‘How can she be?’ I said.
‘I don’t know, but she is. Feel her!’
I felt her quiver and lift, and then she thudded back into her gravel bed. But she still went on quivering and from deep down in the bowels of her came a slow grating sound; and all the time she was trembling as though she were stirring in her sleep, struggling to free herself from the deadly reef bed on which she lay. ‘It’s not possible,’ I murmured. The ship couldn’t be afloat when her bows were submerged like a reef and the waves were rolling over them. This must be a dream. And I thought then that perhaps we had drowned out there. Did drowned men go back to their ships and dream that they shook off the reef shackles and voyaged like ghosts through dark, unnatural seas? My mind was beyond coherent thought. The ship was dead. That I knew, and beyond that, all I wanted was to lose consciousness of cold and pain, to lie down and sleep.
A hand reached out and gripped me, holding me up, and my feet trod the iron of the passage-way and climbed, without volition, up into the cold of the night air, to glimpses of stars and a drunken funnel and the unending noise of the sea. Down aft we stumbled over a steel hawser laid taut across the well-deck. It thrummed and sang to the sea’s roll, and the ship moved like a drunkard, tottering its masts against the sky, as we climbed the ladder to the poop’s platform and vanished into the black abyss of the little deckhouse. There was clothing there in the bos’n’s cabin. As I remember, it was neither wet nor dry, but it had more warmth than my own sodden clothes, and there was a dank bunk, with blankets smelling of wet like a dog’s fur, and sleep—the utter oblivion of sleep, more perfect than any heaven ever dreamed of by a well-fed man seated by his own fireside.
A long time after, it seemed—many years, perhaps—the tread of a man’s feet entered into that heavenly oblivion. I can’t say that it woke me or even that I struggled back to consciousness. Not immediately. It was just that the tread of his feet was there; a solid, metallic sound—the ring of boots on steel plates. It was a penetrating, insistent sound. It was above my head, beside my bed, first one side, then the other, and then farther away—a slow, unhurried, purposeful tread . . . the march of a dead man across the sleep of oblivion. And when it was no longer there I woke.
Daylight stabbed at my bleared eyes and a huddle of sodden blankets in the corner of the dank steel prison in which I lay, stirred and rose. It was Patch, his face ashen with fatigue. ‘I thought I heard footsteps,’ he said. His eyes looked wild, black marbles sunk deep in ivory sockets. ‘I swear I heard somebody.’
I crawled out of the bunk, sweaty with the salt-heat of a soggy mass of blankets, but cold and stiff with a gnawing pain in my belly and my shoulder aching like hell. It all came back to me then, hitting me like a physical blow, and I stumbled to the door and looked out. It was true then—not a dream. I was back on the Mary Deare, and . . . God, she was a wreck! She was a rust-red nightmare of a ship, smeared with a film of green slime, with a stubble-growth of grey that was the barnacles. Her funnel lay over at a crazy angle and all the bridge deck was twisted and gnarled and battered. The tide was low and, beyond the wreck of her, the Minkies gnashed their black teeth, foam-flecked where the stumps of rock stuck up out of the sea. No salvage ship lay anchored off, no tug, not even a fishing boat. There was nothing—just the ugly, familiar shape of Grune à Croc and the mass of reefs beyond . . . not a single sign of life, and the sky savagely grey, with an ugly pallor that made the cloud shapes black and cold-looking.
‘My God!’ I croaked. Instinctively, perhaps, I knew what we had to face—what the pallor of the dawn meant and the savage grey of the sky.
And Patch, sniffing the air over my shoulder, muttered, ‘There’s a heap of dirt coming up.’
The sky to the west of us was sombre, a black wedge of cloud that left the horizon sharp as a line ruled between air and sea. There wasn’t much wind, but the thunder of the waves on the exposed reefs had an ominous sound, and, even here, in the shelter of the rocks, the swell that slopped against the Mary Deare’s side was big and solid.
‘Those footsteps,’ I said. ‘What were they?’
He shook his head, not answering, and his eyes avoided mine. God knows what he was thinking, but a shudder ran through him, and it crossed my mind that a lot of men had died because of this ship. And then a strange thing happened: a little cloud of rust rose like red steam from the well-deck bulwark as a steel hawser ran out over the side. The bight appeared, checked on the rail, and then fell over into the sea with a faint splash. When it was gone, the ship was still again—no movement anywhere, and I was conscious that Patch was gripping my arm. ‘Queer,’ he said, and his voice had a hollow sound.
We stood rooted to the spot for a long time, staring along the length of the ship. But everything was still and motionless—nothing moved except the sea.
‘There’s somebody on board,’ he said. His tone was uneasy and his face was as drawn and haggard as it had been on the day I had first met him. ‘Listen!’ But I could hear nothing—only the slap of the waves against the ship’s side and the pounding of the swell on the reefs. The wreck was as still and as quiet as the grave. A lone sea-bird drifted by, soundless on the wind and white like a piece of paper against the clouds.
Patch descended then to the well-deck and stopped to gaze at the cover of Number Four hatch. And when I joined him I saw that it wasn’t the usual tarpaulin cover fixed with wooden wedges, but steel plates fresh-welded to the coaming. He had a look at the derrick winches and then we went past Number Three hatch, which was also plated over, and up the ladder to the boat deck. Here all the ventilators had been removed and lay about the deck like truncated limbs, the ventilation holes covered by rusty plating. The funnel had been cut through at the base by a blow torch, shifted to one side and the vent plated over. The engine-room skylight was screwed down tight and the water-tight doors to the port and starboard main deck alley-ways had been removed and the holes plated over.
There was no doubt whatever that the report of the St Helier fisherman had been correct. A salvage company had been working on the wreck. They had sealed off the whole hull of the Mary Deare and probably they had also repaired the leak in the for’ard holds. It explained the way she had lifted at the top of the tide and the rake of the decks to the cocked-up stern. The ship was watertight, almost ready to float off. I found Patch standing by the port bunkering chute, his eyes riveted on the hatch cover, which had been torn from its hinges and lay abandoned on the deck. In its place a steel plate had been welded over the chute, effectively sealing the bunker off. It meant that Dellimare’s body would remain there in its steel coffin until the hulk was towed into port and officials came on board with equipment to open up the ship. It meant days, possibly weeks of suspense for him, and there was despair in his face as he said, ‘Well, that’s that.’ And he turned away, to stare aft along the length of the ship. ‘They should have had a stern line out,’ he said.
I wasn’t following his trend of thought. I was thinking that there was all this work completed and no salvage ship. ‘Why do you think they left?’ I asked him.
He glanced at the sky, sniffing the breeze from the west which was coming now in irregular puffs. ‘The forecast was probably bad,’ he said. ‘Maybe they had a gale warning.’
I stared at the jagged reefs, remembering what it had been like before. Surely to God . . .
‘What’s that?’ His voice came sharp and clear, and through it, beyond the barrier of the bridge-deck, the cough of a diesel engine settled to a steady roar. I could feel the deck vibrating under my feet, and for a moment we stood, quite still, listening to the music of it. Then we were running for the bridge-deck alley-way. We came out at the head of the ladder that led down to the for’ard well-deck and there, just aft of Number Two hatch, stood a big suction pump, lashed to the deck. The engine was going full bat and the thick suction pipe was pulsating with the flow of water where it disappeared through a hole cut in an inspection hatch. Water was sluicing out of the far side
of the pump, flooding across the deck and disappearing through the scuppers. And yet there was nobody there. The well-deck was empty and in all the fore part of the ship there wasn’t a living soul.
It was uncanny.
‘Try the bridge,’ Patch said. ‘Somebody started that pump.’
We dived back into the alley-way and up the ladder to the bridge. It was all so familiar, but horribly changed. The glass was gone, the doors smashed and the wind was whistling through it, pushing little rivulets of water across the sand-smeared platform. There was nobody there—nobody in the chartroom. And then, out on the bridge again, Patch gripped my arm and pointed. Beyond the bows a pillar-like rock stood like a bollard with the bite of a thick steel hawser round it. The hawser ran taut from rock to ship, an anchor against the pull of the tides. It was the hawser that had fouled me during the night as I swam in over the bows.
But Patch was pointing to something else—a small blue dinghy pulling out from under the Mary Deare’s bows. It was Higgins, and he was rowing out to the rock. The peaked cap on the bull head, the massive shoulders and the blue seaman’s jersey—it was all so clear in the cold grey light. It was clear, too, what he intended to do. I shouted to him, but he couldn’t hear me from the bridge. I dived back down the ladder, down to the well-deck and up on to the fo’c’stle. ‘Higgins!’ I screamed at him. ‘Higgins!’
But it was blowing quite strong in the gusts now and Higgins didn’t hear me. He had reached the rock and was tying the dinghy to a snag, and then he began to climb. He reached the bight of the hawser and, with an iron bar he had brought with him for the purpose, began to lever it up the rock, whilst I shouted to him, standing up in the wind, balanced right on the slippery point of the Mary Deare’s bows.
He had his back to me all the time and when he’d freed the loop, he pushed it up over the jagged point of the rock and the whole line of the wire that anchored the ship right from where it ran out through the hawse-hole, went slack as it fell with a splash into the sea. Then he clambered back down the rock and got into his dinghy.
He saw me just as he’d unhitched the painter and he sat looking at me for a moment. His face was without expression and his big shoulders sagged with the effort he had made. And all the time I was shouting to him, telling him to fix the hawser back on to the rock. ‘There’s a gale coming,’ I shouted. ‘A gale!’ I kept on repeating that one word, trying to din it into his thick head.
Maybe I succeeded, for Higgins suddenly let go of the rock, pivoted the dinghy on one oar and began to row back towards the Mary Deare. Whether he panicked and was making a desperate attempt to get back on board, or whether he was moved to unexpected pity by the desolate character of the place and was trying to take us off, I shall never know, for the tide was north-going, about three knots, and though he worked like a man possessed to drag that heavy dinghy through the water faster than the tide ran, he made not more than twenty yards headway. He tired quickly and, after the first burst of energy, he made no further progress; and then, gradually, the tide took control and he drifted farther and farther away from the ship, still desperately rowing.
In the end he gave it up and steered the dinghy across the tide into the lee of Grune à Croc, and there he sat, clutching the rock, staring at the ship, his head bowed to his knees, his whole body slack with exhaustion.
The noise of the suction pump died and ceased abruptly so that I was suddenly conscious of the wind whining through the broken superstructure. Patch had switched the engine off and as I climbed down off the fore-peak he came to meet me. ‘We’ve got to flood the ship,’ he called out, his voice loud and clear. ‘It’s our only hope.’
But there was no way of flooding her now. Every vent and hole was sealed off and we couldn’t get at the sea cocks. Even the doors of the engine-room had been welded to keep the water out. The salvage company had sealed that hull up as tight as a submarine. ‘We’ll just have to hope for the best,’ I said.
Patch laughed. The sound had a hollow ring down there in the steel vault of the alley-way. ‘A westerly gale will bring a big tide. She’ll float off at high water. Bound to, with nothing to hold her. She’s pumped dry, all but the two for’ard holds.’ His voice sounded hoarse and cracked. ‘I wouldn’t mind for myself.’ He was staring at me. ‘But it’s tough on you.’ And then he shrugged his shoulders and added, ‘Better see if we can find some food.’
I was appalled by his acceptance of it, and as I followed him back down the alley-way to the galley, I was thinking that if only I had woken in time. The French salvage men had had her securely moored with hawsers fore and aft, and Higgins had let them go. I couldn’t hate the man. I hadn’t the strength to hate. But if only I’d got up the instant I heard those footsteps . . . And as though he knew what was in my mind, Patch said, ‘One thing—Higgins is going to have a bad time of it out there in that dinghy.’
The galley was dark and it stank. The sea had been there before us, and so had the French. There wasn’t a tin of any sort in the place. There was a cupboard full of bread that was a pulped, mildewed mass and there was meat that heaved with maggots and butter thick with slime and sand. All we found was some cheese that was good in the centre, a jar of half-dried mustard, some pickles and a broken pot of marmalade. We broke our fast on that, wolfing it down, and then we searched the saloon and all through the officers’ cabins and the crew’s quarters. We found a sticky mass of boiled sweets and a jar of ginger and, best of all, some stoker had gone to earth with two tins of bully beef. We took our miserable haul back to the little deckhouse on the poop and ate it, sitting there, shivering and listening to the rising note of the wind.
The gale came up fast with the turn of the tide and soon the waves, breaking against the side of the wreck were reaching up to the bridge-deck and we could feel the stern beginning to move under us. Once, when I went to look out of the door, I saw the blue dinghy still bobbing in the lee of Grune à Croc.
By midday it was blowing full gale. All the forepart of the Mary Deare was being pounded and battered by huge seas, her bridge-deck hidden every now and then in sheets of white water, the whole hull quivering to the onslaught. Water swirled across the well-deck below us and the boom of the waves striking against the plates of her side was so shattering that I found myself holding my breath, waiting for them, as though the blows were being struck against my own body. The noise went on and on. It filled my head and left no room for any thought beyond the terrible, everlasting consciousness of the sea. And out beyond the sea-swept wreck of the Mary Deare, the stumps of the reefs dwindled as the Minkies gradually vanished in a welter of foaming surf.
I saw Higgins once more. It was about two hours before high water. The Mary Deare was beginning to lift and shift her bottom on the gravel bed and Grune à Croc was a grey molar stuck up out of a sea of foam with water streaming white from its sides and spray sweeping across in a low-flung cloud, driven by the wind. Higgins was moving on the back of the rock, climbing down towards the dinghy. I saw him get into it and pick up the oars. And then a squall came, blurring the shape of the rock, and I suddenly lost sight of him in curtain of rain.
That was the last I saw of Higgins. It was the last anybody saw of him. I suppose he was trying to reach the Mary Deare. Or perhaps he thought he could reach the mainland in the dinghy. He had no choice, anyway; Grune à Croc would have been untenable at high water.
I stood in the doorway of our deckhouse for a long time, my eyes slitted against the rain and the driving spray, watching for a glimpse of him through the squall. In the end the seas drove me in and when I told Patch how Higgins had gone, he shrugged his shoulders and said, ‘Lucky bastard! He’s probably dead by now.’ There was no anger in his voice, only weariness.
The cabin in that deckhouse was about ten feet by six, steel-walled, with a bunk, some broken furniture, a window that had no glass in it and sand on the floor. It was damp and cold, the air smoking with wind-driven spray, and it resounded like a tin box to every sound throughout th
e ship. We had chosen it for our refuge because it was perched high up on the stern, and it was the stern part of the ship that was afloat.
For a long time we had been conscious of movement, a rising and falling of the steel walls that coincided with the gunfire bursts of the waves crashing against the hull below us. But now there was a shifting and a grating of the keel. It was a sound felt rather than heard, for nothing was really audible except the incredible, overwhelming noise of the sea. And then gradually it lessened. Spray ceased to come in through the window. The door blew open with a crash. The Mary Deare had struggled free of the sea bed and was turning head to wind.
I looked out and saw that Grune à Croc was no longer on the port bow, but away to starboard. The Mary Deare was afloat. The movement was easier now, the noise of the sea less terrifying. The high stern was acting as a steadying sail and she was bows-on to the breaking waves. I could hear them thundering against the bridge deck, see them burst in a great cloud of spray, forcing water through every opening of the bridge housing as the broken tops swept by on either side. And all the time Grune à Croc was fading away.
I shouted to Patch that we were clear and he came out from the cabin and stood looking at the incredible sight—a wreck floating with her decks streaming rivers of water and sloped flown so that all the fore part of her was below the waves. ‘We’re clear,’ I cried. ‘If we clear Les Sauvages we’re all right.’
He looked at me. I think he was considering leaving me in ignorance. But then he said, ‘It must be very near high water.’
I nodded. ‘Just about,’ I said. And then it came to me: for six solid hours after high water the tide would be north and west-going—driving us back on to the Minkies, back on to the Minkies at low water with all the reefs exposed. ‘God Almighty!’ I breathed, and I went back into the cabin and lay down on the bunk.
The Wreck of the Mary Deare Page 26