And this provided another dilemma for Devereaux, and, naturally, he blamed his predicament on David and allowed his anger to feed the fires of his hatred. The truth was that Devereaux didn’t care at all about the welfare of the enlisted man. Devereaux thoroughly enjoyed all the privileges of his rank and accepted them as the indisputable rights of a man who held a Master’s degree and who taught at a university in civilian life. He would no more equate himself with a member of the deck gang than he would with an ape. And whereas he admitted that radarmen were perhaps high on the Navy’s scale of intelligence, he nonetheless knew that no radarman on the Hanley, and perhaps no radarman in the entire fleet, was as intelligent or as educated or as cultured as he, George Devereaux. He knew nothing at all about David Regan except that he had been intimate with a girl named Ardis Fletcher and that his father had drowned in a Connecticut lake, and more about him he didn’t particularly care to know. Knowing as little as he did, he was certain that David’s background and education were not equal to his own, that David’s I.Q. was undoubtedly lower than his, and that David was about as important to him as the man who swept the streets back in Westwood.
And yet the captain’s order annoyed him, and he convinced himself that he was concerned about the rights of the enlisted man while all the time he knew the order was in keeping with a naval regulation that met with his approval. That was the damn thing about David Regan, he told himself. He forced you into these stupid situations where you believed one thing and professed another, where you were compelled to examine with scrutiny your own motivations, and where you always came out the loser.
The next morning, after quarters for muster, he told David what the captain had said, and David instantly suggested that they forget all about finishing the story.
“No,” Devereaux told him. “You go on with the rewrite. Leave the story in my mailbox, and I’ll type up any suggestions I have and leave them for you in the radar shack. We’re going to finish that story, David!”
Two days after the Hanley came out of dry dock, she was ordered to take part in a battle problem involving an American cruiser and five other American destroyers. Considering the fact that the Hanley had been in a great many real battles, it was no surprise that the men looked upon the exercise as something of a lark. There was, in fact, something of a holiday air aboard the ship that day as she maneuvered off Pearl in simulated combat.
David, at his battle station on the bridge, was not immune to the general feeling of gaiety. It was nice to be involved in combat where no one could get hurt. He snapped his radar bearings to the exec, sifted the lookout reports, translated messages from fire control, and generally enjoyed the balmy weather and the mild breeze blowing off the open water. As always, he wore sound-powered phones on his head, the mouthpiece of the set strapped around his neck. And, as always, the left earpiece was in place over his left ear so that he could hear any messages that came over the phones, but his right ear was uncovered so that he could hear any commands given on the bridge. The radar shack was in TBS contact with a squadron of Wildcats flying in support of the group, and George Devereaux was the communications officer directing the squadron and reporting its position to the bridge. Three borrowed Army B-24s were approaching the ships, simulating Japanese bombers, and Devereaux had given the Wildcats their interception vectors and was reporting their progress at regularly spaced intervals. In the meantime, the ships were engaged in some fairly complicated defensive maneuvers against a mythical surface-attack force, and radarmen were constantly calling up ranges and bearings to the bridge, the maneuver constructed so that each ship in the group took accurate position from a previously designated guide ship. The skipper kept pacing the bridge and listening to the signalmen as they reported the flags that appeared on the cruiser, the flags telling the rest of the force which turns they were supposed to execute. As soon as the turn was executed, the radar beamed in on the guide destroyer and called up the range and bearing, and the skipper gave orders to correct or maintain direction or speed as the radar indicated. And all the while, Devereaux kept calling up the progress of the fighter planes, waiting for that moment of contact with the approaching B-24s, that moment when he would hear the fighter pilots shout “Tallyho! Tallyho!”
The moment came unexpectedly and somewhat confusedly.
The skipper turned to David, wanting the position of the guide destroyer, and started to say, “Regan, get me a range and bearing on Sugarfoot.”
All he got out was “Regan, get me a ra—” because at that moment the phone on David’s left ear burst into sound.
“Bridge, Combat,” Devereaux said. “Tallyho! Tallyho! Three bogeys, zero-four-two, range one-oh-five, angels two.”
David, assaulted by the sound from the radar shack in his left ear, catching the captain’s words in his uncovered right ear, did a very normal and natural thing, which was immediately misinterpreted by the captain. He held out his hand like a traffic cop and waved it at the captain, shushing him as he listened carefully to the urgent message coming over the phone. The captain clamped his mouth shut and stared at David. David turned to him, caught in the excitement of the imaginary battle.
“Wildcats report enemy contact, sir,” he said. “Three bogeys at zero-four-two, range one—”
“Get off the bridge, Regan,” the captain said.
David bunked. “Sir?”
“I said get off the bridge! Now!”
“Sir?” David repeated.
“Did you hear me talking to you a moment ago?”
“Yes, sir, but—”
“But what?”
“Sir, Mr. Devereaux—”
“Mr. Devereaux what?”
“Sir,” David said, “the Wildcats, sir. They spotted...” and he fell silent, recognizing at once that it was futile to argue with an officer, especially when he was a full commander who happened to be captain of the ship. He took off the earphones, unstrapped the mouthpiece, and looked at the captain. “Re... re... request permission to leave the bridge, sir,” he said.
“Permission granted,” the captain snapped.
“Who... who do you want to... to take the phones, sir?”
“You may give them to the executive officer, Regan.”
“Yes, sir,” David said. He handed the phones to Mr. Peterson. Peterson took them without a word. David turned to the captain again. “Sir? Sir, where should I go?”
“Cruiser flying Turn-One-Answer, sir,” one of the signalmen shouted.
The captain shoved David aside and turned toward the helmsman. “Right fifteen degrees rudder,” he said.
“Right fifteen degrees rudder, sir.”
The captain turned to the engine-order telegraph operator. “All engines ahead standard,” he said.
“All engines ahead standard, sir.”
“Coming around to zero-three-five, sir.”
“Meet her.”
“All engines answer ahead standard, sir.”
“Very well.”
“Steady on zero-three-five, sir.”
“Very well,” the captain said. “Mr. Peterson, range and bearing on Sugarfoot. Tell Combat to send up another talker.”
“Sir,” David said, “should I—?”
“Get the hell off the bridge!” the captain bellowed, and David nodded and went down the ladder quietly.