We Saw The Sea

by John Winton

  Cynical as they were and scornful of anything designed by the Admiralty, the sailors (and their officers gathered discreetly in the rear) could not restrain a gasp of awe and admiration. If Bat Masterson had designed The Thing, then the man was an artist. It resembled a harpoon gun but was bigger and more robust, as though its harpoons were armed with atomic warheads. It looked as light and fragile as a spider’s web but as strong as steel scaffolding. Its long barrel leaped from a pedestal as graceful as a woman’s throat and tapered to a sharp antenna-like point. The butt was a solid block studded with gauges and coloured levers. In spite of their long sojourn under a tarpaulin the paintwork and the glass were still bright and shining. It was a beautiful Thing.

  There were two bucket seats upholstered in red leather by the breech. The Conference Pear climbed into the lower and Bat Masterson into the upper. They pulled several of the levers and studied the gauges. The Thing began to hum and slowly revolved through an arc of a circle. The barrel depressed and elevated again. By means of a small joy-stick Bat Masterson controlled The Thing as effortlessly as a conductor waving a baton.

  “O.K. Bat?” Mr Merrydown called up from the base of The Thing.

  Bat Masterson, assured of his audience and determined not to waste a minute of the limelight, gestured impatiently.

  He began to demonstrate The Thing, playing upon it like a sensitive instrument. The Thing was incredibly quick, one moment inching round, snake-like and menacing, and the next lashing suddenly in a half-circle, making the sailors watching drop back a pace.

  “Are you all right, Bat?”

  Bat Masterson bared his teeth in a grimace of exasperation. The barrel quartered the sky, waving gently like an insect’s feeler, then locked rigidly as though it had scented a target, and tracked steadily across the horizon. The Thing accelerated until it was spinning rapidly on its axis and Bat Masterson was indistinguishable except for his flying white hair.

  “Are you all right, Bat?”

  The spinning slowly stopped. Bat Masterson reset the levers. The hum died away. Bat Masterson and the Conference Pear climbed down.

  “ --- lovely,” said the sailors. “But what’s it --- for?”

  The Bodger had the same sentiments. Cautiously, he sounded Mr Merrydown.

  “Quite an impressive thing, isn’t it?” he said, cunningly. “What is it exactly?”

  But Mr Merrydown was not to be drawn. “Can’t tell you that, I’m afraid,” he said. “This is just a prototype. If it works we’ll build a bigger job ashore and if that’s a success we’ll make another shipborne one. Then we’ll go back on shore again and finally we hope to have something for service in the Fleet.”

  “But how long will that take?”

  “Years, old boy, years. Rome wasn’t built in a day, you know.”

  Mr Merrydown walked away, chuckling.

  “Today’s beautiful thought,” said The Bodger.

  The ship settled quickly on her passage to the trials area. Conditions on the messdecks and wardroom of Carousel, a ship isolated in a tropical climate for most of the year, were ideal for the growth and flowering of individual idiosyncracies; any man who had a mole or wart in his nature found a fertile atmosphere in which to develop it.

  Every messdeck had its mouth-organists, rug-makers, marquetry-workers and ship-modellers. Everyone had some means of leisure employment; those who did not knit, or embroider, or write pornographic poems, sat in corners and grew beards or contemplated suicide. In the wardroom, the P.M.O. opened a file on any officers whose behaviour he considered was trespassing nearer than the norm to insanity. The file swiftly included most of the wardroom. The P.M.O. wrote brilliantly reasoned letters to The Lancet upon environmental insanity.

  A large canvas swimming pool was erected on the fo’c’sle, fed by water from the firemain. In the dog watches, there was deck hockey and clay pigeon shooting on the quarterdeck, boxing on the upper deck, judo and weight-lifting on the boat deck and all over the ship naked sun-worshippers stretched themselves out, burning themselves a darker mahogany brown. Spin-Dryer Boy disappeared one night.

  Bat Masterson’s skill with The Thing had made him one of the most popular men on board and such was his personal standing that his invention was nicknamed Miranda. Every morning a large crowd watched Bat Masterson put Miranda through her paces. The sailors came to know all her tricks and recognized all her characteristic sounds. Above all, the sailors enjoyed Bat Masterson’s pièce de résistance, when he spun Miranda like a top until he himself became invisible but for his flying hair. The performance was always rewarded by a round of clapping, shouts of “Encore” and, from the Instructor Officer (who was a balletomane) “Bis!” Bat Masterson flourished under the applause; he would bow to each side and descend, flushed and smiling, each silver hair on his head standing rigid with gratification.

  At dawn after a week at sea the Navigating Officer informed the Captain that the ship was in position for the trials, midway between Wake Island and the Marianas and more than two hundred miles from the nearest land.

  The Captain, who was looking through binoculars at a small brown cloud on the horizon, grunted disbelievingly.

  “I’m not so sure about that, Pilot,” he said. “What do you make of that cloud over there?”

  “I would say it was a cloud, sir.”

  “Would you! I would say it was land.”

  The Navigating Officer made a pretence of looking again. It was an important part of his job to humour the Captain in the very early morning.

  “It can’t be land, sir. I’m sure it’s a cloud.”

  “Trouble is that it’s almost in the sun and I can’t make it out clearly. But I bet it’s land.”

  “There isn’t any land there, sir,” said the Navigating Officer aggrievedly. The Captain was blaspheming against everything the Navigating Officer held sacred.

  “I know it’s land.”

  The Navigating Officer heard, in his inmost soul, the sound of the veil of the temple at H.M.S. Dryad being rent from top to bottom.

  “We’ll go and have a look anyway.” The Captain took a bearing. “Come round to zero four five. I’ve got a feeling in my water there’s something funny going on over there.” As they came nearer it was obvious that it was no ordinary cloud. It was isolated on the horizon, a single stain on the hard blue sky. It changed shape very slowly, elongating and gaining height. It appeared to be hanging over the surface of the sea. At about ten miles distance the Captain could see that the cloud was in fact mushroom-shaped, consisting of a broad hazy head supported on a thick black column. The starboard look-out stiffened and shouted.

  “Green four five sir, large eddy on the sea, sir!“

  “Look at that! “

  Broad on the starboard bow, a gigantic eddy swirled and subsided again, as though a huge mouth had opened in the sea.

  The Captain ran his finger along the bridge rail. “Volcanic dust, or something like it.”

  From two miles, the cloud’s components could be seen clearly. The mushroom head was a dense dust haze and the stalk was a rain of boulders and lava. Beneath the falling, erupting boulders, not more than fifty feet high, but plainly visible, was an island.

  “What did I tell you, Pilot!“ cried the Captain jubilantly. “It’s land after all! The damn thing must have been forced up from the sea bed. If we came back here tomorrow there probably wouldn’t be a sign of it. Pass the word to that press representative. This is right up his street.”

  The ship began to swing wildly off course.

  “Thirty of port wheel on, sir!” shouted the helmsman. “Can’t hold course, sir!”

  “Hard a port!”

  “Hard a port, sir. . . . Wheel’s hard a port, sir! Ship’s not answering, sir! “

  “Very good. Midships.”

  “Midships. . . . Wheel’s amidships, sir.”

  Carousel spun like a toy boat in a bath. On either side swelling eddies surged up and shoals of fish swirled to the surface and were dragg
ed down again. Solitary waves, lead-coloured and as much as twenty feet high, reared and fell onto the upper deck. Carousel had been caught in an oceanic convulsion like the birth pang of the planet itself.

  Fine dust drifted and settled on the upper decks and superstructure and the Captain found time to think of the Commander’s face when the watches fell in to scrub decks.

  “Senior Engineer on the telephone, sir. He’ll have to shut down the main engines soon, sir, the sea temperature’s over a hundred, sir. . . .”

  “Main switchboard report two turbo-generators off the board, sir. . . .”

  Stephen Ropehead appeared on the bridge and the Navigation Officer rolled a frenzied eye at him.

  “Here you are! Put this in your damned scandal sheet! “ Stephen looked at the thundering column of boulders, the huge livid waves leaping and plunging at random in every direction, and the yellow banks of dust. He shrugged his shoulders.

  “No human interest,” he said.

  The ship swung her stern to the island and the Captain seized his chance.

  “Hard a starboard!”

  “Sea temperature’s still rising, sir. . . .”

  “Full ahead together! Bugger the sea temperature!” Black smoke poured from the funnels as the chief stokers in the boiler rooms ordered more sprayers. Shuddering along every girder and plate as she strained round in her turn, the ship fought clear and, still accelerating, glided into cool blue water.

  “Half ahead together.”

  The bow wave dropped. The boiling wake subsided. The Commander appeared on deck and glared in disbelief at the dust on the quarter-deck.

  “Let that be a lesson to us, Pilot,” said the Captain. “Mind your own bloody business until after breakfast!”

  The ship returned to normality so quickly that it was difficult for the Captain to believe that the volcanic island had not been a phantom; only the cloud, now far astern, remained as proof that he had not dreamed the whole incident. The dust, however, was not a trick of imagination. It lay thickly all over the ship and the seamen had to use hoses to wash it off.

  Mr Merrydown appeared on the bridge.

  “Pity we couldn’t have avoided the dust, Captain,” he said severely. “It’s very bad for the works.”

  The Captain remembered. “The trial! I’d forgotten about it. What are we to do now, Pilot? We obviously can’t have it here.”

  “We can go north about fifty miles from here, sir, and still be in the area. It brings us a bit nearer the shipping routes but it should be pretty clear. It’s been published in the Notices to Mariners.”

  The Captain snorted derisively. “Fat lot of good that will be. If you want to keep anything a secret, publish it in Notices to Mariners. We’d better close up radar. We’ll start the trial at nine-thirty. What do you want us to do, Merrydown?”

  “We’d like to fire the first one with the ship stopped, Captain. Then at low speeds, working up to as fast as you can go, steaming on a north-south line. Then we’ll do the same thing on an east-west line. Finally we’ll fire with the ship circling. After that, Bat and I will correlate the data and decide whether we require another set of readings.”

  At nine-thirty, Bat Masterson stepped proudly up to Miranda, like a conductor mounting his rostrum. All the other mornings had been rehearsals; this was the performance. Bat Masterson and the Conference Pear climbed into their seats, made switches, set levers, and waited for Miranda’s tuning noise, warming the intricate circuits and relays in her interior. But Miranda remained passive and silent. Patiently, like a rider whose horse is being fractious, Bat Masterson went through Miranda’s starting routine again. But still Miranda refused to start. The sailors watched with bated breaths; their hearts were with Bat Masterson.

  “What’s the matter, Bat?” Mr Merrydown shouted from the screen.

  Bat Masterson ignored him and set himself to start Miranda. No theatre organist practising for an audition, no lathe operator turning out jobs against the clock, could have rivalled Bat Masterson’s performance in the following minutes. He pounced from knob to lever and from lever to switch. He set gauges to zero and levers to maximum. He reset gauges to full deflection and levers to neutral. He tried every permutation and combination of the controls. But Miranda remained unresponsive.

  At last, red-faced and unable to meet the eyes of the sailors, Bat Masterson climbed down and opened a small tool box set in Miranda’s base. He took out a crank and inserted it in a hole in the side of the pedestal.

  “Well, goddamn my old sombrero,” said The Bodger. “It’s a starting-handle! “

  But the starting-handle was of no more use than anything else. Bat Masterson and the Conference Pear both tried. But Miranda refused to start.

  Paul and Mechanician Fogarty--with bundle of cotton waste and a hammer--waited at the base of the pedestal. Although neither of them knew anything about Miranda, they had both felt that they ought to be there.

  “What’s the matter, Bat?”

  Bat Masterson turned and gestured hopelessly. He was almost in tears.

  “I don’t know. She’s never done this to me before.”

  Mechanician Fogarty tired of the inaction. He strode forward firmly and struck Miranda a resounding blow on the barrel with his hammer. Immediately Miranda hummed into vibrant, chuckling life. Bat Masterson and the Conference Pear leaped into their seats and tried out the controls. Miranda functioned perfectly, performing all her set pieces, even to spinning like a top; she had recognized the hammer blow of a master.

  “Thank God for that,” said the Captain. “Can we start now, Merrydown?”

  “As soon as you’re ready, Captain.”

  “Anything on radar?”

  “Scan clear of all contacts in long range, sir.”

  “Very good. All right, Merrydown, it’s all yours. The ship’s stopped and we’re heading north.”

  “Right. We’ll fire the first one on a bearing of red three zero.”

  Bat Masterson brought Miranda to a bearing of red three zero. As soon as he had set the bearing and bent himself to the firing circuit, Miranda trained herself to a bearing of green three zero. Again Bat Masterson brought her to point on the port bow and again, slowly but inexorably, Miranda swung round to starboard.

  “What the hell’s wrong now,” the Captain muttered. “What’s the matter, Bat?”

  “She’s preset to green three zero. It must be the computer.”

  “Does it matter whether it fires to port or starboard?” the Captain asked.

  “Not at all, Captain. All right, Bat, we’ll fire the first one on green three zero.”

  Bat Masterson made one more attempt to point Miranda on red three zero but Miranda was adamant. “Check radar,” said the Captain.

  “Scan clear of all contacts in long range, sir.”

  “Very good. Go ahead, Merrydown.”

  Bat Masterson held up his thumb. The Conference Pear, in the lower seat, held up his thumb. Beetle and Mr Merrydown held up their thumbs and all the sailors standing in rows in the background held up their thumbs. Mr Merrydown completed the count-down.

  Whatever her other shortcomings, Miranda fulfilled all expectations in her moment of truth. The cable deck, A gun deck and Miranda herself disappeared in a pall of black smoke. The thunder of Miranda’s mighty voice rolled away into the sky and the violence of her recoil shook Carousel from end to end. When the smoke cleared Miranda and Bat Masterson and the Conference Pear could be seen spinning like a top.

  ‘‘Goddamn my old sombrero!”

  “Are you all right, Bat?”

  “Scan clear of all contacts in long range, sir.”

  “Red rocket fire on the starboard bow, sir.”

  “What’s that?”

  “There’s another one, sir.”

  “Does this thing fire a red rocket when it lands, Merry down?”

  “No. The nose cap stains the water yellow.”

  “My Good God,” whispered the Navigating Officer, piously, “we’
ve hit some poor bastard. Right in the middle of the Pacific! With the press on board too! “

  Through his binoculars the Captain could see the thin tracing of a rocket on the horizon. As he watched, it was followed by another and by a puff of black smoke.

  “Scan clear of all contacts in long range. . . .”

  The Captain’s face distorted in a hideous grimace of rage. “Somebody tell that man to stop making bloody stupid reports before I go in there myself and . . .”

  The Navigating Officer sprang into the Radar office. He found Able Seaman Golightly, the R.P. rating on watch, conscious that there was some upset on the compass platform, studying his plot and anxiously turning the tuning dials.

  “I think the set’s off tune, sir.”

  The Navigating Officer controlled himself. “Now you tell us,” he said coldly.

  “Contact zero-two-nine,” reported Able Seaman Golightly suddenly, “forty-five thousand yards, moving slowly left, range closing, sir.”

  “That must be the nose-cap,” said Mr Merrydown. “Nose-cap be damned!” the Captain retorted. “That’s a ship and there’ll be hell to pay if your damned machine’s hit it! Well, we’ll go and see. Come round to zero-two-nine,” he said to Michael, who was Officer of the Watch.

  Michael took a professional pride in bringing the ship to her new course with the minimum of helm orders. Besides, he was conscious that Stephen was watching him.

  “. . Midships, steady.”

  “Midships, steady, sir. Zero-two-six, sir.”

  “Steer zero-two-nine.”

  Michael lifted his head from the compass.

  “Hobbes,” said the Captain, “never give a helmsman the order ‘Steady’ unless you’re within two degrees of your course.”

  “Aye aye, sir,” said Michael, his cheeks burning. He could see Stephen grinning. The Captain, too, had noticed Stephen; he had a momentary vision of the headlines--“Navy’s secret weapon strikes innocent ship”--”Another Lucky Dragon?” For a moment the Captain sighed for an old-time sea captain’s power of permanent arrest.