Voyage to Somewhere Read Free

stopped and looked at me, and I felt that I was being examined in about the same way that I had examined the ship.
    â€œLook, Captain,” he said, “I’ll tell you something. I asked for this job. I don’t mind it. I think we will probably get through. But don’t forget how ridiculous the whole project is, and don’t try to cheer me up. I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but I figure the quicker we understand each other the better.”
    â€œAll right,” I said, “I won’t try to cheer you up. But why in hell did you ask for this job?”
    â€œBecause I got bored and because I don’t give a damn.” He turned and resumed his pacing. “And because I like to keep my convictions,” he added, “and if I got on a nice, big smooth-running ship I might think that some of the brass hats knew what they were doing.”
    The women welders on the deck of the ship finished their job. One of them threw off her welder’s helmet and revealed a thick mass of dirty blond hair. Reaching into her trouser pocket, she pulled out a lipstick and applied it without a mirror. Then, shouldering her mask, she marched off the ship.
    Seeing Mr. Rudd, she waved at him. “Hello, dearie!” she called. “How’s tricks?”

CHAPTER THREE
    T HREE DAYS LATER I received word that we were to put the ship into commission. There was to be no ceremony: a truck would bring the ship’s complement down to the shipyard, we would go aboard, and make everything ready to sail. I went down to the ship early, to be there when the crew arrived. The SV-126 lay deserted; not even a security watch had been left aboard her. I walked over the gangway and stood alone on her deck. Slowly I made my way aft and walked through a passageway past the galley to a door which had “Commanding Officer” in white letters over it. Inside this cabin I found a bunk and a desk. I sat down and looked around me. Not a sound was heard anywhere. “I hope it’s always this quiet,” I thought, and caught myself envisaging all the different noises that can take place on a ship: the sustained shriek of a gale, the mechanical hysteria of the general quarters alarm, the jolt of gunfire, and the steady hum of men’s voices that pervades a fully manned ship, voices which continue day and night and which by their tone express the corporate emotions of the crew. My reverie was disturbed by the sound of a truck stopping beside the ship and the first clamor of those very voices of which I had been thinking. I went on deck and saw a six-wheeled truck with about twenty-five men in the back of it. Already the men were jumping out of the truck and throwing their seabags on the dock. Mr. Rudd was lumbering out of the front seat of the truck, and two other officers, a j.g. and an ensign, were supervising the unloading of the truck. There was a constant babble of voices. “Right here now, make it lively,” the j.g. was shouting, and the men were saying, “Aye aye, sir,” “Hey, Bill, get off my bag,” and “Give me a hand here, Mac, will you? Won’t anybody give me a hand with this thing?”
    When all the seabags were piled on the dock the men formed a line and started swinging them aboard. One bag almost fell in the water, and there were loud cries of alarm.
    â€œLose that and I go naked for the rest of the war,” a tall, thin seaman said.
    When all the bags were piled in a forward corner of the well deck, the men filed aboard over the gangway. The steel decks of the ship trembled under their feet and the air resounded with their voices. “It’s like blood seeping into a dead body and giving it life,” I thought. “She’ll never be quiet again—till she sinks or is left, after the war, to rot in some quiet creek. I wonder when she will be quiet again.”
    Mr. Rudd came aboard last of all and we greeted each other like old friends. The