The Strode Venturer (34 page)

“I’ll tell the Captain,” he said.

Brady belched. “No good you running to Daddy. The Old Man’s dead to the world. A whole bottle he’s had.”

Fields had half risen, but now he sat down again, his thin lips working. “We should alter course for Singapore,” he mumbled.

“Aye, and reduce speed.”

Fields’s eyes shifted to me. “This bloody island,” he said, the whine back in his voice. “It’s caused nothing but trouble.”

“Aye, it ’as that.” Brady stared at me accusingly, but I knew that neither of them was capable of acting on his own responsibility.

“And supposing we hit that area of shallows when visibility is bad.” Fields’s mouth was trembling. “The
Trader
was lucky, she had cargo she could jettison. We’re empty except for Number Two.”

“There’s no danger of our going aground until dawn to-morrow,” I said. But I could see he didn’t believe me.
Like Reece he was cursed with too much imagination; he was scared out of his wits.

I finished my breakfast quickly and went to Deacon’s cabin. I thought it was time he made an appearance, but when I went in I found Brady had understated the situation. Deacon was lying sprawled across his bunk, the whisky bottle on the floor, the glass lying amongst the bedclothes where it had slipped from his nerveless grasp. His head was pillowed on his bare arm and when I peered at his face I saw that it was unnaturally dark, the blood vessels standing out under pressure like an intricate pattern inked in red. He was dead to the world, and yet as I stood there one eye opened, bloodshot and swimming. “Get out!” he breathed.

I hesitated. “There’s a report of bad weather ahead,” I said.

“I’m in command si’uation, so get out.” The eye closed, the coarse mottled face relaxed from the effort of speech and his body sagged into sleep again.

I opened the portholes which were tightly closed and then I left him and started on a tour of the ship. I went all over her—the engine-room, the holds, even the tiller flat, making a point of speaking to as many of the Chinese crew as I could find. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust them. They seemed a competent, hard-working lot, but I wouldn’t trust any bunch of men not to panic if things got bad and their officers failed them. As for the ship, you could see the water seeping in between the plates. But in old riveted ships this isn’t all that uncommon. I’d seen naval vessels whose plates weeped just as much. I had the carpenter sound all the wells and in the engine-room I asked Brady to give me the times at which he ran the pumps and the duration in various weather conditions. They didn’t like it, but none of them questioned my authority.

By the time I reached the bridge again it was past eleven. The south-west breeze was blowing stronger now. “Little piece monsoon wind,” the quartermaster described it. The sea glinted with rushes of broken water, but there was no sign of the swell increasing.

I stood there for a while thinking of George Strode and his arrogant assumption that we’d turn the ship round and go back to Gan, leaving Peter and the rest to rot on an island that was supposed not to be there any more. A fine, slow death if they were still alive. Finally I went to the wireless room and had Weston send him a message—
My information Reece’s position so inaccurate may call for full investigation. Expect reach island next few days. Please do utmost to obtain further co-operation R.A.F. In any case rely on you not to obstruct final effort to rescue these men.
I thought it would worry him. Anyway, I didn’t care. I’d nothing to lose now.

I went back to the wheelhouse. The breeze had changed. It had swung round into the north, a hot breath from the vastness of Asia where the great deserts and arid wastes of the interior were like a burning glass, raising the temperature of the air masses to furnace heat. Little cross seas broke and sparkled.

We were steaming into an area where the Pilot’s thirty-year observation tables give the number of days with wind speeds over Force 8 as nil, but freak weather conditions are always possible. All morning clouds had been building up to the south of us, great convoluting mushroom growths standing like stacks along the horizon and constantly changing shape. Shortly after lunch the northerly breeze died away. It became suddenly very humid, and standing in the doorway leading to the foredeck, I could see a great toppling mass of cloud leaning over us. The sun vanished, huge raindrops fell singly, large as coins, and the surface of the sea began to dance as though struggling to reach up to the water still prisoned in the cloud above. Lightning stabbed and instantaneous thunder clapped a great peal of noise on to the stillness; and then suddenly white water below the blackness of the cloud, a tooth-white line that grew broader and broader as it bore down on us until it stretched from horizon to horizon with the sea behind it all boiling. Then the wind hit us with screaming force and the ship heeled.

It was a line squall—but what was behind it? The time was 1428. I turned, my natural instinct to head for the bridge, and as I turned I saw the mate come out of his cabin like a startled rabbit bolting from its burrow. I know fear when I see it—most men do—and it was there in his face, in his shiftless eyes and the frantic haste with which he flung past me, out into the open and up the ladder to where the boats were.

I hesitated only a moment, and then I followed him. I caught up with him by the boat on the starboard side as he stood irresolute and half-dazed, his clothes wrapped tight against his thin body by the force of the wind howling through the gap between the funnel and the bridge. I grabbed hold of his arm. “Fields!” I yelled. But he showed no sign of having heard me; his pale eyes had a vacant stare, the whites showing a jaundiced yellow and his teeth chattering. I could smell the liquor on his breath as I shook him, “Fields! Pull yourself together, man!” I could damn’ near smell his fear. And then suddenly he was struggling, fighting to get free of me, and the heel of the deck carried us against the winch gear of the davits. I hit him then, a sharp jab to the midriff that knocked the wind out of him, and as he sagged, his breath whistling through his teeth, gulping for air, I got a grip on him and dragged him back to the ladder. “Your place is on the bridge,” I told him. “And you’re going to stay there till we’re out of this.”

He stared down at the wet steel deck below and I felt him cringe. I think he was afraid I was going to pitch him down the ladder. He was trembling and the skin of his face was a muddy grey. He looked as though he were going to be sick. I let go of him then, feeling suddenly sorry for him; he was one of those poor wretches that need the support of a man stronger than themselves in order to face the world, resenting that need and hating themselves and others because of it. “I’m—all right—now.” His long, weak features shone with sweat and he looked ghastly as he went slowly down the ladder, back past his cabin and up into the wheel-house.

I followed him. I don’t know what I expected to find there—certainly not Deacon. But there he was, standing magnificent and indomitable, his legs straddled to the increasing movement of the sea, doing automatically, almost unconsciously, what he’d done all his seagoing life—helping his ship to face the elements. His face was unshaven and the sag of his stubbled cheeks, the drawn-down look of his puffy bloodshot eyes reminded me again of a grizzled old bloodhound. He had slung a reefer jacket, green with age and sea mould, over the dirty pyjama jacket and he stood there, huge in the half light of that sudden storm, sniffing the weather with his big nose, not saying a word, but by his mere presence giving support to the helmsman, a feeling of stability to the whole ship.

“Is everything—all right?” Fields’s voice, hesitant, doubtful, was in itself a plea for strength.

The big high-domed head turned. “Ah, it’s you, Arthur. A squall, that’s all. Very sudden.” And he added with surprising gentleness, “Nothing to worry about.” The strength of the man at that moment, the absolute sense of command!

He swung his head back to face the sea and I wondered again about the relationship between these two. Had it been physical as well as psychological at one time? They made a pair, there was no doubt of that—this poor little undersized runt, as yellow as a cur, and this towering, soft-bellied, sodden man who could rise out of a stupor of drink to take command of his ship the instant she needed him. I watched him as he hunched his half-bald head down into the upturned collar of his jacket the way I did myself, the way all sailors do, his eyes cocked to the weather side where the horizon was white against the ink-black cloud and the seas broke in long streamers of spray, beaten almost flat by the weight of the wind. I didn’t mind about his alcoholism then or his relationship with the wretched mate whom he’d probably ruined as much as he’d helped. I recognized him for what he was, a born seaman, and my heart warmed to him.

“See that all the pumps are working, will you? And have them reduce speed to six knots.”

Fields went to the engine-room telephone. He seemed in command of himself now. The sweat had dried on his face and the skin no longer had that muddy look. “All pumps working. Reducing speed now.”

“Check the holds. See how much water she’s making.” And as the mate left the wheelhouse Deacon turned to me. “Where did you find him?”

“Beside Number One boat.”

He nodded. “It’s his nerves. You can’t blame him.”

That was all. He knew his man all right. Knew himself, too, probably. And as though he wanted to wipe that subject from his mind he said in a quiet, level voice: “Be a bad sea when the wind eases, I shouldn’t wonder.” And after that he didn’t say anything.

The wind began to ease about half an hour later. In the shelter of the wheelhouse we couldn’t feel it, of course, and we couldn’t hear it either for the noise of the sea was too great. But we could see it in the changed pattern of the waves. Now, instead of the break of each comber being laid flat, the seas were free to build up so that the ship wallowed in the troughs and as she rose the crests broke against her sides with the thrust and drive of hundreds of tons of water flung forward with a mighty surge. The waves were rolling green across the for’ard hatch covers and in those moments the high, old-fashioned fo’c’sle looked like a rock awash with spray driving across it and white water cascading off its steel sides. I could feel the old boat straining, hear the creak of her woodwork as the steel-plated hull changed its shape fractionally to the pressure of the seas.

When Fields returned to the bridge the scared look was back in his eyes. “The water’s beginning to make in Number One hold and the pumps are only just holding their own in the others.”

Deacon half turned and his eyes met mine as he gave the order to turn south and run before it. “Makes you laugh, doesn’t it?” There was an ugly look on his face, frustration
and bitterness needling his half-sunk pride. “A piddling little blow like this and I have to lift up my tail and show my arse. Like a greenhorn,” he snarled, “mucking my trousers at the first glimpse of a big sea.”

I looked out over the bows, now riding high and free of spray, the paintwork gleaming black, out to where the seas rolled white. I was thinking of what Fields had said at breakfast. If we were right, then we were getting very close to the area of shallows where the
Strode Trader
had grounded. How quickly the mental picture conjures fear when the body is starved of action! My mouth felt suddenly dry, for in that turmoil of broken water there was no chance of any warning. I turned to the echo-sounder clicking metronomically on the wall behind me. But the fact that it was recording no bottom meant very little. For all I knew those shallows might rise up sheer out of 2000 fathoms. “It was in conditions like these—a sudden storm—that Sir Reginald went.” Deacon’s voice was barely audible above the sound of the seas, and for a moment I didn’t grasp what he was saying. “You knew he died at sea?”

I turned then. “My father, you mean?”

He was staring ahead at the rise and fall of the bows and the tumbled water beyond, his mind going back into the past. “It was in Biscay, just after we’d passed the Ar Men buoy. About midnight. It came up very fast as it often does round Ushant. There was a full moon, but the murk had covered it so that there was a weird half-light.”

“Are you talking about my father?” I asked him again.

He nodded his head slowly. “I’d just come down from the bridge. He was alone in the saloon and I said I’d see him to his cabin. He’d been drinking a bit heavy, you know, for several days and he’d got a bottle of whisky under his arm. But he waved me off. ‘Kind of you,’ he said, standing very straight. ‘But I’m on my own now. And Harry,” he added. ‘Don’t stop—not for anything. Understand?’” Deacon turned and looked at me then and there were tears in his bloodshot eyes. “That was the last I saw of him.”

“What happened?” I asked.

He shrugged. “I never knew for certain. One of the crew said he saw him leaning on the stern rail staring down into the wake. My guess is he just drank the bottle and let himself go over.” The swollen red eyes stared at me a moment and then he turned abruptly away. He was crying—but whether for my father or for the past that was lost I didn’t know. And after that he wouldn’t say anything more but stared fixedly ahead.

We steamed south for a little over an hour and then south-east while the storm blew itself out behind us. At 1644 Deacon ordered the helmsman back to the original course, told Fields to take over and went below to his cabin. I went aft to the stern rail and stood there watching the ship’s broad wake as my father had done all those years ago, wondering about his end and how Henry Strode had known. The sun was falling now towards the west and I stayed there, watching the sparkle of it on the water until it sank into the sea and the sky turned fiery red, a flaming furnace glow dyed purple at the edges. Three pillars of cu-nim burned for a while, anvil-headed; the glow faded to a hard duck’s egg green and the first stars appeared. Then, suddenly it was night. So long ago and my memory of him a vague shadow, elusive as all my childhood recollections were. The portrait on the stairs, the reports in
The Times
, even those words composed by my mother, they all obtruded, overlaying my recollection of the man himself. And yet there were moments as I stood there watching the wake white in the stern light when I felt so close to him I could have sworn he was standing there beside me. No doubt it was all in my own mind, but I know this, that when I finally returned to the bridge I had a feeling of most extraordinary confidence.