by D. W. Buffa
‘You shipped out—went to sea on a freighter—when you were how old again?’
‘Twelve. I knew the captain of a ship from Singapore. He had known my father. I was a cabin boy.’
‘And how long has it been now? How many years have you lived your life at sea?’
‘More than forty.’
‘And are you married? Do you have children of your own?’
‘No, I never married. I suppose I never felt the need. My home was always where I happened to be—on a ship, or in whatever port I found myself when one voyage ended and I was waiting for another.’
Darnell was in no hurry. He wanted the jury to get to know Marlowe in a way that went beyond the narrow facts of his biography; he wanted those twelve people, all of whom had led their lives in the sheltered comfort of urban congregations, to get some feel for the harsh imperatives and the distant solitude of the sea;he wanted them, so far as they were able,to enter into Marlowe’s strange, exotic and solitary life. Darnell stood near the jury box, drawing Marlowe out, asking him to explain—to men and women whose only adventures away from land had been on some short commercial cruise—a life spent in constant motion, in which each destination was only the next point of departure. Darnell wanted desperately to convey the sense that because nothing around Marlowe ever stayed the same, the only firm ground was to be found in the man himself. The scene was always shifting, the world become a child’s kaleidoscope, but the eyes that saw it were always those of Marlowe and Marlowe never changed, Marlowe endured. That was the difference Darnell wanted to show, that the whole panoply of modern life—the passing fads, the latest advanced opinion all right-thinking people had to share—had no meaning once you stepped off the apparent solidity of the shore.Whatever else you might think of him, Marlowe was real.
It took all morning, and lasted until sometime after lunch. Finally, in midafternoon, Darnell brought the questioning up to events that were closer to hand.
‘You had spent much of your life on cargo ships, on freighters. The Evangeline was a sailing vessel. It did not carry a cargo; it was a pleasure craft that carried passengers. What happened to make you go from the one to the other?’
‘When I started, years ago, the ships I sailed carried cargoes in the hold: sacks of grain, bales of wire, timber, iron ore. The ships were not that large and the crews that sailed them were, for the most part, small. The ports we went to might be miles up a river. Then they started building container ships that could carry hundreds of freight cars on deck, ships ten times larger than the ones I had sailed, ships so large there were harbours you could not enter because there was not room enough to turn around. The ships were larger, and because of that, not so much life in them…’
‘I’m sorry,’ interjected Darnell with a puzzled smile. ‘“Not so much life in them”?’
‘The action of the sea, the closeness of it. If you were in the navy, it’s the difference between being on a battleship or a carrier as against living life on a destroyer. The bigger they are the more like being on shore. Do you see my meaning?’
‘Yes, I do. Thank you. Please, go on.You went from freighters to sailing vessels?’
‘Yes, but like everything else, it was all a matter of chance. I had been injured—hurt my leg in an accident on board the freighter I had been on—was laid up in the hospital for a while, out in Sumatra. The captain of a British schooner was in the bed next to me, suffering from a siege of malaria. He offered me a berth, and once I had been out on a ship like that—the quiet way they run, the wind whistling by you—I never much wanted to go back to the other. It was a relief, really. The freighters were all too big, the engines too large and powerful, the routes they sail too safe and predictable: the sea isn’t just some straight-lined road you take from point to point.’
‘So from that time on, you made your living on board sailing vessels?’
‘Yes. I still had some work on freighters, but less of it all the time until, finally, all I did was hire out on sailing ships.’
‘Does this mean that you had earned a reputation as a man who knew his way around ships, or boats, of this kind?’
‘I learned my way well enough.’
Darnell gave the jury a look which said that, for men of Marlowe’s type, understatement was even more a fact than a habit.
‘And is that how you happened to become the captain of the Evangeline? Because Benjamin Whitfield had heard of you by reputation?’
‘No, it wasn’t that at all. That was also chance.We met here—in San Francisco—a couple years back. I was working for a Mr Elgin, and Mr Elgin was a friend, a business associate, of Mr Whitfield. He—Mr Whitfield—had an interest in sailing ships. He had become an avid racer, and went all over the world to do it.’
‘He designed, or helped design, the Evangeline, did he not?’
‘Mr Whitfield always wanted the best.What had been built by others did not measure up.’
‘The Evangeline was built here, in the United States?’
‘Yes, in Seattle.’
‘Where you were raised?’
‘Yes.’
‘And were you involved in any way with the construction?’
‘Mr Whitfield had me oversee it,’ said Marlowe, then immediately shook his head. ‘No, that’s putting too much importance on what I did. The design followed Mr Whitfield’s conception—the look he wanted, what he wanted her to do—but he employed a naval architect to do it. My job was just to be there, to be his ears and eyes; but, more than that, to learn everything I could about her by seeing the way she was built.’
‘Would it be fair to say, then, that you were comfortable with the way she was built? That you were confident in the ability of the Evangeline to sail anywhere in the world?’
There was nothing in Marlowe’s eyes to suggest that, even now, after everything that had happened, he had any doubt that the ship was everything she was supposed to have been and more. ‘She was the finest ship of her kind ever built.’
Up to this point, Darnell had been the soul of geniality, asking questions the way a curious friend might inquire into the recent travels of a man he had known intimately for years. Now, suddenly, he looked at Marlowe with hard, sceptical eyes.‘You can say that? After she sank like a rock in the south Atlantic? After all those lives were lost? After what those of you who survived had to do? How can you possibly tell me now that she was the “finest ship of her kind ever built”?’
‘There is nothing made that is ever perfect,’ Marlowe answered right back. ‘Yes, she sank; sank in the worst storm that in more than forty years I ever saw.’
Darnell moved away from the jury box railing and took a step closer to the witness stand.
‘But worst storm or not, she sank in a way you could not have expected; sank in a way she would not have sank had she been built to the specifications of the original design. Isn’t that what happened, Mr Marlowe? The Evangeline sank quickly because her hull broke in two?’
A look of distress, of grim disillusion, stretched across Marlowe’s strong, broad mouth. Nodding slowly, he peered deep into Darnell’s watching eyes.
‘Exactly right; just as you describe it, Mr Darnell.We were in the middle of that storm, the wind howling like a banshee—a terrible, piercing scream—the waves crashing down on her, turning us high up on one side, then the other. Then it all went quiet, and the sea, suddenly all calm, and then this strange whisper, like the distant roll of a drum, as if an army had started marching towards us but was still miles away; and then that awful God-forsaken roar, as if the whole ocean had been drawn up from the bottom—lifted right off the earth—and then hurled back with all the force of God Almighty, thrown down like some prehistoric avalanche that took all the mountains with it. It was like being hit by a locomotive: there was a sickening, sharp cracking noise; the ship seemed to cave in on itself. The passengers, the crew—the ones who were hanging on in their cabins, trying to ride it out—must have all been dead, drowned or beaten on the head, almost
right away. The ones who were either already out there, or somehow got out on deck—some of them made it to the lifeboats, some of them survived.’
Darnell held Marlowe’s gaze tight. ‘Why did the Evangeline break in half? Why did it “cave in on itself ”?’
‘Because the metal plating of the hull was not strong enough—the centre could not hold.’
‘But the crack in the hull had been repaired,’ Darnell reminded him as he turned towards the watching eyes of the jury. ‘You remember the testimony of Benjamin Whitfield. He was asked about the defective weld; he was asked about the report— this report that has been offered into evidence,’ he said, waving it in the air. ‘He testified that the repair had been made.’
‘Yes, I heard,’ said Marlowe with a baleful look. ‘And I also heard that they could have checked the hull in its entirety, seen if any of the other seams had not been welded properly.’
Darnell shook his head.‘You heard Benjamin Whitfield testify that after the repair the ship was perfect.’
Marlowe rubbed his large hands together. There was an anguished look in his eyes. ‘She was not perfect that night she sank! She might have lasted years in normal weather, but strains put on the hull in a storm like that … It is like putting your foot on a glass; you can put some pressure on it and nothing happens— but then, just a little more, and it shatters.’
‘But if that is the case—if the risk was so great—why did you not insist that Benjamin Whitfield have the hull examined? Why didn’t you insist that this be done before you took the Evangeline on a long voyage around Africa?’
‘There was no occasion.’
Darnell stared at him. ‘No occasion? Lives were at stake!’
‘No occasion, because Mr Whitfield never told me about the report; he never told me about the repair.’
‘He did not tell you that there had been a crack below the waterline?’ asked Darnell with a cold, determined look.
‘No, sir—never. He told me the Evangeline had passed her sea trials with flying colours.’
‘He told you that? There’s no mistake?’
‘I wouldn’t have taken her out if he had told me what I heard him say in court.When he told me how well she had done in her sea trials, I was more convinced than ever that she was exactly what I thought: the finest ship of her kind ever built.’
‘So you were sent to sea, sent to sail around Africa with a crew of eight and nineteen passengers, having been told the ship was safe and sound—when she was not?’
‘It appears so, yes.’
Chapter Eighteen
IF MARLOWE WAS TELLING THE TRUTH, IF Benjamin Whitfield had not told him about the problem with the aluminium hull and what had, and what had not, been done about it, then Whitfield had not only lied to him, but by his failure to mention this all-important detail had misled the court. But while this deepened the mystery of why the Evangeline had been allowed to set off around Africa in the first place, it intensified, and in a way clarified, the sense that everyone on board, whatever they may have done to survive, had been as much a victim as anyone killed. The author of a newspaper column written at the end of Marlowe’s first day of testimony spoke for a great many people when he remarked that to blame the survivors for what they did was a little like blaming the gladiators who had been forced to kill or die for the amusement of the Romans who had left them only that choice.
It was what Darnell had hoped to show the jury: that Marlowe had not put everyone in danger,Whitfield had.Whether through a negligence he was now trying to hide, or through deliberate and inexcusable indifference,Whitfield had placed all those lives at risk. Marlowe had tried to save them, or as many of them as he could. That was the point that Darnell tried to make the second day he had Marlowe on the stand—that he could not save them all, and that to save anyone, others had to die. He knew before he started that it was the last thing anyone wanted to believe.
‘Yesterday you testified that when the Evangeline went down some of the passengers and crew were killed instantly, but others got away. Did all of those who managed to get off the Evangeline make it to one of the lifeboats?’
Wearing the same suit and tie he had the day before—the same suit and tie, the only ones he had, he wore every day to trial—Marlowe shook his head.‘No.’
‘We have heard testimony,’ said Darnell, moving towards his favourite position at the far end of the jury box, directly in front of the witness stand, ‘that one lifeboat—one of the inflatable rafts—got away but was never seen again.Was that the lifeboat for which Aaron Trevelyn had responsibility?’
‘Yes, but you can’t blame him for that. He was right when he said that there was not any time.’
‘But you managed to reach the boat that was your responsibility?’
‘I was on deck, at the wheel. I didn’t have far to go.’
Darnell placed his hand on the jury box railing. He knew that Marlowe could not help himself—that he believed, and always would, that everything that happened had been his responsibility and his alone.‘I’m not asking you what you think of Aaron Trevelyn and whether he acted honourably. I’m simply asking you to describe what happened. Two lifeboats got away, the one for which you had responsibility and the one for which—had he been able to get to it—Mr Trevelyn would have had responsibility. Is this correct?’
‘Yes.’
‘The other boat—do you know how many people were in it?’
‘No, I barely had a glimpse of it. If I had to guess, I’d say maybe four or five.’
‘Would you say, then—though you just had a glimpse of it— that it had fewer people in it than it was capable of holding?’
‘It seemed to me it was at least half empty.’
‘And the one you were in…? Do you agree with the testimony already given, including that of Mr Trevelyn himself, that it held more people than it should have?’
Marlowe’s look was grave, distant, as if he could not only see it in his mind, but also feel again what it was like, the howling desperation of that fatal storm. ‘We had as many as it could handle.’
Darnell peered intently at him from under lowered eyelids. ‘And there were others, still in the water, trying to get in?’
Marlowe clenched his teeth; his neck and head became rigid. He opened his mouth to answer, but not a word came out.
Darnell took one quick step forward and asked, or rather insisted, ‘Which means that there would have been room for everyone if that other boat had taken as many as it should have— isn’t that correct?’
Marlowe’s head jerked up. ‘If there had been time!’
‘Or if Trevelyn had done his job,’ Darnell fired back. He turned on his heel to face the twelve men and women in the jury box. ‘Tell us what happened then—what you had to do—with a boat already filled to the point of swamping and others trying to get in, to save their own lives. Isn’t this when Trevelyn started swinging an oar at them, beating them away? How did he get into your boat anyway?’
‘He might have jumped; a lot of them did. What else could they do? The Evangeline was going down, everything was dark, the wind, the waves … None of them had any choice but to get off any way they could.’
‘He jumped. That’s when he broke his wrist. But he still had the strength to keep others out?’
‘He did what he had to; he did what he was told.’
Darnell gave him a sharp look. He was not certain he had heard him right.‘Did what he was told?’
‘It was worse than you think, Mr Darnell, worse than anyone can imagine. It was not just that the boat would sink, that everyone would drown if even one more person got into it—the boat already was sinking with those we had!’
Darnell was frozen to the spot. ‘You mean you…?’
‘Some had to go; someone had to decide. I did that, Mr Darnell. I was the captain—it had to be my decision. I put two men over, members of the crew, both of them men I had hired. I told them they had to take their chances, that there was another lif
eboat, that it could not be too far away. I told them to try to save the others, the ones still alive in the water, the ones we would not let on board, the ones we had done whatever we had to— including, yes, hitting them with oars—to keep them out. I had to do it. There was not any choice. The only way to save some of them was to sacrifice the rest.’
Darnell tried to hide his surprise behind a look of stern sympathy, the kind reserved for those forced by necessity to commit cruelties otherwise inexcusable.‘When you were finally away—the survivors in the lifeboat—safe from the storm, how did you…?’
Darnell suddenly remembered what Marlowe’s admission had made him forget.‘Trevelyn jumped, and so did some of the others apparently, but what about Hugo Offenbach? He did not get there on his own, did he? He had a heart attack.You got him into the boat; you saved his life—why? Here’s a man who was dying anyway—you could have left him behind. Instead, you risked your own life to get him—and not only your life, you risked the lives of other people, the ones who depended on you to handle the lifeboat.You kept other people out of the boat so it wouldn’t sink; you put two men into the sea in order to keep it afloat—but Hugo Offenbach was probably closer to death than any of them. Why didn’t you just let him go?’
‘It wasn’t a question of calculation; there wasn’t time to decide whether what you did made sense in terms of what it would do to the chances of others. Mr Offenbach was starting across the deck when I first caught sight of him, hanging on to that case, the one that held his violin. That’s what did it, I think—what made up my mind. Strange, the things that go through your mind at a time like that. I saw him, this frail old man, clutching that violin of his as if it were more important than his life, that it was—what he could do with it—the whole meaning of his life, and I knew I had to help him. It was just when I got to him—he looked at me, tried to say something—but you could hear nothing in that awful wind— when he grabbed his chest and doubled over. I got him into the boat—he wasn’t much to carry—and then, with everything that was going on—all the commotion, all the terrible things that happened, all the terrible things I did—I didn’t think about him again until we were out of the storm and we could start to take stock of what had happened and what we had to do.’