I growled and threw cup and saucer over the side. I couldn’t say anything to Johnny. I knew he was telling the truth. Oh, well, maybe there happened to be some milk and sugar in the cup he used and he didn’t notice it. It was a weak sort of excuse, but I clung to it.
At six bells the second heaved himself up the ladder. “O.K.—you’re relieved,” he said.
“At eleven o’clock? What’s the idea?”
“Aw—” His huge bulk pulsed as he panted, and he was sweating. “I couldn’t sleep, that’s all. Shove off.”
“I’ll be damned! First time I ever heard of you rolling out before you were called, Harry. What’s the matter—this canting too much for you?” The ship still lay over at about 47°.
“Naw. I c’n sleep through twice that. It was—Oh, go below, third.”
“O.K. Course ’n’ speed the same—zero-zero. The wind is on the weather side, an’ we’re runnin’ between the anchors. The bow is dead ahead and the smokestack is aft. The temperature—”
“Dry up, will ya?”
“The temperature is mighty hot around the second mate. What’s eatin’ you, Harry?”
“I’ll tell you,” he said suddenly, very softly, so Johnny couldn’t hear. “It was my bunk. It was full of spikes. I could feel ’em, but I couldn’t see ’em. I’ve got the blue willies, third.” He mopped his expansive face.
I slapped him on the back and went aft laughing. I was sorry I had laughed. When I turned in to my bunk it was full of cold, wet worms that crept and crawled and sent me mooning and shuddering to the deck, to roll up in the carpet for some shut-eye. No, I couldn’t see them.
We left there—wherever “there” was—about fourteen hours after we struck. What it was that had stopped the ship we never did find out. We took soundings all around and got nothing but deep water. Whatever it was that the ship was lying on was directly underneath the turn of the bilge, so that no sounding lead could strike it. After the first surprise of it we almost got used to it—it and the fog, thick as banked snow, that covered everything. And all the while the “loading” went on. When it began, that invisible crowding centered around the section of the starboard well deck that was awash. But in a few hours it spread to every part of the ship. Everywhere you went you saw nothing and you actually felt nothing; and yet there was an increasing sense of being crowded—jostled.
It happened at breakfast, 7:20. The skipper was there, and the mate, though he should have been on the bridge. Harry rolled in, too, three hundred pounds of fretful wanness. I gathered that there were still spikes in his bunk. Being second mate, his watch was the twelve to four, and breakfast was generally something he did without.
The captain lolled back in his chair, leaning against the canted deck and grinning. It made me sore. I refused the bottle he shoved at me and ordered my eggs from the messman.
“Na, don’t be dat vay,” said the skipper. “Everyt’ing is under control. Ve is all going to get a bonus, and nobody is going to get hurt.”
“I don’t savvy you, cap’n,” I said brusquely. “Here we are high and dry in the middle of an African pea-souper, with everything aboard gone haywire, and you’re tickled to death. If you know what’s going on, you ought to tip us off.”
The mate said, “He’s got something there, captain. I want to put a boat over the side, at least, and have a look at what it is that’s grounded us. I told you that last night, and you wouldn’t let a boat leave the chocks. What’s the idea—don’t you want to know?”
The captain dipped a piece of sea bread into the remains of four eggs on his plate. “Look, boyss, didn’t I pull y’u out of a lot of spots before dis? Did I ever let y’u down yet? Heh. Vell, I von’t now.”
The mate looked exasperated. “O.K., O.K., but this calls for a little more than seamanship, skipper.”
“Not from y’u it don’t,” flared the captain. “I know vat goes on, but if I told y’u, y’u wouldn’t believe it. Y’u’ll make out all right.”
I decided to take matters into my own hands. “Toole, he’s got some silly idea that the ship is out of our hands. Told me the other night. He’s seeing ghosts. He says we were surrounded by ‘vimmin mit tails on.’ ”
The mate cocked an eyebrow at the Old Man. The captain lurched to his feet.
“Vell, it’s true! An’ I bat y’u y’ur trip’s pay against mine dat I gat one for myself! Ve is taking on a cargo of—” He swallowed noisily and put his face so close to mine that our foreheads nearly touched. “Vare de hell y’u t’ink I got dis viskey?” he bellowed. “Somebody has chartered dis ship, and ve’ll get paid. Vot y’u care who it is? Y’u never worried before!” He stamped out.
Harry laughed hollowly, his four pale chins bobbing. “I guess that tells you off, third.”
“I’ll be damned,” I said hotly. “I trust the Old Man as much as anyone, but I’m not going to take much more of this.”
“Take it easy, man,” soothed Harry. He reached for the canned milk. “A lot of this is fog and imagination. Until the skipper does something endangering crew, ship or cargo we’ve got no kick.”
“What do you call staying in his room when the ship rams something?”
“He seems to know it’s all right. Let it go, mate. We’re O.K., so far. When the fog clears, everything will be jake. You’re letting your imagination run away with you.” He stared at Toole and upended the milk can over his cup.
Ink came out.
I clutched the edge of the slanting table and looked away and back again. It was true enough—black ink out of a milk can I’d seen the messman open three minutes before. I didn’t say anything because I couldn’t. Neither Toole nor Harry noticed it. Harry put the can on the table and it slid down toward Toole.
“All right,” said Toole, “we’ll keep our traps shut until the skipper pulls something really phoney. But I happen to know we have a cargo consigned to a Mediterranean port; and when and if we get off this sandbank, or whatever it is, I’m going to see to it that it’s delivered. A charter is a charter.” He picked up the can and poured.
Blood came out.
It drove me absolutely screwball. He wouldn’t watch what he was doing! Harry was working on a pile of scrambled eggs, and the mate was looking at me, and my stomach was missing beats. I muttered something and went up to the bridge. Every time there was some rational explanation developing, something like that had to happen. Know why I couldn’t pipe up about what I had seen? Because after the ink and the blood hit their coffee it was cream! You don’t go telling people that you’re bats!
It was ten minutes to eight, but as usual, Johnny Weiss was early. He was a darn good quartermaster—one of the best I ever sailed with. A very steady guy, but I didn’t go for the blind trust he expressed in the skipper. That was all right to a certain extent, but now—
“Anything you want done?” he asked me.
“No, Johnny, stand by. Johnny—what would you do if the officers decided the captain was nuts and put him in irons?”
“I’d borry one of the Old Man’s guns an’ shoot the irons off him,” said my quartermaster laconically. “An’ then I’d stand over him an’ take his orders.”
Johnny was a keynote in the crew. We were asking for real trouble if we tried anything. Ah, it was no use. All we could do was to wait for developments.
At eight bells on the button we floated again, and the lurch of it threw every man jack off his feet. With a splash and a muffled scraping, the Dawnlight settled deeply from under our feet, righted herself, rolled far over to the other side, and then gradually steadied. After I got up off my back I rang a “Stand-by” on the engine room telegraph, whistled down the skipper’s speaking tube, and motioned Johnny behind the wheel. He got up on the wheel mat as if we were leaving the dock in a seaport. Not a quiver! Old Johnny was one in a million.
I answered the engine room. “All steamed up and ready to go down here!” said the third engineer’s voice. “And I think we’ll have that generator running in another t
wenty minutes!”
“Good stuff!” I said, and whistled for the skipper. He must have felt that mighty lurch. I couldn’t imagine why he wasn’t on the bridge.
He answered sleepily: “Vell?”
“We’re afloat!” I spluttered.
“So?”
“What do you want to do—lay here? Or are we going some place?”
There was silence for a long time—so long that I called and asked him if he was still on the other end of the tube.
“I vas getting my orders,” he said. “Yes, ve go. Full speed ahead.”
“What course?”
“How should I know? I’m through now, third. Y’u’ll get y’ur orders.”
“From Toole?”
“No!”
“Hey, if you ain’t captain, who is?”
“I vouldn’t know about dat. Full speed ahead!” The plug on his end of the tube clicked into place, and I turned toward Johnny, uncertain what to do.
“He said full ahead, didn’t he?” asked Johnny quietly.
“Yeah, but—”
“Aye, aye, sir,” he said with just a trace of sarcasm, and pulled the handle of the telegraph over from “Stand-by” to “Full ahead.”
I put out my hand, and then shrugged and stuck it in my pocket. I’d tell Toole about it when I came off watch. “As you go,” I said, not looking at the compass.
“As she goes, sir,” said Johnny, and began to steer as the shudder of the engines pounded through the ship.
The mate came up with Harry at noon, and we had a little confab. Toole was rubbing his hands and visibly expanding under the warmth of the bright sun, which had shone since three bells with a fierce brilliance, as if it wanted to make up for our three days of fog. “How’s she go?” he asked me.
“Due west,” I said meaningly.
“What? And we have a cargo for the Mediterranean?”
“I only work here,” I said. “Skipper’s orders.”
Harry shrugged. “Then west it is, that’s all I say,” he grunted.
“Do you want to get paid this trip?” snapped Toole. He picked up the slip on which I had written the ship’s position, which I’d worked out as soon as I could after the sun came out. “We’re due south of the Madeiras and heading home,” he went on. “How do you think those arms shippers are going to like our returning with their cargo? This is the payoff.”
Harry tried to catch his arm, but he twisted away and strode into the wheelhouse. The twelve-to-four quartermaster hadn’t relieved Johnny Weiss yet.
“Change course,” barked the mate, his small, chunky body trembling. “East-nor’east!”
Johnny looked him over coolly and spat. “Cap’n changes course, mate.”
“Then change course!” Toole roared. “The squarehead’s nuts. From now on I’m running this ship!”
“I ain’t been told of it,” said Johnny quietly, and steadied on his westerly course.
“Well, by God, I’m the mate!” Toole said. “You’ve had no orders from that lunatic to disregard a command of a superior officer. Steer east!”
Weiss gazed out of the wheelhouse window, taking his time about thinking it over. The mate had made his point; to refuse further would be rank insubordination. Though Johnny was strong in his loyalty to the skipper, he was too much of a seaman to be pig-headed about this until he knew a little better where he stood.
“East it is, sir,” he said, and his eyes were baleful. He hauled at the wheel, and a hint of a grin cracked his leathery face. “She—won’t answer, sir!”
I saw red. “Go below!” I growled, and butted him from behind the wheel with my shoulder. He laughed aloud and went out.
I grasped the two top spokes, hunched my shoulders and gave a mighty heave. There was suddenly no resistance at all on the wheel, and my own violence threw me heels over crupper into the second mate, and we spun and tumbled, all his mass of lard on top of me. It was like lying under an anchor. The wind was knocked out of him, and he couldn’t move. I was smothering, and the mate was too surprised to do anything but stare. When Harry finally rolled off me it was a good two minutes before I could move.
“Damn that quartermaster,” I gasped when we were on our feet again.
“Wasn’t his fault,” wheezed Harry. “He really tried to spin the wheel.”
Knowing Johnny, I had to agree. He’d never pull anything like that. I scratched my head and turned to the mate. He was steering now, apparently without any trouble at all. “Don’t tell me you can turn the ship?”
He grinned. “All it needed was a real helmsman,” he ribbed me. And then the engines stopped, and the telegraph rang and spun over to “Stop,” and the engine room tube squealed.
“Now what?”
“I dunno,” came the third’s plaintive voice. “She just quit on us.”
“O.K.; let us know when you’ve shot the trouble.” The engineer rang off.
“Now what the hell?” said the mate.
I shrugged. “This is a jinxed trip,” I said. I verified the “Stop” signal on the telegraph.
Harry said: “I don’t know what’s got into you guys. The skipper said somethin’ about a new charter. He don’t have to tell us who gave it to us.”
“He don’t have to keep us in the dark, either,” said Toole. Then, glancing at the compass, he said, “Looka that! She’s swingin’ back to west!”
I looked over his shoulder. Slowly the ship was turning in the gentle swell, back to due west. And just as she came to 270° on the card—the engines began to pound.
“Ah!” said the mate, and verified the “Full ahead” gong that had just rung.
The third whistled up again and reported that he was picking fluff off his oilskins. “I’m going on the wagon,” he said. “She quits by herself and starts by herself, an’ I’m gonna bust out cryin’ if it keeps up!”
And that’s how we found out that the ship, with this strange cargo, insisted on having her head. For every time we tried to change course, the engines would stop, or a rudder cable would break, or the steering engine would quit. What could we do? We stood our watches and ran our ship as if nothing were the matter. If we hadn’t we’d have gone as mad as we thought we already were.
Harry noticed a strange thing one afternoon. He told me about it when we came off watch.
“Y’know that box o’ books in the chart room?” he asked me.
I did. It was an American Merchant Marine Library Association book chest, left aboard from the time the ship was honest. I’d been pretty well all through it. There were a few textbooks on French and Spanish, half a dozen detective novels, a pile of ten-year-old magazines, and a miscellaneous collection of pamphlets and unclassifiable.
“Well, about three o’clock I hear a noise in the chart room,” said Harry, “an’ I have a look. Well, sir, them books is heaving ’emselves up out of the chest and spilling on th’ deck. Most of ’em was just tossed around, but a few was stackin’ in a neat heap near the bulkhead. I on’y saw it for a second, and then it stopped, like I’d caught someone at the job, but I couldn’t see no one there.” He stopped and licked his lips and wheezed. “I looks at that pile o’ books, an’ they was all to do with North America an’ the United States. A coupla history books, an atlas, a guidebook to New York City, a book on th’ national parks—all sech. Well, I goes back into the wheelhouse, an’ a few minutes later I peeks in again. All them books on America was open in different places in the chart room, an’ the pages was turnin’ like someone was readin’ them, only—there just wasn’t nobody there!”
What the hell was it that we had aboard, that wanted to know about the United States, that had replaced our captain with a string of coincidence, that had “chartered” the ship? I’d had enough. I firmly swore that if I ever got back to the States, police or no, I’d get off this scow and stay off her. A man can just stand so much.
About three days out the torpedo boat picked us up. She was a raider, small and gray and fast and wicked, and she bel
onged to a nation that likes to sink arms runners. One of the nations, I mean. I had just come off watch, and was leaning on the taffrail when I saw her boiling along behind us, overtaking.
I ran forward, collaring an ordinary seaman. “Run up some colors,” I said. “I don’t give a damn what ones. Hurry!”
Pounding up the ladder, I hauled Toole out of the wheelhouse, pointed out the raider and dived for the radio shack, which was some good to us now that the generator was going again.
I sat down at the key and put on a headset. Sure enough, in a second or two I heard: “What ship is that? Where from? Where bound?” repeated in English, French, German and Spanish. I’d have called the skipper, but had given him up as a bad job. Toole came in.
“They want to know who we are,” I said excitedly. “Who are we?”
“Wait’ll I look at the flag the kid is running up,” he said. He went to the door, and I heard him swear and whistle. “Give a look,” he said.
Flying from the masthead was a brilliant green flag on which was a unicorn, rampant. I’d seen it—where was it? Years ago—oh, yes; that was it! In a book of English folk tales; that was supposed to be the standard of Oberon and Titania, King and Queen of … of the fairies, the Little Folk!
Dazed, I turned to the key and began pounding. I didn’t even realize what I was sending. Some imp controlled my hand, and not until it was sent did I realize I had said, “S.S. Princess of Birmingham, Liverpool, bound for Calais with a load of airplane parts.”
“Thank you!” said the raider, and put a shell across our bow. Toole had gone back to the bridge, and I sat there sweating and wondering what the hell to do about this. Of all stupid things to say to an enemy raider!
The engine vibration suddenly became labored and the ship slowed perceptibly. Oh, of course, the old wagon would pick a time like this to become temperamental! I beat my skull with my fists and groaned. This was curtains.
The raider was abeam and angling toward us. “Heave to!” she kept buzzing through my phones. Through the porthole beside me I could already see the men moving about on her narrow decks. I turned to my key again and sent the commander of the raider some advice on a highly original way to amuse himself. In answer he brought his four swivel guns to bear on us.
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