Alita closed her eyes and opened them again. ‘I’ve been wondering about us. Why is it that just you and I and Conda and Helene and a few others survived the sinking? Why didn’t some of the hundreds of others join us? What are we?’
The old woman moved her feet slowly, rippling the currents.
‘We’re Guardians, that’s what you’d call us. A thousand people drowned when the Atlantic went down, but twenty of us came out, half-dead, because we have somebody to guard. You have a lover on the convoy routes. I have four sons in the Navy. The others have similar obligations. Conda has sons too. And Helene - well, her lover was drowned inside the Atlantic and never came half-alive like us, so she’s vindictive, motivated by a great vengeance. She can’t ever really be killed.
‘We all have a stake in the convoys that cross and recross the ocean. We’re not the only ones. Maybe there are thousands of others who cannot and will not rest between here and England, breaking seams in German cargo boats, darkening Nazi periscopes and frightening German crewmen, sinking their gunboats when the chance comes.
‘But we’re all the same. Our love for our husbands and sons and daughters and fathers makes us go on when we should be meat for fish, make us go on being Guardians of the Convoy, gives us the ability to swim faster than any human ever swam while living, as fast as any fish ever swam. Invisible guardians nobody’ll ever know about or appreciate. Our urge to do our bit was so great we wouldn’t let dying put us out of action. . .’
‘I’m so tired, though,’ said Alita. ‘So very tired.’
‘When the war is over - we’ll rest. In the meanwhile - ’
'The convoy is coming!’
It was Conda’s deep voice of authority. Used to giving captain’s orders for years aboard the Atlantic, he appeared below them now, about a hundred yards away, striving up in the watered sunlight, his red hair aflame around his big-nosed, thick-lipped face. His beard was like so many living tentacles, writhing.
The convoy!
The Guardians stopped whatever they were doing and hung suspended like insects in some green primordial amber, listening to the deeps.
From far, far off it came: the voice of the convoy. First a dim note, a lazy drifting of sound, like trumpets blown into eternity and lost in the wind. A dim vibration of propellers beating water, a bulking of much weight on the sun-sparkled Atlantic tides.
The convoy!
Destroyers, cruisers, corvettes, and cargo ships. The great bulking convoy!
Richard! Richard! Are you with them?
Alita breached water in her nostrils, down her throat, in her lungs. She hung like a pearl against a green velvet gown that rose and fell under the breathing of the sea.
Richard!
The echo of ships became more than a suggestion. The water began to hum and dance and tremble with the advancing armada. Bearing munitions and food and planes, bearing hopes and prayers and people, the convoy churned for England.
Richard Jameson!
The ships would come by like so many heavy blue shadows over their heads and pass on and be lost soon in the night-time, and tomorrow there would be another and another stream of them.
Alita would swim with them for a way. Until she was tired of swimming, perhaps, and then she’d drop down, come floating back here to this spot on a deep water tide she knew and utilized for the purpose.
Now, excitedly, she shot upward.
She went as near to the surface as she could, hearing Conda’s thunder-voice commands.
‘ Spread out! One of you to each major ship! Report any hostile activity to me instantly! We’ll trail with them until after sunset! Spread!’
The others obeyed, rising to position, ready. Not near enough to the surface so the sun could get at their flesh.
They waited. The hammer-hammer, chum-churn of ships folded and grew upon itself. The sea brimmed with its bellow going down to kick the sand and striking up in reflected quivers of sound. Hammer-hammer-churn!
Richard Jameson!
Alita dared raise her head above the water. The sun hit her like a dull hammer. Her eyes flicked, searching, and as she sank down again she cried, ‘Richard. It’s his ship. The first destroyer. I recognize the number. He’s here again!’
‘Alita, please,’ cautioned the old woman. ‘Control yourself. My boy too. He’s on one of the cargo ships. I know its propeller voice well. I recognize the sound. One of my boys is here, near me. And it feels so very good.’
The whole score of them swam to meet the convoy. Only Helene stayed behind. Swimming around and around the German U-boat, swimming swiftly and laughing her strange high laugh that wasn’t sane.
Alita felt something like elation rising in her. It was good, just to be this close to Richard, even if she couldn’t speak or show herself or kiss him ever again. She’d watch him every time he came by this way. Perhaps she’d swim all night, now, and part of the next day, until she couldn't keep up with him any longer, and
then she’d whisper goodbye and let him sail on alone.
The destroyer cut close to her. She saw its number on the prow in the sun. And the sea sprang aside as the destroyer cut it like a glittering knife.
There was a moment of exhilaration, and then Conda shouted it deep and loud and excited:
‘Submarine! Submarine coming from north, cutting across convoy! German!’
Richard!
Alita’s body twisted fearfully as she heard the under-water vibration that meant a submarine was coming in toward them, fast. A dark long shadow pulsed underwater.
There was nothing you could do to stop a moving submarine, unless you were lucky. You could try stopping it by jamming its propellers, but there wasn’t time for that.
Conda yelled, ‘Close in on the sub! Try to stop it somehow! Block the periscope. Do anything!’
But the German U-boat gnashed in like a mercurial monster. In three breaths it was lined up with the convoy, unseen, and squaring off to release its torpedoes.
Down below, like some dim-moving fantasy, Helene swam in eccentric circles, but as the sub shadow trailed over her she snapped her face up, her hot eyes pulled wide and she launched herself with terrific energy up at it, her face blazing with fury!
The ships of the convoy moved on, all unaware of the poisoned waters they churned. Their great valvular hearts pounding, their screws thrashing a wild water song.
‘Conda, do something! Conda!’ Alita shivered as her mind thrust the thoughts out at the red-bearded giant. Conda moved like a magnificent shark up toward the propellers of the U-boat, swift and angry.
Squirting, bubbling, jolting, the sub expelled a child of force, a streamlined torpedo that kicked out of its metal womb, trailed by a second, launched with terrific impetus - at the destroyer.
Alita kicked with her feet. She grasped at the veils of water with helpless fingers, blew all the water from her lungs in a stifled scream.
Things happened swiftly. She had to swim at incredible speed just to keep pace with submarine and convoy. And - spinning a bubbled trail of web - the torpedoes coursed at the destroyer as Alita swam her frantic way.
'It missed! Both torps missed!’ someone cried; it sounded like the old woman.
Oh, Richard, Richard, don’t you know the sub is near you. Don’t let it bring you down to. . . this, Richard! Drop the depth charges! Drop them now!
Nothing.
Conda clung to the conning tower of the U-boat, cursing with elemental rage, striving uselessly.
Two more torpedoes issued from the mouths of the sub and went surging on their trajectories. Maybe -
'Missed again!’
Alita was gaining. Gaining. Getting closer to the destroyer. If only she could leap from the waters, shouting. If only she were something else but this dead white flesh. . .
Another torpedo. The last one, probably, in the sub.
It was going to hit!
Alita knew that before she’d taken three strokes more. She swam exactly alongside the destroyer now,
the submarine was many many yards ahead when it let loose its last explosive. She saw it come, shining like some new kind of fish, and she knew the range was correct this time.
In an instant she knew what there was to be done. In an instant she knew the whole purpose and destiny of her swimming and being only half-dead. It meant the end of swimming forever, now, the end of thinking about Richard and never having him for herself ever again. It meant -
She kicked her heels in the face of water, stroked ahead, clean, quick. The torpedo came directly at her with its blunt, ugly nose.’
Alita coasted, spread her arms wide, waited to embrace it, take it to her breast like a long-lost lover.
She shouted it out in her mind;
'Helene! Helene! From now on - from now on - take care of Richard for me! Watch over him for me! Take care of Richard -!’
‘Submarine off starboard!’
‘Ready depth-charges!’
‘Torpedo traces! Four of them! Missed us!’
‘Here comes another one! They’ve got our range this time, Jameson! Watch it!’
To the men on the bridge it was the last moment before hell. Richard Jameson stood there with his teeth clenched, yelling, ‘Hard over!’ but it was no use; that torp was coming on, not caring, not looking where it was going. It would hit them amidship! Jameson’s face went white all over and he breathed under his breath and clutched the rail.
The torpedo never reached the destroyer.
It exploded about one hundred feet from the destroyer’s hull. Jameson fell to the deck, swearing. He waited. He staggered up moments later, helped by his junior officer.
‘That was a close one, sir!’
‘What happened?’
‘That torp had our range, sir. But they must have put a faulty mechanism in her. She exploded short of her goal. Struck a submerged log or something.’
Jameson stood there with salt spraying his face. ‘I thought I saw something just before the explosion. It looked like a. . .log. Yeah. That was it. A log.’
‘Lucky for us, eh, sir?’
‘Yeah. Damn lucky.’
‘Depth-charge! Toss ’em!’
Depth-charges were dropped. Moments later a subwater explosion tore up the water. Oil bubbled up to colour the waves, with bits of wreckage mixed in it.
‘We got the sub,’ someone said.
‘Yeah. And the sub almost got us!’
The destroyer ran in the wave channels, in the free wind, under a darkening sky.
‘Full speed ahead!’
The ocean slept quiet as the convoy moved on in the twilight. There was little movement in its deep green silence. Except for some things that may have been a swarm of silver fish gathered below, just under the waters where the convoy had passed; pale things stirring, flashing a flash of white, and swimming off silently, strangely, into the deep green soundlessness of the undersea valleys. . .
The ocean slept again.
THE TURNING OF THE TIDE
C. S. Forester
It is perhaps only right after spending so much of this collection far out on the vastness of the oceans, to return to the shore for this final contribution. It is also most appropriately by the Twentieth Century's best-known writer of sea stories, C. S. Forester (1899-1966), creator of the immortal Horatio Homblower series which ran from 1937 to his death.
Forester was bom in Egypt, and spent much of his childhood travelling in Europe, before coming to England to study medicine. However, the urge to write caused him to neglect his studies and before long they had been abandoned altogether. The sea featured in his work almost from the start, and in 1926 he described the voyage he and his wife made for their honeymoon in a dinghy called the Annie Marble.
The first Homblower story, The Happy Return appeared in 1937 and with success following success Forester was attracted to Hollywood. There he scored another major hit with the film based on his book, The African Queen, which appeared in 1952 starring the inimitable Humphrey Bogart.
A number of his short stories likewise took their inspiration from the sea, the most notable being 'The Turn of the Tide' (1960). It is a grim little mystery, and like the sea itself there is something almost inevitable about what happens in the dramatic climax. For mystery and the sea have always been inextricably entwined - as this collection has clearly shown. And I have little doubt they always will be.
‘What always beats them in the end,’ said Dr Matthews, ‘is how to dispose of the body. But, of course, you know that as well as I do.’
‘Yes,’ said Slade. He had, in fact, been devoting far more thought to what Dr Matthews believed to be this accidental subject of conversation than Dr Matthews could ever guess.
‘As a matter of fact,’ went on Dr Matthews, warming to the subject to which Slade had so tactfully led him, ‘it’s a terribly knotty problem. It’s so difficult, in fact, that I always wonder why anyone is fool enough to commit murder.’
All very well for you, thought Slade, but he did not allow his thoughts to alter his expression. You smug, self-satisfied old ass! You don't know the sort of difficulties a man can be up against.
‘I’ve often thought the same,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ went on Dr Matthews, ‘it’s the body that does it, every time. To use poison calls for special facilities, which are good enough to hang you as soon as suspicion is roused. And that suspicion - well, of course, part of my job is to detect poisoning.
I don’t think anyone can get away with it, nowadays, even with the most dunderheaded general practitioner.’
‘I quite agree with you,’ said Slade. He had no intention of using poison.
‘Well,’ went on Dr Matthews, developing his logical argument, ‘if you rule out poison, you rule out the chance of getting the body disposed of under the impression that the victim died a natural death. The only other way, if a man cares to.
stand the racket of having the body to give evidence against him, is to fake things to look like suicide. But you know, and I know, that it just can’t be done.
The mere fact of suicide calls for a close examination, and no one has ever been able to fix things so well as to get away with it. You’re a lawyer. You’ve probably read a lot of reports on trials where the murderer has tried it on. And you know what’s happened to them.’
‘Yes,’ said Slade.
He certainly had given a great deal of consideration to the matter. It was only after long thought that he had, finally, put aside the notion of disposing of young Spalding and concealing his guilt by a sham suicide.
‘That brings us to where we started, then,’ said Dr Matthews. ‘The only other thing left is to try and conceal the body. And that’s more difficult still.’
‘Yes,’ said Slade. But he had a perfect plan for disposing of the body.
‘A human body,’ said Dr Matthews, ‘is a most difficult thing to get rid of. That chap Oscar Wilde, in that book of his -Dorian Gray, isn’t it? - gets rid of one by the use of chemicals. Well, I’m a chemist as well as a doctor, and I wouldn’t like the job. ’
‘No?’ said Slade, politely.
Dr Matthews was not nearly as clever a man as himself, he thought.
‘There’s altogether too much of it,’ said Dr Matthews. ‘It’s heavy, and it’s bulky, and it’s bound to undergo corruption. Think of all those poor devils who’ve tried it. Bodies in trunks, and bodies in coal-cellars, and bodies in chicken-runs. You can’t hide the thing, try as you will.’
Can't I? Thafs all you know, thought Slade, but aloud he said: ‘You’re quite right. I’ve never thought about it before.*
‘Of course, you haven’t,’ agreed Dr Matthews. ‘Sensible people don’t, unless it’s an incident of their profession, as in my case.
‘And yet, you know,* he went on, meditatively, ‘there’s one decided advantage about getting rid of the body altogether. You’re much safer, then. It’s a point which ought to interest you, as a lawyer, more than me. It’s rather an obscure point of law, but I fancy there
are very definite rulings on it. You know what I’m referring to?’
‘No, I don’t,’ said Slade, genuinely puzzled.
‘You can’t have a trial for murder unless you can prove there’s a victim,’ said Dr Matthews. ‘There’s got to be a carpus delicti, as you lawyers say in your horrible dog-La tin. A corpse, in other words, even if it’s only a bit of one, like that which hanged Crippen. No corpse, no trial. I think that’s good law, isn’t it?’
‘By jove, you’re right!’ said Slade. ‘I wonder why that hadn’t occurred to me before?’
No sooner were the words out of his mouth than he regretted having said them. He did his best to make his face immobile again; he was afraid lest his expression might have hinted at his pleasure in discovering another very reassuring factor in this problem of killing young Spalding. But Dr Matthews had noticed nothing.
‘Well, as I said, people only think about these things if they’re incidental to their profession,’ he said. ‘And, all the same, it’s only a theoretical piece of law. The entire destruction of a body is practically impossible. But, I suppose, if a man could achieve it, he would be all right. However strong the suspicion was against him, the police couldn’t get him without a corpse. There might be a story in that, Slade, if you or I were writers.’
‘Yes,’ assented Slade, and laughed harshly.
There never would be any story about the killing of young Spalding, the insolent pup.
‘Well,’ said Dr Matthews, ‘we’ve had a pretty gruesome conversation, haven’t we? And I seem to have done all the talking, somehow. That’s the result, I suppose, Slade, of the very excellent dinner you gave me. I’d better push off now. Not that the weather is very inviting.’
Nor was it. As Slade saw Dr Matthews into his car, the rain was driving down in a real winter storm, and there was a bitter wind blowing.
Mysterious Sea Stories Page 24