Kings of the Sea

by Van Every Frost, Joan

  We went under the poop deck and fetched up among the stern cant frames looking at where the pin holding the rudder head to the quadrant had sheered off. I regarded the mess sourly. That the entire rudder system should depend upon a miserable little metal pin like that …

  “Surely you could work something into a substitute for that bloody pin.”

  “The problem isn’t that. The problem is to bring the rudder back into position to be fastened to the quadrant once more.” He brought out a grimy wrinkled piece of paper that contained a crude drawing of a rudder shaped like half an oval. “There’s no way to fish for it from up on deck, because there’s no square corner on the rudder blade to hook onto.”

  “If you had an iron rod of some sort that you could poke through one of the spaces between the pintles, and a line or flexible cable hooked to that like thread to a needle, you could winch the rudder around then, couldn’t you?”

  “That’s the best idea yet, but how’re you going to get close enough to poke a rod through?”

  We crawled back out and I joined the group at the stem.

  “You try to get a boat near and you’d smash it to pieces,” the first officer was saying. “I doubt if you could lower a boat in this anyway.”

  The wind had slackened, but there were still heavy seas battering the helpless ship. If they continued, it was only a matter of time before seams sprang enough to let in more water than the already overworked pumps could handle. The stern was plunging up and down in sickening swoops and lurches as one mountainous wave after another marched toward us. Two of the three lifeboats had been washed overboard during the storm, and the remaining one had been stove in by a large keg of tallow. That could be fixed, but the first officer was right — no boat even if launched could live in close proximity to the ship, where the powerful surge of the great waves would be bound to smash it to smithereens.

  “Captain Crowell,” I said, tapping him on the shoulder, “I may have an idea for getting the rudder under control.”

  “And who may you be, sir?” he asked frostily, his eyes like blue ice. The little bastard knew perfectly well who I was — he’d sat at the captain’s table with me often enough — but he obviously didn’t want to admit outsiders to his deliberations. I lack six feet by several inches, but I felt huge when looking at this lean bristly little man who couldn’t have been much more than five-five. He reminded me a little of Dick Poulson.

  “I am an engineer and shipbuilder, captain, and I think —”

  “When I want your advice, I’ll ask for it,” he snapped, neatly breaking me off in midsentence.

  I shrugged, though inwardly I was boiling. The little fool should be looking for all the advice he could get, and yet here he was still wasting time talking about launching the lifeboat. As I made to go forward, the engineer followed and took hold of my arm.

  “Listen to me, laddie,” he said in a low voice. “Help me jury-rig some kind of pin and by the time we’ve got it ready, he’ll listen to anyone, mark my words. If we don’t do something pretty quick, we’ll all be in Davy Jones’s locker. Another twenty-four hours of this and the old Medea’s going to sink out from under us.”

  I held up my crudely bandaged hands. “I’m not sure how much help I’ll be, but I’ll be glad to do what I can. This pounding goes on much longer, and it won’t matter if she sinks or not, there won’t be anyone left to drown. I make it that we’ve killed something like a half a dozen passengers or more and injured most of the rest. Listen!”

  There was a terrible chorus of cacophonous sound made by the remains of crockery, silverware, broken furniture, the smashed chandelier, loose casks, baggage, a chain cable in a compartment somewhere forward, and all matter of odds and ends being dashed from side to side of the ship, fetching up against a wall, and then sliding noisily for the opposite side as the ship rolled. In the momentary pauses in the sound made by the shifting debris could be heard the groans and wails of the hurt, sick, and terrified passengers.

  He looked at me astounded. “What in God’s name happened?”

  “Well, you take furniture that was never fastened down, add passengers who know nothing of taking care of themselves in a heavy sea, add a fallen chandelier and a cow through the skylight, and those are the sounds you hear. Crowell would be well advised to have the ship’s officers soothing the paying guests instead of standing up on that bloody stern engaging in wishful thinking.”

  In the end it took Houser and me and two assistants the better part of three hours to make up a contraption for the broken rudder that would work. By the time we were finished, I was so tired I could hardly see. Every time the ship rolled, we had to brace ourselves and hang on to something, and as my hands grew sorer and sorer I kept trying to compensate with my legs. Even the thought of that stinking stateroom was one I now contemplated with no little degree of longing.

  Houser and I were just climbing up on deck once more when we heard a swish and saw a trail of black smoke followed by a brilliant flash as the first of a series of distress rockets were set off from the Medea.

  “He’s given up,” Houser said unnecessarily, speaking of Crowell, who had obviously decided that the best he could do now was to try to attract another ship to take off the passengers and crew.

  We discovered the reason for this capitulation soon enough. Against all common sense they had repaired and tried to launch the remaining lifeboat, which was not beaten to splinters against the side of the Medea only because it first capsized, drowning the second officer and all but one of the crewmen rowing. Crowell was nothing if not stubborn.

  Houser approached him. “Sir, we’ve rigged another pin that should hold for long enough to get us to port, and Mr. Hand here has a scheme for capturing the rudder.”

  In the time it had taken us to fashion a steering apparatus that would work, the captain had seemingly shrunk and aged, for it was a broken man who looked out at us with dull faded eyes. He shrugged. “Do what you will,” he said listlessly. “We’re going to lose everything before long. There’s two hours yet until dark when the rockets will be readily visible, and the pumps are losing ground steadily.”

  I turned to Houser. “I want a rope with a seat knotted into it and three very strong seamen.”

  His eyes widened in comprehension. “You’ll never find anyone fool enough to be lowered off the stern,” he warned.

  “I know. I’m going to do it myself.”

  “You’re mad!”

  “Well,” I said reasonably, “would you prefer to drown? For myself, I’d rather be killed against the ship’s side than go down with her.” I was really only putting on a show of bravado. In reality I was feeling weak and sweaty with fear. Those green-black waves laced with foam looked like great cliffs bearing down on us, and I had visions of being squashed like a bug.

  “You couldn’t live dangling down even as far as the top of the rudder — you’d be drowned or worse.”

  “Ah, but that’s where you come in. I’ve been watching these waves, and even in a sea like this there are brief runs of lesser waves just as there are brief runs of monsters. You’ll be watching from up here, and you will signal the seamen to raise and lower me to clear the water. Sooner or later there will be an opportunity to push the needle through and thread the rudder. First, however, I want to be lowered just enough to clear the stern and examine the rudder when it’s out of water to see if I can find a good place to try for.”

  I was thoroughly doused twice before I ever cleared the part of the stern that extended out over the rudder, and I remember clearly the sting of the salt water on my lacerated hands, but at last I got a good look at the mechanism that was costing us so much grief. I could hear a muffled clanging as the great slab of iron flapped loosely against a blade of the propeller. I couldn’t see, however, if all three blades of the propeller were intact. I did manage to see a vertical line of four long spaces between the pintles that fastened the rudder to the post. I waved to Houser to have me drawn up.

 
“It’s not impossible,” I told him, shivering even under the blanket that was thrown over me. Someone miraculously produced a cup of hot tea. “It will take a lot of luck, but if I don’t drown, it can be done.”

  Houser shook his head doubtfully. “Even if you get it through, how will we pick it up on the other side?”

  “With the hook that someone can be getting ready right now.”

  I put on heavy rubber seaman’s boots that reached up to my hips and decided that for the sake of freedom of movement I would wear my long underwear and nothing else. I settled myself and grasped the rope firmly in one hand, the slender four-foot iron rod in the other. Houser tied me firmly to the rope by my waist.

  “Lower away!”

  The stern of the ship would sit corkscrewing on top of a wave and then drop every few minutes the equivalent of a five-story building to land with a thump before sluggishly rising again as the ship awkwardly backed pitching up the next wave, held stern-to toward the following sea by the spar sea anchor that had been thrown overboard to keep us from broaching and capsizing. I soon found that there was no way in which I was going to be able simply to poke the rod through, and I had to ask them to pull me up on deck once more.

  “Take the cable off that rod,” I directed through chattering teeth, “and fasten a light line to it instead. I’m going to have to throw it. If we can get the line through and picked up on the other side, then we can pull the cable through later on.”

  Houser rolled his eyes upward, but did as I asked. I thought of all of the javelin throws I had done at Harvard, and offered up a prayer. The first time I didn’t even get the throw off before being jerked up to miss the next wave, though not fast enough to avoid being inundated and swung against the rudder stock underneath the stern. I fended off the blow with my booted feet and finally came sputtering out from under the stern feeling — and I’m sure looking — like a drowned rat. The second time I got the throw off all right but didn’t allow sufficiently for the weight even of that light line, and the throw went short. The third time the rod went partway through but fell out again. I wanted to cry. The fourth time I was drenched again, and the fifth I missed the slot entirely. By this time I was almost completely numb, which didn’t help my aim any, and I knew that I had perhaps only one more throw in me and that was all.

  As I reared back to throw, I was aware out of the comer of my eye of a swiftly moving mountain of water bearing down on me. I think Houser knew that this was a kind of last chance, for he left me there until the last possible moment. I got off the shot and saw the rod with its following line snake through the slot and disappear on the far side. At that moment, as I was being hauled rapidly up, the wave loomed over me as big as the world, larger than anything I had ever imagined, its sleek green side marbled with foam seeming to reach for me, and I was cast into the merciful blackness of unconsciousness.

  When I came to I was lying on my stomach and some oaf was sitting on my back and bouncing up and down. My head felt as if it had been split in two. “Get off me, you dunderhead,” I croaked, retching seawater.

  “By God, he’s alive!” Houser exclaimed, and I looked up to see a forest of legs whose owners were no doubt gawking at my discomfiture.

  “Get off, I say! I want to get dressed,” I demanded in a stronger voice. That was the last I knew until I woke strapped to a bunk in the dispensary.

  My old friend Lawson the surgeon was binding my hands, and I lay there for a few moments without announcing my return to consciousness. Slowly I became aware of a sound that I had almost not heard because of its commonness: the high-pitched shifting whine of the screw. I could feel the vibration of the engine then as well, along with the pounding of a vicious headache. With what was nevertheless I’m sure a beatific smile, I blacked out once more.

  *

  “You’ll never believe it,” I was saying to my old college chum Sam Drury as we sat happily drinking at the bar of the New Saracen’s Head, “but the passengers actually voted to present me with the ship’s silver punch bowl, which had the Medea’s name and all kinds of anchors, tridents, mermaids, and sea gods already splendidly engraved on it, and in addition a space cleared for my name and the words: ‘From his many friends and admirers who might otherwise be at the bottom of the sea.’ Do you know, they even gave a vote of praise to that little pissant of a Scottish captain?”

  Sam laughed appreciatively and signaled for another round. “If they were that happy with you, the shipping company must have rewarded you handsomely.”

  “Well, if you call handsomely an overly flowery speech by one of the directors, seconded by Lloyd’s insurance adjuster,” I said, laughing.

  Sam looked at me with widening eyes. “You mean to tell me that they offered you no financial reward for saving their ship?” he asked incredulously.

  “They sure as hell didn’t.”

  He looked at me contemplatively. “I don’t know if you’re interested,” he said slowly, “but you could sue them for a small fortune if you’d a mind to.”

  “Oh, I hardly think that.” I laughed uncomfortably. “There was nothing to say the ship wouldn’t have survived in any event.”

  “No, seriously, my boy. You say the captain fired the distress rockets and that it was his intention to put passengers and crew alike aboard another ship — in short, to abandon the Medea. In effect, from that moment on the Medea came under the laws of salvage.”

  “I’ve not the money nor the inclination nor the knowledge to go about suing people,” I replied.

  “You won’t need the money,” Sam pressed, “because I’ll do it for you on a contingency basis, and I do have the inclination and the knowledge.” He leaned forward eagerly. “I’m over here studying marine law with an old boy retired from Lloyd’s legal staff. My own law firm is footing the bill. I should count it a favor on your part to give me the experience. I’ll have to dig up a hungry young London lawyer as a front — they’d never allow me to take this up directly myself — but I’ll be the driving force, don’t you worry.”

  I was still not more than idly curious. “How much would you sue for?”

  “A hundred thousand pounds,” he answered airily.

  “You’re out of your mind!”

  “Am I?” He smiled, a smile that several professors of law at Harvard had learned to remark, for it generally meant that he had thought of something they hadn’t. “I’ll force them to settle,” he went on confidently, “and when they do, I want the settlement high enough to make it all worthwhile. If we sue for only ten thousand pounds, they’ll try to settle for two. By suing for a hundred thousand, we should end up in the neighborhood of twenty or twenty-five thousand.”

  I still couldn’t comprehend that this was more than idle conjecture. Though he was three years ahead of me — in law school while I was still an undergraduate — Sam and I had fallen into an easy relationship all but unheard of between a graduate and a lower classman. I think that my being such a determined cocksman and rakehell had something to do with it, because he more than equaled my enthusiasm for the fair sex. We had in the end shared a number of escapades and upon occasion had even shared girls, something I’ve done with no one else.

  “What a splendid beginning for my shipping line!” I joked, raising my glass in a mock toast.

  “You don’t believe me, do you? If we make twenty-five thousand, you get fifteen and I get ten. If we make twenty, you get twelve and I get eight. Fair enough?”

  I nodded happily, suddenly feeling quite drunk and very fond of this dark-visaged erstwhile companion in my misadventures. Later on that evening I dropped the word “erstwhile” as we frolicked about on a perfectly huge bed with several delightful young ladies whom he guaranteed clean.

  After that memorable evening, I didn’t see Sam for some time, and I realized I didn’t even know where he was staying. I tried to pick up Arabella’s trail, but with no success, and I settled finally for sniffing around the docks and poking into shipyards. They all told me the same
thing, that Robert Napier was the best marine engineer and ship designer alive, with Black Jack Carr running him a close second. Next to those two came a large gap down to a gaggle of others who were shipbuilders and very good ones, but without the genius and vision of the first two. Napier was at the time up in Scotland, but his secretary, a dapper little man in his thirties with pince-nez spectacles and an unfamiliar accent that was difficult for me to understand — I found out later he was Welsh — told me that young men like me were waiting in line to work with Napier.

  “What about John Carr?”

  “Old Black Jack?” The man smiled in a superior fashion. “No one’s lined up for him, if that’s what you want to know.”

  “Oh? Why not, may I ask?”

  “He eats young men like you alive.” His eyes twinkled. “I’d be lying if I said he wasn’t good, but he’s like a cat, he walks alone.”

  “I’m much obliged to you,” I said and meant it, having decided in the course of the conversation to try my luck with Carr, cat or no cat. After all, I’d been brought up with cats.

  I went to Carr’s shipyard, which to the uninitiated looked like an impossible hodgepodge of materials and activity, men going this way and that, wagons threading their way through seemingly randomly stacked piles of lumber, acrid smoke from forges laying a blue haze over everything, and a three-quarters-finished ship swarming with workers thrusting up from her ways toward the cold gray sky above. When I told the man at the gate I was looking for John Carr, he gave a snaggle-toothed grin and jerked his thumb toward the middle of the yard.

  “’E’s in that hut of ’is, but Gawd ’elp whoever wants ter fish ’im out.”

  I thanked him and began making my way among the familiar hazards and obstacles of the yard toward the unfinished ship. She was a four-master with place for two funnels that hadn’t been put in yet. Even though she was a stinkpot, my father would have reveled in the workmanship displayed in her every detail.