The Caine Mutiny (38 page)

“Well, but we’re getting under way this afternoon, going south.”

“No strain. Send him over to my ship for berthing. I think I can get us out of here in a couple of days. My relief is aboard and ready to take over.”

“Well, there’s still the question of Rabbitt’s relief,” said Queeg, with a chuckle. It was a strange solitary sound in the wardroom.

“What do you mean, Captain? Doesn’t Rabbitt have a qualified relief aboard?”

“Depends on what you mean by qualified- More coffee, Commander?”

“No, thank you- Are you
that
shorthanded, Commander Queeg? How long has Rabbitt’s assistant been aboard?”

“Harding? Oh, I’d say five-six months.”

“Is he a weak sister?”

“Well, that’s pretty harsh.”

“Hell, Captain, there isn’t an officer on my ship, outside of the exec, that I couldn’t detach in twenty-four hours. I figure it’s part of the job to maintain that level of training.”

“Why, it’s all a question of standards, sir,” said Queeg. “I daresay on a good many ships Ensign Harding would be considered qualified in every respect. It’s just that, well, on my ship, excellence is the standard, and I’m not sure Harding has quite achieved excellence.”

“I believe I will have ‘some more coffee, please,” said Frazer.

Queeg said, “Willie, would you be good enough-” The ensign leaped up and poured for the senior officers.

“Well, Commander Queeg,” said Frazer, “I see your viewpoint and I appreciate your high standards. On the other hand, the
Oaks
needs a first lieutenant to start putting her in commission right away, and I particularly need someone around me who knows a little minesweeping. After all, we’re in a war. People have to learn fast, and do their best-”

“Well, I don’t know,” said Queeg, with a wise smile, “it sort of seems to me that in war standards of officer training should be higher, not lower. There are lives at stake, you know.”

Frazer stirred canned milk into his coffee slowly, and studied Queeg’s face with narrowed eyes. The captain of the
Caine
slouched in his chair, and stared at the wall, still smiling; in one hand hung over the back of the chair, the steel balls rolled with a little crackling noise.

“Captain Queeg,” said the blond commander, “your point is well taken. Only thing is, it wouldn’t make sense for me to hold up commissioning the
Oaks
while we waited for this relief of Rabbitt’s to come up to your standards, would it? I have to stop over in Washington to report to the Bureau. Suppose I tell them frankly that you’ve had difficulty in training up a replacement for Rabbitt to suit your standards, and just request that another officer be assigned-”

“I’ve had no difficulty of any kind, and I’ll match the state of officer training on this ship with any ship in the fleet, sir,” said Queeg quickly. When he put his coffee cup down it rattled. “As I say, by anybody’s standards but my own Harding is perfectly qualified, and in fact by my own standards his state of training is damned good, and, as I say, if Rabbitt left this afternoon the
Caine
would still be qualified to carry out all assignments, but all I was getting at-”

“I’m glad to hear that, Captain, and I’m sure it’s true,” said Frazer, grinning. “And that being the case, how about letting me have Rabbitt this afternoon?”

“Well, sir-” Queeg’s head wagged heavily from side to side, and sank down between his shoulders. He peered out from under his eyebrows. “Well, as I say, since apparently it would work such a hardship to the
Oaks
if Rabbitt stayed aboard here another few days, which is all I ever intended, and gave Harding some concentrated indoctrination, why-I fully realize that the
Caine
is an obsolescent vessel and the battle mission of the
Oaks
is far more important, sir, but for that very reason I regard training as one of the primary missions of this ship, and if I seem overzealous for excellence, well, I don’t know as you can blame me or the Bureau could, either.”

“On the contrary, you deserve commendation for your high standards.” Frazer stood, and picked up his cap. “Suppose I send my gig over for Rabbitt, say, 1600, Captain. Save your boat a trip. Will that suit you?”

“That’ll be fine. If you have any friends in the Bureau, you might tell them that Queeg, Philip, class of ’36, is fairly due for some orders, too. ... I’ll escort you to the gangway, sir,” Queeg said, as Frazer moved toward the door.

“Thank you. Nice meeting you, Keith.”

“It was an honor and a pleasure, sir, I’m sure,” said Willie. He failed in his effort to keep the gladness out of his voice. Queeg shot a baleful side glance at Willie as he left.

Ordinarily when a detached officer quitted the
Caine
nobody took notice except the gangway watch, who had to log the exact time of his leaving. But Willie, who had the watch that afternoon, began to see around three-thirty that something extraordinary was going on. Sailors were congregating near the sea ladder, talking in low tones. The officers began to drift to the quarterdeck, too, one by one. Officers and men alike watched the movements of troops and machines on the battered gray islands, or made jokes about the physiques of swimmers splashing around a destroyer anchored close by, or gawked at the deck hands painting number-three stack slate blue. The sweet oily smell of paint was strong in the warm air.

“Here she comes,” someone said. A trim gig appeared around the bow of a transport and clove through the muddy water toward the
Caine
. A rustling sigh passed through the watchers, as through an audience at a transition moment of a play. Whittaker and a steward’s mate came through the port passageway, carrying a weather-beaten wooden foot locker with two blue canvas handbags piled on it. Rabbitt emerged on the quarterdeck behind them. He blinked in amazement at the crowd. The officers shook hands with him one by one. The sailors stood with their thumbs hooked in their belts, or their hands in their pockets. A few of them called out, “So long, Mr. Rabbitt.”

The gig clanged to a stop beside the sea ladder. Rabbitt went up to Willie and saluted. His lips were sharply pressed together, and his eyes were winking nervously. “Request permission to leave the ship, sir.”

“Permission granted, sir,” said Willie, and added impulsively, “You don’t know what you’re getting out of.”

Rabbitt grinned, pressed Willie’s hand, and went down the ladder. The gig pulled away. Willie, at the gangway desk, looked at the array of backs lined along the rail. They reminded him of shabby spectators roped off at the entrance to a wedding. He went to the rail himself, and gazed after Rabbitt. The gig disappeared around the transport. There was only the fading foamy curve of the wake.

Within the hour Captain Queeg threw a fearful tantrum. Paynter brought him a fuel and water report which showed that the crew’s consumption of water had risen ten percent during the Kwajalein operation. “They’re forgetting the value of water, hey? Kay, Mr. Paynter,” the captain shrieked. “No water for officers’ and crew’s personal use for forty-eight hours! Maybe that’ll show ’em I mean business, here!”

The
Caine
weighed anchor half an hour later, and headed out of Kwajalein Lagoon, bound for Funafuti.

CHAPTER 22

The Water Famine

In the days of sail, a following wind was a blessing; not so in the days of steam.

En route to Funafuti, two hundred miles out of Kwajalein, the
Caine
was wallowing along at ten knots under masses of clouds like vast dirty pillows. It was enveloped in its own miasma, from which it could not escape. The breeze blew from astern at about ten knots. Relative to the ship there was no movement of air at all. The minesweeper seemed to be traveling in a nightmare calm. The stack gas swirled and rolled on the main deck, sluggish, oily, almost visible. It stank; it coated tongues and throats with an itchy, foul-tasting film; it stung the eyes. The air was hot and damp. The smell of the crated cabbages on the after deckhouse made a singularly sickening marriage with the stack fumes. The sailors and officers of the
Caine
, sweating, dirty, unable to obtain the relief of a shower, looked at each other with lolling tongues and dulled sad eyes, and worked with their hands to their noses.

The
Caine
and a destroyer-escort were screening six LST’s, lumbering fat shells more than three hundred feet long, shaped like wooden shoes, and withal strangely frail-looking; a determined assault with a can opener, one felt, on one of these paunchy hulls might bring about the abandon-ship alarm. The LST’s wobbled over the waves at eight knots, and the zigzagging escorts went slightly faster.

Queeg’s water ban was about twenty-four hours old when Maryk presented himself in the captain’s cabin. The
Caine
’s commanding officer lay flat on his back in his bunk, naked. Two fans, buzzing at full speed, blew streams of air down on him; nevertheless sweat stood in beads on his white chest. “What is it, Steve?” he said, not moving.

“Captain, in view of the extraordinary wind conditions, how about securing the water regulations after one day instead of two? Paynter tells me we’ve got plenty to last us until Funafuti-”

“That’s not the point,” exclaimed Queeg. “Why is everybody so goddamned stupid on this ship? Don’t you think I know how much water we have? The point is, the men on this ship have been wasting water, and for their own good they’ve got to be taught a lesson, that’s all.”

“Captain, they’ve learned their lesson. One day of this is like a week without water.”

The captain pursed his lips. “No, Steve, I said forty-eight hours and I meant forty-eight hours. If these men get the idea that I’m one of these shilly-shallyers who doesn’t mean what he says there’ll be no controlling them. Hell, I’d like a shower myself, Steve. I know how you feel. But we’ve got to put up with these inconveniences for the sake of the men’s own good-”

“I wasn’t asking for myself, sir. But the men-”

“Now don’t give me any of that!” Queeg raised up on one elbow, and glared at the executive officer. “I’m as interested in the men’s welfare as you are, and don’t you go playing the hero. Did they or didn’t they waste water? They did. Well, what do you want me to do about it-give them all letters of commendation?”

“Sir, consumption went up ten per cent. It was an invasion day. It wasn’t really what I’d call wasting-”

“All right, all right, Mr. Maryk.” Queeg lay back on the bed. “I see you simply want an argument for argument’s sake. Sorry I can’t accommodate you, but it’s too hot and smelly at the moment. That’s all.”

Maryk heaved his broad chest in a painful sigh. “Sir, how about one fifteen-minute shower period after the sweep-down?”

“God damn it, no! They’ll get enough water in their soup and coffee to keep from getting dehydrated. That’s all that matters. Next time they’ll remember not to waste water on my ship! You can go, Steve.”

The following wind did not desert the
Caine
that night nor the next day. Below decks, the air that came through the ventilators was intolerable; most of it was stack gas. The sailors swarmed out of the compartments and slept in clusters on the after deckhouse or on the main deck, as far from the stacks as they could get. Some of them brought mattresses, but mostly they curled themselves on the rusted deck plates, with life jackets for pillows. On the bridge everyone breathed in gasps through the night. During certain legs of the zigzag the breeze blew at a slight angle, instead of from dead astern, and then it was possible, by stretching one’s neck far out over the bulwark, to catch a gulp or two of warm, fresh, unbelievably sweet air.

A hot sun rose out of the sea next morning and glared redly on a ship which appeared stricken by a plague. Dirty half-naked bodies sprawled all over the decks, apparently lifeless. The boatswain, piping reveille, wrought only a halfhearted resurrection. The bodies stirred, and rose, and began to move through chores with leaden limbs, like the crew of dead men in the
Rime of the Ancient Mariner
. The
Caine
was now fifty miles from the equator, sailing almost due south. With each hour that the sun rose in the sky the air grew hotter and more humid. And-still the ship wallowed over the glittering sea, trapped in its own stench of stack gas and cabbages.

Around noon, human nature revolted. The black gang began to bootleg water in the after engine room, where the evaporators were, so that no pressure would be found by Queeg in any pipes. The word passed through the ship like a telegram. The two narrow steel ladders descending to the broiling, clanking engine space became choked with sailors. Paynter quickly discovered what was happening, and reported it to Maryk in the charthouse. The executive officer shrugged. “Can’t hear a word you’re saying,” he said. “Stack gas has got my ears ringing.”

This blessed relief was available only to the crew. Word of it soon reached all the officers; but, unanimously disloyal though they were to Queeg, a vague yet pervasive sense of the symbolism of an officer’s cap kept them from descending the engine-room ladders.

Ducely, indeed, dropped his head on his arms beside the coding machine at three o’clock, and bleated to Willie that he could stand it no more; he was going aft to get a drink in the engine room. Willie glared at him. Ensign Keith bore small resemblance at this moment to the chubby, cheery-faced piano player who had walked into Furnald Hall fourteen months earlier. He had marked lines around mouth and nose; cheekbones and chin stood out from the round face. His eyes were sunk in smudged sockets. His face was grimy, and brown hairs bristled all over it. Trickles of sweat ran down his face into the neck of his open collar, staining the shirt dark brown. “You go back aft, you sad little bastard,” he said (Ducely was three inches the taller of the two), “and you had better start living in your life jacket. I swear to God I’ll throw you over the side.”

Ducely moaned, lifted his head, and resumed picking feebly at the coding machine.

In one respect Captain Queeg’s isolation from his officers was not as complete as he might have wished; having no private toilet, he was compelled to come below to use the officers’ head in the wardroom passageway. These periodic appearances of the captain at odd hours sometimes led to trouble. It had become instinctive with all the officers to listen for the clang of the captain’s door, and to spring into attitudes of virtue as soon as they heard it. One would leap out of his bunk and pick up a fistful of official mail, another would dart at a coding machine, a third would seize a pen and a mess statement, and a fourth would flip open a logbook.

Since Willie and Ducely were honorably employed, the bang of the captain’s door at this moment did not trouble them. Queeg appeared a few seconds later and flapped through the wardroom in his run-down slippers, pouting morosely at vacancy as usual. The two officers did not look up from their coding. There was quiet while one might count ten, then a sudden frightful yammering in the passageway. Willie jumped up, thinking, or rather half hoping, that the captain had touched some defective light socket and electrocuted himself. He ran up the passageway, followed by Ducely. But there was nothing wrong with the captain, except that he was screeching unintelligibly into the officers’ shower room. Ensign Jorgensen, naked as a cow, his large pink behind jutting like a shelf from his sway back, stood under the shower, his shoulders unmistakably wet, the iron deck under his feel covered with droplets. One hand gripped the shower valve, and with the other he was mechanically fumbling at his car to adjust glasses that weren’t there. His face wore an idiotically pleasant smile. Out of the captain’s jumbled sounds emerged the words, “-
dare
to violate my orders, my express orders? How
dare
you?”

“The water left in the pipes, sir-in the pipes, that’s all,” babbled Jorgensen. “I was just using the water in the pipes, I swear.”

“The water in the pipes, hey? Very good. That’s what the officers on this ship can
all
use for a while. The crew’s water restriction goes off at five o’clock. The officers’ restriction will continue for another
forty-eight hours
. You inform Mr. Maryk of that fact, Mr. Jorgensen, and then submit a written report to me explaining why I should not make out an unsatisfactory
fitness
report for you” (he spat out the word “fitness” as though it were an oath) “at once!”

“The water in the pipes, sir,” groaned Jorgensen, but Queeg had flounced into the head, and slammed the door. Keith and Ducely stared at Jorgensen, with stern, hating faces.

“Fellows, I’ve got to have my shower or I don’t feel human,” said Jorgensen, with injured self-righteousness. “I was only using the water in the pipes, really.”

“Jorgensen,” said Willie, “the water supply for nine men dying of thirst has coursed away into that huge cleft between your buttocks. That’s the right place for it, since your whole personality is concentrated in there. I hope you enjoyed it.”

The officers of the
Caine
went without water for two more days. They all took turns at cursing Jorgensen, and then forgave him. The breeze changed, and the horror of the stack gas and cabbage fumes abated, but the weather continually grew hotter and stickier. There was nothing to do but suffer, and slander the captain. The officers did plenty of both.

Funafuti Atoll was a necklace of low islands richly green, flung on the empty sea. The
Caine
entered it shortly after sunrise, steaming slowly through a gap of blue water in the long white line of breakers on the reef. Half an hour later the minesweeper was secured to the port side of the destroyer tender
Pluto
, outboard of two other ships. Lines for steam, water, and electric power were hurriedly run across; the fires were allowed to die on the
Caine
; and the ship commenced to nurse itself at the generous dugs of the
Pluto
. The tender with its litter swung to a heavy anchor chain, fifteen hundred yards from the beach of Funafuti Island.

Willie was one of the first over the gangplank. A visit to a destroyer tender’s communication office saved him whole days of decoding. It was part of the tender’s service to decode and mimeograph fleet messages. These AlPacs, AlComs, AlFleets, GenPacs, PacFleets, AlNavs, NavGens, SoPacGens, and CentPacGens were what broke the backs of overburdened destroyer communicators.

There was a choppy swell in the lagoon. Willie airily crossed the unsteady planks over the sucking, churning, murderous little spaces between the ships. From the destroyer next to the
Pluto
a broad, stout gangplank on rollers slanted upward. Willie mounted it and found himself in a roaring machine shop. He groped around the cavernous tender, through zigzagging passageways and up and down ladders, passing in and out of a blacksmith shop, a barbershop, a carpenter shop, a laundry, a stainless-steel kitchen where hundreds of chickens were frying, a bakery, and twenty other such civilized enterprises. Throngs of sailors moved sedately through these clean, fresh-painted spaces, most of them eating ice cream out of paper cups. They looked different from his own crew; generally older, fatter, and more peaceful; a species of herbivorous sailor, one might say, as contrasted to the coyotes of the
Caine
.

He stumbled at last upon the immense wardroom. Brown leather couches stretched along the bulkheads, and officers in khaki stretched upon the couches. There were perhaps fifteen of these prostrate figures. Willie walked up to a bulky body and touched the shoulder. The officer grunted, rolled over, and sat up, blinking. He stared at Willie a moment, and said, “I’ll be goddamned-the demerit king, Midshipman Keith.”

The jowly face had familiar, half-obliterated features. Willie studied the officer with some embarrassment and put out his hand. “That’s right,” he said, and added, with a sudden jolt of recognition, “Aren’t you Ensign Acres?”

“Good for you. Only it’s Lieutenant jg.” Acres uttered a wheezy laugh. “They don’t always recognize me. Coffee?”

“Yes,” he said, a few minutes later, stirring his cup, “I’ve put on at least forty pounds, I know. You do, on these damn tenders. There’s so much of everything-You look pretty good. Skinnier. Sort of older, somehow. You got a good deal?”

“It’s all right,” Willie said. He was trying to keep himself from staring in wonder at Acres. The once stern, handsome drill officer was a fat wreck.