'Enough,' said Pig. 'What about our Club.' This was the Prisoners-at-Large and Restricted Men's Club, formed recently for the purpose of hatching plots against Knoop, who was also Groomsman's division officer.
'One thing,' Groomsman said, 'that Knoop cannot stand is water. He can't swim, he owns three umbrellas.'
They discussed ways of exposing Knoop to water, short of throwing him over the side. A few hours after lights out Lazar and Teledu joined the plot after a blackjack game (payday stakes) in the mess hall. Both had been losers. As were all the Captain's Men. They had a fifth of Old Stag conned from Howie Surd.
Saturday Knoop had the duty. At sundown the Navy has this tradition called Evening Colors, which around the Convoy Escort Piers in Norfolk is impressive. Looking at it from any destroyer's bridge you would see all motion - afoot and vehicular - stop; everyone come to attention, turn and salute the American flags going down on dozens of fantails.
Knoop had the first dog watch, 4 to 6 P.M., as OOD. Groomsman was to pass the word 'Now on deck attention to colors.' The destroyer tender U.S.S. Mammoth Cave, alongside which the Scaffold and its division were moored, had recently acquired a trumpet player from shore duty in Washington, D. C., so tonight there was even a bugle to play retreat.
Meanwhile Pig was lying on top of the pilot house, a pile of curious objects beside him. Teledu was down at the water tap aft of the pilot house, filling up rubbers - among them Pig's French ticklers - and passing them to Lazar who was putting them next to Pig.
'Now on deck,' said Groomsman. From over the way came the first note of Taps. A few tin cans down the line, jumping the gun, started lowering their own flags. Out on the bridge came Knoop to supervise. 'Attention to colors.' Splat, went a rubber, two inches from Knoop's foot. 'Oh, oh,' said Pig. 'Get him while he's still saluting,' Lazar whispered, frantic. The second rubber landed on Knoop's hat, intact. From out of the corner of one eye Pig saw that great nightly immobility, dyed orange by the sun, grip the entire C.E. Piers area. The bugle knew what he was doing, and played Taps clear and strong.
The third rubber missed completely, going over the side. Pig had the shakes. 'I can't hit him,' he kept saying. Lazar, exasperated, had picked up two and fled. 'Traitor,' Pig snarled and threw one after him. 'Aha,' said Lazar from down among the 3-inch mounts, and lobbed one back at Pig. Bugle blew a riff. 'Carry on,' said Groomsman. Knoop brought his right hand smartly to his side and with his left removed the water-filled rubber from his hat. He started calmly up the ladder on the pilot house after Pig. The first person he saw was Teledu, crouching by the water tap, still filling rubbers. Down on the torpedo deck Pig and Lazar were having a water fight, chasing each other among the gray tubes now highlighted vermilion by the sunset. Arming himself with the stockpile Pig had abandoned, Knoop joined the struggle.
They ended up drenched, exhausted and swearing mutual fealty. Groomsman even named Knoop to honorary membership in the PAL and Restricted Men's Club.
The reconciliation came as a surprise to Pig, who'd expected to get the book thrown at him. He felt let down and saw no other way to improve his outlook but to get laid. Unfortunately he was now afflicted by contraceptivelessness. He tried to borrow a few. It was that horrible and cheerless time just before payday when everybody is out of everything: money, cigarettes, soap, and especially rubbers, much less French ticklers. 'Gawd,' moaned Pig, 'what do I do?' To his rescue came Hiroshima, ET3.
'Didn't anybody ever tell you,' said this worthy, 'about the biological effects of r-f energy?'
'Wha,' said Pig.
'Stand in front of the radar antenna,' said Hiroshima, 'while it is radiating, and what it will do is, it will make you temporarily sterile.'
'Indeed,' said Pig. Indeed. Hiroshima showed him a book which said so.
'I am scared of heights?' said Pig.
'It is the only way out,' Hiroshima told him. 'What you do is, you climb up the mast and I will go light off the old SPA 4 Able.'
Already tottering, Pig made his way topside and prepared to climb the mast. Howie Surd had come along and solicitously offered a shot of something murky in an unlabeled bottle. On the way up, Pig passed Profane swinging like a bird in a boatswain's chair hooked to the spar. Profane was painting the mast. 'Dum de dum, de dum,' sang Profane. 'Good afternoon, Pig.' My old buddy, thought Pig. His are probably the last words I will ever hear.
Hiroshima appeared below. 'Yo, Pig,' he yelled. Pig made the mistake of looking down. Hiroshima gave him the thumb-and-index-finger-in-a-circle sign. Pig felt like vomiting.
'What are you doing in this neck of the woods,' Profane said.
'Oh, just out for a stroll,' said Pig. 'I see you are painting the mast, there.'
'Right,' said Profane, 'deck gray.' They examined at length the subject of the Scaffold's color scheme, as well as the long-standing jurisdictional dispute which had Profane, a deck ape, painting the mast when it was really the radar gang's responsibility.
Hiroshima and Surd impatient, started yelling. 'Well,' said Pig, 'good-bye old buddy.'
'Be careful walking around on that platform,' Profane said. 'I robbed some more hamburger out of the galley and stowed it up there. I figure on sneaking it off over the 01 deck.' Pig, nodding, creaked slowly up the ladder.
At the top be latched his nose over the platform like Kilroy and cased the situation. There was Profane's hamburger all right. Pig started to climb on the platform when his ultra-sensitive nose detected something. He lifted it off the deck.
'How remarkable,' said Pig out loud, 'it smells like hamburger frying.' He looked a little closer at Profane's cache. 'Guess what,' he said, and started backing quickly down the ladder. When he got level with Profane he yelled over: 'Buddy, you just saved my life. You got a piece of line?'
'What are you going to do,' said Profane, tossing him a piece of line: 'hang yourself?'
Pig made a noose on one end and headed up the ladder again. After a couple-three tries he managed to snare the hamburger, pulled it over, dragged off his white hat and dumped the hamburger in it, being careful all the time
