Read The Caine Mutiny for Free Online Page A

casualties are worse than Army in this war, so far.”
    “I want to be a Navy man,” said Willie, and only when the words were out of his mouth did he realize that they were quite true.
    The doctor looked at him, with a flicker of good will in his eye. He wrote decisively on the record: Mild lordosis well compensated. Pulse normal-J. Grimm, Chief Med. Bklyn. He crumpled up and threw away the red-lettered memo, and returned the other papers to Willie. “Don’t suffer in silence in this outfit, boy. Speak up when something damn silly is happening to you.”
    “Aye aye, sir.”
    The captain turned his attention to a spread of papers on his desk, and Willie left. It occurred to him that his naval career had probably been saved by a doctor’s shame at keeping a patient waiting eight hours, but he rejoiced at the outcome, anyway. Back at Furnald Hall he returned his medical record to the pharmacist’s mate of the red pencil in the dispensary. Warner put aside a bowl of purple antiseptic to glance eagerly at the papers. His face fell, but he managed a baleful grin. “Hm, you made it. Fine.”
    “See you in Tokyo, Doctor,” said Willie.
    In his room he found Keggs and Keefer fussing with guns. A big battered rifle, with a custody card, lay on Willie’s cot. “Rifles in the Navy?” he said mildly.
    “Bet your behind,” said Keefer. The pieces of his firing lock lay on the desk beside him. Keggs was clanking the rotating bolt back and forth with an air of futility. “We have to learn how to take one apart and assemble it in two minutes,” he moaned, “by tomorrow morning. I bilge, for sure.”
    “Don’t strain your milk,” said Keefer. “Lemme get this baby together, and I’ll show you. Damn this mainspring.”
    The Southerner gave his two roommates a patient thorough lesson in the mysteries of the Springfield rifle. Keggs got the hang of it quickly. His long bony fingers caught the critical trick, which was to force the tough mainspring back into the bolt on reassembly. He beamed at his weapon, and ran through the process several times. Willie wrestled vainly with the bolt for a while and panted, “They should have bilged me on lordosis. It would have been more dignified. I’ll be out of this Navy tomorrow- Get in there, lousy damn spring-” He had never touched a gun before. The potential deadliness of it meant nothing to him. It was simply a troublesome assignment: a knotty page of Beethoven, an overdue book report on Clarissa Harlowe.
    “Jam the butt of that bolt in your stomach, see?” said Keefer. “Then press the spring down with both hands.”
    Willie obeyed. The spring yielded slowly. The end of it sank at last into the rim. “It works! Thanks, Rollo-” At that moment the spring, still unsecured, escaped between his fingers and leaped from the bolt. It soared across the room. The window was conveniently open. The spring sailed out into the night.
    His roommates stared at him in horror. “That’s bad, isn’t it?” quavered Willie.
    “Anything happens to your rifle, boy-that does it,” said the Southerner, walking to the window.
    “I’ll run downstairs,” Willie said.
    “What, during study hour? Twelve demerits!” Keggs said.
    “Come here, fella.” Keefer pointed out through the window. The spring lay in a rain gutter at the edge of a steeply slanting copper-covered roof projection beneath the window. The tenth floor was set slightly back from the rest of the building.
    “I can’t get that,” said Willie.
    “You better, fella.”
    Keggs peered out. “You’d never make it. You’d fall off.”
    “That’s what I think,” said Willie. He was not at all a daredevil. His mountain climbing had been done in plenty of stout company, and with much gulping horror. He hated high places and poor footing.
    “Look, fella, you want to stay in the Navy? Climb out there. Or d’you want me to do it?”
    Willie climbed out, clinging to the window frame. The wind moaned in the darkness. Broadway