Authors: John Christopher
Mouritzen went on telling the story to her. It was one he remembered from his childhood, but seeing that she continued to be wakeful, he embroidered and stretched it, and tagged on other stories, rambling on and on. He must have continued for half an hour, before Mary interrupted him softly.
‘She’s asleep.’
Mary bent over the bed and tucked the child’s arm inside the sheet. She straightened up, and said to him:
‘That was very kind of you, Niels. You have a lovely drowsy voice. I wasn’t sure I wouldn’t fall asleep first.’
‘I thought perhaps I would!’ Mouritzen said. ‘But I think she will sleep now.’
‘I’ll stay with her for a time.’
‘But you are coming down to dinner then?’
‘Am I? I’m not sure. I thought I would, but it seems to have got so much worse in the last five minutes. I don’t think I ought to risk it.’
‘We are changing course,’ Mouritzen said. ‘It will not take too long, and after that it will be better, because we will have our nose into the wind.’
‘Should I go on deck for a time – get some fresh air? I haven’t been out today.’
Mouritzen shook his head decisively. ‘You would be blown away. There is sleet and rain, and a wind of sixty miles an hour behind it.’
‘It really is a storm, then?’
‘It truly is.’
The cabin heaved as a wave struck the
Kreya
. Mary lost her hold on the stanchion of the bunk and fell forwards; Mouritzen moved and caught her. He held her in his arms for a moment or two, and then released her.
She said: ‘Thank you.’
Her voice was not quite steady. He regretted having released her, but was sensible enough to make no new move in her direction.
‘I’m glad it is a storm,’ Mary said. ‘I don’t feel quite so weak for staying in my cabin all day. Have the others been down to meals?’
‘Only two of them.’
‘Who?’
‘Two of the Simanyis. The old man, and Nadya.’
She hesitated, and then looked at him. ‘I think I will come down for dinner tonight.’
‘I’m glad,’ Mouritzen said.
There was a constant background of sounds – the creakings, throbbings, metallic groans of a ship at sea, accentuated by the strains of the storm through which the
Kreya
was driving – to which Mouritzen was accustomed. The noises registered, but made no impact. But the unfamiliar excited attention. He sharpened into immobility as he heard it: a jarring crack that vibrated along the ship, a
frisson
of iron. The vibration lived for an instant, and died away.
He said: ‘If you’ll excuse me, I must go up first to the bridge.’
The difference had not registered on her. She said:
‘I’ll see you at dinner. Ten minutes?’
Mouritzen nodded. ‘Ten minutes.’
Mouritzen found Olsen with his own hands on the wheel. He was staring out beyond the glass into the savage blackness of the night, his gaze fixed like a man suddenly confronted with betrayal of his life’s purpose. He did not answer nor look round the first time Mouritzen spoke to him.
‘What is it?’ Mouritzen repeated, more urgently. ‘There’s something wrong. What?’
Olsen stood back and let Mouritzen take the wheel. He spun it, immediately conscious of the difference in the feel.
‘A linkage gone?’ he said.
‘You heard it,’ Olsen said.
‘The shaft,’ Mouritzen said. ‘My God!’
He moved away from the useless wheel. Olsen came back and put his hands on it again. The
Kreya
heeled over as a wave struck her starboard side. Spray dashed over the glass in front of them. She went deep, deep, before beginning the slow swing back to an even keel.
‘Have you sent out a distress call?’ Mouritzen asked.
‘No. Not yet.’
‘Shall I see to that?’
‘Yes, you can do that,’ Olsen said. He seemed to rouse himself. ‘If there is anything near us they can stand by to take off passengers. But no melodrama, Niels. The
Kreya
can ride this out. She is toughly built.’ He considered a moment. ‘And it helps now that she is so lightly loaded.’
‘No chance of rigging a jury-rudder, I suppose?’
Mouritzen recognized the futility of the idea before he had finished saying it. Olsen grinned tightly, pointing out into the storm.
‘In this?’
‘I’ll go down to the wireless room,’ Mouritzen said. ‘With Lauring it is a good idea to stand over him.’
It was possible on the
Kreya
to reach the wireless room and the engine room from the bridge without going outside, but Mouritzen took the outside steps deliberately, to get the feel of the storm. For the present it was not raining, but the wind was carrying spray that served the same purpose, except when the ship rolled and lifted and the huge surge of water crashed down across her, swamping and blinding everything. It was a strange, two-edged element, striking with the force of rock, and then breaking and ebbing away into salty streams across the
Kreya
’s deck. It was worse than it had been; the waves were higher. Still there was reassurance in the way in which, after each new vicious blow, the waves splintered and drained away. She should be able to ride things out till the storm abated and the sea grew calmer. It would mean a tow into Amsterdam; a humiliation for Olsen, but no more than that.
Closing the heavy metal door behind him he was conscious of the cutting off of so much of the noise – the wind’s howling, the smashing thunder of the sea. Almost at once it became quieter still. He went into the wireless room and found Lauring struggling up into a sitting position from his bunk. His set was on broadcast; a stream of steady, Budd-keyed morse issued from the speaker.
‘At this time of day and in this weather, Lauring, you’re supposed to be on constant watch. You don’t need telling that, do you?’
Lauring was fair-haired, slight, a neat, lazy young man with a quick mind and tongue, chiefly devoted to complaints about his conditions.
He said now: ‘What’s that, sir? That was the engines stopping, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes. Get in your chair while I write out a message for you to send. It’s urgent.’
‘Why have the engines stopped?’
‘It’s a new fuel economy drive.’ Glancing up, he saw Lauring’s face, the lines of bewilderment and fear, and remembered that joking, especially with someone like Lauring, could be dangerous. ‘We’ve got steering trouble,’ he added.
‘What kind?’
Mouritzen handed him the message pad. He said:
‘There’s nothing to worry about. Captain Olsen will have stopped the engines while he tries to get a sea-anchor out, to see if we can get her nose into the wind. Get this off right away. Do you know who’s near us, offhand?’
‘There’s nothing!’ Lauring said. ‘Nothing within fifty miles, anyway. There was the
Astrida
, but she was running for Borkum.’
‘How long ago was that?’
‘Half an hour, maybe three-quarters.’
‘Try and raise her. Send this out as a CQ first. I’m going back up to the bridge. Let us know as soon as you have anything.’
Lauring picked up his earphones, but stared at them instead of putting them on.
‘If we can’t steer,’ he said, ‘we’re helpless.’
‘As helpless as a cork. We may get a shaking, but that’s the worst that can happen.’
Lauring put on the earphones. ‘I’ll try to raise someone,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ Mouritzen said, ‘I’m sure you will.’
He ran into a work-party on deck; under Carling’s direction they were, as he had expected, rigging a sea-anchor. He stopped to see how things were going. They were proceeding with as much calmness and efficiency as was possible on the deck of a small ship swept by waves thirty and forty feet high, with a wind at Force 8 or 9. But Carling, he thought, looked strange – stranger than the conditions justified. In emergencies, Carling normally exceeded himself, cursing and encouraging with a zest that appeared to be the greater for the difficulties or danger encountered. Now he was shouting his orders to the men with a curtness that made it seem his mind was on something other than the task in hand.
Mouritzen stayed to endeavour to give some kind of encouragement himself, but after a time he abandoned the attempt. He felt it was making Carling’s withdrawal more conspicuous. In any case, the work was proceeding well enough. He went back up to the bridge, but did not immediately remove his oilskins. He stood by the door, water dripping from him to form a pool. Olsen had abandoned the wheel and was watching the radar screen.
‘Anything from Lauring yet?’ Mouritzen asked.
‘A Swedish freighter, the
Västervik
– about seventy miles west of Esbjerg.’
Mouritzen glanced at the chart. ‘Getting on for a hundred miles. What’s she making?’
‘Seven or eight knots. That’s good, against this.’
‘Nothing else?’
‘Borkum are ready to send out a lifeboat. I’ve told them there’s no need.’
‘No need yet. Are you sure it was wise?’
‘They could be here no sooner than the
Västervik
. It would be a needless risk. In any case, we are in good shape.’
A wave broke up against the glass.
‘We are taking a hammering,’ Mouritzen said. ‘I wonder what shape we shall be in by morning?’
‘The same as now – with a few bruises, perhaps.’
‘Have the passengers been told anything?’
‘There is no need. It would be stupid to tell them, from their point of view as well as from ours.’
‘Yes, you are right. It’s a pity, Erik.’
‘What is a pity?’
‘You would have made a fine doctor.’
Olsen looked at him coldly for a moment, and then smiled. ‘So I would. And I manage well enough as a sea captain, do I not?’
‘Yes. The sea-anchor – you will not pull her round with seas like these.’
‘I think not, also. It was the only thing to try.’
Mouritzen nodded. ‘I’ll go down again, and see how it goes.’
The hours went by while the
Kreya
lay helpless under the savage fingers of the giant. The gale veered to southerly, and then fractionally into the eastern quarter, but it showed no abatement. The
Västervik
, on the report that all was still well and that the
Kreya
was being carried north-east, into the path of British coastal shipping, abandoned the attempt to come up with her, and resumed her own original course for Amsterdam. Help was now being offered by a Scottish cargo ship, but there was little chance of her being on the scene before dawn.
About one o’clock, with a noise as rending as though the ship itself were being torn in two, the foremast splintered and crashed. Mouritzen drained the coffee which Thorsen had just brought up, burning his tongue, and went forward to look at the damage. Although he went by the relatively sheltered port side, he had to hold the rail as the waves crashed over, and once, misjudging the roll, he was thrown against the hatch cover.
The mast had crashed down across the forecastle. The result was untidy but did not seem serious. Carling was there with a couple of hands. Mouritzen spoke to Carling but he did not seem to hear. He cupped his hands over his mouth and shouted.
‘Nothing we can do about this just now. It will have to wait till things are quieter.’
Carling made no answer. He stared at Mouritzen, his face wet and bewildered in the light of the torch. Mouritzen heard a shout behind him, and turned to see another of the hands coming up from the direction of the forward hatch. Whatever he was saying was carried away by the wind.
Mouritzen shouted: ‘What was that?’
He came up to them. ‘The bear?’
‘What about the bear?’
‘The bear’s loose!’
‘Are you sure?’ Mouritzen demanded.
‘She’s down there, on the deck.’
Carling spoke then, his voice trumpeting over the massed violins of the storm.
‘The first sign!’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘The first sign …’ Carling roared again, ‘– the beast walks free!’
Mouritzen considered, as clearly and rapidly as he could, the two new factors. Of the two, a crazy C.P.O. seemed to him to constitute the greater nuisance.
He shouted: ‘Get Carling below, and look after him. And send Herning up to the bridge for orders.’
He saw the men clustering round Carling, talking to him, and raced down to the well-deck, getting down the steps during the ship’s slow roll to port and hanging on at the bottom while the next wave smashed across. Then he made his way to the bear’s crate. The securing ropes had broken and the crate had been thrown up against the forecastle. In doing so it had shattered, and the door of the iron cage within had sprung. In the light of his torch, Mouritzen saw it gaping open, and empty. He flashed the light around, but there was no sign of the bear.
He kept a look-out on his way to the bridge, but found nothing. Olsen looked up from the chart as he came in. Fatigue and strain had made his face pale, giving him the appearance of an intelligent child under pressure. The deepness of his voice, when he spoke, was incongruous.
‘Well? How is it?’
‘The port rail is smashed. Nothing serious and nothing one can do now. But there’s another complication. The bear’s loose. Her cage has been cracked open and she’s wandering free.’
Olsen asked sharply: ‘Where?’
Mouritzen shook his head. ‘No sign of her, but I’ve not made a thorough search.’
Olsen made a gesture of despair. ‘Animals are worse than passengers! I’ve got two men down below seeing to those cursed horses as it is – both very reluctantly.’
The door opened with an inrush of wind and spray, and Herning entered. He ranked next to Carling and was a quiet, earnest man, with prematurely white hair and a slight limp, from an injury to his knee when his ship was torpedoed during the war. He had stood for years in Carling’s shadow, and during the latter’s increasing moroseness and withdrawal of the past year had shown no signs of being able to step out of it.
‘Reporting, sir,’ he said to Olsen.
Mouritzen explained quickly: ‘Carling’s having some kind of a brainstorm. I got some of the men to take him below and asked them to send Herning up here.’
‘A brainstorm?’ Olsen looked incisively from Mouritzen to Herning. ‘Where is he now? How is he?’