Free The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk

by them. The path lay clear ahead to Furnald-
    “Midshipman Keith, I believe?”
    Willie spun around in unbelieving horror at the tones. Ensign Brain, concealed by a granite post at the library entrance, was seated on a yellow chair, smoking. He dropped the cigarette, ground it out daintily with his toe, and rose. “Any explanation, Midshipman Keith, for being outside your room and wandering around out of uniform during a study hour?”
    All Willie’s resolve and invention caved in. “No, sir.”
    “No, sir. An excellent answer, Midshipman Keith, making up in clarity for what it lacks in official acceptability.” Ensign Brain smiled like a hungry man at the sight of a chicken leg. “Midshipman Auerbach, you will take charge of the working party.”
    “Aye aye, sir.”
    “You will come with me, Midshipman Keith.”
    “Aye aye, sir.”
    Willie got back into Furnald Hall with no trouble, under the escort of Ensign Brain. He was marched to the desk of the duty officer, Ensign Acres. The midshipmen on the quarterdeck regarded him with pale dismay. Word of his pile of demerits had spread through the school. This new disaster horrified them. Willie Keith was all their nightmares come to life.
    “Holy cow,” exclaimed Ensign Acres, standing, “not Keith again.”
    “The same,” said Ensign Brain. “The same paragon of military virtue, Midshipman Keith. Out of uniform, absent without leave, and violating a study period. No explanation.”
    “This is the end of him,” said Acres.
    “No doubt. I’m sorry for him, but obviously I had to pick him up.”
    “Of course.” Acres regarded Willie curiously, and with some pity. “Don’t you like the Navy, Keith?”
    “I do, sir. I’ve had a bad run of luck, sir.”
    Acres lifted his hat, scratched his head with the same hand, and looked doubtfully at Brain. “Maybe we ought to just kick his behind up nine flights of stairs.”
    “You’re the duty officer,” said Brain virtuously. “A couple of dozen midshipmen know of this already. For all I know the exec saw the whole business through his window.”
    Acres nodded, and squared his hat as Brain walked off. “Well, this does it, Keith. Come along.”
    They paused outside the exec’s door. Acres said in a low voice, “Between you and me, Keith, what the hell happened?”
    The uniforms of both young men seemed to fade away for the moment, in the friendliness of Acres’ tone. Willie had a sudden flooding sense that this was all just a dream in Looking-glass Land, that he still had his health, that the sun still shone, and that outside Furnald Hall, just a few feet away, on Broadway, his predicament would seem a joke. There was just this one difficulty: he was inside Furnald Hall. Enmeshed in comic-opera laws, he had comically broken a few, and was going to a comic-opera doom. But this dance of nonsense impinged very strongly on the real world. It meant that in time his living body, instead of being carted across the Pacific, clad in blue, would be carted across the Atlantic, clad in brown. This fact bothered him violently.
    “What’s the difference?” he said. “It was nice knowing you, Acres.”
    Ensign Acres let the familiarity pass. He understood it. “Merton has a heart. Tell him the truth. You have a chance,” he said as he knocked.
    Commander Merton, a little round-headed man with bristling brown hair and a red face, sat at his desk facing the door. He was partly hidden by a bubbling Silex. “Yes, Acres?”
    “Sir-Midshipman Keith again.”
    Commander Merton peered sternly around the coffee at Willie. “Good God. What now?”
    Acres recited the indictment. Merton nodded, dismissed him, locked the door, and flipped a key on his interoffice talkbox. “I don’t want any calls or other interruptions until further notice.”
    “Aye aye, sir,” rattled the box.
    The commander filled a cup. “Coffee, Keith?”
    “No, thank you, sir.” Willie’s knees were unsteady.
    “I think you’d better have