As the captain was maneuvering the nose of the ship into the center of the anchoring berth, Willie, yawning on the starboard wing, felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned. Keefer, pointing off to the right, said, “Willie dear, look yonder and tell me it’s a hallucination.”A thousand yards away an LST, painted with brown-and-green tropic camouflage, was anchored. Tied to the open ramp at the bow were three sixty-ton target sleds. Willie said sadly, “Oh, Christ, no.”“What do you see?” said Keefer.“Targets. That’s why we were sent down to this hole, no doubt.” The despatch ordering the Caine to proceed from Eniwetok to Ulithi alone at high speed had been the subject of extended guessing in the wardroom.“I am going below to fall on my sword,” said the novelist.The weary old Caine went back to work, hauling targets around the open sea near Ulithi for the fleet’s gunnery practice. Day after day, dawn found the ship steaming out of the channel with the sled, and dusk was usually purple over the atoll before it dropped anchor again.
