Night Watch

A Story

by THOMAS HEGGEN

THIS ship lying at anchor in the glassy little bay is a Navy cargo ship. You can tell it as a cargo ship by the five hatches, by the house amidships, by the booms that bristle from the masts like so many mechanical arms. You know it as a Navy ship by the color (dark, dull blue), by the large numbers painted on the bow, and incontrovertibly by the thin ribbon of the commission pennant flying from the mainmast.

The U.S.S. Reluctant operates in the rear areas of the Pacific. Most of the time it stays on its regular run: from Tedium to Boredom and back; about five days each way. It makes an occasional trip to Monotony, and once it made a run all the way to Ennui, a distance of 3000 nautical miles from Tedium. It performs its dreary and thankless job, and performs it well, if not inspiredly. How many enemy planes has it shot down? None. How many fired upon? None. How many subs sent to the bottom by her guns? None. How many fired upon? Well, there was once. This periscope; the lookout sighted it way off on the port beam, and the Captain got very excited. “Commence firing!”

The five-inch and the two port three-inch guns fired for perhaps five minutes, but they didn’t really do very well; the best shell was live hundred yards off the target and there were many that weren’t even in sight. “We’ll ram!” the Captain shouted. “Hard left! ” The ship bore down on the periscope; it seemed dead in the water. At one thousand yards it was positively identified as the protruding branch of a small floating tree. The branch had a big bend in it and didn’t even look much like a periscope.

You say that the men aboard her are not heroes? Well, perhaps; but I should urge moderation and the judgment deferred. I am perfectly willing to see “heroism” retired from the conversation, for it is always an embarrassing word, and suspiciously ubiquitous. But I am not so sure that it is inapplicable here. I think I should insist, for instance, upon its extension to Lieutenant Roberts.

Lieutenant Roberts is a young man of sensitivity, perceptiveness, and idealism; attributes which are worthless and even inimical to such a community as this. He wants to be in the war; like filings to a magnet, he is powerfully drawn to the war and to the general desolation of the time; but he is held off, frustrated, defeated by the rather magnificently nonconductive character of his station. He is the highstrung instrument assuming the low-strung role; the violin playing bass. To convert like this, from a higher to a lower tempo, requires the invention of a sort of self-imposed, self-maintained reduction gear, and Roberts supplied this. He geared himself to the tempo of the ship and made the adjustment with — I do not believe the words are misplaced — gallantry, courage, and fortitude. I would call him a kind of hero.

I

ALL the officers, with the exception of the Doctor and Mr. Ronad, the supply officer, had at one time or another submitted letters to the Bureau requesting a change of duty. This was their privilege, and presumably the Bureau gave just consideration to such letters. These officers, however, turned in their requests perfunctorily and without hope; for all of them were absolutely certain that there existed at the Bureau a yeoman, probably a Wave, whose sole duty consisted in dropping all such correspondence, unopened, into a roaring incinerator.

As incontestable proof of this theory they cited the fact that in fifteen months the only officer transferred from the ship had been an ensign named Moulton, who had been aboard only six months and who had never submitted a letter. Naturally, there was some ill-will toward Moulton, who it was felt was undeserving of such good fortune; but for the most part the officers accepted the stroke philosophically and even, their theory confirmed, with a certain satisfaction.

While the officers may or may not have been right in guessing the disposition of their requests, there can be no doubt at all that they correctly gauged the futility of them. As a matter of policy — a policy, clearly, of pure spite, since he had many times expressed his desire to be rid of the whole passel of officers — the Captain always forwarded these letters with the endorsement: “Not recommending approval.” That way they were licked from the start.

While all the other officers were content to submit their one letter, make their one gesture and let it go at that, Lieutenant Roberts did not give up so easily. One month to the day after he had written his first request he appeared in the yeomen’s office and had the letter retyped verbatim and presented again to the Captain. The Captain muttered, then sputtered, then roared; but he had no choice other than to forward it, with, of course, the same negative endorsement. Every month after that — without fail, it was exactly a month — the procedure was repeated: Lieutenant Roberts would submit the same letter and the Captain with the same curses would apply the same endorsement.

It might seem that this was a foolish and futile business and in the main Roberts would agree, but not entirely. As he explained to his friend Pulver, he felt that it had a certain nuisance value. He reasoned that, if anyone at the Bureau did indeed read these letters, sooner or later that person was going to get so goddamned angry with him that he would be transferred to the Naval equivalent of Siberia — which, by comparison with his present station, he did not consider at all undesirable. And he knew for an agreeable fact that, every time the yeoman appeared bearing his letter, the Captain’s digestion was effectively ruined for at least one meal.

Regularly on the fourteenth of every month Roberts would appear in the ship’s office and turn in his letter to the grinning yeomen. One month, on the fourteenth, he did not appear and the next morning, while be was sleeping in after the midwatch, there came a knock on his stateroom door. It was about ten o’clock; Roberts had just awakened and was lying in his bunk, arms crossed beneath his head, debating whether to get up and go down to the wardroom for a cup of coffee. So he was willing to be disturbed.

“Come in,” he called.

Steuben, the satyr-faced little yeoman, entered. He had a letter in his hand and he was grinning. “Good morning, Mr. Roberts,” he said.

Roberts said, “Good morning, Mr. Steuben,” and smiled at the formality.

“Mr. Roberts?”

“Yes?”

“You know what day it is?”

Roberts rubbed his head with his knuckles. “ Tuesday, isn’t it?”

“Mr. Roberts,” Steuben said significantly, “it’s the fifteenth!” Steuben grinned in satisfaction. “I can’t let you slip up, you know.”

“No, hell no,” said Roberts. “I’m glad you didn’t. We’ve got to keep those letters rolling in.”

Steuben nodded at the sheet in his hand. “Same one?”

Roberts nodded. “Same one.” Then, as the yeoman started for the door, he sat up. “No, wait a minute. Can I see that?” As Steuben handed him the letter he said: “By God, maybe we ought to change it a little. Maybe it would change our luck.”

He read the familiar letter to himself and then he read aloud the third and concluding paragraph, dwelling questioningly on each word: “It is therefore requested that I be ordered to duty aboard a combatant ship, preferably a destroyer or cruiser.” He flicked the letter with his hand. “ What do you think, shall we change that?”

Steuben considered soberly. “Yeah, let’s change it,” he said.

“All right,” said Roberts. “Give the correspondence a little variety and improve the grammar at the same time. How’s to make this read, ‘It is requested comma therefore comma’? Think that will do it?” He passed the letter back.

“Yeah, hell yes,” Steuben said. “That’s a lot better. Gives it more punch, you know. I’ll fix it right up, Mr. Roberts.” He grinned again and put his hand on the doorknob.

Roberts reached down for the cigarettes on the desk and lit one. “You know, Steuben,” he said, “by God, maybe that’s all it needed. Maybe the Captain will like it better now.”

“He will, Mr. Roberts. I bet he will.”

“Yep,” said Roberts, “I think he’ll appreciate that.” After Steuben went out he sat for a moment on the edge of the bunk, smoking. He looked at his watch: ten thirty. He stretched and rubbed his head. He might as well get up and go have some coffee. He remembered that Keith had a new copy of Life with a girl in a zebra-striped bathing suit on the cover. He would go down and read that while he drank his coffee.

As he slipped a leg into his khaki trousers he thought again: “It is requested comma therefore comma.” Yes, by God, that did it, that fixed it up. A split participle—no wonder his orders hadn’t come! No doubt the Bureau had a policy concerning split participles. Putting on his shoes, he could see clearly the fate of all his previous letters; the Wave yeoman opens the envelope, reads the letter, gasps as she comes to the defective part, and in a shocked voice says to Commander Doark: “Commander, here’s a letter from an officer who’s split a participle.”And the Commander, looking up coldly from his desk, says: “Well, you know what to do with it, Carrigan.” And without a word Carrigan drops it into the blazing incinerator.

Yep, by God, that was all it needed. Roberts felt almost good as he started down to get the copy of Life with the girl in the zebra-striped bathing suit on the cover.

2

IT seemed to Lieutenant Roberts that he had just fallen asleep when the flashlight shone in his face, awakening him for the watch. He had been dreaming, and in his dream his dead mother was there; it was summer at his home and he was going out to play tennis. His mother was sitting on the porch drinking a Coca-Cola and as he went out she said: “On your way back pick up some pastry for supper.” And he got into the car and started off and at the corner he smashed right into another car; and when the driver of the other car got out and came toward him he saw that it was Captain Morton.

The flashlight shone questioningly in his face and he was fully awake by the time the messenger called: “Mr. Roberts. Mr. Roberts. It’s eleven thirty, sir. You have the watch.”

Roberts put a hand to his eyes and rubbed them. “Okay,” he said. “Thank you.” The messenger went out, stumbling in the darkened stateroom against the chair. Carefully, he pulled the door to behind him; he knew that Mr. Roberts would get up; you only had to call Mr. Roberts once. Roberts lay on his back not moving a muscle, numbly, tiredness an actual ache in his legs, considering the fact that sleep was over and now for four hours — another four of the hours without end that wheeled past ceaselessly like ducks in a shooting gallery — he must get up and stand in the darkness.

Here we go again, he thought; and as he lay there he felt the old, incipient despair that for two hours he had eluded returning again. To stop it he stopped his mind; he had learned well how to do that. He lay there and all he was doing was breathing and listening. In the hot, pitch-dark little room there were four distinct sounds. There was the noisy breathing of Langston in the bunk above him — a long, wheezing inspiration, then a pause, then a wet, angry snort. There was the hissing drone of the blower in the overhead and the whirring of the fan that wearily pushed the heavy air over to the bunks.

Over on the desk the cheap alarm clock ticked evenly, tirelessly, stridently. Roberts raised his head and looked at the luminous dial: eleven thirty-five. He lay still a moment longer; then he stretched and sat up. In the darkness he reached to the deck and put on his stockings and shoes and still without turning on a light he found the rest of his clothes and put them on. As he went out he closed the door quietly, although he could have slammed it fifteen times without awakening Langston.

He went down to the wardroom, where one overhead light burned dimly. It was deserted; a few old and much-thumbed magazines were strewn about the tables. There was no one in the pantry either; not even the steward’s mate with the watch. Incuriously, Roberts looked through the refrigerator for something to eat and, finding nothing, poured himself a cup of coffee from the Silex and sat down at a table. He picked up a six-month-old copy of Time and looked at the book section to see if he had read it. He had; he threw it aside. He drank the black coffee in deep swallows and felt better; it smothered some of the weariness, his legs felt better, he could stand the watch now. He stretched again, shook his head like a swimmer with water in his ear, put on his cap, and walked slowly up the two ladders to the charthouse. There he initialed the Captain’s nightorder book — always the same: “ Call me at any time if in doubt” — and looked at the chart. The closest land was four hundred miles. He went out into the wheelhouse.

Usually, before he took the officer-of-the-deck watch, Roberts would stand at night in the rear of the wheelhouse and let his eyes adjust to the darkness. Tonight, though, as soon as he stepped into the wheelhouse, he could see. A bright moonlight was streaming through the portholes and almost right away he could make out every object in the room and every person. He asked the helmsman: “Where’s Mr. Carney?” and the helmsman told him: “Out on the port wing.” Roberts went out on the wing and found Carney leaning on the pelorus.

Like all watch-standers about to be relieved, Carney was jovial. “Welcome,” he said. “And good morning.”

Roberts smiled wryly. “Good morning, goddamn it,” he said. He waited quietly for Carney to give him the dope.

“Well,” Carney began, “we’re steaming along in this here ocean at ten knots, seventy-two r.p.m., and the base course is two five eight and that’s what we’re steering. No zigzag, no nothing; everything’s peaceful.”

“I trust Stupid’s gone to bed,” said Roberts.

“Stupid’s gone to bed.”

“Okay,” said Roberts. “Anything else?”

“Nope, nothing else. No course changes.”

“Okay,” Roberts said. “I’ve got it.”

“Okay.” Carney made a gestured salute. He stood around a moment, trying not to appear too anxious to go below. “Hell of a bright night,” he said.

“It really is.”

Carney shifted his cap back on his head and yawned. “Okay,” he said vaguely, and slouched off into the charthouse to write his log and turn in.

Roberts had the watch. For maybe the thousandth time in two and a half years Roberts had the watch. He walked back out on the wing, leaned against the windshield, and looked out at the sea and the night; and for the first time he noticed what an incredible night it was. The moon — what an enormous moon! It had risen yellow and round and fat, and now that it was higher it had shrunk a little, but still it was round and full, and no longer yellow but molten, incandescent silver. The light it spread was daylight with the harshness filtered out, unbelievably pure and even and dimensionless. On the bridge you could have read a newspaper: it was that bright.

The moon now was on the port quarter and all the way to the horizon it parted the water in a wide, white glistening path that hurt the eyes; and back where the horizon should be there was really none at all; there was only this pale blue, shimmering haze where sky and water merged without a discernible break. And the sea was even more remarkable: Roberts had never seen the sea quite like this. There wasn’t a ripple anywhere; there was only the faintest hint of a ground swell, an occasional bulge of water. The surface, glazed as it was with moonlight, looked heavy, coated, enameled: it was that perfect.

The ship slid through the water with an oily hiss, and the bow cut the fabric like a casual knife. At the stern, the wake was a wide, frothing rent, but further back it was healing and not so wide, and far, far back the fabric was whole and perfect again.

Lord, thought Roberts, this sea is a phony, a mirage, an illusion. There couldn’t be a sea like this. It’s a lie, a myth, a legend. It isn’t real.

And a not at all faint rebutting voice answered him: Don’t you wish it weren’t.

Yeah, said Roberts, I do for a fact: I wish it weren’t.

And then he added: But this ship can’t be real. There couldn’t possibly be a ship like this.

The voice concurred: You’re right there. There couldn’t be.

But there is, Roberts said.

But there is, the voice agreed.

3

LIKE a damn millpond,” said a voice at his side; a more audible and more physical voice. Roberts looked up at Dolan, the second-class quartermaster.

“The smoothest I ever saw it,” Roberts said.

“It really is.” Dolan looke about, almost squinting in the shiny moonlight. “ What a hell of a night to be out in this place!”

“I was thinking the same thing.”

Dolan, his eyes still scanning the water, shook his head defeatedly. “Man, that beats me.” He was young, only twenty-one or so, but he was a smart one; savvy; shrewd. He had been aboard not quite a year, and in that time he had established himself as one of the most formidable crapshooters on the ship; the company was fast. From his first day aboard, he had stood his watches with Mr. Roberts, and a nice feeling had grown up between the two. When the two stood a watch there wasn’t any nicely shaded officer and enlisted man relationship; there wasn’t even any awareness of difference. They just stood and talked together: two men with the background of the United States, the bond of this ship, a mutual dislike of the Captain; stood and gossiped and speculated and told stories and reminisced; things two men together are apt to do anywhere. Their watches were really one continued conversation which they could resume at any time without consciousness of a break.

“Crap game tonight?” Roberts asked.

“Yeah,” Dolan said. “I played till about eleven, then I quit.”

“How’d you make out?”

“Lousy. That’s why I quit. I went in with a hundred and I dropped that and then I borrowed fifty from Vanessi and I came back a little but then I dropped that too. So I figured it was time to get out of there.”

“Who won all the money?”

“Vanessi. Dowdy and him. That guy Vanessi was up about eight hundred bucks when I got out. He was hotter than a firecracker.”

Dolan was quiet a moment, then he said suddenly: “By the way, did you hear about Dowdy? Him and the old man?”

“No. What did he do?”

Dolan laughed delightedly, an obviously choice morsel to give. “That guy, you know what he did? Tonight? The old man called him up, something about the boats, and when they got through, the old man started crying the blues to Dowdy about the officers on here; what a miserable bunch of officers there was, and what a miserable outfit the Navy is, and how he wished he was back in the merchant service and could get hold of some of the officers back there. And then he says to Dowdy: I know the officers on here hate my guts. That’s all right; I don’t care about that. Now tell me what the crew thinks of me.’ And Dowdy looks at him and says, ' You really want to know, Captain?’ And then he says: ‘Okay, you asked me and I’m telling you, Captain. They think you’re an ass.’ ”

“Well I’ll be damned!” Roberts said. He clapped the pelorus. “Say, that’s fine! He really said that?”

“Absolutely! He said, ‘Captain, they think you’re an ass.’ And he said the old man turned blue in the face, he was so mad; and at first he couldn’t even talk, he was that mad. Then he told Dowdy to get the hell out of his cabin!”

“Say, that’s fine,” Roberts said admiringly. “Dowdy should get decorated for that — the Navy Cross at least. I’m going to see to it that Dowdy gets recommended for the Navy Cross.”

The two worked on the Dowdy incident until its possibilities were exhausted; then they moved on to other matters. Dolan did most of the talking: he was a garrulous young man with impressively complete information on all strata of shipboard life, which he passed on faithfully to Mr. Roberts. Roberts, in turn, supplied opinion when asked, advice when asked, and a certain amount of information on officers’ doings, which were somewhat inaccessible to Dolan’s probing. Like all good gossip sessions, theirs was a reciprocal affair, and like a good session it served its purpose; it passed a weary hour.

Dolan looked at his watch. “Jeez, a quarter of two,” he said. “Okay if I go down for some coffee?” Roberts said it was, although it always took Dolan half an hour to get a cup of coffee.

“Shall I bring you some?” Dolan said, starting down the ladder. Roberts shook his head.

4

ALONE on the wing again, he took his glasses and studied the horizon. There was nothing there; there was nothing at all in the night but this ship, the point of reference in infinity, and this sea that planed away in all directions to the curving line of its visible limits. A little wind had come up, and on the sea there was a little swell; the ship rolled in it ever so gently and slowly. Roberts watched as the foremast wheeled in a stately arc against the stars of the Southern Cross, a pointer tracing on the blackboard of the sky. A quarter of two: well, that was good; that was better than he expected. That’s where it paid to have someone to talk to, someone like Dolan; the time went down so much more easily.

A quarter of two. Two hours down, two to go. It was when you were alone like this, nothing to do, no one to talk with, that the time went hard. It was a hundred times better to run in convoy and be busy as hell; a station to keep, the zigzag plan to run, ships to watch out for. It was when you were alone like this, no ships and no Dolan to engage the front of your mind, that it got bad. You started thinking then, and that was always bad. Never think: that was one of the two great lessons Roberts had learned. The other was, once started, how to stop thinking. When his mind started to work in the all too frequent pattern — subjectively, wishfully, unrealistically or too realistically, and, in the end, despairingly — there was only one thing to do and that was to stop it; to wipe his mind blank and clean as a slate washed with a sponge, and to keep it that way.

He had learned to do that, and he considered the knowledge a priceless boon. He could stand for hours as he did now, his mind shuttered like a lens; and the tiny corner of it that would never quite close completely engrossed with such an external as the mast pirouetting among the stars, or the phosphorus that flared in the bow wave. And sooner or later the watches always ended — he had learned that too — they always ended.

There were footsteps on the ladder and Dolan was back. He busied himself for a moment in the wheelhouse, getting the two o’clock readings; then he came out. He was eating an apple and he handed one to the officer.

“Clocks go back an hour tomorrow night,” Dolan said between bites. “Not on our watch though.”

“Midnight?” Roberts said.

“I guess so. Jeez they’d better. I think we’ve caught all the long watches so far. And then when we go the other way and the clocks go ahead we miss all of those.”

Dolan worked on his apple down to the core and then threw it over the side. “What time does Frisco keep?” he asked suddenly.

“Frisco?” Roberts said. “I think plus seven. Why?”

“ Plus seven,” Dolan mused, “ plus seven. We’re in minus eleven now. That’s six hours difference.” He ticked off on his fingers. “Man, do you know what time it is in Frisco right now? It’s eight o’clock!”

“That’s right,” said Roberts. “Eight o’clock yesterday.”

“Sonofabitch!” Dolan was impressed. “Think of that, Mr. Roberts. Eight o’clock. Just the time to be starting out in Frisco!”

Roberts didn’t say anything and the quartermaster went on: “Man, how I’d like to be down on Turck Street right now. Just going into the old Yardarm. Things would just be starting to pop down there! Were you ever in the Yardarm, Mr. Roberts?”

Roberts smiled. “Once.”

“I knew it! ” Dolan chuckled. “I knew it! I might have known you’d get down there. It’s all right, ain’t it, the old Yardarm?”

“A little strenuous,” Roberts smiled.

“More beasts down there than you can shake a stick at!” Dolan was getting enthusiastic in his recollection. “You know what, Mr. Roberts? The last time I was there, that was a year ago, man, I found a fine little beast down there. Cutest little doll you ever saw, blonde, a beautiful figure, really a beautiful girl. I was pretty stupid drunk but I saw her and I started dancing with her and, boy, I sobered up in a hurry. I said, ‘Let’s go some place else, baby,’ and she said, ‘Let’s go,’ and we went out the door and I said, ‘ Where we going? ‘ and she just says, ‘ Come with me.’ And she led me and we got in her car and she drove me out to her apartment ‘way out by U. C. Hospital. She had an apartment all to herself and this fine car and, man, I was shacked up with her for a month. Her old man owned three bars and she was always getting me liquor and I was driving all over town in that Plymouth convertible and all the time shacked up with that fine beast. That was all right!” He shook his head wonderingly.

Dolan was all wound up now. He went on and on, recalling other conquests in San Francisco. Roberts listened for a while but gradually his mind wandered. He nodded his head at the right places, and smiled at the right places, but he was no longer listening. Against his will, knowing he shouldn’t be doing it, he was thinking of San Francisco; he was back there himself now, reconstructing his own version of the town. He was thinking of eight o’clock, the hour when the evening came to life; drawing upon his intensely maintained recollections of two and a half years ago. He was thinking of the signs lighting up along Geary Street, and the lineup waiting for taxis in front of the St. Francis, and the cable cars climbing Nob Hill, and the dusk settling on Nob Hill, filling up from the bay and from the city below.

Eight o’clock in the nice bars — the St. Francis and the Cirque room at the Fairmount and the Top of the Mark and the Zebra room at the Huntington — the air bright and murmurous with the laughter and the clink of glasses and the foolish, confidential talk and over it all, soft and unheard and really astonishingly sad, the deep, slow rhythms of American dance music. And the girls, the fine, straight clean-limbed American girls in their tailored suits, sitting, leaning forward, each talking with her escort, one hand extended on the table and just touching his sleeve. Or dancing tall and proud to the music that promised them bright and lovely and imperishable things.

And at the bar all the young officers, the brighteyed, expectant young officers, watching the girls, looking for something — they didn’t know what — something that called at night with the dusk and the neon lights and swore to them that tonight, this very night, in this town, this bar, something of desperate loveliness was going to happen if only they found the right girl, found the right bar, drank enough liquor, smoked enough cigarettes, heard enough talk, laughed enough. But they must hurry, they must hurry; the bars were closing, the trains were leaving, the ships were sailing, youth itself was running out. What was it they were seeking? It wasn’t just a girl, although a girl was necessary. A girl wasn’t the total; she was just a factor. It was more than that, Roberts thought; what was it?

And the angry, critical refuting voice arose inside him and answered: Why you goddamn knucklehead! Who’re you trying to kid? The bars are so goddamn noisy you can’t yell from one table to the next. The women are a bunch of beasts with dirty bare legs and stringy hair. The boys are out for just one thing. Who’re you trying to kid, anyway? . . .

5

DOLAN was asking him something. He wanted to know: “Any chance of this scow ever getting back to the States?”

Roberts said mildly, “You know better than that.”

“ Yeah,” Dolan said, “ I guess so. But the engineers keep saying we’ve got to get in a yard pretty soon.”

“And they’ve been saying that for two and a half years. There’s nothing wrong with these engines that can’t be taken care of right out here.”

Dolan shook his head sadly. “Yeah, this bucket will be running around here till the war’s over.” He added determinedly: “But this kid is sure as hell going to get back before then. As soon as I get eighteen months in, if they don’t send me back then, whiz over the hill I go!”

Roberts turned and smiled. “What are you going to do, swim?”

“If necessary!” Dolan said emphatically. “If necessary! Do you know there are thousands of bastards lying around the States who’ve never been to sea? Yeomen and storekeepers and all that crap. Thousands of them!”

“That doesn’t help us any.”

“No, but it should,” Dolan said. “How long have you been out of the States, Mr. Roberts?”

“How long? Two and a half years. Thirty-three months exactly.”

“Kee-ri-st!” Dolan said, impressed. “That’s a long time! How come?”

Roberts pinched his ear thoughtfully. “I have a theory that all my records have blown out the window at the Bureau.”

“But thirty-three months! That’s a long time!”

Yes, Roberts thought, it probably was a long time. He wasn’t sure just how long, but it must have been quite long. He thought of his little sister for a greater comprehension of thirty-three months than the calendar provided. Thirty-three months had been long enough for his little sister, four years younger, to meet a man, fall in love with him, marry him, and bear a child for him. It was long enough for his sister, who had been slim and blonde and pretty, to become, according to the evidence of the camera, no longer slim, no longer pretty, and more than thirty-three months older. It had been long enough, he wondered, for how many couples to fall in love and marry and have children? If all the couples who met and married in that period were to march four abreast past a given point, how long would the procession take? A hell of a long time, he decided; probably another two and a half years. . . .

“I know one thing,” Dolan was saying, “when I do get back I’m sure as hell going to get married. Little girl in Lakeland, Florida. Cute as hell. Did I ever show you her picture?”

Roberts shook his head and Dolan said: “I got it right here.” He pulled a wallet out of his dungaree pants and in the ample moonlight they stood and examined the likeness of a round-eyed, gentle-looking girl with bobbed blonde hair. “Very pretty girl,” Roberts said.

“I’m going to marry that gal,” Dolan said, “and then when I get out I’m going to settle down right there in Lakeland and raise ferns. Make a million dollars growing ferns.”

“Ferns?”

“Hell, yeah. There’s a lot of money in them. People just don’t realize. You can make a lot of money growing ferns if you get a little good ground.”

“ I didn’t know,” Roberts said politely.

“Yeah, hell yes,” Dolan said. “What are you going to do when you get out?”

Roberts picked up a pair of glasses and raised them to his eyes. “I haven’t the faintest idea. Run a chain of whore-houses, maybe. Grow ferns. Sell apples. Shine shoes.”

“What were you doing before you came in?”

Roberts looked through the glasses a moment without answering; then he put them down. “ I was going to school,” he said. “Medical school. I’d just finished my first year.”

“Medical school? How come they got you in this outfit?”

“I came in. It was my own idea.”

“Yeah, but how come? The draft couldn’t get you in medical school, could it?”

“No.”

“And you still joined this outfit?” Dolan insisted. “When you didn’t have to?”

Roberts smiled crookedly. “That was right after Pearl Harbor. For some reason I felt that I had to get in the war.” He shrugged as though to dismiss the subject. “I don’t understand it myself now.”

But Dolan was not to be put aside. “Jeez,” he said. “ I shouldn’t think you would. If I had a chance like that to stay out I sure as hell wouldn’t be here now!”

“Jeez,” he said again; and after a moment: “ How many times a day do you kick yourself, Mr. Roberts?”

“Several hundred,” Roberts said quietly. “An average of several hundred.”

“Are you going back to medical school when you get out?”

Roberts shook his head and squinted up at the foremast. “Too old,” he said. “I was twenty-three when I came in, I’m twenty-six now, I’ll be twenty-eight when I get out. That’s too old. I’d have to take a year of refresher work, then three more years of med school, then two years interning. That would make me thirty-four before I even started practicing. That’s too much.”

The quartermaster was quiet a moment. “Jeez,” he said after a moment, softly. “ Why in the hell did you want to get in the war?”

Roberts answer wasn’t really an answer at all. “I didn’t know then that there were such things as auxiliaries,” he mused. “I just took for granted that I’d get on a can or a wagon or a carrier right in the middle of it. Instead I end up on a tanker in the Atlantic and this thing out here.”

“Jeez,” Dolan said again. He shook his head doubtfully and looked at his wrist. “Three o’clock,” he announced, “five after.” He went into the wheelhouse to get the readings. He came back and leaned on the pelorus and the two stood together and looked out at the sea. A minute passed, and then another, and then, like an army in rout, the watch collapsed, fell apart, was finished. One minute it was three o’clock, and the next it was four. One minute Dolan was telling a story about the girl friend of Dowdy’s who got her picture in True Detective for shooting her husband, and the next it was three thirty and time to call the reliefs. And from three thirty, the clock jumped to a quarter of four and Dolan was making an informal salute and spieling all in one breath and almost in one word, “I’ve been relieved sir Garrity has the watch,” and then there was Pauley standing beside him, rubbing his eyes and yawning.

“A hell of a time to get a man up,” Pauley mumbled.

And the watch was over, swallowed, put down. “It is that,” Roberts agreed. “It is that.”

Pauley scowled around the horizon. “What’s the dope?”

“Two five eight. Seventy-two turns. No course changes. No zigzag. Stupid has a call in for six.”

Pauley nodded. “I saw that. Okay,” he said. “I got it.”

“Okay,” said Roberts. He turned to go.

“Say,” called Pauley, “have you got God’s Little Acre? ”

“No, I don’t have it. Keith had it the last time I saw it.”

“He’s too young to be reading that,” Pauley pronounced soberly.

“That’s very true.” Roberts went on into the charthouse to write his log. When he had finished he sat for a moment slumped on the stool at the chart table, rubbing his eyes. He considered for a moment going down to the wardroom for something to eat, then he remembered there was nothing there. He got up slowly and went down the ladder to his room.

Nothing had changed: it could have been seconds that he had been gone. Langston was still breathing with the same rhythm and the same intensity. With the same whine the fan was pushing the same air across the room. The clock ticked on and on. Roberts undressed in the dark and got into bed. He lay on his back, his arms cradled beneath his head, his eyes open and staring into the darkness. Helplessly, before he could stop himself, he thought, again of San Francisco. Now, as he saw it, it was midnight there and the bars were letting out; the couples walked arm in arm down the streets and the women laughed, and all of them were rich with the knowledge of some incomparable party to follow. A boy and a lovely, slender girl with shining black hair came out of the Mark and stepped into a taxicab, and as the taxi pulled away the girl lay back in the seat and turned to the boy with a slow, happy, secret, smile. And down the steep face of California Street, past the careless, oblivious couples, a young man walked alone, back to the ship, the camp, the empty hotel room; another night spent of the dwindling supply, and nothing bought. What was he looking for? What was he missing? What had he lost?

And then the sudden, angry voice clamored: Will you knock it off? Will you for Pete’s sake knock it off?

Abruptly as turning out a light Roberts stopped thinking, shut off his mind, composed himself for sleep. Mechanically, through the tiny corner left open, he calculated the day ahead: four hours of sleep now, the four to eight watch in the afternoon, and then all night in — no watch until eight the next morning. A whole night in — that was something to look forward to.