So Hams was brought up to join the deck gang and Pawling stayed below in the laundry. Away from everyone else and from the provocation to stir up trouble, he did a fair job. He did especially well after Captain Thompson assigned Ensign Webster to go down and stand over him at the ironing machine and make him press the same shirt over and over again until it was done to Webster's satisfaction.
But there, on Sunday, one week after Kerensky had his tonsils removed. Pawling caught his left hand in the machinery, and tore the back of it open. It was early afternoon, and the men had gone ashore again to defeat the officers and chiefs in the ritualistic baseball game. Almost everyone was ashore, even Doctor Claremont, who had gone to the base hospital to watch an intricate operation scheduled for that afternoon.
Bullitt and Williams had been together in the sick bay for morning sick call, but Bullitt had not appeared at noon. Williams did not know if he had gone ashore with the others or if he was below. Williams was just locking up, thinking that he would like to go ashore for a swim, when Pawling came running along the deck, his hand streaming blood. "Look, Doc, look," he said. "I've hurt my hand."
Williams hastily unlocked the sick-bay door and took him inside. He pulled the treatment table down and sat Pawling in the chair beside it, with his injured hand placed there on a towel. He did what he could to arrest the bleeding, applying pressure with gauze squares. Pawling was unable to tell him exactly what had happened. With his gift of "being mechanically inclined," he had apparently decided to amuse himself on this Sunday afternoon by taking the washing-machine mechanism apart to clean and oil it. Somewhere in the process he had accidentally started the motor by brushing against the switch, and his hand had been caught and the back of it ripped open. Williams could see, when he removed one gauze pad to replace it with another, that the tendons and muscles were laid bare. He placed a number of these pads beside Pawling, and told him to continue the pressure while he went below to see if he could find Chief Bullitt.
Williams rarely went to the chiefs' quarters since, like the officers' country, it was out of bounds for lesser ratings. Today the small wardroom of the chiefs' quarters was deserted, and Williams stood there hesitantly for a moment, uncertain of what to do. It was the first time he had been faced with an emergency while he was absolutely alone. Even Captain Thompson was ashore, watching the ball game. The injury to Pawling's hand needed treatment, Williams knew, more professional than he could administer. He would probably have to try to get someone to take him, with Pawling, in the small boat to the base hospital, across the bay. As he stood there, he thought he heard heavy breathing, and he went to the curtained passageway that led to the quarters where the chiefs' bunks were. He pulled the curtain aside, and saw Bullitt, asleep in a lower bunk. His instinctive reaction was one of relief. He went to waken him, but when he leaned over him he smelled the heavy scent of alcohol.
Afterward, in the way we retrace our actions and mentally rearrange them when it is too late to alter the consequences, he wished again and again that he had simply gone away and left Bullitt asleep. But his military training, relatively brief as it was, had already supplied him with certain automatic reflexes. He was never to act independently, in the presence of a superior, without that superior's instruction, and so now he leaned over Bullitt and shook him, to waken him. Bullitt groaned and moved and opened his eyes.
"Chief, I need you," Williams said. "Pawling has injured his hand, quite badly, and I can't take care of it by myself."
Bullitt looked up at him for a moment blankly, from rheumy eyes, as if he did not know who Williams was, or where he was himself, but then, without saying anything, he pulled himself up on the edge of the bunk. He was fully dressed, and he sat there for a moment, as if waiting for his head to clear; then, still without speaking, he got up and made his way to the door. Williams followed him. Bullitt's walk was uncertain. He lurched against the ship's rail once, and the toe of his shoe caught on the raised sill of the sick-bay door when he went to step inside. He stood over Pawling, removed the compresses, and examined the injury, still without speaking.
If Pawling felt pain, he did not show it. He had found his laugh again. "I sure tore up my hand, didn't I, Chief?" he said, as if it were some comic feat for which he would be rewarded.
Bullitt went to the sink and began to wash his hands.
"Shall I go out and see if I can get someone to man the small boat?" Williams asked.
Bullitt turned to him, weaving a bit. "Why?" he asked.
"Doctor Claremont isn't on board," Williams said. "I thought you would want to take Pawling to the base hospital."
"I'm in charge here," Bullitt said. "No one asked you to think."
Williams was reminded of Bullitt's early attitude of rudeness, before he had accepted him, and had turned the rudeness into travesty. Now that he thought about it, Bullitt's attitude toward him had been different ever since the operation on Kerensky. Had he resented being left out of that? Had he felt his self-appointed position as head of the sick bay threatened? Or was he jealous, preposterous as that might seem, of the relationship between Williams and Doctor Claremont before and during the operation, as if it were a betrayal of the order of loyalties that existed between men on a ship?
"Will you help me as you are," Bullitt said, as if in answer to his thoughts, "or shall I wait while you put on your mask and gown?"
Williams said nothing. Bullitt cleaned the wound. He sprinkled it with sulfathiazole powder and covered it with gauze compresses spread with petroleum jelly. He bandaged the hand and bound it to a hand splint with the fingers flat. From a square of muslin he fashioned a sling over Pawling's shoulder, and he placed the bandaged hand and forearm in this, upward, to slow further bleeding. Williams helped m this procedure silently, with a feeling of concern, his confidence in Bullitt's judgment gravely undermined for the first time. It was completely wrong, of course, for him to attempt to treat a man while he was drunk, but, aside from that, Williams had a strong conviction that the injury to Pawling's hand needed more complicated treatment than a mere bandage. It was possible that the muscles or ligaments or nerves on the back of his hand had been damaged.
"There," Bullitt said sharply, when he had finished. "Now go back to your hole. Why is it always the most useless members of the crew who cause the most trouble? See if you can't keep yourself away from moving parts for the rest of the afternoon so that I can get some sleep."
Pawling laughed and let himself out of the sick bay. "Don't forget to take me off the watch list," he said.
"Of course I won't take you off the watch list," Bullitt said. "Do you think a scratch on your hand entitles you to a vacation." He left the sick bay, again catching the toe of his shoe on the sill, and made his way a little uncertainly toward the chiefs' quarters.
On the following day, Monday, the Ajax was assigned to crash-boat duty with the Jove, an aircraft carrier practicing flight maneuvers. This meant that she must be prepared at a moment's notice to launch the small boat in a rescue operation for any young pilot who might miss the flight deck and plunge into the sea.
It had been a busy morning for Williams, since, on the night before, during the run of a movie on the forecastle, almost one third of the crew had been struck with food poisoning. It did not take Doctor Claremont long to track down the guilty agent. After the baseball game the cooks, coming back late to the ship, had served up as part of an impromptu supper the remainder of the cold meat and potato salad that they had taken ashore for lunch.