Bear Island (8 page)

    I said something that might have been misconstrued as a brusque apology, side-stepped and had my foot on the first rung when she caught my arm with both hands.

    "Something's wrong. I know it is. What?" Her voice was calm, just loud enough to make itself heard over the high-pitched obbligato of the wind in the rigging. Sure she knew something was wrong, the sight of Dr. Marlowe moving at anything above his customary saunter was as good as a police or air-raid siren any day. I was about to say something to this effect when she added: "That's "why I came on deck," which effectively rendered still-born any cutting remarks I'd been about to make, because she'd been aware of trouble before I'd been: but, then, she hadn't had her thoughts taken up with Aconitum napellus.

    "The ship's not under command. There's nobody in charge on the bridge, nobody trying to keep a course.”

    “Can I do anything?" She was wonderful. "Yes. There's a hot water electric geyser on the galley bulkhead by the stove. Bring up a jug of hot water, not too hot to drink, a mug and salt. Lots of salt."

    I sensed as much as saw her nod and then she was gone. Four seconds later I was inside the wheelhouse. I could dimly see one figure crumpled against the chart table, another apparently sitting straight by the wheel, but that was all I could see. The two overhead lights were dull yellow glows. It took me almost fifteen frantic seconds to locate the instrument panel just foreword of the wheel, but only a couple of seconds thereafter to locate the rheostat and twist it to its clockwise maximum. I blinked in the hurtfully sudden wash of white light.

    Smithy was by the chart table, Oakley by the wheel, the former on his side, the latter upright, but that, I could see, didn't mean that Oakley was in any better state of health than the first mate, it was just that neither appeared capable of moving from the positions they had adopted. Both had their heads arched towards their knees, both had their hands clasped tightly to their midriffs. Neither of them was making any sound. Possibly neither was suffering pain and that the contracted positions they had assumed resulted from some wholly involuntary motor mechanism: it was equally possible that their vocal cords were paralysed.

    I looked at Smithy first. One life is as important as the next, or so any one of a group of sufferers will think, but in this case I was concerned with the greatest good of all concerned and the fact that the "all" here just Coincidentally included me had no bearing on my choice: if the Morning Rose was running into trouble, and I had a strange fey conviction that it was, Smithy was the man I wanted around.

    Smithy's eyes were open and the look in them intelligent. Among other things the aconite article had stated that full intelligence is maintained to the very end. Could this be the end? Paralysis of motion, the article had said, and paralysis of motion we undoubtedly had here. Then paralysis of sensation-maybe that's why they weren't crying out in agony, it could have been that they had been screaming their heads off up on the bridge here with no one around to hear them, but now they weren't feeling anything any more. I saw and vaguely recorded the fact that there were two metal canteens lying close together on the floor, both of them very nearly emptied of food. Both of them, I would have thought, were in extremis, but for one very odd factor: there was no sign of the violent vomiting of which the article had spoken. I wished to God that somewhere, sometime, I had taken the trouble to learn something about poisons, their causes, their effects, their symptoms and aberrant symptoms which we seemed to have here-if any.

    Mary Stuart came in. Her clothes were soaking and her hair was in a terrible mess, but she'd been very quick and she'd got what I'd asked her to-including a spoon, which I'd forgotten. I said: "A mug of hot water, six spoons of salt. Quick. Stir it well." Gastric lavage, the book had said, but as far as the availability of tannic acid and animal charcoal was concerned. I might as well have been on the moon. The best and indeed the only hope lay in a powerful and quick-acting emetic. Alum and zinc sulphate was what the old boy in my medical school had preferred but I'd never come across anything better than sodium chloride-common salt. I hoped desperately that aconitine absorption into the bloodstream hadn't progressed too far-and that it was aconitine I didn't for a moment doubt. Coincidence is Coincidence but to introduce some such fancy concoction as curare at this stage would be stretching things a bit. I levered Smithy into a sitting position and was just getting my hands under his armpits when a dark-haired young seaman, clad-in that bitter weather-in only jersey and jeans came hurrying into the wheelhouse. It was Allison, the senior of the two quartermasters. He looked-not stared-at the two men on the deck: he was very much a seaman cast in Smithy's mould.

    "What's wrong, Doctor?”

    “Food poisoning.”

    “Had to be something like that. I was asleep. Something woke me. I knew something was wrong, that we weren't under command." I believed him, all experienced seamen have this in-built capacity to sense trouble. Even in their sleep. I'd come across it before. He moved quickly to the chart table then glanced at the compass. "Fifty degrees off course, to the east.”

    “We've got all the Barents Sea to rattle about in," I said. "Give me a hand with Mr. Smith, will you?"

    We took an arm each and dragged him towards the port door. Mary dear stopped stirring the contents of the metal mug she held in her hand and looked at us in some perplexity.

    "Where are you going with Mr. Smith?”

    “Taking him out on the wing." What did she think we were going to do with him, throw him over the side? "All that fresh air. It's very therapeutic.”

    “But it's snowing out there! And bitterly cold.”

    “He's also-I hope-going to be very very sick. Better outside than in. How does that concoction taste?"

    She sipped a little salt and water from her spoon and screwed up her face. "It's awful.“

    "Can you swallow it?"

    She tried and shuddered. "Just.”

    “Another three spoons."We dragged Smithy outside and propped him in a sitting position. The canvas winddodger gave him some protection but not much. His eyes were open and following our actions and he seemed aware of what was going on. I put the emetic to his lips and tilted the mug but the fluid just trickled down his chin. I forced his head back and poured some of the emetic into his mouth. Clearly, all sensation wasn't lost, for his face contorted into an involuntary grimace of distaste: more importantly, his Adam's apple bobbed up and down and I knew he'd swallowed some of it. Encouraged, I poured in twice as much, and this time he swallowed it all. Not ten seconds later he was as violently ill as ever I've seen a man be. Over Mary's protests and in spite of Allison's very evident apprehension I forced some more of the salt and water on him: when he started coughing blood I turned my attention to Oakley.

    Within fifteen minutes we had two still very ill men on our hands, clearly suffering violent abdominal pains and weak to the point of exhaustion, but, more importantly, we had two men who weren't going to go the same way as the unfortunate Antonio had gone. Allison was at the wheel, with the Morning Rose back on course: Mary dear, her straw-coloured hair now matted with snow, crouched beside a very groggy Oakley: Smithy was now sufficiently recovered to sit on the storm sill of the wheelhouse, though he still required my arm to brace him against the staggering of the Morning Rose. He was beginning to recover the use of his voice although only to a minimal extent.

    "Brandy," he croaked.

    I shook my head. "Contraindicated. That's what the textbooks say."

    "Otard-Dupuy," he insisted. At least his mind was clear enough. I rose and got him a bottle from Captain Imrie's private reserve. After what his stomach had just been through nothing short of carbolic acid was going to damage it any more. He put the bottle to his head, swallowed and was immediately sick again.

    "Maybe I should have given you cognac in the first place," I said. "Salt water comes cheaper, though."

    He tried to smile, a brief and painful effort, and tilted the bottle again. This time the cognac stayed down, he must have had a stomach lined with steel or asbestos. I took the bottle from him and offered it to Oakley, who winced and shook his head.

    "Who's got the wheel?" Smithy's voice was a hoarse and strained whisper as if it hurt him to speak, which it almost certainly did.

    "Allison."

    He nodded, satisfied. "Damn boat," he said. "Damn sea. Damn sea. I’m seasick. Me. Seasick."

    “You're sick, all right. Nothing to do with the sea. This damn boat wallowing about in this damn sea was all that saved you: a flat calm and Smithy was among the immortals." I tried to think why anyone who was not completely unhinged should want Smithy and Oakley among the immortals but the idea was so preposterous that I abandoned it almost the moment it occurred to me. "Food poisoning and I was lucky. I got here in time."

    He nodded but kept quiet. It probably hurt him too much to talk. Mary dear said: "Mr. Oakley's hands and face are freezing and he's shaking with the cold. So am I, for that matter."

    And so, I realised, was I. I helped Smithy to a bolted chair beyond the wheel, then went to assist Mary dear who was trying to get a jelly-kneed Oakley to his feel?. We'd just got Oakley approximately upright, no easy task, for he was practically a dead weight and we required one hand for him and one for ourselves, when Goin and the Count appeared at the top of the ladder.

    "Thank God, at last!" Goin was slightly out of breath but not one hair was out of place. "We've been looking for you every-what on earth-is that man drunk?”

    “He's sick. The same sickness as Antonio had, only he's been lucky. What's the panic?”

    “The same sickness-you must come at once, Marlowe. My God, this is turning into a regular epidemic.”

    “A moment." I helped Oakley inside and lowered him into as comfortable a position as possible atop some kapok life jackets. "Another casualty, I take it?”

    “Yes, Otto Gerran." Maybe I lifted an eyebrow, I forget, I do know I felt no particular surprise, it seemed to me that anyone who had been within sniffing distance of that damned aconite was liable to keel over at any moment. "I called at his cabin ten minutes ago, there was no reply and I went in and there he was, rolling about the carpet-"

    The irreverent thought came to me that, with his almost perfectly spherical shape, no one had ever been better equipped for rolling about a carpet than Otto was: it seemed unlikely that Otto was seeing the humorous side of it at that moment. I said to Allison: "Can you get anyone up here to help you?”

    “No trouble." The quartermaster nodded at the small exchange in the corner. "I've only to phone the mess deck.”

    “No need." It was the Count. "I'll stay.”

    “That's very kind." I nodded at Smithy and Oakley in turn. "They're not fit to go below yet. If they try to, they'll like as not end up over the side. Could you get them some blankets?”

    “Of course." He hesitated. "My cabin--“

    “Is locked. Mine's not. There are blankets on the bed and extra ones at the foot of the hanging locker." The Count left and I turned to Allison. "Short of dynamiting his door open, how do I attract the captain's attention. He seems to be a sound sleeper."

    Allison smiled and again indicated the corner exchange. "The bridge phone hangs just above his head. There's a resistance in the circuit. I can make the call-up sound like the QE 2's foghorn."

    "Tell him to come along to Mr. Gerran's room and tell him it's urgent."

    "Well." Allison was uncertain. "Captain Imrie doesn't much like being woken up in the middle of the night. Not without an awfully good reason, that is, and now that the mate and bosun are all right again, like-"

    "Tell him Antonio is dead."

    4

    At least Otto wasn't dead. Even above the sound of the wind and the sound of the sea, the creakings and groanings as the elderly trawler slammed her way into the Arctic gale, Otto's voice could be distinctly heard at least a dozen feet from his cabin door. What he was saying, however, was far from distinct, the tearing gasps and agonised groans boded ill for what we would see when we opened the door.

    Otto Gerran looked as he sounded, not quite in extremis but rapidly heading that way. As Goin had said, he was indeed rolling about the floor, both hands clutching his throat as if he was trying to throttle himself: his normally puce complexion had deepened to a dark and dangerous looking purple, his eyes were bloodshot and a purplish foam at his mouth had stained his lips to almost the same colour as his face: or maybe his lips were purplish anyway, like a man with cyanosis. As far as I could see he hadn't a single symptom in common with Smithy and Oakley: so much for the toxicological experts and their learned textbooks.

    I said to Goin: "Let's get him on his feet and along to the bathroom." As a statement of intent it was clear and simple enough, but its execution was far from simple: it was impossible. The task of hoisting 245 lbs. of uncooperative jellyfish to the vertical proved to be quite beyond us. I was just about to abandon the attempt and administer what would certainly be a very messy first aid on the spot when Captain Imrie and Mr. Stokes entered the cabin. My surprise at the remarkable promptness with which they had put in an appearance was as nothing compared to my initial astonishment at observing that both men were fully dressed: it was not until I noticed the horizontal creases in their trousers that I realised that they had gone to sleep with all their clothes on. I made a brief prayer for Smithy's swift and complete recovery.

    "What in the name of God goes on?" Whatever condition Captain Imrie had been in an hour or so ago, he was completely sober now. "Allison says that Italian fellow's dead and--" He stopped abruptly as Goin and I moved sufficiently apart to let him have his first glimpse of the prostrate moaning Gerran. "Jesus wept!" He moved forward and stared down. "What the devil--an epileptic fit?”