Sullivan, by his assignment, occupied a position unique in the ship's organization. The chain of command went from Captain Thompson to the executive officer, Lieutenant Commander Mortimer Gould, a career Navy man of the third generation of a career Navy family. Commander Gould was the sort of man who, if asked quickly who he was, would not reply that he was an American citizen, or a man, or even a human being. He would say that he was an officer in the United States Navy, and his tone would suggest that, as such, he was absolutely immune to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.
The liaison between Commander Gould and the captain, the buffer between the executive officer and the crew, was Yeoman Sullivan. His somewhat stooped young shoulders bore the responsibility of the endless routine paper work, so that Captain Thompson and Commander Gould might have some free time to sail the ship and conduct the war.
Sullivan was a slender, tall, intelligent young man. It infuriated him to be taken for a citizen sailor, a mistake understandable enough, since he looked so much like the many other intelligent young men whom the war had brought into service. Sullivan was Regular Navy, and to prove this to all he was twice as obscene and profane as any other enlisted man on board. Williams wanted to tell him not to try so hard to be a sailor and a man.
As captain's yeoman, Sullivan was forced into a lonely and proud isolation. No man dared approach him without suspicion of his motives, because there were favors Sullivan could do; knowing this, Sullivan had to make the first move if he wanted a friend.
Williams concluded that this explained his visit. He was pleased that Sullivan had sought him out as a friend. He listened with what interest he could display to Sullivan's monologue about the intricacies of the ship's organization.
"What do you do up there on the bridge when you have the watch?" he asked Sullivan, as they drank coffee together.
"Why don't you come up and see for yourself?" Sullivan said.
"I thought the crew was supposed to stay away from the bridge while the ship was under way," Williams said.
"Oh, that doesn't mean you, Doc," Sullivan said. "I tell you what. Tomorrow I have the eight-to-twelve on the engine-order indicator. Why don't you come up and have a look around?"
Williams thought that sounded fine.
The following morning, when he had cleared the sick bay after sick call, and Bullitt had left him to go below, he closed the sick bay and climbed the ladder to the bridge. It was a clear, warm day. The Ajax was proceeding at twenty knots through a ground swell off Cape Hatteras, moving rhythmically from side to side, so that a man braced his legs automatically and moved with it. Ensign Webster, of the engineering department, was the officer on watch. Ensign Webster was fresh from Annapolis, and he still lived so strictly by the book that in any undefined situation he simply froze into place like a setter, with correct posture and expression, the very model of what a young ensign should be. He did not acknowledge Williams in any way when he came into the cabin. He merely looked up with a frown.
Sullivan was at the engine-order indicator, wearing earphones, his back to Williams. He turned and nodded, as if too absorbed in his duties for any further display of welcome. At that moment Captain Thompson came onto the bridge. He was happy that day, happy as only a sea captain can be when his ship is under way. "Why, Williams," he said, with smoothly affable surprise, "what brings you up here?"
In that moment Williams knew he had walked into a trap. Sullivan did not move, but Williams, from the corner of his eye, saw a wicked smile deepen on his averted face. Williams reddened, but he kept his voice controlled.
"I just wanted to look around, Captain," he said. "I like it up here, sir."
Captain Thompson smiled widely. "Williams likes it up here," he said, addressing himself, as royalty might, to the impersonal ear. "In that case, Sullivan, you might as well turn the earphones over to him. We'll have to make him useful."
Sullivan removed the earphones and handed them to Williams silently, without meeting his eyes. He then left the bridge as quickly as he could, and for the remainder of Sullivan's watch Williams was subjected to the delicate torment of Captain Thompson's amusement, and the confused, nervous exasperation of Ensign Webster.
He never did quite understand what he was supposed to be doing. The adjustments he made, as instructed, on the dial before him guided the engine-room crew below. Williams was to repeat the orders addressed to him by Ensign Webster, from Captain Thompson, into the speaking tube, as he adjusted the dial accordingly, and to hear the order repeated in confirmation from below. A simple procedure, perhaps, with practice, but in a matter of moments Williams stood sweating between the shouts of angry confusion from below and the icy corrections of Ensign Webster, the whole scene warmed by the benevolent smile of Captain Thompson, who was happily inventing a series of small and rapid changes in speed.
When Becker relieved the watch, Williams stumbled below in search of Sullivan. He found him in the ship's office, smoking a cigar, his feet up on the desk.
"That was a hell of a thing to do," Williams said.
Sullivan removed the cigar from his mouth and looked at it gravely. "Somebody had to give you the word. Doc," he said. "I just wanted to see if you could take it. And besides," he added, "if you had told the skipper that I asked you up there, well . . ." His voice trailed off significantly, and he made a gesture with the side of his hand as if cutting his throat.
Williams looked at him, at the ridiculous, solemn manliness which he wore like a coat too large for him, and he began to laugh.
On his way back to the sick bay he stopped for a moment and stood at the rail on the starboard side, ruefully amused by the fact that Sullivan had made a fool of him, and yet pleased that Sullivan had taken the initiative to make him his friend. It was still warm and bright, and several boys, off duty, had stripped to the waist and were sunning themselves, dozing on coils of line. He heard a voice behind him, and it was Bullitt. "I have been on better cruise ships," the chief said, "but after all, I suppose this is the best one can expect in wartime."
Williams turned, but Bullitt's appearance so astonished him that he couldn't speak. Bullitt was wearing only a pair of swimming trunks, cork-soled bath slippers and, inevitably, his chief's hat. "I have tried wearing my stripes on my arm," he said, "but the pins do hurt."
"Oh, hell, Chief," Williams said. "Don't make such an ass out of yourself."
"Don't get so excited on your first cruise," Bullitt went on. "Everyone who is anyone goes south at this season."
McNulty had come up with a working party to chip paint, and he looked up now, hearing the absurd intonation of Bullitt's voice. "I'll be up on the sun deck," Bullitt said, and as he caught the flat, disapproving look in McNulty's eyes a wicked gleam of amusement came into his own. "And you, too," he said to McNulty, "why don't you join us there after vespers?"
McNulty spat over the rail. "Come on, you punks," he called loudly, ignoring Bullitt. "Get the lead out! What do you think this is, a pleasure cruise?" The tone of his voice would not deceive his boys. They knew McNulty, and McNulty knew them.
Williams went back to the sick bay and slammed the door behind him. The momentary pleasure he had felt in Sullivan's newly tendered friendship vanished. It didn't matter what friends he had, or even whether or not he had any friends. In the eyes of the crew he was associated with Bullitt. He had made his bed, he said to himself, and now he was damned well going to have to lie in it. Bullitt was drunk. You could smell the alcohol five paces away.
Chapter 5
THAT EVENING, Williams sat alone in the sick bay, reading, the call to general quarters sounded, the quick, shrill siren, the demonic cry which rose and fell and touched the nerve ends as if they had been seared by a hot iron. Williams sprang to his feet. Instantly, automatically, he did the things he had been trained to do. He strapped his deflated rubber life belt around his waist, flung his first-aid bag over his shoulder, jammed his metal helmet on his head, opened the door —an act which extinguished the lights of the sick bay —and raced along the passageway and forward on the deck.