The Golden Reef (1969)

by Pattinson, James

  ‘If she does start to go‚’ he said, ‘we’ll take you with us on the raft. We won’t leave you.’

  It was a bad night. The wind blew strongly and there was more rain. The rain drove against the sides of the accommodation and made a constant drumming sound on the iron-work. There was no electricity in the ship, but Keeton had found an oil lantern amongst the stores, and this he had lighted and hung up in the captain’s cabin. He and Bristow moved in and took up their quarters there.

  ‘It’s comfortable anyway,’ Bristow said. ‘There’s no telling how long we’ll be able to enjoy it, but it’ll be cosy while it lasts.’

  They decided to keep watch by turns, one sleeping on the settee while the other stayed awake, alert to any obvious deterioration in the ship’s condition. They knew that they might have to get away quickly if the worst came, and they had provided themselves with torches so that there would be no difficulty in finding the raft. Peterson was the big problem.

  ‘If we stop for him‚’ Bristow grumbled, ‘we’ll likely all go down together. It ain’t worth it. He’ll die anyway. Besides, maybe he’d rather go with his ship. That’s the proper drill. We ought to leave him.’

  ‘We take him with us‚’ Keeton said. Bristow might argue as much as he liked, but Peterson was not going to be abandoned a second time. ‘We take him with us and you’ll help me. Let’s toss for first watch.’

  The spin of the coin gave Bristow the privilege of using the settee first. In less than a minute he was fast asleep. Keeton sat in an arm-chair listening to the rain and the wind. The ship rolled sluggishly and shuddered when the sea battered her. The lantern swayed and flickered, casting uneasy shadows in the cabin.

  Keeton got up and took an oilskin coat and sou’wester off a peg and put them on. The coat was too small, but he managed to struggle into it, his wrists protruding from the sleeves. He took an electric torch and went out on deck.

  Immediately the rain lashed at his face and the wind wrenched at his coat, flapping it wildly against his legs. He went to the port side and leaned against the rail and shone the beam of his torch on the sea. There was a glimmer of phosphorescence on the breaking water and where it fell on the decks the phosphorescence dribbled away in little islands of moving fire.

  It was difficult to tell whether the ship had settled lower. The night was so dark that even the outline of the Valparaiso’s superstructure was indistinguishable from the background. Standing there, it seemed to Keeton as though he were perched on a tiny rock surrounded by an invading ocean. But this rock moved; it rose and fell; it shifted this way and that; and every now and then it shuddered as though in fear.

  Keeton shone his torch on the raft; it was hanging in the slipway ready to go; and he wondered just how long men could hope to survive in such a sea on such a primitive craft, a framework of slatted timbers given buoyancy by iron drums.

  ‘Forget it‚’ he muttered. There was no point in worrying about questions like that.

  He went back into the shelter of the accommodation and shone his torch down into the engine-room. The white beam touched the man hanging in the cold embrace of twisted iron, and his grotesque shadow danced and postured as though the devil had been in it. Keeton could hear the dismal sound of water slopping from side to side as the ship rolled, but he could not be certain that it had risen any higher.

  He returned to the cabin and found Bristow snoring with his mouth wide open. For a moment or two he gazed down at the slack, soft face and then walked into the adjoining room, leaving the door hooked open so that the light from the lantern shone through.

  Peterson looked exactly the same; his eyes were still open.

  Keeton said: ‘I’ve been out on deck. It’s a rough night.’ He slipped out of the oilskin coat and hung it, dripping, on a peg. ‘I borrowed this.’ He moved closer to the bed, hoping that Peterson would show some sign of understanding. ‘I had a look at the engine-room. I don’t think the water’s coming in all that fast, but it’s a job to tell.’

  Keeton could not help reflecting on the strangeness of the situation. Here he was, talking to a paralysed sea captain in the cabin of a derelict ship which was being driven blindly through a pitch-black night. And still he felt a compulsion to go on talking.

  ‘I wonder where the boats are now. If Mr Rains and his lot caught this weather they’ll be having a nasty time of it. Of course they may have been picked up by now.’

  The cat came into the room and jumped on to the foot of the bed. It curled itself up and went to sleep.

  ‘There’s one joker that doesn’t think the ship’s going to sink,’ Keeton said.

  He walked to the porthole. He could see drops of water running down the outside of the glass, but beyond that all was black and impenetrable darkness. A sudden roll of the ship caught him off balance and flung him on to the bed, and he could feel Peterson’s thin body under the covers.

  ‘Sorry‚’ he muttered. ‘I’m sorry, sir.’ But there was no reaction from Peterson.

  When Keeton got up he discovered that it was more difficult to stand because the deck was sloping more steeply. There could be no doubt that the ship’s list had in the last few moments increased to alarming proportions. The cat still slept, but the bed had tilted so much that Peterson’s head was now far higher than his feet and he was in effect resting on an inclined plane.

  Keeton heard a sound behind him and found Bristow standing in the doorway. Bristow’s voice was hoarse and frightened.

  ‘She’s going. There’s no doubt about it. She’s had it now for sure. We’ve got to get away.’

  Keeton said: ‘That raft is going to be pretty bad in this sea.

  ‘It’s that or an iron coffin.’ Bristow’s hair was sticking out in spikes, as though it had caught the atmosphere of terror. ‘Are you coming?’

  Keeton pointed at the bed. ‘There’s Captain Peterson.’

  ‘Leave him. Leave the corpse.’

  ‘He’s alive.’

  ‘He’s as near dead as makes no difference. Leave him, I say.’

  ‘No‚’ Keeton said. ‘We’ll take him with us. Give me a hand.’

  He moved to the bed and put his arm under Peterson’s shoulders. It was easy to lift the man; there was no weight in him.

  ‘Take his legs, Johnnie.’

  ‘Damn you,’ Bristow said. He was almost weeping with terror and frustration; but he obeyed Keeton. He pulled off the coverings and gripped Peterson’s legs. Peterson was wearing blue and white striped pyjamas and his legs were lost inside them. Together they lifted him off the bed.

  ‘You go first, Johnnie.’

  ‘Damn you‚’ Bristow said again. He started to back towards the door and the cat got under his feet and squealed as he trod on it. Bristow stumbled and dropped Peterson’s legs.

  ‘Be careful‚’ Keeton said.

  ‘It was that cat. Nearly had me down.’

  ‘Never mind the cat. Get a move on.’

  Bristow picked up Peterson’s legs again and backed out through the doorway. Another wave struck the ship and Bristow stumbled and fell. Keeton yelled at him.

  ‘What’s wrong with you? Get up, you slob.’

  Bristow got up, but he did not take Peterson’s legs.

  ‘I’m going. It’s time to go. If you want to drag that corpse along with you, that’s your concern. But not mine, not this boy’s. I’ve had enough.’

  He turned and clawed his way towards the outer door. Keeton snarled at him.

  ‘Come back, you bastard.’

  Bristow did not even look at him.

  It happened just as Bristow was about to go through the doorway. He did not get through because the shock sent him reeling backwards and he fell heavily against the settee.

  There was a harsh grating and grinding noise, a noise that seemed to push its way up through the decks. It made Keeton’s teeth chatter, as though he had become an integral part of the ship and the tremor that ran through the Valparaiso was running through his body also.
/>
  And then he realized that the ship had stopped moving; she was no longer rising and falling, no longer swinging drunkenly from side to side; and had it not been for the shuddering as the waves struck her it might have been imagined that she had at last come safely into harbour.

  Bristow sat up, rubbing his bruised head. ‘What happened Charlie?’

  He gazed about him in amazement. The carpet beneath him was no longer sloping steeply; it had returned almost to the horizontal. Moreover, the lack of motion in the ship was so strange that it was frightening. Again he muttered: ‘What happened?’

  ‘I think we’ve run aground,’ Keeton said. He spoke in a hushed, awed voice, hardly able to believe that this could really be true, yet unable to think of any other explanation. ‘What else could it have been? There’s something solid under the keel. Must be.’

  Bristow got to his feet. His voice shook with excitement. ‘It’s land then. We drifted to land. We’re safe.’

  Keeton could hear the thunder of the seas and he could feel the ship trembling as they struck. He did not believe their troubles were over.

  ‘What kind of land? A rock? How long before the ship breaks up?’

  The hope faded from Bristow’s eyes. ‘You think it’s like that? Just a rock?’

  Keeton answered sharply, impatient with Bristow: ‘I don’t know. How could I? Help me carry the Old Man back to his bed. Then we’ll go and look.’

  When they went out on deck the wind flicked rain in their faces and a monster with a white head reared up in front of them.

  Keeton yelled a warning. ‘Look out! Hang on!’

  The spout of water crashed with a sound of thunder on the deck, drenching them. It ran away in gurgling torrents and they made their way to the side. There they clung to the rails and looked at what appeared to be a white carpet visible in the darkness, a shifting, twisting carpet full of queer spiral patterns constantly changing.

  Keeton put his mouth close to Bristow’s ear and shouted to make himself heard above the racket of the storm.

  ‘It’s a reef. A coral reef.’

  They clawed across to the other side, and there too was the ghostly glimmer of the surf, a pale hand stretching out into the night. They could hear the wind piling the sea against the ship, making it leap up in great fountains of water, and they could hear the ship groaning.

  ‘Where do we go from here?’ Keeton said.

  Chapter Six

  Morning

  The reef lay under the sun, white as a bone. It lay with the water rippling over it like a man dozing in a warm bath. Beyond the reef the sea stretched away, blue and placid, apparently with no memory of the storm of yesterday; all that was past and forgotten. Now the wind had fallen, the water was calm, and out of a cloudless sky the glaring disc of the sun poured down its heat like molten metal tipped from a crucible.

  Keeton and Bristow stood on the boat-deck of the Valparaiso and gazed around them. Keeton had a pair of binoculars that he had taken from the captain’s cabin; with them he swept all that wide expanse of water lying between the ship and the horizon. It was empty.

  ‘No neighbours‚’ he said.

  Bristow took a wad of cotton waste from the pocket of his shorts and wiped sweat from his forehead. ‘Not even a proper island.’ There was disgust in his voice. ‘Not even a bit of sand and a couple of palm trees. We might have expected better than this.’

  ‘Last night you were expecting worse. We’ve been lucky. The ship hasn’t sunk.’

  ‘But how long will it be before she does? Get more bad weather and she may go to pieces.’

  Keeton looked over the side. The water was so limpid that he could see the corral touching the ship’s hull. The Valparaiso appeared to have slid into a kind of groove in the reef; she was wedged there, almost on an even keel, as though she had been put into a dry dock for repairs.

  ‘She could last a long time. The reef has got a good hold on her.’

  Bristow seemed determined to look on the dark side of things. ‘Wait till the sea starts pounding her. If you ask me, we’re going to have trouble before long.’

  ‘At least we’ll be no worse off than we were. We may be able to do something about repairing that boat.’

  ‘Are you a boat-builder?’

  ‘A man can do most things if the need is strong enough.’

  Bristow walked over to the damaged lifeboat. ‘So you really think you can patch this up good enough to keep the water out?’

  ‘It’d do no harm to try.’ Keeton fingered the splintered edges of the broken boards. ‘I think it could be done. Let’s swing the boat inboard. We can have a better look at it then.’

  ‘It’ll be hard work.’

  ‘A bit of hard work won’t kill you.’

  They released the gripes and lowered the griping spar against which the boat had been resting. The davits were operated by handles that turned a worm and cog and swung the boat inboard. It was sweating work in the hot sun, but Keeton drove Bristow to it and finally they had the boat resting on its crutches on the deck.

  ‘You see‚’ Keeton said. ‘It didn’t kill you.’

  Bristow looked at the palms of his hands. ‘It’s given me blisters.’

  ‘You shouldn’t be so soft. I don’t get blisters.’

  He climbed over the gunwale of the boat and examined it from the inside. There were some chunks of metal embedded in the timber and the blades of two of the oars had been shattered. Fortunately, the compass appeared to be undamaged.

  Bristow peered over the gunwale. ‘Well, boat-builder? What’s the expert verdict?’

  ‘We could maybe clamp some wood over that big hole and put in some more here where the upper boards have been splintered. The rest of the damage doesn’t amount to much.’

  ‘I wouldn’t like to trust myself in a patched-up boat.’

  ‘You may not have to. It’d be a last resort. Maybe we’ll be picked up. But you can’t count on it.’

  He climbed out of the lifeboat and made his way down to the poop. Bristow followed him, as though fearful of being left alone, and they went into the gunners’ quarters. There was water in the washplace and the bulkheads dripped with moisture. After the blaze of heat on deck the air felt almost chilly.

  They paddled through the water and stepped over the high sill through the doorway into the sleeping quarters and mess-room. On the table were still some plates and a few dirty knives and forks and spoons which the high fiddle round the edge had prevented from sliding off, and on the floor lay an enamel teapot in company with a slab of cheese, a tin of butter and half a loaf of bread.

  The bunks were just as they had been left when the gunners had leapt to action; one could imagine that at any moment the men might come clattering back down the ladder to resume the normal routine. It was hard to realize that for them the last stand-down had been given, that for them there would never again be any call to action. For all of them the game was played out.

  Bristow said with his nervous laugh: ‘This place gives me the creeps. Look at all that kit and nobody to claim it. And there’s Lofty’s girl.’ He pointed at a photograph of a blonde pinned above one of the bunks. ‘He’ll never marry her now. Sweet little face and all.’

  ‘Brainless‚’ Keeton said. ‘You can see that.’

  ‘She’d have suited Lofty. You could have spread all his brains on a sixpence without covering the date.’

  There was a sheet of paper lying on the bunk. Keeton picked it up and saw that it was covered with Lofty’s scrawling, unformed handwriting.

  ‘My darling Shirley‚’ he read. ‘I am thinking of you always. Maybe it won’t be so long now. When I come home for good ….’

  Keeton folded the paper and tore it into small pieces. He let the pieces flutter down to join the debris on the deck. Then he picked up his own kit and moved towards the door.

  ‘I’m shifting my quarters. I’m getting myself a cabin amidships.

  Captain Peterson lay on his bed and his breathing was
so slight it would hardly have stirred a cobweb. Keeton had the odd feeling that, though Peterson was looking at him, he was in fact seeing something altogether different; perhaps a picture in his own mind. But it was impossible to tell; one could talk to Peterson, and perhaps the words would reach his brain, but there was no way of being certain that they did, for the old man gave no sign.

  ‘I wish you could talk‚’ Keeton said. ‘Hell, I wish you could tell me things. There’s so much I need to know.’

  This old, old sea-dog could have helped him so greatly; could, out of the vast store of his accumulated knowledge, have given so much valuable advice. There was a world of knowledge locked away in his brain and no way of getting at it. Keeton felt frustrated, as a starving man might feel when peering through a plate glass window at food beyond his reach.

  ‘You could tell us where we are. Maybe you know how to work that wireless transmitter. And you can’t say a word.’

  Peterson made no movement. He stared at Keeton and gave no sign that he had heard. Keeton turned and went out of the cabin, nearly tripping over the cat. It arched its back and rubbed against his leg, purring fiercely.

  In the galley Keeton found Bristow cooking. He had started a fire in the stove and the galley was sweltering. Bristow, stripped to the waist, was sweating freely.

  ‘Fried Spam and spuds‚’ he said. He shook the frying-pan and the fat hissed and crackled. ‘You hungry?’

  ‘Could be.’

  ‘You know something? There’s enough grub on board this ship to last the two of us for years.’

  ‘And Peterson?’

  ‘Him too if he wants any. Number two hold is full of cases of canned stuff – meat, fruit, vegetables, milk.’

  ‘Peterson can’t take anything. I tried him with some milk but I couldn’t get his mouth open.’

  ‘Well, that’s his worry. We got enough worries of our own without losing sleep over him.’

  ‘I wish he could talk‚’ Keeton said.

  ‘You want him to give you orders?’ Bristow took the frying-pan off the stove and filled two plates with the hot, greasy food. ‘I’d say we was better off not having him talk. We’re free now. No bosses. We do what we like when we like. No drill, no watches, just the easy life. Could be worse.’