Sweet Reason Read Online Free Page B

quickly.
    Frantic that Rummler would report the incident anyhow Jones apologized again later, and Rummler, charming as always, told him that as far as he was concerned the affair was closed, besides which Germans had to put up with that sort of thing all the time and he, Rummler, was used to it.
    The skipper’s anger had just about worn off when Wallowitch did it again. The Ebersole had raced up to Iskenderun from Rhodes when an Italian-built Panamanian-licensed, British-insured, German-owned, American-leased tanker full of jet fuel for the U.S. Air Force base at Adana, Turkey, caught fire. The Greek-Spanish-Turkish crew had long since abandoned the burning ship when the Ebersole arrived on the scene. It was late at night and the flames from the tanker provided a beacon to Iskenderun that could be seen for thirty nautical miles.
    Soon after the Ebersole anchored in the bay the Captain assembled the officers in the wardroom to discuss the situation.Lieutenant j.g. Moore, the engineering officer, back from a longboat tour around the burning tanker, reported that the decks were red-hot in places and that she might blow up at any moment.
    Jones shivered in a spasm of indecisiveness. Chewing away at the inside of his cheek, he pored over the text of the message ordering the Ebersole to the scene, explicating it like a poem, poking in and under and around the words for some nuance that would let him know whether his superiors in Washington actually expected him to put the Ebersole alongside and fight the blaze or stand off a few miles and report on its progress. (As was usual in cases like this, the orders had been carefully worded so that the admirals could claim they meant either one.) The Captain even polled the officers, something he had never done before. Only Ensign de Bovenkamp voted for going alongside. Everyone else (except the XO, who seemed to be voting “yes” and “no” at the same time, and Lustig, who was noncommittal) came out against doing anything rash.
    “But what about this phrase ‘will render all possible assistance,’ ” the Captain said. In agony he read the message again, and then again; sometimes the emphasis seemed to fall on “all,” sometimes on “possible.” Finally he slapped his palm down on the back of his other hand as if he were tossing an invisible coin and said: “Well, hell, what’ve we got to lose, eh?”
    The decision stunned everyone except de Bovenkamp, who jumped up from the wardroom huddle with a “hot damn,” and Wallowitch, who piped up with his remark heard ’round the ship.
    “Thank God,” he mumbled, “I have but one life to give for my captain’s career!”
    Jones’s eyebrows shot up. “I heard that, Mister Wallowitch,” he shouted, wagging his finger at the Shrink. “I heard that and I won’t forget it either.”

    Wallowitch Puts a Shot Across the Skunk’s Bow
    “This is not my idea of a joke,” Captain Jones yelled after Wallowitch as he made his way, sword clanking against stanchions and bulkheads, to his main director battle station. There, his hairy legs and sword dangling from the tractor seat, Wallowitch put his eye to the director optics. Squinting into the hazy, predawn dimness, the Shrink reported that he could make out the target fairly clearly.
    “Looks like a junk to me, Larry,” he told Lustig over the sound-powered headset.
    “Wallowitch says it looks like a junk, Captain,” Lustig told Jones on the open bridge.
    “It’s kind of long for a junk,” said the Captain, peering intently at the skunk through binoculars. “And you don’t see any sails, do you? I think it might be … I bet the sonovabitch is a Commie patrol boat. What do you think, XO?”
    “Sonovabitch looks like a patrol boat to me, Captain. I think we’re in for a piece of the action, that’s what I think.”
    “Damn if you’re not right,” agreed the skipper, biting his cuticles. “She’s probably moving slow like that so we’ll think she’s some sort of