frankly rather overdone — vulgar, sobbing, maudlin rummies pleading for mercy in the tank. Claude’s confronted by one fellow who manages to grab on to the raft — every contour of his face is defined by a desperate yearning — then his body shivers and shakes, reaching. . a climax: the blood pours from his eyes, his mouth, his nostrils, he goes limp, lets go, lazily up-ends. . a cork . . from the end of which protrude three . . four white vertebrae. The offal slick spreads out across the water, replenished for a time by the pumping of the half-man’s heart. — Anywhere Claude directs his gaze there’s more of the same. . to feast my eyes on: arms are taken off at the shoulder, legs at the knee or crotch, heads at the neck. . kinda merciful, really. Try as he might, Claude finds it difficult to maintain the necessary detachment — appreciate the spectacle for what it is: a Saturday night fish fry . . attended by. . jigging jig-a-boo diners, who’re such jive bunnies . . they can hop, dive and eat. . to their cold, cold hearts’ content all at the same time. He guesses it might be time for a few more vite-a-mines . . after all. . if you gotta Johnson you oughta give him a little Johnson’s waxing, eh, Molly?Where’d you put the stuff — in Fibber McGee’s closet? There are two more of the syrettes in his shirt pocket — but, while his shipmates are mostly distracted by show time, there’s one big lunk — a Hoosier, to judge by his honking — who can’t take his eyes off Claude. Maybe he’s a hop head too — could be he’s made me. — The big circle of swimmers the Chaplain managed to tie together drifts away from the raft, attracting as it goes more and more desperate men, who grab on to the writhing mass of their comrades. . in arms. Safety in numbers is one of the many delusions, like truth, justice and the chain of command, that have been torn apart and scattered on the waters. When the setting sun’s last low-angled rays lance into the bloodied waves, a furious mêlée engulfs the group, seemingly from within — arms throw punches, legs kick free and bodies are lifted clean out of the water and slung. . every which way. The master-sergeant, who probably enjoyed counting them off the LS at Iwo Jima, takes a perverse pleasure in doing the same now: synchronising his watch with the feeding frenzy, he remarks to the others, We-ell, that’s maybe fifty of the poor bastids gone in the past ten minutes. This intelligence Claude snickers at — because, what with the distraction, he’s managed to take another shot in the leg. Soon after, the night falls on top of them: banked-up masses of cloud blowing up from the south cover the bare-ass moon . . and the dinner-and-dance crowd slink off back to the depths. For a long while the six men in the raft can hear the remaining swimmers hollering and beating the water with their hands — and if Claude weren’t so sweetly drowsy, he’d tell them to cut it out because it’s interfering with. . my nod . . Oh roister-doister l’il oyster, Down in the slimy sea . . — At last, mercifully, the wind gets up and the raft spins away from them, sliding up on the acclivity of each wave, poising for a lurching moment, slip-surfing down into the next hateful trough. Claude, his arms hooked over the side, his back cushioned by the kid’s life-vest, his legs rolling in the cooling bilge water, is perfectly content. . you gotta take your ease where you can. One hand is down my pants . . and the other leafs through a Nick Carter. Pop has one of the newfangled radiograms, teenage Claude carps, but he won’t lemme near enough to adjust it, so all we get to listen to is the Hot Five blowing in a blizzard of interference. — Long past midnight, two of the dumb Prairie polliwogs get a powerful notion to drink their own urine. Claude looks on amused as they kneel before one another in turn and cup their hands to receive the trickled libation. The master-sergeant. . such a prude! . . is disgusted: What’re you morons playin’ at? he barks. Doin’ that’ll drive you as crazy as guzzlin’ seawater — break it up, now! But he’s too weak to intervene — and before long the big Hoosier and his mule-skinner pals are getting in on the circle-jerk, slurping up whatever droplets they can — licking their fingers too. . mmm-mmm. Claude wishes their apple-pie moms could get an eyeful of this. . faggish behaviour. When they’re done, they collapse back against the sides and. . that’s worse. All there is to look at are their swollen, oil-stained faces and their white teeth when they open their mouths to Happy talk, keep talkin’ happy talk on the subject of rescue. Claude has no illusions: If they were gonna find us, he thinks, they would’ve by now — it’s been over twenty-four hours since the Indy went down. Distress messages would’ve been radioed to Guam before the ship was abandoned — and they’re at most a couple of hours’ flying time away. No! Claude holds fast to this prophetic hairball, its fibres thick with bile: We’re a sacrifice, an offering to Neptune or Poseidon or whoever the fuck he is. Such detachment is possible so long. . as they let me alone, but maybe an hour before dawn, conditions on the raft take a turn for the worse. For sometime the urine-drinkers have been silent and eyeing each other suspiciously, now the master-sergeant says, I dunno what you got there, sailor, but if it’s K-rations you oughta share some with your shipmates. Tucked up in his warm narcotic bed, Claude thinks, Who cares? It ain’t like the big Hoosier’s got a chateaubriand and a glass of fine Tokay — it ain’t like he’s got hash browns, eggs sunny side up and a whole mess of bacon. But the master-sergeant doesn’t take this live-and-let-live approach, he’s got Camp Pendleton stuck up his fuckin’ ass, and he says: That’s an order, sailor, then, when the Hoosier goes on nibbling just the same, there’s a dull gleam and the master-sergeant says, This here’s a Ka-Bar fighting knife, near ’nough ten inches of tempered steel, sailor. It’s property of the United States Marine Corps and was issued to me for the sacred pursuance of my command. Claude would like to point out to the master-sergeant he’s outranked. . if I could be assed. . then mock him: Property. . Sacred. . Pur-su ance! What kinda damn-foolishness is this? But the Hoosier beats him to it: Oh, ma-an, can you hear yourself? Boodlie-property, boodlie-USM, boodlie-sacred, boodlie-command — why don’t you shut-the-boodlie-fuck boodlie-up? — When the two men begin to fight, it’s so slow and clumsy the others pay it no mind. Claude almost admires them: to peck away so. . the Woody-Wood Peckerheads . . at their dumb pecking order shows a degree of conviction. Claude remembers amateur bouts at St Nick’s Arena. . West 66th and Columbus . . Tough Puerto Rican and Bajan kids sockin’ the shit outta each other for ten bucks, the peculiar smack-squelch of padded leather hitting flesh, their squeaking boots on the tight canvas, their own grunts and the gentle patter of blood on the worn boards