Free Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson

Manila and beyond.
     
    A couple of days into the voyage it becomes apparent that Sergeant Frick has forgotten how to shine his boots. Every night he puts them on the deck beside his bunk, like he’s expecting a coolie to come around and shine them up during the night. Every morning he wakes up and finds them in a sorrier state than before. After a few days he starts todraw reprimands from On High, starts to get a lot of potato-peeling duty.
    Now in and of itself this is forgivable. Frick started out his career chasing bandolier-draped desperadoes away from mail trains on the High Chaparral, for God’s sake. In ’27 he got shipped off to Shanghai on very short notice, and no doubt had to display some adaptability. Fine. And now he’s on this miserable pre-Great War cruiser and it’s a little hard on him. Fine. But he does not take all of this with the dignity that is demanded of Marines by Marines. He whines about it. He lets himself get humiliated. He gets angry. A lot of the other old China Marines see things his way.
    One day Bobby Shaftoe is up on the deck of the destroyer tossing the old horsehide around with a couple of the other young Marines when he sees a few of these older guys accumulating into a sort of human booger on the afterdeck. He can tell by the looks on their faces and by their gestures that they are bellyaching.
    Shaftoe hears a couple of the ship’s crew talking to each other nearby. “What the hell is wrong with those Marines?” one of them says. The other one shakes his head sadly, like a doctor who has just seen a patient’s eyeballs roll up into their sockets. “Those poor bastards have gone Asiatic,” he says.
    And then they turn and look at Shaftoe.
    That evening, at mess, Bobby Shaftoe gulps his food down double-time, then stands up and approaches the table where those Old Breed Marines are sullenly gathered. “Begging your pardon, Sergeant!” he hollers. “Request permission to shine your boots, Sarge!”
    Frick’s mouth drops open, revealing a half-chewed plug of boiled beef. “Whud you say, Corporal?”
    The mess has gone silent. “Respectfully request permission to shine your boots, Sarge!”
    Frick is not the quickest guy in the world even when he’s sober, and it’s pretty obvious, just from looking at his pupils, that he and his comrades have brought some opium aboard. “Wull, uh, I guess so,” he says. He looks around at his crew of gripers, who are a little confused and a little amused. He unlaces his boots. Bobby Shaftoe takes those disgracefulthings away and returns a bit later with them resplendently shined. By this time, Frick has gotten high and mighty. “Wull, those boots look real good, Corporal Shaftoe,” he says in a brassy voice. “Darned if you ain’t as good a shoe-shiner as my coolie boy was.”
    At lights out, Frick and crew are short-sheeted. Various other, ruder practical jokes ensue during the nighttime. One of them gets jumped in his bunk and beaten by unspecified attackers. The brass call a surprise inspection the next morning and cuss them out. The “gone Asiatic” crew spend most of the next day gathered in a cluster, watching each other’s backs.
    Around midday, Frick finally gets it through his head that all of this was triggered by Shaftoe’s gesture, and that Shaftoe knew, all along, what was going to happen. So he rushes Bobby Shaftoe up on the deck and tries to throw him over the rail.
    Shaftoe’s warned at the last minute by one of his compadres, and spins around just enough to throw off Frick’s attack. Frick caroms off the rail, turns around, and tries to grab Shaftoe’s nuts. Shaftoe pokes him in the eye, which straightens him right up. They back away from each other. The opening formalities having been finished, they put up their dukes.
    Frick and Shaftoe box for a couple of rounds. A large crowd of Marines gathers. On most of their cards, Frick is winning the fight. Frick was always dim-witted, and is now crazy to boot, but