Seagulls in My Soup

by Tristan Jones

  As far as I could see, when I glanced around, we were being fired upon from every direction except the dark gap of the wide harbor mouth. I kept the compass lined up with the course and assured myself that the throttle could be rammed no farther forward. We raced toward the harbor exit and, in a matter of what must have been no more than two minutes, we shot through the exit like a bullet—although to me it seemed a funereal pace.

  By now, with the spray slashing over the bow, the windscreen was completely wet, and, as I didn’t know where the wiper switch was, the view was totally obscured. I was steering blindly by compass alone. As we roared past the mole-heads a machine gun on each side of us fired away. Every window on the superstructure sides was shattered, but few bullets actually penetrated the inch-gauge steel hull and upperworks. The row from ricocheting bullets inside the cabins and wheelhouse was ear-shattering, even above the screaming of the propeller shafts and the roar of the engines. It was an almost paralyzing pandemonium of nerve-jangling noise, and the only thing that kept me holding onto the helm, I think, was the realization that this bastard Reynaud had really set us up; that he was a maniacal psychopath, and that he would probably finish Tony and me off before we reached Marseilles—and that I was going to make damn sure he didn’t get either the chance or the excuse. Besides, I couldn’t leave this world without making sure Cresswell was all right—and Nelson.

  I peered out as best I could through the spray and splintered plexiglass of the windshields. The course ahead seemed to be clear. There were patches of pale moonlight here and there as clouds moved over the thin, weak scimitar of the new moon.

  When the firing grew fainter I called to Tony. “Get the hand-bearing compass—it’s in the navigation table drawer. Put in on the deck below my feet.”

  This he did quickly, keeping his head low. When he reached me he was panting hard, both with exertion and fear. I realized that I was, too. Reynaud ran, crouching, over to the starboard wheelhouse door, where he peeped aft around the bulkhead, watching for pursuers.

  “What’s that for?” breathed Tony as he put the compass below me.

  “In case the bastards start firing again—so I can keep my head down.” I bent toward him. “This sod is dangerous,” I said.

  Tony turned his spectacles toward me and gave me a sad grin. “The understatement of the year, old chap.”

  “There’s a wheel-lashing lanyard in the second drawer of the navigation desk. Get it out as quietly as you can and keep it in your pocket. As soon as he goes into any compartment, lash the bas . . . but wait ’til I give the word.”

  “Right, got you.” Tony went straight away and pulled the length of thin line, with a noose at one end, out of the drawer, all the while glancing at Reynaud, who still had his back to us, peering aft into the dark, tracer-streaked night.

  I stood up straight now. It had been several minutes since the last bullet had zinged against the hull. (Tony later told me that Aries must have been a good two miles offshore before the firing from the harbor moles finally stopped.)

  The boat was now cutting her way through the slight, smooth swell, into the blackness, with her stern well down and her bows streaming spray aft like a firehose. The sound of the seawater now drumming on the forward bulkhead of the wheelhouse was even noisier than the scream of the engines.

  Suddenly Reynaud came to me. “I think we’re being followed. I saw a dark shape pass in front of the harbor entrance lights.”

  “Bloody great,” said I, as I again tried to push the throttle lever even farther forward. Reynaud’s face was serious as he sidled over again toward his look-out post at the starboard door. Shortly Tony came to the wheel and told me the same thing.

  “That prick has got a machine pistol onboard,” I said in a low voice.

  “I know,” replied Tony.

  “Do you know where he put it?”

  “No. Do you?”

  “No.”

  “Oh, crikey,” he muttered.

  “Yes.”

  “What?”

  “Yes, oh crikey. You know what it might mean, right?”

  “You don’t mean . . .”

  “I do indeed.”

  “Oh, crikey!”

  “I don’t trust that toe-rag any farther than I can see him.”

  “What’ll we do?” asked Tony in a high, plaintive voice.

  “I’ll put this bugger on a course for . . .” I got no further. Reynaud, his back wet with spray, strode over to my side. Tony headed back to his post by the port door. I noticed that Reynaud, unlike either Tony or me, was as steady as a rock. You would have imagined he was out for a moonlight cruise along the Seine in a bateau-mouche.

  “All right?” he asked, almost absentmindedly.

  “Are you sure we’ve got enough fuel?” I asked, thinking ‘My God, what a time to ask that question.’” My hands still shook as I tried to hold the helm steady.

  “The tanks are full,” he replied. “I told you, everything was arranged.” He peered into the compass binnacle. “Have we the right course?”

  “We’re on course for Marseilles—northeast by north—but I think that’s a mistake. Those characters back there know where you’ll head for. They’ll just keep on our tail until daybreak. Then we’ll be for the high jump.”

  “What do you suggest we do?” Reynaud asked.

  “Well, we should aim away from the course to France. We should head due north. That’ll bring us to . . .”

  I thought for a second or two, envisioning the chart I had studied before all hell had been let loose. “ . . . to Cabrera, right on the southern tip of Majorca. By daylight, if we maintain full speed, we’ll be within visual range of Cabrera light. We’ll know by then if we’re still being chased, and if we are, we can head into Spanish territorial waters, maybe even into Palma itself. They can’t follow us in there.”

  Reynaud looked at me with his green eyes. There was a different look in them now—something of a degree of respect. Not much, but it was definitely there. He went over to the chart table, where I’d laid out the chart for the western Mediterranean. He bent over it, using the penlight I had left on the table, and studied the chart. A minute or two later he was back again. “I see what you mean,” he said, straining his voice above the noise of the engines and the drumming of the spray.

  “The range of the Cabrera light—that’s a small island—is twenty-five miles. That means we’ll pick it up after we’ve made a hundred thirty miles from Algiers. Let’s see . . . If we stay at twenty knots all night we should just about see the light at six in the morning. How do you think the engines will hold up?”

  “They are in first-class condition. How do you say—A1 at Lloyd’s?”

  “I wish I were at Lloyd’s right now,” said I under my breath. Aloud I said, “We’ll have to check the lube oil every hour.”

  “Of course.”

  “And the circulating water, too. We don’t want any fuck-ups on this little run, do we?”

  Reynaud nodded, his face grim.

  “Why don’t you and Tony check the engines every hour,” I went on. “You can alternate and rest in between checks. He can make the first check at midnight.”

  “What about you . . . Won’t you be tired?”

  “Oh, I’ll be all right. I’m used to long hours at the helm, and I wouldn’t be able to sleep anyway.”

  “Well, it sounds reasonable. Will you tell Tony?”

  “Yes, and you check below at one, three, and five, OK?”

  “OK.”

  “Pierre . . . What are we going to do if they catch up with us?”

  “Leave that to me,” replied Reynaud darkly. “You just keep the boat on course.”

  “Right.”

  All through the windless night we roared over the slight swell, showing no lights. At about two in the middle watch the clouds uncovered the mo
on. I suggested to Reynaud that we heave-to for a moment, so we could reduce the engine noise and try to check if we were being chased. This he agreed to, and as Aries wallowed away, slowly rocking this way and that, we all three stood on the bow and searched the southern horizon, straining our ears in the semi-silent night. We saw nothing, and Reynaud seemed pleased—but I noticed that he took great care never to turn his back on either Tony or me, nor to come too close to us when we were on deck.

  I passed over to the port side and gazed steadily to the southeast, where a dark mass obscured the horizon. It was a rain squall, and even then a slight breeze was rising from the direction of the clouds.

  “We’d better wait for this squall to pass over,” I called to Tony and Reynaud.

  The Frenchman rushed over to my side, then shuffled away out of arm’s reach. “Where?” he asked.

  I pointed to the blacker blackness in the black.

  “There,” I said. Then, as my eyes adjusted completely to the darkness, I forgot the threatening evil so close to me; forgot all thoughts of overpowering Reynaud, and watched the beauty of inanimate things—water and wind—turn to life. Soon the sound of the steadily increasing wind, like a huge beast drawing greater breaths, a sound sorrowful and startling at the same time, passed over Aries as she wallowed in the now-deepening troughs. I found myself searching with one hand, in the dark, for something to steady myself against. The sound traveled toward us across the starless space between the rain and Aries, passed directly above us, then ceased for a moment, just as suddenly as it had begun. As if the sea, too, had drawn an anxious breath of apprehension, a long, slow movement lifted and let down the waters under us.

  Very shortly a mini-chaos was let loose on the surface of the sea. It seemed to leap out of the darkness between water and sky onto the backs of the slowly heaving swells; then it lifted upon the crests a livid opacity of foam, as if it were driving a multitude of pale ghosts before it—and the squall was upon Aries in a spitting, spluttering welter of rain and spray.

  Aries, for a moment, remained jolt-upright, like a duchess whose bottom has been pinched by a footman. Then she suddenly lay over, away from the hard blast of the squall. Then it was that I wished we were under sail; for a sailboat, reefed down, would have laid to that wind and scooted ahead like a jack-rabbit. But all Aries did was shiver and shake from aerials to keel, like a felled mastodon, a great, stupid ox, a grounded leviathan.

  By this time we were all three wet through with spray and rain, but although Tony retreated to the wheelhouse, Reynaud and I stayed out on deck—awed, possibly, by the holiness of what was happening. I swallowed mouthfuls of cool water, which the wind drove at my face. Everywhere around Aries water streamed and swept in cataracts lashed ragged as they shot to leeward. It was as if half the sky had fallen down upon us, and half the sea were rising up to meet it.

  The awesome deluge seemed to last forever. Then, just as it all became unbearable, and I started to haul myself along the handrail to the wheelhouse, it stopped. It stopped instantly. All became quiet except for the low mumble of the idling engines. In a matter of a second it was as if the squall had never been, except for a diminishing excitement—a slight agitation on the moonlit faces of the swells. In a moment the natural forces of the world had abandoned us once more to the petty details of human existence; we were again deprived of the revelation of grandeur, released from unthinking, uncaring eternal beauty, and cast down again into our own private pits of human anxiety.

  For a few moments we had been, all three of us, bound together inexorably. It was as if we had become one in some ineffable, inexpressible way. It was as if the universe had judged us and found us wanting.

  Halfway to the wheelhouse door I stopped in the sudden silence and stared again at the southern edge of the black blanket of the night sky. Three lights appeared on the horizon. My heart jolted and I focused intently on the lights until I discerned that they were, in fact, three low stars, leaping and falling between the crests of the waves. Then I turned again and said to Reynaud, who still stood, sodden, looking south, “I may be wrong, but I think there’s something there.” I thought it just as well to keep him worried.

  He started, surprised, and leaned forward to stare more intently. “Are you sure? Vous êtes sûr?”

  “No, I’m not, but I thought I saw something just now, way out over the horizon, more to the southeast. It could be that they’re searching for us on the track to Marseilles . . . But look, you’re wet through—why don’t you go down to the engine room and dry out.”

  Reynaud merely grunted at this, and then said, “Let’s get going.”

  “OK, but you really ought to get inside the wheelhouse so you don’t dry out in the headwind.”

  I went into the wheelhouse. Tony was standing by the navigation table. I winked at him—a mere flicker of an eyelid. He gave no response. I was not certain that he had seen me in the dull glow of the pink compass light, but I imagined that I saw a slight movement of his body.

  With Reynaud close behind, watching me, I returned to the helm, pushed the engine gear lever forward, and slowly opened up the throttle. The boat moved slowly at first; then, as the speed increased, her stern lowered, her bow arose, and she was leaping again into the blackness of the night like a sprung hare. Now that the squall had disturbed the sea, her bows butted and battered, rammed and thundered over and upon the crests of the wakened seas. The hull gave off a rumbling sound to accompany the screaming whine of the engines. Once in a while a great dollop of green water, with a spitting zizz of spray, sped over the bow. We were moving at speed now, and I stared through the windscreen between douses of water. The sea now looked as if it had picked up its baggage and was moving swiftly to the star-spangled edges of the world. Even the stars themselves—the ones low down on the horizon—seemed to be marching with Aries, trying to race her toward our goal—or our doom.

  All through the night we continued at full speed, crashing and bashing our way toward Polaris through sudden patches of pale silver moonlight reflected off the surface of the liverish sea-swells.

  Toward four-thirty I picked up the loom of Cabrera light. I asked Reynaud to relieve me at the wheel while I checked our position with the hand-bearing compass. I marked the position on the chart. Then, as I returned to the helm, I glanced at Tony and nodded toward the chart. He nodded back at me and strolled over to the chart table. There I had scrawled “5 a.m.”

  At four-fifty we could see the light itself quite clearly. Minutes later Reynaud went down to check the engines. They were in a compartment abaft and below the wheel-house, and reached by opening up two hatches. As soon as Reynaud had gone, I shouted at Tony, “Now!”

  He raced—almost fell—down the short ladder at the after end of the wheelhouse, and I tumbled down after him. We both grabbed the engine compartment hatches and slammed them shut. By now Tony was lying right across both hatches.

  “The lanyard,” I screamed at him. He fumbled in his pocket and passed it to me. “Roll over,” I shouted.

  I passed the lanyard again and again through the two ring handles of the hatches, securely lashing them together. “Out of the way,” I shouted. “He might have the bloody gun down there!”

  Tony shot forward on his belly away from the hatches. I raced to the helm and put the engines into neutral, then ran to the small workshop at the after end of the superstructure and searched for a suitable metal bar. I found a steel wire-splicing fid, about a foot long. I hared back to the lower midships passage, where Tony was standing, shaking, and where we could hear and see Reynaud pounding on the underside of the hatches, trying to force them open.

  “I don’t think the gun’s down there, old chap,” said Tony in a high treble, staring at the hatches mournfully.

  “Hang on the slack there, mate—let’s make sure that bugger . . .” I stood on one side of the hatch, and, with the point of the fid, lifted the ring handles and sli
d the fid through them, all the while hearing Reynaud’s bellowing below. “Get me something heavy to knock this in with,” I said.

  Tony soon returned with a small grapnel, and with it I rammed the fid home so that it wedged well and true into the brass rings.

  We stood back, looking stupidly at each other for a minute, until Tony grinned. “Now what?” he panted.

  “Now we find that bleedin’ gun, mate! Before we do anything else . . . even if we have to rip this bloody boat apart.”

  Even as I spoke the engines died. There was a silence for a minute, until Reynaud shouted, “If you let me out of here I will pay you ten thousand dollars!”

  “Where’s the machine-gun?” I shouted back at him.

  “What are you talking about?” he replied, in French.

  “You know bloody well you kept the gun the soldier gave you. You don’t come out of there until you tell me where it is.”

  “I have it down here,” he replied, “and if you do not let me out I will shoot my way out . . .”

  “You’re a lying bastard!”

  “He’d have shot his way out by now,” murmured Tony, grabbing the handrail of the ladder to steady himself as the boat pitched.

  “You stay here.” I handed Tony a heavy fire extinguisher which had been stowed in a bracket in the passage. “If that son-of-a-bitch starts to force the hatch open, crown him. I’m off to find that flamin’ gun.”