Читать книгу The Sand Pebbles - Richard McKenna - Страница 5

Table of Contents

For turn-to next morning Holman walked around the engine room with Lynch. He was wearing his new white shorts and he felt very silly dressed like that in an engine room. This first walk and talk about the machinery on a new ship was always a kind of mental wrestling match, with the new man trying to show the chief how much he knew. Lynch wouldn’t wrestle. Holman scratched his thumbnail on pump rods and commented that they were steam cut. He shook valve gears and the loose bushings rattled. Lynch just grinned.

“She steams,” he said. “That’s all we give a damn about.”

The other engineers were all down there too in shorts, and their day’s work was only a gesture. Burgoyne looked around the fireroom while Perna checked the bunkers, and then they both made out the coal report. Stawski followed two coolies around and watched them jack over idle pumps with a crowbar. Wilsey watched a gang of coolies jack over the main engine. The jacking gear was a removable worm that engaged a worm wheel around the shaft just aft of the engine. They turned the worm with a long ratchet bar, and it took three coolies hauling at it with a rope and singing, “Hay ho! Hay ho!” while a fourth coolie squatted and threw the bar clicking back after each heave. Holman could barely see the balanced tons of metal move.

“Are them coolies dogging it, or is she really that stiff?” he asked Lynch.

“She’s stiff. The dockyard rebabbited all the bearings,” Lynch said. “She’ll free up, with a day’s steaming.”

Chien followed them around the engine room. He ignored Holman. He was very attentive to Lynch. Lynch told Chien various small cleaning and repair jobs to do. Holman simply could not draw Lynch into technical talk.

“There ain’t no blueprints. Nobody ever knew the valve settings,” Lynch said. “Chinamen in Hong Kong built her for the Spaniards, Christ knows how long ago. So long ago her frames and plates are all wrought iron.”

“I been noticing the dents.”

“You ought to see her in drydock, all humps and hollows. She just ain’t got the springback steel has,” Lynch said. He laughed. “She’s a beat-up old bitch, but by God she’s a home!”

After battle drills Holman had to go with Lynch again, to sign Title B cards in the CPO quarters. The quarters were aft on the boat deck, in a block that also held the sickbay and a small stateroom for the Chinese pilot. There were wicker armchairs outside under the awning and broad-leafed plants in green wooden tubs, and the Chinese messcook was sitting in one of the armchairs shining shoes. Inside, the CPO bunks had blue spreads, but otherwise the place was no more clean and spacious than the crew’s compartment, directly below it on the main deck.

“Lemon! Catch coffee!” Lynch told the messcook.

They were alone at the round table inside. Holman had a big stack of cards to sign. On each one he had to cross out Pitocki’s name. Lemon brought coffee in a porcelain pitcher and set out two of the CPO cups with handles. Lynch leaned and pulled a bottle of rum out from under a bunk. He held it up and sloshed it.

“You’ll have some, won’t you?”

“Sure. And much obliged,” Holman said.

Lynch splashed rum in the cups. He filled his own half full. He did not look good. His face looked puffy and yielding, like wax that was too warm, and his brown hair was very thin on top. The hot coffee in the rum made an aromatic smell.

“Here’s how,” Lynch said. He tossed off half his cup and snorted.

“Ain’t how for me,” Holman said, grinning. He sipped at his cup.

“Needed that!” Lynch said. “Holman, I hear you locked horns with old Chien yesterday.”

Holman went on guard. “It wasn’t much. We both saved face.”

“Well, you know how slopeheads are about face and old custom,” Lynch said. “I got to cut you in on how we do things on this ship. It ain’t like the Fleet ships you’re used to, not a bit.”

When you wanted something with a bilge coolie you always went through old Chien, he said. Same with the deck coolies, you went to Pappy Tung. You never got familiar with deck or bilge coolies. It was all right to kid with the compartment coolies, because they knew their places. And you never wore dungarees except to stand a steaming watch.

“Like you yesterday, in the bilges and all dirty,” Lynch said. “It made it look like you didn’t trust Chien, so he lost face. And you lost face for being so dirty.”

“That’s how it is on here, huh?”

“That’s how it is.”

Lynch poured more rum for himself. It was putting a sparkle in his pouched eyes and his face looked firmer.

“No, thanks.” Holman waved away the bottle. “What work do we do, and what do they do, down in that engine room?”

“They do the coolie work, the dirty stuff and the mule hauling. We give ’em the jobs, supervise and inspect. And we keep up the paper work.” Lynch squinted at Holman. “Oh, we make the big decisions, and we’d take over in any emergency, but for routine stuff Chien carries the load.”

“Whatever happens down there that ain’t routine?”

“Nothing! Nothing, by God!” Lynch leaned back and laughed. “Old Chien’s been aboard more than twenty years and not much can happen he ain’t seen and handled before. That’s what’s good about it.”

Holman poured himself more coffee. He kept his face straight.

“Keep old Chien happy, give him what he wants, and you can just forget about the God damned machinery,” Lynch said.

It was clear enough that Chien had the place on this ship that Holman wanted for himself. But how could he ever ease Chien out of it if all engine work was coolie work and he was not a coolie? He saw Lynch eyeing him oddly and he tried to grin.

“Get out of that Fleet way of thinking,” Lynch said. “We ain’t in no engineering competition. We ain’t got any division maneuvers or drill schedules to keep up. No admiral is going to chew the Old Man’s ass if we break down. We don’t even have typhoons and we ain’t never out of sight of land. Engineering just ain’t important on this ship.”

“I guess you’re right,” Holman said sadly.

“What is important is face and old custom.” Lynch sipped at his coffee royal. “Take shaving. It’s old custom that Clip Clip shaves all hands.” He rubbed his jaw. “Hell, I’d feel abused if I had to shave myself. I probably forgot how.”

“The coolies get paid by squeeze, huh?”

“And how, they squeeze!” Lynch nodded vigorously. “On coal and stores and chow—oh, I could tell you some stories. But you’ll see.” He chuckled. “It all goes to Lop Eye Shing. Sew Sew and Press Press and Clip Clip’s take, the tips, everything goes to Shing and he shares it out again.”

“Shing. Who’s he?”

“Number one boy for the ship, been aboard twenty-five years,” Lynch said. “He’s half paralyzed, you don’t see him on deck much. But he’ll be up tomorrow for payday.”

Holman stood up. “I got ’em all signed,” he said, pushing the cards toward Lynch. “Thanks for the rum. And for the good advice.”

Lynch waved a hand. “Good for us both.”

In the compartment they were drinking coffee at the mess tables and waiting their turns for a shave. Holman poured a cup and sat down and Burgoyne shoved a paper at him.

“Put your name down for your turn,” he said.

“Don’t need a shave right now.” Holman knuckled his jaw. He had a stubble, but he knew it was too light in color to show much.

“Ought to have a clean shave to take the quarterdeck,” Farren said. “You got the twelve-to-four.”

Farren made out the watch list for Holman’s section. Holman looked at Farren’s beard.

“Maybe I’ll grow me a beard,” he said.

“It’s a free country,” the gunner’s mate said.

They were not as friendly as yesterday. On any other ship Holman would not have cared about that, because he would have the machinery to back him up. He did not know about this ship. I will get shaved, he thought, and then, no, God damn them, shaving was a man’s own private business.

They left Holman out of the talk. They were all kidding Clip Clip, talking about bending him on like a messenger and discussing his good and bad points as a piece of duhai. Clip Clip was a nervous, wizened old Chinaman in a white U.S. Navy surgical gown, and he was very fast and expert with his shaving. He shrilled and chattered back at the sailors, making a great show of anger, and they all laughed at him. A big, sloppy seaman named Ellis, with a half-round scar on his cheek, sneaked up and goosed Clip Clip. The old man jumped and squealed and turned, waving his razor.

“My cuttee you neck!” he shrilled.

Ellis retreated, to a burst of laughter.

“Every time you goose him, he adds twenty cents to your bill,” Farren told Ellis. “Serves you right.”

“Aw, you reckon he’d do that? You reckon old Clip Clip’d do a thing like that to a shipmate?” Ellis said.

They all laughed some more. After a while Wong, the messcook, started putting out the mess gear for dinner.

Bronson was a fleshy, important-looking first-class quartermaster. He stood stiffly on the quarterdeck and reeled off the watch dope to Holman: ships in port, senior officer present, weather.... Holman hardly listened. He was hating it already and thinking how you relieved a steaming watch in an engine room. You went down early and checked the machinery and when you knew of your own knowledge how things were, you went to the throttle and told the guy, “Okay, I got it.” He did not understand half of what Bronson was saying. He did not know anything about this topside military crap and he did not want to learn. He was wishing that he had never put his name in for the U.S.S. San Pablo.

“That’s the information, up to the moment.” Bronson stood waiting.

“Okay, I guess I got it,” Holman said.

“You’re supposed to salute me and say, ‘I relieve you, sir.’ ”

Rage rippled over Jake Holman. “It ain’t regulation for enlisted men to salute each other,” he said, trying to control his voice.

“On this quarterdeck we’re both junior officers of the deck,” Bronson said. “It’s how we do it on here, Holman.”

“If you was sitting in God’s own armchair, you’d still be an enlisted man.” Holman’s voice trembled. “I won’t salute you. I never did believe in that kind of crap.”

Bronson turned pale. His lips pinched in and he looked at Holman in silence for almost a minute. Then he saluted and said, “I hereby turn the watch over to you, sir.”

Holman checked his impulse to salute back. He turned his guilt to anger. “Okay, I got it,” he said, more surly still. “Give me that God damned peashooter.” His face was burning.

Silently, Bronson unbuckled his pistol belt, and silently Holman buckled it on himself. Bronson went away. The pistol lay heavy and accusing against Holman’s thigh and the Chinese messenger was looking at him curiously. Holman knew he had gone too far. He had long known that his dislike of military crap was like a private disease, which no one else could understand. Other guys hated it and said so, but it did not curdle the inside of their bones. New panic tried to rise in him. He felt like a dog on its hind legs. Like a whore in church. He stood at attention and looked down at his hairy bare legs and saw that his knees touched and his ankles touched and there was a long, narrow, figure-eight gap between his knees and his ankles. He had never noticed that before. He did not know whether he was knock-kneed or bowlegged. What am I doing here, he thought. Jesus Christ on a crutch, what am I doing here?

An old help he had once used came back to him. They could command you what you had to do, he thought, but they could not command you how you had to feel about it, although they tried. So you did things their way and you felt about them your own way, and you did not let them know how you felt. That way you kept the two things separate and you could stand it. Slowly, Holman began getting hold of himself.

He was able to return the salutes when he checked out the liberty party, one of whom was Bronson. Chief Franks was senior OOD, and he came down and stood most of the watch with Holman. He was breaking Holman in, instructing him in the watch duties without seeming to, just passing along information while he talked casually about things. Franks was probably not trying to sound out his attitudes, Holman decided. Franks had a plain, straight manner, and he was not one of the sly, watching kind. It turned out to Holman’s relief that he would not have to know anything about seamanship.

“Pappy Tung looks after all that stuff without anybody telling him,” Franks said. “He’s the best seaman aboard.”

Pappy Tung seemed to have the same position on deck that Chien had in the engine room. He was a short, sturdy old Chinese with a dark face that seemed carved out of wood. Like the other deck coolies, he wore navy undress whites without insignia, but he also wore a black neckerchief to mark his rank.

“That’s good. I sure ain’t no seaman,” Holman said.

The important thing was the smart appearance of the ship, smart side and boat courtesies and, most of all, exchanging salutes with passing ships. Bugle calls, hand salutes and color dips had to be timed and spaced exactly right. Lt. Collins had a very raw nerve for passing honors, Franks said, and if they did not go off exactly right he would raise hell. Franks handled the ceremony for the several ships that passed, to show Holman how to do it. They only exchanged salutes with treaty power flags. A few rusty steamers flew the five-barred Chinese flag, but they did not make dips. The big junks did not bother with flags, unless you could call a white cloth with the skipper’s name in Chinese characters a flag.

“That’s the kind of flags most of the warlords down in Hunan use,” Franks said. “The slopeheads just don’t savvy flags, is all.”

Junks did have a kind of passing ceremony, when one junk overhauled another one, and Holman and Franks walked over to port to watch one on the river. The faster junk was trying to cut sharp across the bow of the slower one and they were neck and neck and curving in toward the bank. On the smaller, slower junk the crew was screaming and beating gongs and shooting firecrackers.

Franks chuckled. “That big boy’s trying to unload his devils on the little fellow.”

Holman knew about that. They believed that devils held hands and tailed on behind a junk, more and more of them as time passed, and the only way to get rid of the devils was to cross the bow of another junk. If you could force another junk to cut through your string of devils, your cut-off devils would join his string and you went on your way bobtailed and lucky again.

“We keep a tub of spuds on the bridge to throw at ’em, when they try that stuff on us,” Franks said. “Ignorant bastards, ain’t they?”

“I guess it’s real to them,” Holman said. He could see that the small junk was going to get a new load of devils, for all their noise and trying, and he felt a bit sorry for them.

His other watch duties were to keep the log and carry out inport routine, sweepdowns, sick call and so forth. Most of the things had a bugle call attached and the watch messenger was also the bugler. There were four of them aboard and they were all named Fang.

“So you don’t have to worry about telling ’em apart,” Franks said.

The four Fangs were Lt. Collins’ addition to the ship. He had had Lop Eye Shing hire them away from the warlord army in Changsha. Paying them had raised the squeeze quite a bit and cigarettes and beer had each gone up a dime.

“I had to let ’em squeeze all the canvas I was going to use for new awnings,” Franks said.

“Was the ship as regulation military before Lt. Collins came aboard as it is now?” Holman asked cautiously.

“Just about. It always has been.” Franks looked out over the pontoon. “He’s hot about it, all right. He can get kind of mystical about it and make you feel funny. But he’s just the right skipper for down in Hunan Province.”

By the end of the watch Holman was almost at ease. There was a signal watch on the bridge and a roving sentry and when they reported, on the hour, Holman exchanged smart salutes with them. When Farren relieved him at four o’clock, Holman said all the right things and exchanged salutes with Farren. He had the split set up in himself again, and it was working all right.

From the quarterdeck he went down into the engine room to write up the log there, because he had also been standing the engine room watch officially on paper. It still seemed like a fantastic joke. Chien and his coolies were knocking off and Chien blew the boiler glass just as Holman came down. They exchanged blank looks. Holman checked the plant and everything was all right. He felt slightly like an intruder when he went around to the log desk.

He entered the four o’clock temperature and pressure readings in the various columns of the log sheet. Then he filled them in for the three previous hours, and he felt like a sneak. Faking readings like that was called “radioing,” and it was an engineering sin. He signed his name to the log, and his name was a lie. Because the coolie who had really stood the watch was not even aboard, officially on paper, and he was only represented on the log sheet by tally marks in the margin for the buckets of coal he had burned. Well, that was how they did it on the U.S.S. San Pablo. That was what it meant to be a Sand Pebble.

At sunset Franks mustered the duty section on the fantail and they made evening colors. Coolies watched it from the bank, but it was not much of a show. Holman turned in early and the Fang called him for the watch at midnight by tapping on his bunk frame. The deck coolies were never supposed to touch you. There was nothing to do on the quarterdeck watch at night, except to write up the log. The Fang squatted and went to sleep beside the boat deck ladder and Holman was alone. He looked up the bank to the corner of the brick wall where he had stood and had his first look at the San Pablo two nights ago, and he shook his head.

The deck log was a lot different from the engine room log. You had to put in the deck log what ships were in port and what kinds of clouds were in what parts of the sky and the direction and force of the wind. Holman had to search for the north star, finding the Big Dipper first, and he had not looked at the stars in years. The high, strung-out clouds drifted among the bright stars as if a strong wind blew up there, but there was only a light breeze on the river. The river was black and it whispered and chuckled. It was a big river, already a mile wide six hundred miles from the sea. A few lights bobbed on it and there were more lights on the far bank. There was a pagoda over there, and an old walled city named Wuchang, but at night they blended with the dark, humpy hills.

“High, scattered, moving clouds all over the sky,” he wrote in the deck log.

He logged the air temperature and pressure from the barometer and also the river temperature and depth. Those were temperatures and pressures and water levels, just as you logged them in the engine room, he thought, but up here you could not adjust them if they were wrong. You could not know when they were wrong. Down below even the illiterate coolies knew that much, from red limit marks on the pressure gauge dials and pieces of string around water-level glasses. It was much better down below. You did not care which way was north; you went by port and starboard, fore and aft. You did not care whether it was day or night or what the weather was, unless it got rough enough to pitch the screw out of the water or ship a sea down the skylight. In the engine room you had control of things.

Holman paced across to the port side and back again, several angry times.

Well, with the bugle you controlled a lot of what people did from the quarterdeck, he thought. What the ship did as a ship, as in rendering passing honors. The gangplank was there. It was a kind of gate or threshold, the place where the ship officially touched the world. The gap in the bulwark was flanked by two big wooden slabs with eagles carved on them. Lots of ships in China had those slabs; they were made cheaply ashore in the same shops that made chests and coffins. There was another eagle slab fastened to the bulkhead above the log desk and a long, narrow slab slung from the overhead just inboard of the light. It had a carved dragon and the ship’s name in block letters. There were a brass clock and a name board mounted on the slab above the log desk. Something made the quarterdeck sacred, so that anyone coming on it always had to salute. But the Chinese did not have to salute the quarterdeck.

The thing is to act like it’s sacred but not believe it, Holman reminded himself.

Because after all it was only a small, triangular area of deck where the midship passageway met the starboard main deck gallery. Its only furniture was the arms locker under the boat deck ladder and on the other side the varnished log desk up against the white wooden bulkhead that enclosed the crew’s compartment. Almost all of the ship’s superstructure was wooden, and it had been built on the San Pablo’s wrought-iron hull after she had come to the river. She was much too topheavy ever to go to sea again. The log desk stood on high legs and you wrote standing up. The slanting top lifted up and inside were spare pencils, a pair of binoculars, a box for liberty cards and boxes of sanitubes and condoms for the men going on liberty. That was all there was to the quarterdeck.

There was no machinery. Well, that brass clock is a kind of time-chopping-up machine, Holman thought. The pistol on his hip was a kill-people machine. But the pistol was more like a power tool and so were all the other guns in the arms locker, and the cutlasses in there were hand tools. The name board beside the clock was like a status board in a big engine room, with pegs or tags to tell you at a glance what pumps were on and what important valves were closed or open.

The name board had twenty-four names, each on a separate little stick that slid in a groove. There were parallel columns for “Aboard” and “Ashore” and you slid the sticks from one to the other as the people came and went. The top name was Lt. William Collins, USN, Commanding, and he was ashore. So was P. A. Lynch, CMM, ashore. They said Lynch was gone on a Russian cabaret girl. One of the names was C. J. Pitocki, MM1/c, and he was aboard. They had all been telling him what a fine old guy old Pitocki was, Holman thought. They didn’t want Jake Holman on their ship. They wanted some nameless, faceless raw material that they could nudge and pinch and shape into another Pitocki. It was a weird, lonely night notion, and it bothered Holman. He tried to scratch out Pitocki’s name and broke his pencil point on the transparent tape guarding it. Pitocki was unscratched. Sure, old Pitocki’s aboard, Holman thought. You don’t get rid of a twelve-year plankowner just by killing the bastard.

The panic he had felt at noon began creeping over him again. He tried to visualize his own face, and he could not. He knew he had a firm, squarish face and a strong jaw and gray eyes spaced wide under bushy eyebrows, but he could not make himself see it. All he could get was magnified glimpses of the corner of his mouth or the point of his jaw, with lather and a razor scraping, or his hand with a comb parting his short, sandy hair above a vague, wide forehead. He was about to go aft and look in a mirror when the dozing Fang jumped to his feet. Holman saw a slim, erect figure in service whites walking briskly down to the pontoon. It was Lt. Collins.

Lt. Collins returned the new man’s salute and started up the ladder to the boat deck. On impulse he stopped and turned, standing with his face in shadow and looking down at the new man, Holman, in the light beside the log desk.

“Holman, how do you feel about this ship by now?” he asked. “Do you think you’ll like this duty?”

“I like it fine, sir.”

They always said that. They thought they had to.

“Are you sure? Don’t be afraid to speak up.” He made his voice friendly and reassuring.

“I never had living conditions so good in all my life, sir,” Holman said. “I can’t hardly believe yet how good it is on here.”

“I mean the whole ship. The duty. Do you think you will be happy in this ship?”

Holman licked his lips. “When I get used to these topside watches, sir—I’m more used to things down below—I guess I will, sir.”

He was not being candid. Lt. Collins began questioning him. He wanted to discover that puzzling something hinted at but not revealed by Holman’s service record. The man had grown up in a poor family in a small Western town. He had dropped out of high school to join the navy during the war. It was a perfect background for a career man. His frequent transfers Holman explained by saying that he wanted experience with new machinery plants. All his transfers had been at his own request. It did not explain his low marks in leadership contrasting with almost perfect marks in the other categories. There was no direct way to ask him about that.

“Can you say what you really feel about machinery, Holman?”

“It’s real, sir.”

“What do you mean?”

The man pondered. “Well ... other ships I been on ... military stuff, drills and inspections ... in the end, somebody gives you a mark on it.” He was grasping painfully for words to clothe his thought. “I mean, it’s always inside somebody’s head, like. But machinery runs good or bad or it don’t run at all. You can’t fool yourself or anybody else about it. It’s just ... there. The same for everybody.” He was red and sweating from effort.

“In the end the test of the military stuff is life or death in battle and possibly freedom or slavery for the country which gives one life.”

He said it gently. The man seemed honest in his confusion. Here on my own quarterdeck I meet it again, Lt. Collins thought. There were the men who gave and took death in battle. There were the other men who shuffled papers and cooked beans and such, logistic support for the fighters. The army could keep them separate. In a ship, they all went into battle together. You could not make the distinction between man and man. It had to be made within each man, and each man had constantly to make it for himself. Military ceremony was a powerful help in that. The distinction was built into a man in his boot training and the military ritual thereafter maintained it.

“You know the twofold nature of duty.”

“Yes, sir. Military is most important.”

He knows it as a verbal formula, Lt. Collins thought. Unconsciously he probably rejects it and that shows up in his behavior in some way that earns him those low marks in leadership. Lt. Collins made his voice firm but kindly.

“San Pablo is not a Fleet ship, Holman. In Hunan Province it is only by keeping instantly ready to fight and die that we avoid having to do so. No man can be excused.”

“Yes, sir. I never meant—”

“Anyone can learn technical skills. In San Pablo Chinese do the dirty work and routine drudgery. Military duty demands a certain spirit of instant readiness to deal in life and death. Only the very best men, and no Chinese, are good enough for that.”

“Yes, sir.”

“The men in San Pablo are that kind of men. They are all old hands. If you feel that you are not their kind of man, now is the time to say so.”

Holman said nothing. He could probably not admit a thing like that, even to himself. But a strained look was growing on his face. The shoe was pinching.

“We start summer cruising Monday. I still have time to swap you back to the Fleet, if you feel you will not be happy in my ship.”

“Please, no, sir!” Holman said. “I’ll learn what I need to. I’ll measure up, sir.”

It was clear that he meant it. Lt. Collins smiled slightly.

“Very well. I may talk to you again, in a few days.”

He went on up the ladder and stopped outside his cabin, at the boat deck rail. The talk had begun a train of thought in him. That often happened, and he had no one with whom he could talk out such trains of thought. You should keep a journal, he told himself.

The key was death. In Cromwell’s time everybody knew about death. The church saw to that. But now the people did not like anything that reminded them of death. The naval uniform marked men whose primary purpose in life was to deal in violent death. People would rather not have to know that, even some who wore the uniform. A few years back Josephus Daniels had put chaplains and paymasters into the same uniform as line officers. He was trying to mask the face of death. The current recruiting slogans were pure Josephus Daniels: Join the navy and learn a trade. Every battleship a school. It was no wonder the men tended to forget the primary purpose of their lives.

The only true recruiting poster was one they did not use any more. It was Uncle Sam pointing and saying I need you. Any man who wanted a better reason than that did not belong in the navy.

Well, the men in San Pablo were all right. Chinese handled their logistics and the Sand Pebbles could be pure, dedicated fighting men. If Holman was not one of them, they would know it and they would reject him. San Pablo’s isolation was a protection. But the way the times went, with the smart ones back in the States mocking their own history, Holman’s basic confusion could creep unseen into any man. Lt. Collins meant to call all hands aft for a talk before they started the summer cruise. This was the thing to talk about, he decided.

He drummed his fingers on the rail and looked out across the dark water. His mind began forming simple phrases. He went into his cabin to jot a few of them down before he went to bed.

On the quarterdeck, Holman paced anxiously. He had not thought before that he might be shanghaied off the ship. He did not want to go. He did not want to lose that bunk and locker and mess table. So he had lied to Lt. Collins.

Well, he would just have to make it true. If they had no use for him as an engineer, he would have to become a good topside sailor. He resolved to give in on the shaving and do everything else he could to get on the right side of his shipmates. He was going to need their good will after all.

He recognized the scared, qualmish feeling in his stomach. When you had something to lose, they had a way to put the fear of Christ into you. He could not stop pacing. He was remembering what had happened the only other time in his life when he had had something to lose.