"You'd better see to the boat yourself, Mr. Barrett," said the Old Man.
Barrett went down the starboard ladder to the boat deck. The bo's'n and the hands had already cleared away the lifeboat, were swinging it out. The davits worked smoothly as the handles were turned, as the well-greased worn gear took hold and impelled the steel arms outward. The boat lifted clear of the chocks, out and clear until it was hanging over the dark sea.
Barrett satisfied himself that all was ready for lowering. He gestured to the bo's'n, who was standing with one hand on the winch brake. The petty officer lifted the weighted lever. The falls whined through the blocks and the boat dropped steadily until its gunwale was level with the fish plate. Barrett lifted his hand and the bo's'n let the brake lever fall.
"Man the boat, Chief?" he asked.
"No. Not yet. But send in a couple of hands to check the plugs and ship the rudder. And make sure that everybody who's going away is wearing a life jacket." He paused. "I shall want Stores as bowman. And Woodley and Grant. And Brandt and Mollucca."
He went into his room, pulled his own life jacket down from its rack, put it on. He went up to the bridge again just as the third officer was ringing Dead Slow on the telegraphs. He reported to Captain Hall that everything was in a state of readiness.
"Good," grunted the Old Man. "I'll come as close alongside the ketch as I dare. As soon as I've got the way off her you can lower away and then go for your life." He added grimly, "And theirs."
Barrett went back to the boat deck and found that the second mate was waiting for him there, ready to supervise the lowering. He gave him what few instructions were necessary as he watched the blazing wreck, close now, intently. He heard the Old Man order Full Astern, heard the jangle of the telegraphs, heard and felt the heavy thudding of the twin diesels. He went to the ship's side, steadied himself on the outswung forward davit, watched the creamy turbulence creep forward along the hull. He heard Hall order, "Stop both!" and then call, "As soon as you like, Mr. Barrett!"
The men clambered into the boat and Barrett followed them, taking his place in the stern sheets. He gestured to the second mate, who repeated the order to the bo's'n at the brake. The wires whirred through the sheaves as the boat dropped rapidly. The crest of a swell came up to meet her and the wire falls fell slack, the lower blocks clanking against the hooks. Aft, Barrett unhooked smartly, as did the storekeeper forward. Barrett told him to slip the painter, ordered the others to throw the manropes well clear, in towards the ship, then to man the already-shipped levers of the Fleming Gear.
He ordered, "Give way!"
The backs of the seamen rose and fell in the untidy rhythm unavoidable when a boat is propelled by a manually operated screw. Barrett put the tiller hard over, sheered away from the ship. He did not have far to go. Already he could feel the fierce heat from the burning ketch. Those poor bastards must be cooking, he thought.
He steered for the bows of the wreck, for the survivors who, he could see now, were busy with buckets of sea water, desperately trying to fight the flames back from their tiny refuge, who were pouring the water over themselves.
The ketch was settling by the stern and her stubby bowsprit was lifting well clear of the sea. Barrett decided to steer under it, estimating that there would be ample clearance under the short spar. The storekeeper, silhouetted against the fire as he stood in the bows, had his boat hook raised and ready. Barrett called out to the man, telling him his intentions.
The heat was painful now, the glare blinding, but the boat stood on. "Way enough," ordered Barrett quietly. He threw the reversing lever back, said, "Give way again." He could feel the screw biting into tie water. The storekeeper caught hold of a stay with his hook as Barrett, for the second time, gave the order to stop.
The first of the two men on the bowsprit dropped, falling clumsily and heavily, crying out in pain. The second man waited until the boat lifted to the swell, timed his descent. And then the others—there were only four of them—were crawling out over the water, dropping one by one into the boat. Barrett assumed that the last one of all would be the Skipper but asked, nonetheless, "Is that the lot?"
"Yes," croaked the man faintly. "Yes ... That's all. Bill's had it, an' Bluey."
And Barrett realized, sickeningly, that the stench of charred rags and overdone meat was coming from the skipper.
He ordered, "Let go, Stores!"
The storekeeper did not obey. "But there's a cat still aboard, Chief. We can't leave the poor little bastard to fry."
"Let go, you fool!" whispered the injured skipper. There aren't any cats. Let go! The fuel tanks!"
"But I can see it!" persisted the storekeeper.
From a little aft of amidships there was a soft explosion, a thump rather than a bang. A column of orange fire climbed lazily skyward with a peculiar fluid motion— climbed, then subsided about itself, splashing and spreading as it hit the sea. Barrett did not have to tell the bowman to let go again; neither did he have to order his men to give way. They, together with the survivors from the ketch, bent to the levers with desperate energy and, still under stern power, backed away from the wreck.
And as she pulled away and clear Barrett saw the animals on the now-burning foredeck. They were not cats, although two of them were as large as cats. There were a dozen of them, easily recognizable as they scurried back and forth, chittering with fear. They were rats. And there were two large ones, standing almost erect, looking like little kangaroos.
He saw them run along the bowsprit, drop into the water. He did not see what happened to them; the glare of the fire was in his eyes. He turned the boat, headed for the waiting ship. He heard the storekeeper demanding of one of the men from the ketch, "Did you have livestock aboard? Wallabies or somethin'? An' you let the poor little bastards burn."
"Nothin' but rats," growled the survivor. "Nothin' but bastard rats."
Barrett was sitting in Captain Hall's cabin, talking with the master. The official log was open on Hall's desk, but the entries had yet to be made. They would have to be made before the ship reached Eden, in Twofold Bay, where the survivors were to be landed.
Hall was twisting his fountain pen between his thick fingers as though he intended to break the instrument. He demanded, "What the hell can I put in the log book? You know what these ketch people are like—hard drinkers, every one of them. And who'll believe this story of theirs? Rats like kangaroos taking over the ship and murdering the cat and playing with matches. It's only the skipper who actually saw them, and I doubt if he'll live, anyhow. Did you see anything?" he almost shouted.
"I ... I'm not sure..." said Barrett slowly.
He was remembering the kangaroo-like beast that he had seen outside the Purdoms' house that dreadful night. He was remembering the theft of matches from Jane's kitchen. He was remembering the glare of the fire that he had seen from his back garden in the small hours of the morning.
It all made no sense—
Or a terrifying sort of sense.
He shivered, although it was warm in the cabin.
CHAPTER 4
The survivors from the ketch were landed at Eden, in Twofold Bay, and then Katana resumed her interrupted voyage to Burnie, on the north coast of Tasmania, her first port of discharge. After arrival at Burnie, life aboard the coasting steamer should have been a matter of routine— but it was not.
There was the long spell of high winds and heavy rain—a torrential downpour lasting for all of a week. There was the strike on the Devonport waterfront. And there was the fire that devastated the wharfage and warehouses at Launceston. Katana was actually bound for that port when it broke out, was already proceeding up the River Tamar, was obliged to return to and berth at Bell Bay, at the mouth of the river. She discharged her Launceston cargo there, loaded a few tons of aluminum and alumina, then returned to Burnie to complete loading.
On arrival back in Burnie, Barrett received a letter from Jane. He read and re-read the part about the rats: ... Mrs. Purdom tells me
that the baby will make a good recovery. I was very pleased to hear that. It's been a dreadfully worrying time for the poor woman. And there's talk of a petition to both the Council and the State Parliament to demand that somebody do something about the rats—it's time somebody did. Although they're getting to be a plague all over Sydney.
The poison you got for me is quite useless, by the way. The rats are just turning up their noses at it. Of course, I'm assuming that there are rats in the house. I've not seen any traces. And the little things that get lost aren't the sort of things that rats would go for: a packet of needles, a pair of nail scissors, the odd box of matches. And as for your traps! I nearly lost a finger last night trying to set one.
All in all, Timmy, I prefer my own poltergeist theory. Or perhaps it's just a common or garden haunt. After all, this is a very old house. And I keep getting the oddest feeling, usually at night, that somebody—or something—is watching me. Most uncomfortable, as you can well imagine.
But to get back to the rats. Old Mrs. Hunt—I meet her sometimes in the corner greengrocery—was telling me that she's lost her cat. You know the brute, of course. That far too fertile tabby always having her kittens in other people's sheds and under other people's houses. I was certainly grateful when you blocked that space under our back porch! Anyhow she—Mrs. Hunt—is quite certain that it's "those wicked rats that have murdered poor Tibby."
She could be right, but I'm inclined to think it was some householder tried beyond endurance. Old Miss Wilson in the end house, for instance. She hates cats and she loves her garden and she wouldn't be at all fussy what she used as fertilizer. I was reading somewhere that roses do well on dead bodies. But, of course, poor, dear Tibby is liable to come sauntering back at any tick of the clock with seven little bastard kittens strung out in Indian file behind her.
There's somebody at the front door. I'd better see who it is.
Later: It was a most charming young man, all done up in a white coat like a doctor in a B movie. He told me he was the rodent control officer. He looked at the garbage can. He looked in the garbage can. Then, with my permission, he inspected the house from stem to stern, from truck to keelson. (I know what you mean by "truck" when you use that expression—it's that little round wooden piece on the very top of the mast, isn't it? But when I use it I always think of the faithful VW. Come to that, he did look at the car, both inside and outside. And he asked me—of all things 1 —if I'd had any trouble with the tires.)
Anyhow, he congratulated me on the clean and tidy premises and told me that our shack is a palace compared with some that he's been inspecting. And he gave me a packet of white powder to spread around, all for free, and his telephone number.
And that's about all the local gossip to date, Tim. Life in this neck of the woods isn't half so eventful as in yours. But try to hurry home, won't you? I know that's a silly thing to say—but, after all, as mate you can exercise some slight influence on the course of events. Anyhow, I just feel that I need a man about the house...
Barrett permitted himself a wry grin. He thought, She always wants me when I'm not available, and then when I'm around, looks at me as though I were something brought in by the cat in an off moment.
His thoughts followed the line of word association.
Funny about old Mrs. Hunt's cat. As I recall the beast, she was, with all her faults, a good ratter. And there was that cat aboard the Betty Furness, the ketch, that they said got killed by something just before the fire. Is there any connection? Any pattern?
He put down Jane's letter, picked up the daily paper. He looked at the readers' letters. Most of them complained about the inability of local authorities to do anything about the rat nuisance. And rats were not mentioned only in the correspondence columns. There were stories from Perth and Brisbane, Adelaide and Melbourne, Canberra and Sydney; grim little items concerning deaths and casualties for which the vermin had been blamed. There were attacks on babies in their cots, invalids in their beds, and even on a couple of hapless drunks sleeping it off on a piece of waste ground.
He thought, But they're just doing what they always have done, attacking the weak and the helpless. And they've been known to gang up on dogs and cats before now. This is just a passing plague—not the first one in our history, and not the last. By no means is it the first plague of rats. There was Hamelin Town, by Hanover City, wasn't there?
He threw down the paper and went on deck to see how the loading was progressing.
At last Katana was loaded—with bales of paper, and cartons of canned vegetables, and packs of timber, and sacks of potatoes—and almost ready to make her departure from Burnie to Sydney. Barrett, watching his crew cover the hatches and hammer home the clamps and cross-joint wedges of the steel covers, was not sorry. He wanted to be home, and was sure that every man of the crew, from captain to the deck boy, was feeling the same. Certainly his men were not doing as they so often did: spinning the job out, making it last for the sake of another half-hour's or hour's overtime. They were working well and efficiently, wasting no time.
Walking up and down the wharf, from which he could maintain an over-all view of the little ship, Barrett tried to analyze his uneasiness. And unease had been apparent in each of Jane's letters, had been evident when he had made a long-distance telephone call to his home and, after a long, inexplicable delay, had at last gotten through. His shipmates had spoken of a similar uneasiness. And it was certainly between the lines in every newspaper and news magazine, an undertone to every radio news bulletin or commentary.
It was like—and yet unlike—the period of international tension that sets in before the outbreak of a major war. It was like it, inasmuch as men had taken to glancing uneasily at the sea and sky, to gathering around radio receivers at the times of news broadcasts. It was unlike it, because there was no grouping of powers, no picking of sides, no definite causes of hostility. It felt—as the third mate, an incurable science-fiction addict, had said—like the eve of the Invasion from Outside.
Whatever it was, Barrett wanted to be home when the balloon went up. (If the balloon goes up, he corrected himself.) He looked towards the root of the jetty, saw that the linesmen, with the mobile cranes they used to handle the heavy coir moorings, were beginning to assemble there. He turned to look for the bo's'n, found him on the foredeck hammering tight the last side clamps of Number One hatch. "As soon as you have a couple of spare men, Bose," he called, "you can start singling up."
"Aye, aye, sir!" replied the petty officer.
Barrett looked at his watch, grunted dubiously. He thought, The end of the world must be coming. Normally the boys would have insisted on stopping for a smoke before they'd condescend to touch the moorings.
The berthing master approached Barrett. He said, "The way your crowd is working, Tim, you'll be ready to shove off an hour ahead of time." He added, "And then we shall all be able to turn in early."
"You know the rule," said Barrett. "We can sail after the time on the sailing board, but not before."
"But if all hands are aboard," suggested the berthing master.
"I'll give it a go," said Barrett. He saw one of the crew delegates working by the bulwarks, coiling a guy rope. "Woodley," he called, "it looks as though we shall be ready at 2100 hours, an hour early. Would the boys be agreeable if we changed the sailing time?"
"Too bloody right, they would," replied the delegate. "And all hands are aboard; I've already checked that."
"Good," said Barrett. He went back on board to call Captain Hall, who was taking a nap prior to departure, and then passed the necessary orders to the engineers and to all others concerned.
Katana slid stern first from her berth, backing from the pier into the waters of the Emu Bay. From the fo'c's'le head Barrett listened to the jangling of the engine-room telegraphs on the bridge, listened and watched, worked out for himself Captain Hall's maneuvers and wondered how he would do the job when, in the fullness of time, he was made master. Full astern starboard, he thought. Hal
f ahead port—helm hard to starboard—round she comes, in spite of this onshore breeze. Full ahead both.
The breakwater light came abeam and Barrett told the bo's'n to secure the anchors, leaving the fo'c's'le head as soon as the compressors and the devil's claws were on the chain cables. He made his way aft, shining his torch on the hatch lids and watertight doors to make sure that all was properly battened down. He climbed the ladders to the bridge, found Hall in the wheelhouse, peering into the radar screen.
"All secure, sir," he reported.
"Thank you, Mr. Barrett." The Old Man looked up from the display unit. "Are you turning in right away?"
"After I've had a shower."
"You may as well drop in for a nightcap. I'll be down shortly."
Hall nibbled his cheese sandwich and then sipped from his glass of brandy on the rocks. His round, rubicund face was set in serious lines. He said suddenly, "You remember the Cuban crisis, Barrett?"
"Who doesn't?" countered the chief officer.
"But you were at sea then, weren't you? You weren't on leave or time-off?"
"I was at sea," said Barrett. "In the Kanawa."
"So you remember what happened just before the fun and games started. There were the so-called fleet exercises, with merchant vessels participating. If we saw a periscope or anything else suspicious we were supposed to start screaming on some damn frequency or other. It was a nice, tactful way of putting us in a state of preparedness."
"So?" asked Barrett.
"So there's nothing at all of that kind this time. The way I feel, the way that everybody feels, I'd have thought there would have been. But no."
"In spite of the way the chief carries on," said Barrett, "I don't think Russia's behind it all. You can't tell me they went and lost their latest nuclear-powered ice-breaker just for the hell of it."
The Hamelin Plague Page 3