Neal Stephenson - Cryptonomicon

A couple of days into the voyage it becomes apparent that Sergeant Frick has forgotten how to shine his boots. Every night he puts them on the deck beside his bunk, like he's expecting a coolie to come around and shine them up during the night. Every morning he wakes up and finds them in a sorrier state than before. After a few days he starts to draw reprimands from On High, starts to get a lot of potato-peeling duty.

Now in and of itself this is forgivable. Frick started out his career chasing bandolier-draped desperadoes away from mail trains on the High Chaparral, for God's sake. In '27 he got shipped off to Shanghai on very short notice, and no doubt had to display some adaptability. Fine. And now he's on this miserable pre-Great War cruiser and it's a little hard on him. Fine. But he does not take all of this with the dignity that is demanded of Marines by Marines. He whines about it. He lets himself get humiliated. He gets angry. A lot of the other old China Marines see things his way.

One day Bobby Shaftoe is up on the deck of the destroyer tossing the old horsehide around with a couple of the other young Marines when he sees a few of these older guys accumulating into a sort of human booger on the afterdeck. He can tell by the looks on their faces and by their gestures that they are bellyaching.

Shaftoe hears a couple of the ship's crew talking to each other nearby “What the hell is wrong with those Marines?” one of them says. The other one shakes his head sadly, like a doctor who has just seen a patient's eyeballs roll up into their sockets. “Those poor bastards have gone Asiatic.” he says.

And then they turn and look at Shaftoe.

That evening, at mess, Bobby Shaftoe gulps his food down double-time, then stands up and approaches the table where those Old Breed Marines are sullenly gathered. “Begging your pardon, Sergeant!” he hollers. “Request permission to shine your boots, Sarge!”

Frick's mouth drops open, revealing a half-chewed plug of boiled beef. “Whud you say, Corporal?”

The mess has gone silent. “Respectfully request permission to shine your boots, Sarge!”

Frick is not the quickest guy in the world even when he's sober, and it's pretty obvious, just from looking at his pupils, that he and his comrades have brought some opium aboard. “Wull, uh, I guess so,” he says. He looks around at his crew of gripers, who are a little confused and a little amused. He unlaces his boots. Bobby Shaftoe takes those disgraceful things away and returns a bit later with them resplendently shined. By this time, Frick has gotten high and mighty. “Wull, those boots look real good, Corporal Shaftoe,” he says in a brassy voice. “Darned if you ain't as good a shoe-shiner as my coolie boy was.”

At lights out, Frick and crew are short-sheeted. Various other, ruder practical jokes ensue during the nighttime. One of them gets jumped in his bunk and beaten by unspecified attackers. The brass call a surprise inspection the next morning and cuss them out. The “gone Asiatic” crew spend most of the next day gathered in a cluster, watching each other's backs.

Around midday, Frick finally gets it through his head that all of this was triggered by Shaftoe's gesture, and that Shaftoe knew, all along, what was going to happen. So he rushes Bobby Shaftoe up on the deck and tries to throw him over the rail.

Shaftoe's warned at the last minute by one of his compadres, and spins around just enough to throw off Frick's attack. Frick caroms off the rail, turns around, and tries to grab Shaftoe's nuts. Shaftoe pokes him in the eye, which straightens him right up. They back away from each other. The opening formalities having been finished; they put up their dukes.

Frick and Shaftoe box for a couple of rounds. A large crowd of Marines gathers. On most of their cards, Frick is winning the fight. Frick was always dim-witted, and is now crazy to boot, but he knows his way around a boxing ring, and he has forty pounds on Shaftoe.

Shaftoe puts up with it until Frick socks him pretty hard in the mouth and gives him a bloody lip.

“How far are we from Manila?” Shaftoe hollers. This question, as usual, leaves Sergeant Frick confused and bewildered, and straightens him up for a moment.

“Two days,” answers one of the ship's officers.

“Well, goddamn,” Bobby Shaftoe says. “How'm I gonna kiss my girl with this fat lip?”

Frick answers, “Just go out and find a cheaper one.”

That's all he needs. Shaftoe puts his head down and charges in on Frick, hollering like a Nip. Before Frick can get his brain in gear, Bobby Shaftoe has him wrapped up in one of those chop-socky holds that Goto Dengo taught him in Shanghai. He works his way up Frick's body to a choke-hold and then clamps down until Sergeant Frick's lips turn the color of the inside of an oyster shell. Then he hangs Frick over the rail, holding him upside-down by the ankles, until Frick recovers enough to shout, “Uncle!”

A disciplinary proceeding is hastily called. Shaftoe is found guilty of being courteous (by shining Frick's boots) and defending the life of a Marine (himself) from a crazed attacker. The crazed attacker goes straight to the brig. Within a few hours, the noises Frick makes lets all of the Marines know what opium withdrawal feels like.

So Sergeant Frick does not get to see their entrance into Manila Bay. Shaftoe almost feels sorry for the poor bastard.

The island of Luzon lies to port all day long, a black hulk barely visible through the haze, with glimpses of palm trees and beaches down below. All of the Marines have been this way before and so they can pick out the Cordillera Central up north, and later the Zambales Mountains, which eventually plunge down to meet the sea near Subic Bay. Subic triggers a barrage of salty anecdotes. The ship does not put in there, but continues to swing southward around Bata'an, turning inland toward the entrance of Manila Bay. The ship reeks of shoe polish, talcum powder, and after-shave lotion; the Fourth Marines may have specialized in whoring and opium abuse, but they've always been known as the best-looking Marines in the Corps.

They pass by Corregidor. An island shaped like a bead of water on a waxed boot, it is gently rounded in the middle but steeply sloping into the water. It has a long, bony, dry tail that trails off at one end. The Marines know that the island is riddled with tunnels and bristling with terrible guns, but the only sign of these fortifications is the clusters of concrete barracks up in the hills, housing the men who serve the weapons. A tangle of antennas rises up above Topside. Their shapes are familiar to Shaftoe, because many of the same antennas rose above Station Alpha in Shanghai, and he had to take them apart and load them into the truck.

There is a giant limestone cliff descending nearly into the sea, and at the base of it is the entrance to the tunnel where all the spooks and radio men have their hideaway. Nearby is a dock, quite busy at the moment, with supplies being offloaded from civilian transports and stacked right there on the beach. This detail is noticed by all of the Marines as a positive sign of approaching war. Augusta drops anchor in the cove, and all of that tarp-wrapped radio stuff is unloaded into launches and taken to that dock, along with all of the odd pencil-necked Navy men who tended that gear in Shanghai.

The swell dies as they pass Corregidor and enter the bay. Greenish-brown algae floats in swirls and curlicues near the surface. Navy ships lay brown ropes of smoke across the still sea. Undisturbed by wind, these unfold into rugged shapes like translucent mountain ranges. They pass the big military base at Cavite—a sheet of land so low and flat that its boundary with the water would be invisible except for the picket line of palm trees. A few hangars and water towers rise from it, and low dark clusters of barracks farther inland. Manila is dead ahead of them, still veiled in haze, It is getting on toward evening.