I don’t think even then I had any real sense of uneasiness. The reason I could not sleep was just that my mind was full of so many things. My hammock swung with the movement of the ship. My stomach recorded each swoop. I felt the slight shudder as the bows struck the next wave and then my back pressed hard on the canvas of my hammock as we rose. Sills suddenly tumbled out of his hammock and was sick in a bucket behind one of the cases. His face was green and shining with sweat as he sat with his head in his hands on one of the cases, moaning slightly. The air became foully sweet and nauseating. At twelve-thirty I got up and went outside. “Just going for a stroll round before I relieve you,” I told Bert. “Sills has been sick.”
I went for’ard and stood for a moment in the lea of the bridge structure. The wind was nearing gale force and a biggish sea was running. White-caps went hissing past in the dark, dimly seen blurs of white that gave a frightening picture of black, angry water. Footsteps sounded on the iron plating of the bridge over my head. I heard the Captain’s voice say, “The glass is still falling.”
And Hendrik replied, “Aye. It’ll be a dirty day to-morrow.”
“Suits us, eh?”
They spoke quietly and only the fact that I was standing directly beneath them as they leaned on the canvas windbreaker of the bridge enabled me to overhear their conversation.
“We’ll make it to-morrow night,” Halsey went on. “Have you switched the watches?”
“Aye, Jukes will be at the wheel from two till four to-morrow night,” Hendrik replied.
“Good. Then we’ll make——” Halsey’s voice was lost to me as he turned away. Their footsteps faded slowly over my head as they paced back to the other wing of the bridge.
I did not move. My mind had fastened on one point in that scrap of conversation—they had switched the watches and Jukes would be at the wheel between two and four the next night. Jukes! According to the cook’s gossip, he was a seaman who had been with Halsey on the Penang. They’d a right to switch watches. Jukes was a seaman; no reason why he shouldn’t be on duty at the wheel. But why had Halsey said that it suited them to have a dirty day to-morrow. Had there been a U-boat warning? There were a dozen explanations for the scrap of conversation I had overheard. Yet it is from that moment that I can definitely say I had a sense of uneasiness.
I don’t know how long I stood there under the port wing of the bridge. It must have been some time, for when I became conscious of my surroundings again, I felt wretchedly cold. I walked briskly round the deck and the flying white-caps hissing past us through the darkness seemed to surround the ship with vague menaces.
When I relieved Bert, he said, “You bin for a long stroll, Corp. Thort you’d fallen overboard.” He leaned his rifle against the after-deckhousing and lit a cigarette, hiding the glowing tip of it in his cupped palm the way you learn to in the Army. He leaned against the rail watching the great whale-backed waves slide under our keel. We didn’t speak for a while. But at length he said, “Yer very silent ternight, Corp. Not worried aba’t them seals being broke on that case, are yer?”
“Not particularly,” I said.
“Gosh! You don’t ’alf sound miserable. Wot’s on yer mind?”
For a moment I was tempted to tell him all the little bits of gossip and scraps of conversation and half-toned suspicions that were wandering in a tangled mêlée through my mind. I wanted to talk it over with somebody and have them reassure me that it was all nonsense. But in the end I said nothing.
“Thinkin’ of yer girl, are yer?” Bert persisted. Then he asked, “You ’ave got a girl, ain’t yer, Corp? Never seen no photograph up over yer bed.”
“Yes. I’ve got a girl,” I told him.
“Well, cheer up, for Gawd’s sake,” he encouraged.
“We ain’t doin’ time.” Then after a moment’s hesitation he said, “You ain’t in trouble wiv yer girl, are you? I mean, she ain’t got tired o’ waitin’ or anyfink like that?”
My mind switched to Betty. She was so sane and practical. She would have cleared my mind of uneasiness in a moment. “No, not exactly,” I said, glad of the opportunity to talk about something else. “But it’s she who insisted on my going for this commission. I don’t want to. The truth is, Bert, I’m not cut out for it—not in the Army. If I’d been able to get into the Navy it would have been different. But not in the Army. But her family is Regular Army and she’s been badgering me to go for a commission ever since I was called up. A few weeks back she wrote saying either I took a commission or she’d break off our engagement.”
“Well, so you oughter take a commission—eddicated bloke like you.” Bert gave vent to a cackle of laughter.
“Cheer up, mate,” he said. “It ain’t as bad as you fink being a jolly awficer. Wish I could shout a’t in the morning—‘Private’ Iggins. Where’s me boots?’”
But my mind had gone back to the conversation I had so recently overheard. “Bert,” I said, “have you had a chat with any of the crew since we’ve been on board?”
“’Corse I ’ave,” he replied. “Don’t we mess wiv ’em? I’m practically a life member. Why?”
“Know a seaman called Jukes?” I asked.
“Jukes? Can’t say I remember the name. But then I knows ’em mostly as Jim or Ernie or Bob.”
“Or Evans?” I asked.
“Evans. A little Welshman wot never stops talking? There’s two of ’em da’n there—Evans an’ a bloke called Davies. Talk aba’t laugh! They’re like a couple of comics. Why do you ask?”
“Point Jukes out to me next time he’s on deck, will you,” I said.
“Okay.”
He drifted off to bed shortly afterwards. At three o’clock I called Sills. He looked weak and ill. But I thought the fresh air would do him good and left him vomiting over the rail.
Next morning, the 4th of March, dawned grey and cold. The cloud was practically down to sea level and a thin, driving sleet reduced visibility to a few hundred yards. The wind was at gale strength out of the nor’-nor’-west and the ship staggered and corkscrewed her way through giant waves, burrowing her bows into their green bellies and tossing the stinging spray across her decks from end to end. Just ahead of us, and yet on the edge of visibility, the blunt stern of the American Merchant, a Liberty ship, wallowed through a welter of shaggy white-caps, an ugly slug of a ship, half hidden in spray. Two vague shapes pitched in the sleet-grey void to the south of us and across the starboard rail, just visible, was the sleek outline of the destroyer, Scorpion, rolling crazily with the sea washing in a smother of foam across her decks. Behind us was nothing but the white path of our wake, obliterated almost instantly by the raging waters. We were the last ship in the northern line of the convoy. I remember feeling thankful as I went on duty that we were no longer at the height of the U-boat campaign and that there was little likelihood of our having to take to the boats.… It was a vicious sea, with the wind whipping the spume off the breaking wave tops like white curtains of steam.
Twice during the morning the destroyer came alongside to order us to close the American Merchant. Each time she thrashed off into the grey sleet to speak to other ships like a fussy little hen overburdened with a brood of ugly ducklings. About two o’clock in the afternoon Jennifer Sorrel came and chatted to me. She looked wan and cold. Her skin had an ivory transparency that made her look as though she had the beginnings of jaundice. She talked of her home near Oban, her yacht, the Eilean Mor” which had been requisitioned by the Navy in ’42, of her father. Her dark hair blew about her face and her teeth flashed gaily in the dull daylit misery of our surroundings. Her lips were almost bloodless and she bemoaned her inability to obtain any lipstick in Murmansk as though that were the greatest of all the misfortunes that had befallen her.
I asked her if she was comfortable. She made a wry face. “The cabin’s all right,” she said. “But I don’t like the officers. Oh, Cousins is all right—he’s the young second officer. But Captain Halsey terrifies me and that drunken beast of
a Chief Engineer—I’m having my meals served in my cabin now.”
“Why?” I asked.
“It was the Chief Engineer. I couldn’t stand him ogling me across the table. He was drunk, of course, as usual. I thought I’d got used to that sort of thing. But somehow you don’t expect it in your own race.”
“What about Rankin?” I said, feeling unaccountably angry. “He’s always with the Chief. Does he annoy you?”
“Oh, no,” she said with a little laugh. “He’s not interested in women. Surely you realised that?”
We then got on to the subject of sailing. We exchanged notes on all the various types of boats we’d sailed. About two-thirty she said she felt cold and went below. Sills relieved me at three. His face was dead white, but he swore he felt better. I went below for a mug of cocoa and took it into the crew’s mess-room. Bert was in there, cracking jokes with five or six of the crew. I sat down beside him and after a moment, he leaned towards me and whispered, “You was mentioning Evans last night—well, that’s ’im, ’long at the end o’ the table there.”
The man Bert pointed out to me was a little fellow in dirty blue overalls with a thin, crafty face and dark oily hair. He was talking to the man next to him who had a broken nose and the lobe of his right ear missing. As I sat there drinking my cocoa and watching his crafty little face, I began to wonder how he would react if I mentioned the name Penang. The man next to Bert suddenly pulled out his watch. “Four o’clock,” he said. “Come on, me lads.” Two others scrambled to their feet. When they had gone it left only Evans, the man with the broken nose and a pint-sized old fellow with a tubercular cough.
Evans was telling the man with the broken nose about a tanker he’d sailed in that had run hashish for an Alexandrian Greek. He spoke very fast in an excitable Welsh sing-song and he had a queer way of moving his arms to emphasise a point. “I tell you, man,” he said at the end, “that was the daftest ship I ever sailed in.”
I couldn’t resist it. “What about the Penang?” I said.
His head jerked round in my direction, eyes narrowed. “What did you say?” he asked. His companion was staring at me too.
“The Penang,” I said. “You were talking about queer ships. I should have thought she was the queerest——”
“What do you know about Penang?” growled the man with the broken nose.
“Just gossip,” I said quickly. They were both watching me closely, bodies taut as though about to spring on me. “I live in Falmouth,” I added. “Sailors back from the China Seas used to talk about her.”
Evans leaned towards me. “And what makes you think I was ever on the Penang?” he asked.
“Captain Halsey was the skipper and Hendrik first mate,” I explained. “I heard that you and a man named Jukes——”
“My name’s Jukes,” growled the man with the broken nose.
“Go on,” snapped Evans.
I didn’t like the look of it. Juke’s brown hand had slowly clenched as it lay there on the table. The index finger was missing, but even so his fist looked like a sledge-hammer. “I heard you had sailed with Halsey before and naturally I though you must have been with him on the Penang.”
“Well, we wasn’t, see,” snarled Jukes.
“My mistake,” I said. And then to Bert, “Come on, time Sills was relieved.” Jukes thrust his chair back and started to his feet as we began to move. But Evans restrained him.
“Wot’s up wiv ’em?” Bert asked as we got outside. “You mentionin’ that ship seemed to get ’em proper scared.”
“I don’t know—yet.” I said.
Another thing happened that evening. Bert relieved Sills an hour before midnight. I was in my hammock, half asleep, when Sills came in. “You awake, Corporal?” he asked.
“What is it?” I said.
“Is it all right if I go and kip down in one of the boats?” he asked. “Bit stooffy laike in here an’ I’d feel more comfortable in’t fresh air.”
“It’s against regulations to get into the boats,” I said, “But it’s none of my business where you sleep.”
He went off then and I settled myself to sleep. In less then ten minutes he was back again and jerking at my shoulder to wake me. “What is it now?” I asked.
“Have you got a torch?” he whispered. He was excited and a bit scared.
“No,” I said. “Why? What’s up?”
“Well, it’s laike this, Corp,” he said, “I got in’t boat and was just settlin’ down naice an’ comfy when I felt boards give under me. I felt around with me ’and and I could move ’em. You come an’ have a look.”
I climbed out of my hammock, got my boots on and went for’ard with him. The boat he’d climbed into was the one on the port side, Number Two boat. He climbed underneath and felt around on the seaward side of the keel. “There,” he said, “feel that.”
The wood was wet with spray. I felt the ribs of the planks under my fingers. I pressed against them. They were solid enough. I moved my hand further out, up the port side of the boat, and suddenly one of the planks moved. The next one moved and the next. Altogether five of them were loose. It was only a slight movement. One or two of the screws had probably rusted. Without a torch it was impossible to estimate the extent of the damage. But it was the boat to which we had been assigned if anything happened and I didn’t like the thought of those loose planks. “I’ll go down and have a word with Mr. Rankin,” I said.
Rankin was in the Chief Engineer’s cabin as usual. The place looked just the same as that first night we’d come on board. The Chief was lying on his bunk, Rankin sitting on the end of it and the cards between them. The place was littered with bottles and thick with cigarette smoke. “Well, what is it, Corporal?” Rankin asked.
“I’ve come to report Number Two boat unseaworthy,” I said. “I think Captain Halsey should be informed.”
“What the devil are you talking about?” he cried. “Your job is to run a guard, not to go nosing round the ship.”
“Nevertheless,” I said, “some of the planks are loose in the boat and the Captain should know about it.”
“How do you know about it?”
“Sills discovered it,” I told him. “He climbed into the boat to get some sleep in the fresh air. He reported to me that——”
“Good God!” Rankin interrupted me, flinging his cards down on the bed. “Haven’t you more sense than to let your men go sleeping in the boats.”
“That’s not the point,” I said. I was beginning to feel angry. “I went and had a look at the boat myself. Five planks are loose and my view is that she’s in no fit state to take the sea if the necessity arose.”
“Your view!” he sneered. “My God! anybody’d think you were one of their Lordships instead of a bloody little corporal. What the hell do you know about boats! You wouldn’t know the difference between a cutter and a sieve. Now get back to your guard.”
“I’ve been sailing all my life,” I told him sharply, “and I know as much about small craft as any man on this ship. That boat is the one allocated to us in the event of boat stations and I’m reporting to you the fact that it’s not seaworthy. I insist that you pass on my report.”
Rankin looked at me for a minute. He wasn’t sure of himself. He turned to the Chief Engineer. “How often are the boats inspected?” he asked.
“Oh, about every week,” the other replied. “In fact Hendrik and one of the men were working on ’em while we were in Murmansk.”
“I thought so.” He turned back to me. “Did you hear that, Vardy? Now perhaps you’ll stop getting panicky.”
“I don’t care when Mr. Hendrik was working on them,” I said. “The boat’s unseaworthy at the moment. Come up and see for yourself.”
He hesitated. Then he said, “I’ll have a look at in it the morning. If there’s anything in what you say, I’ll report it to Captain Halsey. There, will that satisfy you?”
“I’d rather you came and looked at it now,” I told him.
“T
hat’s out of the question,” he said. “The ship’s blacked out. Anyway, if there were anything the matter with the boat nothing could be done about it till daylight.” And with that I had to be content. Almost I was convinced that Sills and I must have been mistaken. Down here in the solid bowels of the ship the slight movement I had felt in the planks of the boat seemed unreal and not very important. But one little fact rattled uneasily round my mind. Hendrik and one of the men had been working on the boats in Murmansk. I turned into the galley for a chat with the cook and casually, in the course of conversation, I said, “Did you notice Mr. Hendrik and one of the men working on the boats when the Trikkala was in Murmansk?”
“I believe they were doing something to them,” he said, sleepily stroking the cat which purred contentedly on his lap.
“What was wrong with them?” I asked.
“No idea,” he replied.
“Who was working with him?” There was no suspicion in my mind as I put the question. I asked simply because I thought it might be one of the crew I knew and I could then find out what work they had been doing on the boat.
But the cook’s reply shattered my peace of mind. “Jukes,” he said and the cat purred.
Jukes! Jukes at the wheel in the small hours of the morning. Jukes working on the boats with Hendrik. Jukes sullen and suspicious at the mention of the Penang.
I went up on deck and paced the ship in the mad flurry of wind and driving spray, my mind a turmoil of half-formed suspicions, doubts and uncertainty.
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