"MacDonnell, J E - 021 - The Coxswain" - читать интересную книгу автора (MacDonnell J E)

Nesbitt held by his officers.
Nesbitt was an educated, devoted and highly-sensitive seaman:
- J.E. Macdonnell: The Coxswain Page 7 -



a man marked for promotion, the last man expected to let himself
and the ship down. But the officer of the watch himself had caught
him.It had been after a vicious dusk air-attack, three days earlier. For
an hour Wind Rode had battled desperately against the howling
demons which fell out of the sky upon her, twisting, firing with all
her gunnery armament until the friendly opacity of the night had
brought her surcease from the agony.
At a few minutes to nine o'clock that night the asdic-officer,
Lieutenant Peacock, strolling back and forth across the bridge, had
sighted a dark figure sprawled forward in the lookout's position, its
arms on the disregarded binoculars.
The crucial post of lookout ... a few feet from the bridge itself . .
. Nesbitt's keenness and dependability . . and careless sleep. None
of these equations fitted. But now Bentley had the report of Surgeon-
lieutenant Landis, delivered two hours after he had asked for it.
No blame at all, Landis had decided with professional firmness.
A sensitive nature, driven by natural devotion and the fierce strain
of years of war close to the point of exhaustion. The offence was
serious, the cause was medical. Nesbitt's mental and physical strength
was too finely-tempered for the savage hammering of war in a
destroyer. His very strength-his loyalty and keenness and
dependability- was his weakness. He had driven himself too hard,
he lacked the comparatively insensitive phlegm of his messmates.
He should be transferred, Landis had advised, either to a shore
base for a spell or to a bigger ship, one not almost constantly at sea
and in action like this one. Or else he would crack wide open, perhaps
at a dangerous time.
There had been a time when Bentley would have queried his
surgeon's present unequivocal opinion.* But now he accepted
Landis's judgment as definitely as his own.
He closed the big report-book and handed it over with a murmured
"Thanks, cox'n," and his eyes, squinted against the sea's glare, stared
thoughtfully out over the bow. Being a defaulter, Nesbitt would be
seen last, with no messmates to hear. Bentley would explain to him
the surgeon's diagnosis, and that he was to be transferred south from
Moresby. There were other things the captain would say, for with his
- J.E. Macdonnell: The Coxswain Page 8 -



remissness common knowledge throughout the ship Nesbitt would
be going through hell, but those things Bentley did not have to
rehearse in his mind now. He had been in command of men a long,
violent tune, and what he would say would be spontaneous, sincere;