The Strode Venturer (26 page)

It occurred just as Robbins was testing the main engine. It was a wonderfully hopeful sensation to feel the deck alive again under our feet and then to hear the threshing noise of the prop turning, the beat of the engines rising as power was increased to drive the shaft. We were most of us on deck, peering over the side, watching the turgid water being thrust forward along the hull as the screw drove full astern.
Nothing happened, of course, except that a lot of sand was kicked up from the bottom, for there was still an hour to go to high water and the anchor was down.

We didn’t notice it at first; the reek of sulphur, that was all. I thought something was wrong with the engines, something burning, until two lascar seamen on the far side of the ship called to me. I caught the note of urgency in their voices and crossed to the starboard side. About three cables off on the quarter the sea was boiling like a cauldron, bubbles of hot gas bursting and every thirty seconds or so the surface of the water lifted as though under pressure from below.

It came from the place where our lead had found that hole in the bottom of the sea bed. I hadn’t liked it at the time. I liked it less now that I knew what it was; and there were other disturbances farther away, to the south mainly, like blisters bubbling on the sea’s surface. Then suddenly they were gone, all stopped together, and the water resumed its flat oily calm, only the smell of sulphur hanging on the air to remind us that we were aground on a submarine volcano that was fissured with gas-vents like a colander.

Living in an area of volcanic instability is disturbing enough on land, but living with it at sea, your ship stranded in the vicinity of one of the vents, is infinitely worse, for you have no means of fleeing the area. This boiling of the sea happened not just that once but several times, and each time it wasn’t only our own vent that blew off, but all the others to the south of us—all starting and stopping at the same time. It was a very strange thing to watch, not frightening, for the forces that produced it were too remote. Fear is the instinctive preparation for resistance. Here we were faced with a power beyond our control and we accepted it as something that if it came would be inevitable.

There was nothing frenzied now about the way in which we went about the work of lightening the ship. We moved with a steady concentrated purpose, conserving our energies and not talking much, but unusually sensitive of each other, conscious that what strength we had we drew from the
community of our fellows. European and lascar alike, there was no difference. We slept and ate and worked together, treating each other with the consideration of men whose lives are forfeit, and even Reece and Blake seemed to have forgotten, or at least set aside, their differences.

On the morning of the third day, with the decks all cleared of debris and half the ore emptied from the holds, we gathered at the side of the ship as the time of high water approached—waiting, hoping. There was a breeze from the west, the surface of the sea aglint with small waves breaking and the lead showed the depth of water the same as our draft. At 1048 I felt the first stirring of the ship, a barely perceptible movement under my feet. Ten minutes later she began to swing, slowly at first, but then, as though suddenly freed, she moved to the joint thrust of wind and current until checked by the anchor. She swung then, steadily and easily, until she was head to wind, her bows pointing west. Twenty minutes later we were aground again.

Blake took the lifeboat then with a full crew at the oars and a leadsman in the bows, sounding northwards to the limit of the shallows. They extended for just over a mile and then fell away rapidly into deep water. There were no obstacles and all the way out to the edge the sea bed sloped very gradually downwards.

We saw the boiling water once more that afternoon, shortly after four, but we scarcely glanced at it, accepting it now as a part of our predicament. In any case, we were too tired, too dazed to care, working like automatons through the blazing heat, intent only on shifting sufficient ore in the twelve hours between tides to ensure our escape that night. We didn’t stop for food. We kept right on as the sun fell into the sea and the cloudless sky blazed a flame-red orange that quickly faded to an incredible green. The stars and the moon were suddenly with us and the sacks came up and were emptied over the side in the pale spectral light.

The engineers had steam up then, smoke pouring from
the gaping hole in the deck where the funnel had been. At ten-thirty Reece gave the order for work to cease. Already we could sense that the ship was barely touching bottom. Three-quarters of an hour to go to high water. At eleven o’clock the anchor cable, already severed behind the bits, was let go. It fell with a rattle and a splash and word was passed along the chain of men to the engine-room. The screw bit into the water and from the top of the poop deckhouse, which had now become the bridge, we watched breathless, waiting for the moment when she would answer her helm which was hard over.

It seemed an age, the minutes dragging endlessly. At last there was a grating shiver. The sound continued for a moment and then there was silence, only the beat of the engines, and for’ard the bows swung against the stars—turning, turning steadily towards the north, the shadow of the deckhouse changing shape as the moon’s position changed. “Helm amidships.” Reece’s voice was clear and sharp against the rhythmic thump of the screw immediately below us.

“Helm amidships.” The order passed down the chain of men to the tiller flat. The bows stopped swinging, steadied on a star, and now we saw the sea beginning to move past us. Twice the grating sound deep under our keel sent our hearts into our mouths. But the ship had way now and though we could feel her check she did not stop. Astern the sea was lifted into great waves as the water we had displaced flooded in behind us, dredged up by the shallows. But these stern waves gradually diminished. By eleven-twenty they were gone and the wake was a normal wake, frothing a white line back across the moonlit sea as we thumped our way into deep water.

The cook had produced another curry, but most of us were too tired, too nervously exhausted to eat. Two bottles of Scotch were conjured up and we drank them fast, pouring the liquor urgently down our throats. I fell asleep where I was, lying on the hard deck, the sound of the engines, the sense of movement acting like a lullaby. And the next
moment I was being shaken violently and a voice was saying, “Wake up, Bailey. Wake up.”

It was Blake bending over me and shaking me violently. “Are you awake now?”

I nodded, staring up at him, my brain still numb. “What is it? What’s happened? What’s the time?”

“Midnight and Reece has altered course.”

“Altered course?” I stared at him stupidly, not understanding what he was trying to tell me.

“To the north-west—towards Gan.”

It took a moment for the implication of that to sink in. “Towards Gan?” I started up. “But the island …” He couldn’t head for Gan, not yet—not without getting Peter and the others off that island.

“I thought you’d like to know,” Blake said.

“But didn’t you tell him? He can’t just leave them …”

“I’ve been arguing with the bugger for the last ten minutes. Finally I told him I’d call you.”

“Thanks.” I scrambled to my feet and up the ladder to the top of the deckhouse. Reece was there, sitting with his legs dangling over the for’ard edge of the roofing, a lascar at his side ready to pass his orders to tiller flat or engine-room. He turned as I stepped on to the roof, Blake close behind me. He knew why I was there and his face had a blank obstinate look. I sat down beside him. “You’ve altered course, I see.”

“My concern is for the safety of the ship.” He said it flatly as though repeating something he had learned by heart, his eyes deep-sunk in their sockets, his voice tired.

“You’re headed for Gan, then?” He nodded. I asked Blake to leave us then. I knew Reece wouldn’t give way in front of the older man. “Now,” I said as the grey head of the first officer disappeared down the ladder, “let’s get this quite clear. If you abandon Strode and the rest of the men on the island it won’t look good.”

“My instructions are that the safety of the ship is paramount,” he said woodenly.

“You had specific instructions to that effect?”

He nodded.

“From George Strode?”

“From Phillipson—though it’s the same thing.

“Specific instructions—in writing?” My brain was working painfully slowly.

“Yes.”

“Such instructions,” I said, “only re-state a responsibility vested in every captain. It extends to the crew and also to any passengers. There’ll be an inquiry—you realize that?” He didn’t say anything. “It won’t look good at an inquiry if you abandon these men.”

“I’m not abandoning them. They’re ashore there, and they’ve food for a month.” And he added, “We’re taking in water. Did you know that? Robbins says some rivets have gone, midships on the starb’d side. The heat, he thinks.”

“Are the pumps holding it?”

“At present, yes.”

“You’re at least three days’ steaming from Gan,” I said. “Two or three hours isn’t going to make all that difference.”

“How do you know?” His face remained set and I wondered what was behind his obstinacy, for I was certain this was something he’d made up his mind to some time back.

I was ten minutes sitting there arguing with him. Finally I said, “All right. You have one view. I have another. But I would remind you that I’m an executive of Strode Orient. I’m ordering you now, Reece. Head the ship back to the island and get those men off.”

He shook his head. “You have no power to give me orders on my own ship.”

He was right there, of course, but there was always the question of fitness to command. And when I told him that if he refused to head for the island I would gather the ship’s officers together and put it to them that he was no longer fit to captain the vessel, he sat for a long time without speaking. He knew it would finish his career coming on top of the stranding. Finally he said, “Will you give it to me in writing—a written order? Then, you see, man, if there’s any question——” His voice trailed away, broken and tired.
Now that the ship was afloat and under way every turn of the screw brought the hour of reckoning nearer. And this was his first command. I felt sorry for him then. “Yes, of course,” I said. “You can have it in writing.”

“Now?” he asked, almost eagerly. “Now, please, before I change course?”

I went below and borrowed a pen and a sheet of paper and wrote it out for him, and when I’d handed it to him he read it slowly, carefully, by the light of the moon. And then he gave the order to change course and the bows swung north, back on to the track we’d steamed from the island to the point of stranding.

Shortly after four that morning the engines were stopped and we lay hove-to till dawn, when we got under way again, with a leadsman sounding regularly. But there was no bottom and no sign of the island.

As the sun rose we turned east, searching all the time, but there was nothing, nothing but the empty sea. We searched till noon, steering a pattern that even with the reduced vision from our improvised bridge must have covered 500 square miles. We saw no vestige of the island and the insistent cry of “No bottom” from the leadsman seemed constantly drumming home to me the fact that it had gone again, submerged beneath the steaming surface of the Indian Ocean.

“Have we been searching the right spot?” I asked Blake. And he shrugged and said, “As far as we can tell, yes.” His dour voice had a grim finality about it and when Reece finally gave the order to turn the ship towards Gan again I didn’t try to stop him. The midday heat was steadily reducing visibility. “It’s gone,” Reece said and there was something in his voice, in the look of his eyes—an agonized despair as though he were somehow responsible. And I wondered again why he’d left them there.

The following day it was cloudy with a fresh breeze. The old ship rolled as she ploughed her way nor’-westward as near as we could guess. And after that the sea was calm again, the sky clear, and nothing to relieve the monotony. On the
third day Evans raised Gan beacon on an improvised DF set. We were much farther to the east than we had expected and course was altered accordingly. Just about sunset a plane flew over us. It was a Comet and we knew then that we were on the direct line between Singapore and Gan. The pilot must have spotted us for at dawn a Shackleton appeared, circling low. After making several runs over us at what would have been mast-head height, it headed back for Gan. It returned shortly after noon and stayed with us for nearly an hour to guide the high-speed launch to us.

Wilcox had come out himself to pilot us in and he told us that the search had been on for three days now with another Shackleton flown in from Changi to relieve the one operating from Gan. “They’ve been working seventeen hours at a stretch, the maximum, and not a sign of you or that island. Every report negative.”

“Not even any shallows?” I asked.

“No, nothing.” He turned to Reece. “Either your position was way out, old man, or else …” He gave a quick little shrug.

A Shackleton has a cruising speed of about 150 knots. It would be flying at a height of say 1000 feet. In three days they would have covered thousands of square miles. If Reece had made an error it would have to be an enormous one. I turned to Wilcox. “Did they report any sign of volcanic activity—gas vents, pumice, anything like that?”

He shook his head. “No. I told you, the reports were negative. Nothing sighted at all. Oh, yes, two whales.” He grinned, but the grin vanished when I told him there were seventeen men on the island. “My God!” he said. “And you left them there?” The note of accusation in his voice made it obvious that he regarded the island as gone, vanished without trace. I turned away, the feeling of hopelessness that had been with me for three days now crystallized into certainty. The island was gone, and the shallows where we had stranded must have dropped back into the depths a matter of hours after we had got clear of them.