Summary

Section 5 of Chapter 2 is titled “Thursday. Midwatch: 2400 – 0400.” As the outgoing watch leaves, Krause compliments the helm officer, accepts Carling’s outgoing report, and takes delivery of the coffee and food he ordered. He devours both quickly, and there are enough moments of relative quiet to allow him the time and the freedom to contemplate his failed marriage. He considers how much he had cared for his former wife Evelyn, how difficult it had been for the two of them to reconcile their very different worlds and very different lives, and how Evelyn had eventually left him to be with a lawyer. He contemplates how he asked for duty on the Atlantic side of America, rather than on the Pacific side, where he might accidentally run into reminders of Evelyn and their marriage. This leads him to contemplate how “if it had not been...