None of these things were important now, though. Nothing, except getting out of the storm, was important.
“I wonder how she’s blowing outside?” remarked a deckhand.
“Ought to be hitting a hundred about now,” answered another. “What do you think, Mate?”
“I hope it’s a hundred. If it is that means the storm’ll be over by morning. They don’t last so long, these storms.”
“That’s what I say.”
The men spoke together in low voices. Martin examined the pin-up pictures that plastered the bulkheads. Whenever he thought of his army career he thought of these pictures first. Somehow they almost never changed no matter where he was. These pictures and the radio, those were the two constant things. Occasionally there was no radio but the pictures were always there: half-dressed girls, in mysteriously lighted bedclothes, promising sex.
He thought of the three years he had spent in the army, and, of those years, only a few things stood out in his memory: certain songs that were popular when he had left for overseas, the waiting in line for almost everything.... The rest of his army career came to him only as a half-feeling of discomfort.
The dog, he noticed, was chewing his shoe. He grabbed the animal by the muzzle and pushed it away.
He got up. “See you,” he remarked at large and he began to climb the ladder that led to the forward deck.
“See you, Mate.”