It was not a serious disorder, but under the circumstances it was certainly uncomfortable and inconvenient, even if not without its comic aspects. Boys sat on watch with pails beside them, the heads were crowded with a passing stream of groaning, retching victims, and in the still, tropical night the entire ship had a distinct and unpleasant odor, like an untidy children's nursery during an epidemic of colic. Doctor Claremont felt that no extraordinary steps were indicated, but he did post Williams to a special watch on the dishwasher, to make certain that the mess boys, in their eagerness to finish this disagreeable task in the steaming quarters below deck, would not fail to leave the serving trays in the washer for the length of time required to sterilize them.
After that it was a relief for him to take up his appointed place on the deck beside the small boat, with his life belt and first-aid bag. In case of emergency the small boat was to be launched with McNulty, MacDougal, Clancy, Chief Bullitt and Williams, and they stood together by the rail. Watching with hands cupped over their eyes against the sun, they could see only dimly the organized activity on the Jove. Planes manned by young pilots, untried by war, took off and landed in sequence. Signal pennants flashed, men walked or ran, and an atmosphere of tension communicated itself even as far as the Ajax.
Suddenly, from out of the glare of the sun, a plane came in uncertainly, wobbling a bit in its flight, as if flown by an extremely inexperienced pilot. It overshot the flight deck of the Jove and plunged, in a spray of foam, into the space of water between the Ajax and the Jove.
In a matter of minutes, with shouted instructions from McNulty, the small boat, the crew aboard, was lowered, the falls let go, the sea-painter cast off, and with MacDougal at the tiller they were speeding toward the place where the plane had come down.
The plane had gone down like a stone upon hitting the water, but they could see the pilot afloat. He bobbed in the water in his life jacket, but by the time they reached him he had gone into shock. His blond head, held above water, fell listlessly to one side. They brought the boat as near to him as they could, while Clancy stripped down to his shorts. He dived over the side and held the young pilot, propelling him toward the boat, where McNulty and MacDougal pulled him aboard. A Stokes stretcher waited in readiness, lined with blankets, and with a pillow in one end; they placed him in this gently and covered him with the blankets.
It was impossible to determine if the unconscious young pilot was injured at all beyond shock. Chief Bullitt, stooping over him as the boat sped toward the shore, raised one eyelid with the side of his thumb. The pupil of the eye was not dilated, which would seem to indicate an absence of head injury. Bullitt felt his pulse beneath the blanket. It was low but steady, as his respiration was, except for a deep sigh now and then, as if he struggled for more air. Wordlessly, Bullitt took a small bottle of brandy from the first-aid pack and broke the seal. No liquid could be given to an unconscious man, for fear that he might choke, but Bullitt held the open flask beneath the pilot's nostrils, and presently his eyes opened, astonishingly blue in his clear young face.
"Where am I?" he asked.
"In the men's bar at the Ritz, of course," Bullitt said briskly, holding the brandy to the young man's lips.
The young pilot drank the brandy. Color returned to his cheeks. He moved and tried to rise, but Bullitt held him back. "Lie still," he said. "You will need all of your strength for your court-martial."
The pilot sighed: with a plane lost, he would have to answer in court for his possible negligence. Reminded of this, an expression of pain crossed his face, and he closed his eyes again. The small boat sped on, back through the bay, through the channel, and toward the boat landing of the Marine Base. Ahead of them they could see an ambulance with a red cross painted on its side, summoned to the dock for the emergency by message from the Ajax.
Returning to the Ajax, Williams felt a sense of mysterious depression, a kind of anxiety and apprehension. The downed pilot, Kerensky's throat, the boys vomiting in the head, Pawling's hand — a sequence of mishaps, none of them of fatal consequence, yet all of them seeming in some way to threaten the fabric of their life, as if even Captain Thompson's ready authority, the youth and vigor of the crew, and the sustaining comfort of the daily routine could not really stand between them and protect them from the dangers and the impermanence and the unpredictability of life. The injury to Pawling's hand was a sort of symbol—the hand, stretched out toward experience and life, maimed and rebuked in its reach.
Underneath all this was a feeling of guilt from which Williams could not free himself. He had not told Doctor Claremont the night before about Pawling's hand. When Bullitt had gone back to his quarters, Williams had delayed in cleaning up the sick bay, hopeful that Doctor Claremont would return while he was there, and he would have reason to explain what had happened. After he had finished the job he went out to the deck and stood, in the early dusk, at the rail near the gangway, torn by indecision. It was not his place, certainly, to report his immediate superior to their superior above. His code of behavior rebelled at such a thought. He was not a talebearer, a child running to teacher.
But which was more important, a principle, perhaps superficial in concept, or the state of a man's hand? His indecision angered him.
When Doctor Claremont did return, finally, the confusion brought about by the sudden onset of food poisoning in the crew had made it impossible to tell him about Pawling. Williams had been relieved of the necessity of telling him, but this mechanical solution to his indecision, instead of relieving him of his feeling of guilt, seemed only to increase it.
And the day was not yet finished with them. When the ship secured from maneuvers that afternoon, a small boat approached from the base and the Reverend Luther Foss, Protestant chaplain of the base, climbed the accommodation ladder. In a small Georgia town, in the house where she had borne Stud, Mrs. Artemus Clancy had died. Word had come to Guantanamo Bay through the American Red Cross Home Service, with a request for leave.
Captain Thompson had Stud brought to his cabin, and when he arrived the captain excused himself and went to the bridge. Captain Thompson was a man of simple and profound religious belief, but he was impatient with most ministers. Too many of them, he thought, felt it inappropriate to approach God with the full vigor of their manliness. It was his opinion that most of them smiled too much, and too easily, and the words they used, such as "fellowship," seemed to Captain Thompson to be almost meaningless, like old coins which had had too much handling. When Captain Thompson attended religious service he sat erect in the pew, with his chin pulled in and his neck and head straight. He feared God, but he remembered that he had been created in God's image, and for that reason it was necessary to respect himself, and not be sappy and soft, as he might have phrased it, in his relationship with his Creator.
He remembered how he had felt when his own mother had died, and hoped that the Reverend Foss wouldn't make it too hard for poor Stud. A man needed to be alone at a time like that. He supposed he would be asked to sign an emergency leave for Stud, so that he could fly to Georgia for the funeral, but he wished that Stud would not ask for leave. A funeral, Captain Thompson felt, was nothing but an effort to comfort the living, and it was his firm belief that the best comfort for the living in their loss was simply to go ahead doggedly with whatever work was at hand.
After fifteen minutes or so, Mr. Foss sought Captain Thompson out on the bridge. "Seaman Clancy thinks he will not ask for emergency leave," he said.
Captain Thompson did not allow himself to reveal his relief and approval. "Where is he now, Chaplain?" he asked.