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night air seemed to be oppressively hot and humid, even with the sun down. The twenty-knot breeze coming over the bow gave scant comfort. He looked at his watch. Twenty thirty. Most of the night actions around Guadalcanal had erupted around midnight. The Japs timed their arrival at their objective area so that they could do what they’d come to do and then be out of range of the Cactus air forces by daylight. But what if they came early? As if to accentuate that question, lightning erupted way over on the northwestern horizon, too far away to be heard but bright enough to paint the huge steel towers of the battleships looming behind them in a brief, yellow glaze. That’s what battleship guns probably looked like at night when they started shooting at you from over the horizon.
    Change of plan.
    â€œOfficer of the deck,” Sluff called into the pilothouse. “Pass the word: GQ will go down in five minutes.”
    He went to his sea cabin as the shrill notes of the bosun’s call pierced the 1MC speakers on the weather decks and every space within the ship. He’d told the XO to plan on GQ in twenty minutes or so, but those distant flashes bothered him. The captain’s sea cabin was more like a steel box right behind the bridge than a real cabin. It measured six feet by eight and contained a fold-down bunk, a sink, and a steel commode. It was designed so that an exhausted captain could lie down for a few minutes while not being more than three steps away from the bridge. His battle-dress gear hung on a bulkhead.
    He used the head, washed his face, then changed into a long-sleeved khaki shirt, buttoned to the throat. Then came his kapok life jacket, which he tied across his chest with three strings before he pulled up the two straps that went between his legs and back up to the waist. There were two tiny flashlights pinned to the bulky jacket, one red-lens, one white. There was also a police whistle on a cord attached to the jacket’s lapel.
    Already beginning to sweat from all the layers, he strapped on his steel helmet with the letters CO painted front and back. He could hear the tramp of men hurrying to their GQ stations, along with the first sounds of hatches going down. He bent over with difficulty to stuff his khaki trouser hems into his socks. Finally came the utility belt, which contained a packet of morphine syringes, a full-sized red-lensed flashlight, a pouch of battle-dressing bandages, a sheath knife, and a holstered .45 semiautomatic.
    He stood up and inhaled, feeling a little like a knight about to climb up on his charger. The gear hanging from his belt and life jacket was mostly for use in the water or in a life raft. He’d often wondered about the utility of the pistol, but the idea was that if all the officers carried a sidearm and the ship went down, there would be some guns aboard the life rafts. That was the published version, anyway. The officers all knew there were other uses for a pistol should battle damage, horrible wounds, or a hysterical crewman require it. Unlike in a land battle, retreat was not an option in a naval gunfight.
    The GQ alarm finally sounded, almost as an afterthought, since most of the men were already on station. He could hear the phone-talkers out on the bridge taking manned-and-ready reports from GQ stations throughout the ship. He took a deep breath and went back out onto the bridge. The usual chorus greeted his arrival. The OOD reported that the ship was manned and ready for general quarters. It was fully dark now, with only a faint moon showing through a high overcast. He went out onto the bridge wing, where he could just barely make out the white bow wave of the destroyer next behind the King. The battleships, one and a half miles back, were now lost in the gloom.
    He went back into the pilothouse area to the chart table, which was illuminated by a dim red light. The navigation plot showed that the formation was north-northwest of Savo Island,