At the Midway Page 9

  "Midshipman Davis."

  "Yes, sir?"

  "You're all blue."

  "Yes, sir."

  "Isn't there any way you can remove it?"

  "I think it'll just have to wear off, Captain. I've tried everything else." Except jumping into a vat of turpentine, Davis thought, terrified the captain would suggest just that.

  "All right. Would you please escort Dr. Singleton forward? And ask him to tell you about lead poisoning while at it."

  "Aye aye, sir."

  Singleton did not look at the dolphin again, but turned slowly and followed the midshipman away.

  "Mr. Garrett."

  "Yes, sir?" The ensign licked his chapped lips. Sitting out in the wind and sun all afternoon had dried him out. Beck stood awkwardly to the side, like some green fairy attendant out of A Midsummer's Night Dream.

  "Am I speaking to the same Garrett who had a questionable relationship in Portsmouth? I believe you almost got married there, only the father rescued the girl at the last moment."

  "Sir‑‑"

  "And weren't you brought before the mast for swimming naked in Trinidad?"

  "I was in the water, sir. No one could see‑‑"

  "The water was exceptionally clear, is my understanding. And the ladies on that yacht could see every inch."

  "I didn't know‑‑"

  "Yes... and you're the one who stopped the loading in Number One Turret when that schooner cut through our division. What if it had been an enemy cruiser? Would you have done the same?"

  His question sounded like a reprimand and he realized how foolish it was. Garrett had acted properly that spooky night, for more humiliating than being sunk by an enemy was sinking yourself. The whole idea of firing--no matter how obvious the danger--was repugnant to the captain. Still, he was not here to praise Garrett, but to bury him.

  "I thought it best--"

  "Yes, yes. You thought it best, even though you could see nothing from where you stood and had no idea what we were up against. Very prudent, Ensign." He glanced at the marines. Were they involved in all this? Hard to tell with them. Midshipman Beck, on the other hand, was obviously an unwilling party. By all rights, Oates should dismiss the marines and the midshipman before raking Garrett over the coals, but he wanted his words to get out. For that to happen, he needed an audience. "Where are we, Mr. Garrett?"

  "Sir? I believe we'll soon be rounding Cape São Roque."

  "No. Look around, mister. What I mean is: where are we?"

  Glancing fore and aft, Garrett noted Fourth Division four hundred yards behind and First Division an equal distance ahead. To starboard was Second Division. The rest of Third Division had separated itself from the Florida and had moved off to port.

  "We're in the middle, sir."

  "And what does that mean?"

  "It... uh... means we're in the Observation Ward, sir."

  "And why are we in the Observation Ward with five admirals and the entire Atlantic Squadron looking down on us?"

  "My understanding is that it's punishment for being out of position when we reached Port of Spain, sir."

  "We fell thirty yards behind, Mr. Garrett. We squeezed every ounce of power we could out of this dear old ship and we fell behind."

  Garrett found it difficult to stay at attention. A breeze kept blowing his loose tunic collar against his cheek. To his chagrin, a wayward thread floated up and came perilously near his right eye like some tantalizing cabaret dancer intent on blinding him.

  "What ship were you on before the Florida?"

  "I was stationed on the Oregon, sir. I was a watch and division officer."

  "And where is the Oregon now?"

  "She's restricted to home waters, sir."

  "And why is that?"

  "She... couldn't keep up, sir."

  "She was one of the most honored ships in the Navy, Mr. Garrett. During the war with Spain she sailed from the Pacific to Santiago and decided the fight when she got there. But when the Fleet reorganized she was relegated to the backwaters as if she was nothing more than a rust bucket." Oates glanced around to make certain Singleton had not sneaked back. "Mr. Garrett, I'm sure your presence on my ship is due to the lack of manpower on the East Coast. But rest assured, if a grand old wagon like the Oregon can be cut, there's nothing to putting you swabbing decks on a collier."

  Captain Oates took a long look at the dolphin. It had changed color again. Its faded green tint was like a distress signal from the soul.

  "Get this thing over the side. Admiral Sperry is on the Alabama abaft." He nodded in the direction of the Fourth Division. "If you think I'm a sundowner, I could correct that impression by introducing you to him."

  Ah, is that it? Garrett thought. True, the rear admiral was a notoriously strict disciplinarian. If Sperry was witnessing Oates' angry arm-waving, he would understand the Florida's skipper was disciplining the sailor who took their predicament so lightly.

  "Sir, if you'd like some fish steak--"

  Not much of what Oates had said had made an impact, but the look he now gave Garrett was deadly as a gun. He bit his tongue as the captain seemed to twist inward on himself, then stomped past a six-inch sponson out of sight.

  "All right, Shit-shank, you heard him. Over the side with our dinner."

  Beck was angry. And stunned. With a tongue-lashing like this, the ensign should have been cowed into abject silence. As it was, Garrett's command reflected nothing more than what he felt: disappointment at losing a meal. No concern at all that the captain might carry out his threat and banish him to a collier. While Beck, who'd not been the target of the reprimand, felt his legs wilt like daisy stalks.

  The splash was indistinguishable from the turmoil in the Florida's wake. The last they saw of the dolphin was a greenish-silver sliver on the waves. It raised one flipper, then disappeared.

  Dr. Singleton slipped into his cabin, downed a couple shots of whiskey, and emerged a new man. He dragged Midshipman Davis back on deck, then beat his chest as he filled his lungs with sea air. "A splendid day! Pity you're spliced to an old geezer like me, eh lad?"

  Davis could only agree, so he said nothing.

  Singleton spent a few introspective moments watching the waves slip by, then recited: "'Rƒ = fsv .' You know what that is, Mr. Davis?"

  "One of the first things we learned at the Academy. Frictional resistance."

  "Proportional to the wetted surface and the square of the speed. That's us."

  "Sir? It's the Florida."

  "No. I mean us. Across the surface. Reduced to formula."

  Suspecting a depth he was not accustomed to, Davis offered something simpler: "It sure is blue out here."

  Snorting, Singleton waved his hand as if waxing the ocean. "The bluest water I've ever seen lies between the Antilles and the Cape Verde Islands."

  "You mean the Sargasso Sea," said Davis.

  "If you take pure water and add a millionth of a part of ferric hydrate, it appears brown. A ten-millionth makes it green. Only a minute amount, a twenty-millionth, is needed to make it blue. The water at Capri is bluer than Lake Leman. In Switzerland, lakes like Kandersteg and Arolla are bluer still. A matter of degree. The color is the result of spectral absorption and ferric and humic compounds. Blue water really isn't blue, after all!"

  And your hair isn't as white as an old goat's, Davis thought bitterly. He hid his sour expression by facing away from the doctor. When would he learn to keep his mouth shut? The most innocent observation could elicit an hour‑long lecture‑‑or worse, a demonstration. He prayed the doctor would not resume the experiment that had been interrupted when, during an intermission, they stumbled across Ensign Garrett and his dolphin.

  His prayer was not answered.

  A large audience had watched when Dr. Singleton boarded the Florida in Hampton Roads. It was not so much his reputation as his contraptions that preceded him. He was setting out to sea with a miniature laboratory: wired boxes, odd glowing tubes, tools that bore an unsettling rese
mblance to surgical instruments and a high‑backed chair which was said to thwart sea sickness. After seeing these outlandish items brought on board, the sailors lined up to observe the doctor stagger up from the landing stage. What outrages was he contriving for them? He seemed harmless enough in person, waving his silly straw hat at the boatswain.

  But the questions posed were:

  "What's he going to stick us with?"

  "Who's he going to cut open?"

  "What's that thing hook to? And why?"

  At least he had not started vivisecting sailors‑‑yet. But no one had approached him to ask what he was planning, out of fear of being mistaken for a volunteer.

  Midshipman Davis and a few others had more than a glimmer of the grim truth. Davis' hand still smarted from the experiment Singleton had put him through. That morning, the doctor had asked him into his cabin, then seated him at the small table flush against the bulkhead.

  "Hold out your hand."

  All unsuspecting, Davis obeyed. He had, after all, been told to conform with the doctor's wishes, so long as they did not prove too outrageous. When Singleton strapped his hand down on the chair arm, palm up, he grew alarmed. He let out a shout when the doctor stuck a needle into his palm.

  "It will pass," the doctor said unconcernedly. "It can't be too painful, or it would effect my results. It's not absolutely necessary for the skin to be pricked. I would have brought my foot plates and connected them to the battery and galvanometer. Then it would have been a simple matter of soaking both of your hands in warm brine and pressing them down on another set of plates. But as you can see," he waved a hand at his cluttered cabin, "space is at a premium. A needle is much more compact. Now... it doesn't hurt anymore, does it?"

  Davis frowned. In truth, the needle had not penetrated very far. It itched more than it hurt. But the sight of it sticking out of his palm, a thin wire connecting it to the device on the table, made him a little queasy. He had to look away. This, he decided, coincided with his definition of outrageous. He would have refused to participate had he known what the doctor had in mind. Singleton surprised the midshipman with the needle, whipping it out from behind his back at the last instant. Davis had half a mind to jerk it out and rush to tell Lieutenant Grissom that the doctor was indeed poking sailors with needles, as they'd feared he would. But when Singleton showed him the indicator on the galvanometer and said, "That's you," he was brought up short by curiosity.

  "How so?"

  "Here. The needle is attached to this pole of a sal‑ammoniac battery. Now I've just connected a steel plate to the other pole. This allows an electric current to flow through the skin, between the needle and the plate."

  "Am I going to get a shock?"

  "Why would I do something as pointless as that? This little gadget is the result of years of international effort. The psychogalvanic reflex was first discovered by Dr. Fere in France in 1888. This was followed by the Russian Tarchanow's work in 1890. Over the next eighteen years, the method was elaborated upon by E. R. Mueller in Switzerland and Dr. Veraguth in the States."

  "You mean the needle?"

  "A mere pin‑prick. The strength of the current is indicated by this galvanometer, which is composed of two coils and a third suspended coil. This obviates the need for a magnet‑‑which, like pain, can effect the results. As you can see, it has a mirror."

  "I see," Davis nodded. He was beginning to regain his composure.

  "Now I want you to stay still a few moments. Breathe deeply, regularly. Hold a notion of peace."

  "Sir?"

  "As you relax, your skin increases its resistance. I know that sounds contradictory, but that's been the finding. The resistance is shown by an increased deflection on the galvanometer. Any emotion decreases the resistance and modifies the deflection. Do you understand? I want you to understand, because I want to perform this experiment with at least a hundred sailors. If they demand an explanation, you can give it to them. I don't care to repeat myself a hundred times."

  "A hundred...."

  Davis nearly leaped out of the chair when Singleton, pacing the confines behind him, abruptly clapped his hands hard directly next to his ear.

  "See? There! Look at the scale, not at me‑‑the deflection registered your surprise. And not a second after inception. You have‑excellent reflexes, my lad. If there was any hidden damage to your nerves, as might be caused by improper use of opiates, this could not have happened. Hysteria also can cause insensitivity, but you have no need to dwell on that. Now that we know the apparatus is working and that we have a healthy subject, we can begin. I'm going to ask you a series of questions, matching your response against the resistance scale. Ready?"

  After a half hour's questioning, the doctor announced: "You are one happy sailor."

  "I am?" Davis asked, wide‑eyed.

  "You may not know it. That's not surprising, especially in a young fellow. You don't understand the confusion of emotions. Well... who does? That's why the psychogalvanic response is so intriguing. It tells us things about ourselves that we never suspected."

  Which sounded like so much moonshine to the midshipman. Outside of getting paint dumped on his head, few things had ever made him unhappier than being strapped to the doctor's contraption. He had been fearful the machine would detect the cloak of guilt that had fallen over him as he dwelled more and more on his rejection of Beck. Self‑preservation did not seem a disreputable goal in his book, but disowning a friend to do it left an invisible psychic rash. Dr. Singleton's marvel machine detected none of it, however. Davis wondered if the tint of paint on his arms had foiled the device.

  But as the morning progressed, and Singleton pricked subject after unhappy subject, the boy's doubts grew. One man would be grinning, and the doctor would diagnose acute depression. Another sailor, glowering from a recent tongue‑lashing from a machinist' mate, was told he was radiant with love. The rest of the evaluations seemed equally off the mark. But Singleton consulted his galvometric readings and reference charts and insisted he was correct. Davis wondered where all those statistics in the chart came from. Was there really so large a population where people who laughed were sad, and who frowned were delighted? Were sailors really so misinformed on emotions?

  Men were quickly learning to dodge away whenever they spotted the distinctive straw hat and the midshipman shadow. Today, sharp needles. Tomorrow... a blunt knife?

  The incident with the dolphin seemed to subdue the doctor, his medicinal shots of whiskey notwithstanding. The animal's sad, rainbow death throes had thrown him into deep depression. He watched bluejackets swerve to avoid him without giving in to the temptation to chase them down. Davis was relieved when the doctor spotted one of the black stewards lounging near a hatchway and keyed in on him. The midshipman was already getting enough grief from his peers. They suspected he was directing the doctor's choices.

  No such compunction need be experienced with the colored crewmembers. It was not exactly respectable to abuse them openly, but only because that was done much more effectively in secret. As for consideration of their feelings... it was never considered.

  "Well, boy," Singleton said, approaching the steward, "you look primed for experiment."

  Davis recognized the darky who had over‑filled Beck's coffee mug, causing him to ruin his tunic. His left eye was swollen and bruises showed on the side of his face. The tell‑tale tattoo of a 'met‑by‑the‑galley.' Obviously, Beck was not the only one Macklin had annoyed. The discolorations were courtesy of Ensign Garrett, no doubt. Davis agreed with Beck that Garrett was a devil for all time, but at least he knew how to do one thing right.

  Amos Macklin was easing the ache in his back when the doctor saw him. The galley‑bound sailor was learning respect for the Japanese who'd once performed mess duties. He had been a sailor for years, yet the constant grind, stink, and sweat‑‑plus the continuous bark of unreasonable diners‑‑pressed the new stewards to the wall. The contempt they sensed from the white sailors didn't help.
And in Amos's case, the beating he'd taken the night before tripped the world on its head.

  Ensign Garrett and the three men with him had no need to disguise themselves. This was no hayseed southern town where the latest in fashion was Klan capes and slit hoods. If a ranking officer had come upon the scene, he would have halted the beating with a word to Garrett and his men not to raise a ruckus, and a caution to Amos to stop blocking the passageway.

  He'd been expecting it.

  He was working in the jollification mess where the noncoms ate when Garrett swaggered in and in so many words ordered the niggers to serve him.

  The charred lump Amos sat before him had as much smoke as steam rising from it. The ensign stared at it long and hard. Then, smiling, he cut the blackened morsel with several hard swipes of a sharp knife, raised it to his mouth, and ate it. Amos listened to the crunch with startled satisfaction. He'd expected Garrett to throw it in his face or raise a fuss. But to chew and swallow it?

  It was obvious, as Garrett savored each bite, that he was feeding his wrath, not his belly. Amos experienced a peculiar mixture of tension and resignation. He was in for a beating.

  It could have been worse. Oddly enough, the four men who ganged up on him used no weapons, only their fists. The steward knew from experience that he had a good strong skull, so the blows that landed hurt their hands as much as his head. It was the strangest fight he was ever involved in. Perhaps his assailants could not put their hearts into vengeance over a burned steak. The blows from Garrett didn't amount to much. He had surprisingly tiny hands with little punch behind them.

  But enough to cause soreness next morning. Between the "soft" beating and hard work, he was fairly worn out when Singleton called out to him. He tensed. He'd heard the tales, but never thought the white witch doctor would stoop to experimenting with lowly stewards.

  "You heard the doctor." Midshipman Davis stood as tall as he could before the taller black man. "Dr. Singleton wants to hook some wires to you. Don't go bug‑eyed. It won't hurt much. I took the test myself this morning." Davis held up his hand to display the tiny wound. He was chagrined by the need to reassure the steward. He told himself he did not care whether the man was afraid or not. He just wanted to avoid a scene.