Another day and another passed of rough seas and low­er­ing skies; of rolling and pitch­ing, cold winds, and cold damp eat­ing into bones soft­ened by tropic warmth; of a tread­mill of watches in a wheel­house dank and gloomy by day and danker and gloomier by night; of sullen silent sailors and pale dog-tired offi­cers, of meals in the ward­room eaten in silence, with the cap­tain at the head of the table cease­lessly rolling the balls in his fin­gers and say­ing noth­ing except an infre­quent grumpy sen­tence about the progress of the work requests. Willie lost track of time. He stum­bled from the bridge to his cod­ing, from cod­ing to cor­rect­ing pub­li­ca­tions, from cor­rec­tions back up to the bridge, from the bridge to the table for an unap­pe­tiz­ing bolted meal, from the table to the clip­ping shack for sleep which never went unin­ter­rupted for more than a cou­ple of hours. The world became nar­rowed to a wob­bling iron shell on a waste of foamy gray, and the busi­ness of the world was star­ing out at empty water or mak­ing red-ink inser­tions in the devil’s own end­less library of mildewed unin­tel­li­gi­ble volume.

p. 233

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Tags: Herman Wouk, passage of time, quotes, ship, The Caine Mutiny, time