Her chin went up a trifle and she smiled. ‘It’s nice to know I look all right, because I’m feeling just like hell.’
Luvia gave the order to cease rowing and ship the oars. He was perfectly well aware that any progress they could make that way was so infinitesimal as to be virtually useless, and had only set them to pulling in the first place to put a little life into his men.
Now he called old Jansen, the carpenter, aft to take the tiller while he went forward himself to superintend the stepping of the short mast through a hole in the central thwart, and the setting of the single sail.
By the time the job was completed, and the boat rippling through the water at a steady pace, Unity had made the tea and all hands were called aft to receive rations.
Synolda had cut the block of bully beef into seventeen slices with scrupulous fairness, and each of them received one of these with a large ship’s biscuit. De Brissac’s was put aside, as he was still sleeping, in the hope that he might be able to manage it later.
Most of the sailors had brought mess tins in their hastily packed bundles, and there were half a dozen tin pannikins in the locker which served for the passengers. Luvia had them all set out in a row, and Unity, measuring the hot tea with one, distributed it equally among the rest.
The last to come up for his tin was Harlem Joe. Basil studied him with special interest now he could see him at close quarters. He was a huge man, weighing at least sixteen stone. He was wearing only a pair of canvas trousers and a dirty cotton singlet. The muscles of his biceps stood out under the black, shiny skin of his bare arms in great knotted cords.
For a moment he paused opposite Luvia, then he pointed with a thick begrimed forefinger; first to his own pannikin, then to Luvia’s, the only two remaining. ‘Fair do’s, Bass.’
Luvia looked down. There was very little in it, but just enough for anyone to have agreed that there was a spoonful or two more tea in his own pannikin. Without a word he changed them over, giving the stoker the larger portion.
It was Monday, January the 10th, and they had been thirteen hours in the boat when, at midday, Luvia shot the sun with the dead Third Officer’s sextant and, after a short calculation, announced that their latitude was in the neighbourhood of 35° South.
‘Clever boy,’ remarked Basil acidly. ‘I didn’t know you were a navigator as well as an engineer.’
‘I’m not,’ replied the Finn with a good-natured smile, ‘but even an apprentice knows how to fix a sextant.’
‘Christoforo Colo discover America before the instrument was invent at all,’ Vicente said hopefully.
Unity nodded. ‘And the Carthaginians circumnavigated Africa in one of their galleys nearly two thousand years before that.’
‘Phoenicians,’ Basil corrected. ‘You’re confusing Hanno’s voyage with the sailors sent by Pharaoh Necho who sailed out of the Mediterranean from Egypt and returned nearly three years later up the Red Sea. They landed each year to sow and harvest a crop of wheat before going on; but where’s all this erudition getting us? What does 35° South mean in terms that the lay mind can understand?’
Luvia spread out a chart he had taken from the locker and placed a square-ended forefinger in the middle of the South Atlantic. ‘We’re somewhere here, ‘bout level with Cape Town in the east and Buenos Aires in the west. Just on the line that shows the limit to which drift ice comes north from the Antarctic.’
Fortunately for them it was early January, high summer in the southern hemisphere, at which season the nearest icebergs were many hundreds of miles to the south, so they had no cause to fear the intense cold they would have suffered had they chanced to drift into an archipelago of bergs at night.
On the contrary, the January temperature in that latitude was much the same as it would have been at sea in July off the coast of Morocco, and they were finding the strong sunshine a mixed blessing. In the mid-morning hours it had dried their clothes and cheered their spirits, but now it was grilling down on their backs and shoulders with uncomfortable persistence.
To protect the two girls from it, and give them a little privacy, a low, tent-like tarpaulin-covered shelter, with a flap that could be lowered, had been rigged up from spare gear at the extreme stern of the boat.
It was little more than a cubby-hole, dark, uncomfortable and awkward to move in, as the tiller, now artificially lengthened by a boathook lashed to it, ran through the centre of the space and out at the forward end; but it afforded a refuge from the eyes of the men, and in order to tend the unconscious De Brissac better Unity had him carried into it.
The Frenchman had roused just after breakfast. He had lost a great deal of blood and was delirious. After bathing and rebandaging his head, they had forced some condensed milk diluted with water down his throat, and two tablets of medinol from the medicine chest, soon after which he had fallen into another heavy sleep.
At twelve-thirty Luvia issued rations again: half a cup of water all round and two biscuits apiece. He told them they would not feel so thirsty if they had no meat in the middle of the day and promised them a slice of corned beef a head with their evening meal.
Afterwards, the girls retired to try and snatch a nap in their shelter during the heat of the afternoon, and the crew set to work on making another low tent in the bows of the boat. Luvia decided the time had come to hold a conference, so he gathered Jansen, Vicente, Basil, and the Colonel round him in the stern.
‘I think I ought to tell you people just where we stand,’ he opened up at once, in a voice carefully lowered so that the women on the far side of the tarpaulin should not hear him. ‘We’re over a thousand miles from the nearest land, and I’d be a liar if I told you I thought there was the least chance of our making it.’
‘Why not?’ asked the Colonel gruffly. ‘Lieutenant Bligh of the Bounty covered a greater distance than that in an open boat.’
‘Did he? Well, maybe he did. I don’t remember hearing about it; unless he’s the guy who crossed the Atlantic in a canoe a year or two back. Anyhow, that’s neither here nor there. The point is that whatever he did he was properly provisioned for the job—whereas we’re not.’
‘ ’Ow many days’ sail you need to arrive South America?’ Vicente inquired.
‘Even with a favourable wind I doubt if we could do it under fourteen days. As it is, the wind’s next to useless. That’s why we’re tacking about so. We’re constantly losing way to the south as it is.’
‘And for ‘ow many days ‘ave we provision?’
‘If we go easy we might make the food hang out a week. Water’s the trouble. That cask holds six gallons, but it’s lost about a gallon by evaporation. Four quarts to a gallon—that’s twenty quarts. Two pints to the quart—forty pints. Say we allow ourselves three rations each per day of one-third of a pint: there are seventeen of us, so that’s seventeen pints a day. We’ll have used the lot by midday the day after tomorrow.’
‘We could distil fresh water by boiling sea-water in the kettle,’ suggested the Colonel.
‘Only as long as our fuel lasts, and our supply of paraffin is pretty meagre.’ Basil shrugged gloomily.
Vicente groaned. His dark eye held the expression of a spaniel that has been unjustly punished. Life was so very good and would be infinitely better once they had mined the gold that lay under his brother’s farm. It was unfair; unreasonable that death should come to claim him out here in the desolate wastes of the ocean when fortune promised him so many favours.
‘How about cutting the ration down a bit?’ asked Basil.
Luvia shook his head. ‘I might a little, but not much. If we were in a cooler climate we could do on less, but we’ll be burnt up on under a pint a day beneath a sun like this. Don’t you agree, Jansen?’
‘Ja, ja, Mister Luvia. I was in a boat myself one time off the Canaries. My, it was no joke that, and a pint a day we have to have, else we go mad of the heat. Fortunately, we do not run out and are picked up the third day.’
‘You definitely state th
at it’s impossible to reach the coast, Mr. Luvia?’ the Colonel asked abruptly.
‘Yes, unless we were blown there by another gale, and in that case it’s a thousand to one only the boat would be swept up. She’d have capsized and we’d be drowned.’
‘Then we must pin our hopes upon being sighted by a passing ship?’
‘That’s about it, but here again I don’t want you to go counting any chickens. We’re three thousand miles south of the great traffic lanes connecting the principal ports of the world across the North Atlantic, and the hurricane swept us five hundred miles south of the lesser routes linking up Africa with Rio and the Indies.’
Basil made a grimace. ‘So the hurricane carried us off the track as far as that?’
‘Yep, and we’re still drifting southward, caught up in the main current that runs parallel with the coast of South America and then swings across to pass south of the African peninsula.’
‘We’re right out in the blue then?’
‘You’ve said it! If we go on this way we’ll be south of southward, if you get what I mean; beyond the waters in which any ships ever sail except for whalers and Antarctic expeditions.’
‘Well!’—the Colonel tapped his sound foot sharply on the bottom boards—‘What d’you propose to do?’
Luvia’s kind blue eyes regarded the old man a little pitifully. ‘I had a hunch I was making things pretty plain, Colonel. There’s nothing I can do—nothing that anyone could do, except hope we’ll sight a ship in the next two days. I thought it right to let you know how we stand though—that’s all.’
There ensued a few moments’ gloomy silence, then Basil broke up the meeting. The afternoon sun was beating down so fiercely on his head and back that he feared he would get heat-stroke if he didn’t move. As it was, he had covered up every portion of himself that he could to prevent sunburn and blistering. Now, wiping the perspiration from his face, he crossed a couple of thwarts and lowered himself on to the bottom boards to get in the shadow of the sail.
He was feeling rotten again. The tonic effect of finding himself still alive when he woke in the morning had worn off. He needed a drink. He would have needed one anyway, having been deprived of his normal before-lunch cocktails; but facing the grim prospects his imagination conjured up as a result of Luvia’s statement made him need one extra badly.
The temptation to go aft and plead with Luvia for a tot of rum was a strong one, but he knew the Finn would refuse him and it seemed senseless to submit to such humiliation to no purpose. He thought of Synolda and her flask of Van der Hum, but could not bring himself to ask her for a pull at it. It wasn’t fair to rob the girl when she might need the stuff herself later on.
He tried to sleep, but could not. His mind seemed obsessed with the craving. As he dozed, visions of iced horses’ necks, ginslings, whisky-sours and planters’ punch came up before him—all those long, cool, spirituous concoctions which men drink in the tropics directly the sun goes down. Again and again he roused up just as he was dropping off to pass his tongue round his dry mouth and face reality.
A movement near by caused him to turn over. Hansie, having helped to complete the men’s shelter in the bow, was settling down in the shade beside him.
‘Well, Mister Sutherland, hot enough for you?’
‘Too hot by half,’ Basil muttered. I wonder you weren’t burnt to a cinder up in the bow there.’
Hansie regarded the backs of his hands ruefully, and began to feel his cheeks, ears and neck. They were a bright brick red, glowing hot to the touch, and the skin seemed to be stretched abnormally taut across the red patches. ‘I’ve caught it,’ he declared bitterly. ‘It’ll start in about two hours’ time—burn like I was being held in front of a red-hot fire. Ain’t life hell!’
‘Hell’s the word,’ agreed Basil, ‘and it’s triple hell not being able to get a drink.’
The barman looked at him thoughtfully. ‘Of course, you’ve been used to your bottle a day, Mister Sutherland, haven’t you? It’s not easy to go on the wagon all at once. Here, don’t let the others see you, but take a pull at this.’
With a cautious movement Hansie extracted a large flat flask of Bourbon from under his jacket and passed it beneath Basil’s upraised leg.
Basil reached down a hand and gripped it, turning slowly over on one side. Hansie leant above him, shielding his head from view as he unscrewed the cap and sucked down a couple of gulps of the fiery liquid.
‘Bless you, Hansie!’ he said, when the flask was safely back in the barman’s pocket. ‘God! that was good. I’ll manage to keep sane until sundown now.’
To while away the time he amused himself composing some lines of poetry; a cynical summing up of his companions in misfortune which he scribbled in a notebook he had on him. They ran:
To these ends did I carve you said our Maker,
you dozen painted dolls within a boat.
(I was an Artist; your lives brand me Faker.)
Carden, a man born brave, grown old a goat;
Hans with his soul behind a steward’s coat
mixing oblivion in a cocktail-shaker;
Vicente with a purse around his heart;
Synolda, shop-soiled by exchange and mart;
Four negroes, children who would not grow old
till civilisation gave them guns and gold;
Basil, a scarecrow, dressed in the ragged tatters
of love and genius—and of all that matters.
Such lives are jangled mockeries of my craft,
poems so out of tune they will not scan.
My last gift to you then—your epitaph;
‘the improper image of mankind is man’.
Luvia came towards him some time afterward. ‘You were saying this morning that you’d done some yacht sailing, Mr. Sutherland—isn’t that so?’
Basil nodded.
‘Good. Then you’ll take the tiller for the next hour. The men passengers must break even with the crew. The Colonel’s coming forward to do a spell at look-out and Mr. Vedras will take over from him later.’
‘The old man will be fried like a fritter up there in the bow,’ Basil grinned.
‘Not he,’ Luvia smiled back. ‘He’ll have gotten the hide of an elephant after all those years in Burma.’
Basil stood up and went off to take over the tiller from Jansen. Having surrendered it, the carpenter accompanied the Colonel forward to his post.
Just as the change-overs were being effected Synolda popped her head out of the low tent where she and Unity were sheltering. Vicente seized the opportunity to produce a pack of cards from his pocket.
‘You’re very bored, eh?’ he smiled. ‘Let me tell your fortunes. Vicente is very good fortune-teller with ‘is cards.’
Synolda spoke to Unity, and then turned back to him. ‘All right. You’d better come in here out of the sun. If we squeeze up we can just make room for you.’
‘Gracia, gracia,’ he accepted the invitation instantly, and eagerly scrambled in beside them.
He told Synolda’s fortune first and muttered a lot over it rather unhappily. The King of Spades, which obviously represented himself, was constantly in her vicinity, but the King of Diamonds persistently came between them. It appears that she had just escaped from a grave danger and others threatened her. However, she had all the ‘luck’ cards, and so he was able to promise her health, wealth, and a happy marriage.
Unity’s cards troubled him much more; not from his own point of view, as he had no personal interest in her, but from hers. He told her of an unhappy love affair in the recent past and spoke of a Club man in her future; but he stuttered, became tongue-tied and so obviously agitated, that both the girls insisted on his telling them what else he could see. At last, unwillingly, he confessed it. ‘Death comes up next to you again and again.’
Meanwhile, only a couple of feet further forward, Basil was at the artificially lengthened tiller, with Luvia beside him. Ever since his talk with Hansie in the early morning he ha
d been watching for a chance to get the Finn for a few moments on his own; at last luck had favoured him.
In a low voice he gave a detailed account of Hansie’s disquieting information about Harlem Joe.
Luvia heard him out and sat silent for a little. ‘So the man’s a killer, eh!’ he said slowly. ‘Doesn’t exactly add to the gaiety of nations having a guy like that along—does it?’
Basil had little time for large, blond, hearty men in the ordinary way, but he looked at the strong-featured Finn now with considerable sympathy. He had been so immersed in his own personal misery that he had not given a thought before to what Luvia must be feeling. The situation was bad enough for any of them individually, but the young engineer had in addition the responsibility of keeping discipline, navigating the boat, and looking after them all; a responsibility which seemed almost certain to bring hideously increased anxieties the further one looked into the desperately uncertain future. ‘I’ll keep an eye on Harlem as far as I can,’ he volunteered.
‘Thanks. I’ll tip off the Colonel and Mr. Vedras too. Between us we’ll watch him plenty.’ Luvia yawned and lowered himself to the bottom of the boat. It was many hours since he had closed an eye and almost instantly he was asleep.
Through the long hours of the afternoon the whole party tried to make the most of every inch of shadow, and where it was insufficient they hid themselves under blankets or odd pieces of clothing from their bundles. They sweltered there in acute discomfort, but that was better than suffering the agony of being blistered by the relentless sun.
Unceasing watch was kept for smoke trails or any other sign of shipping, but when sundown came, and the shadows crept in upon them from the surrounding emptiness, there had not even been a false alarm from the look-outs during the whole day.
By the light of a hurricane lantern Luvia superintended the distribution of the evening ration; a slice of meat, a biscuit and half a mug of tea laced with a dash of rum. The men could hardly restrain themselves from snatching at the pannikins. It was over seven hours since they had sipped down their third of a pint of water, and in the baking heat of the afternoon the thoughts of all of them had become centred in wishing away the crawling minutes which separated them from their next drink.
Uncharted Seas Page 5