The Coffin Ship

by Peter Tonkin

  The parrot, of course, deserted as soon as it saw the sky.

  She had taken perhaps ten steps upward when the ladder toppled sideways with the rest of the hull. She twisted, reaching up for the lip of the hatchway with her right hand while keeping firm hold of her lifeline with her left. In this position she hung while the felucca pivoted round her. The hatch that had been a hole above her became almost a doorway framing her as she faced inward. She pushed off hard and stepped back into the dazzling, roaring day.

  At once, the seat on the boatswain’s chair under her left armpit took all her weight; but as it slid up past her ribs, it gathered her shirt into a pad which, during the next few minutes, protected her shoulder from serious damage.

  As soon as she swung out of the hatchway, the deck fell forward into her face. She brought up her arms and legs, bouncing off it as best she could, with elbows and knees. Everything was happening far too quickly now to allow her to plan ahead or even to think clearly. So it was that the broken railing round the edge of the deck was able to slide down unexpectedly and bash her over the crown of her head. She felt giddy; almost slipped into unconsciousness. But her lithe body just would not quit. Everything went extremely bright. Reality wavered. She seemed to lose contact with what was going on around her.

  The high aftercastle gathered her almost gently to itself, swinging in from her right as the wreck fell left. She flew out, spun around, came back in like a pendulum, in the grip of forces far beyond her control. When her mind cleared, she was just sliding off Prometheus’s huge torpedo-head protrusion on which the felucca had rested, and slipping down into the sea.

  Horrified, she looked up. In a mess, hanging out over the side, destroyed by the same physical forces that had been sporting with her over the last few minutes, the tripod of the boatswain’s chair protruded like a bizarre bowsprit. Then this, too, seemed to swing into dizzying motion as the water took her and swept her into the boiling bedlam of the bow wave.

  Her head only went under for a second; then she was gripping madly with her left arm, the strain beginning to tell in her shoulder joint, and she rose above the surface a little. The weed-and barnacle-encrusted side of the ship pressed against her. The movement of the monster through the sea tried to suck her under once more, but the trusty rope, and the trusty men on the far end of it, would not let her down. Instead, she ground back toward the stern, losing a little skin from exposed parts of her body, as though she were being keel-hauled. By this stage, she would have been glad enough to go free, even if it meant being sucked to oblivion under that long, long hull; but something in her made her throw her right arm up instead to grasp the rope above her head, relieve the pressure on her shoulder a little, and hang on like grim death.

  The rope angled back from the forepeak now, tight as a fishing line, with her body riding the inner curve of the bow wave some twenty feet back. The pendulum effect had pulled her almost half out of the water and, because only her legs were still submerged, she was slowly spinning round and round, so that some of the time she was facing the black hull and some of the time she faced Madagascar nearly two hundred miles away.

  It was on one of the occasions when she was facing out that the flying fish returned. Something really panicked them this time and Robin’s mind was suddenly filled with visions of sinister shadows cruising the depths. Instead of running parallel to the ship, as they usually did, they hurled themselves straight at the side, and at Robin. One moment the sea rolled away smoothly, the next its bright blue surface exploded with bodies. Wings spread wide, they hurled themselves into the air just above her head. She quailed automatically, giving her shoulder a nasty twinge, and almost let go of the rope with her right hand, so overpowering was the desire to shield her face. Then they were on her. Luckily, only the youngest and smallest hit her. The rest smashed into the metal above her and fell back, stunned, down into the sea.

  Those few that did hit her were quite enough, however, for there was no way for her to protect herself and no time to try to turn. They connected with bruising force. She tried to disregard them, grinding her heels against the metal in an effort to stay still as she looked for what had spooked them. But there was nothing there.

  How long had passed since the felucca fell free she had no way of knowing, but the shock had cleared her mind and this was her first opportunity for anything approaching coherent thought. So, as she held herself facing out, as much by an effort of will as anything else, looking for a shark’s fin near at hand, she began to wonder how she was going to get out of this.

  The constant pummeling motion of the water over her skin had already killed off most of the sensation below her waist—if only it could do as much for her shoulder, which was really starting to hurt! Even if she could pull free, she could not trust three of her limbs to get her up the rope, then. But she wasn’t looking forward to being hoisted up fifty odd feet by her shoulder either.

  It was only at this point, really, that she began to regret the adventure.

  “For a parrot?” Richard could hardly believe it. “She went down after a parrot?”

  “It sounded like a child.” Kerem was insistent: the third mate had not been foolhardy.

  Neither of them was standing still to have this discussion. While the rest of the team were holding the rope safely, the captain and the young Palestinian were trying to put together enough of a line to lower some help. They rapidly tied several shorter pieces of rope together, testing the knots with vicious wrenches to ensure they were secure. In their skilled hands, it was the work of a few moments.

  As soon as the second line was ready, Richard began tying it round his waist. There was no alternative to going himself. Ben was below somewhere, in his office, probably. John was on the bridge. There was no time to get either down here. Robin seemed safe enough for the moment, but there was no time to hang around practicing theoretical leadership. And in any case, it never even occurred to Richard that he should send someone younger, less senior, more expendable. He had never been the sort of captain—or person—who put his dignity first. If it was dirty, if it was dangerous, Richard had always led from the front; he saw no reason to change now.

  And the fact that it was Robin suddenly made an unexpectedly powerful difference.

  As soon as the rope was tied, Richard looped it around the rail twice so that it effectively went through a pulley, making it easier for Kerem to lower him unaided. Even so, Kerem looped the far end around his own waist, glancing up as he did so: if you go, I go. Richard had time to nod once, in curt recognition of the gesture; then he stepped over the rail and, leaning back against the tension of the rope, he began to walk backward down the side.

  Things went wrong at once. The tumblehome was angled more acutely than it seemed, effectively giving an overhang. The metal was too wet and slippery for the grip even of his desert boots. What ought to have been a careful, controlled descent became an undignified scramble. But at least—by the skin of his teeth—he did not fall. And that was really all that counted.

  Fifteen feet down, the side was perfectly vertical again, though even more spray-covered and slippery. He took the opportunity to slow his descent and to check below. Robin didn’t even seem to have noticed that he was coming. She was flat against the side of the ship facing out, looking steadfastly toward distant, invisible Madagascar. He need not pause to look down again: he could judge how close he was getting to her by the angle of the rope stretching, almost straight, between her shoulder and the forepeak. He looked back up. High in the hard blue sky, vivid even at this distance, the parrot that had caused all this was heading for the massive, distant island.

  He eased the rope around his waist and called up as loudly as he could. The rope lurched into motion once more. After a few more minutes, he could feel the spray from the bow wave on his bare legs and Robin’s rope, straight as an iron bar, was angling down close by. He yelled again and his progress stopped. He turned carefully, and there she was, a matter of feet below him, at that
instant looking up to see where the noise had come from. Their eyes met and she smiled. The smile of a perfectly happy woman.

  “KEREM!” He was in motion.

  Five seconds later, at the top of his lungs, “KEREM!” again.

  He stood astride her and leaned inward to take her gently under the arms. Her face twisted at once and he saw the danger posed by the boatswain’s chair. But there was little time to consider alternatives. He slid his hands round between her back and the cold side of the tanker, gathering her to him in a gentle bear hug. At once the rope round his own waist cut more deeply. No help for that either.

  As soon as her feet were clear of the water, the weight of her rope pulled them left, nearly upsetting Richard’s precarious balance. But the men on the deck understood the change in tension. A head was thrust briefly into silhouette over the edge of the deck and the boatswain’s chair fell free. Richard and Robin swung back, his feet skipping and dancing over the metal, trying to keep their purchase. The strain on his arms intensified. The rope bit deeper at his waist. He took the first step on the long walk home.

  There were willing hands enough to lift them in over the rail. John had remained on watch on the bridge, but he had got hold of Ben, who had arrived on the forecastle head too late to do anything other than to heave with the rest. In that psychic way he seemed to have, Chief Steward Ho had heard too, and, having high regard both for his round-eyed captain and the barbarian woman, he, too, had hastened here, collecting on the way Salah Malik, who had just completed the second, fruitless, search for Hajji Hassan.

  In the final analysis, their presence was the most germaine. As Richard and Robin sank to the deck, side by side, water spewed out of Robin’s sea-filled shirt, and in it, the smallest of the flying fish that had bombarded her earlier. They all stood looking at it. Hajji’s winnings had gone back into the pot. The fish was worth two hundred dollars.

  Robin pulled herself up. Her shoulder hurt, but she would survive. And she was determined to get back on duty as soon as possible. She looked at them all standing watching the flying fish dance.

  “Salah,” she said firmly, “you’d better share the winnings from this one round the team,’cause I’ll be damned if I’m going to get you another one.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  After the adventure of the felucca, Prometheus proceeded west of south and early August passed in a deceptive, haunted calm while they sailed under Capricorn and out of the Mozambique Channel. The calm was both haunted and deceptive almost all because of Hajji Hassan. The cause of his disappearance remained a mystery. Richard interviewed anyone who had anything to say, formed his own conclusions, and filled in the logs and the Accident Reports accordingly. After that, it seemed, he was gone for good. And yet he left something of himself behind. Something more even than Levkas’s doomed crew. Perhaps because they had all known him; perhaps because none of them had liked him much; what ever the reason, it was he, the crew said, who was always there, just beyond the edge of your vision. Just behind you. It was his breath that stirred the hair on your neck when you paused in the flat bright corridors in the night to listen to the haunting music one of Ho’s men played on a mysterious Eastern flute.

  But, beyond this, the haunted calm was deceptive because on board there were plots and currents under the busy surface that boded no good at all. And because, far to the east and south, a weather system was building that would come close to destroying them all.

  Robin had had every intention of returning to duty before the end of her first watch, but Ben had gone soft on her and filled her so full of painkillers before he dared try sew up the small wound on her scalp caused by the felucca’s rail, that he knocked her out for nearly a day and kept her in bed for several more.

  Richard took her watches, and this was no bad thing. While on the one hand it tied him down—he had to be on the bridge at certain times—it also brought him out of his captain’s solitude and dumped him right back in the swing of things. With the action forced upon him, he was happier at once. Nor was this a quiet time for anyone else. There was painting to be done; all sorts of maintenance to be completed before they reached the Cape in less than a week’s time. And, while South Africa is as near the equator as Florida, nevertheless it was winter in the Southern Hemisphere and rough weather could be expected.

  The working day stretched from dawn to dusk and then beyond. Suddenly it became the rule rather than the exception for small groups of men to appear and disappear at odd times, and to demand food when everyone else had just eaten or were still fasting. The entertainments committee disbanded itself, without having entertained anyone other than themselves. The true brains of the ship moved from the bridge—and the Engine Room—to the galley. This was the time “Twelve Toes” Ho and his men came into their own. No demand was too great; no requirement too unreasonable. As the machine of the crew—above deck and below—ran more and more rapidly, they poured the oil of their service on all the working parts. No matter who left what berth in how much of a mess when called away on some errand, it was all neat and tidy on his return. No matter what nameless accident with what filthy part of the engine, there were always clean, freshly pressed overalls available. Ho even set up an elementary watch system so that there would be someone in the galley at all times.

  At midnight, local time, August 4, however, there was no steward there at all. Which made it all too easy for the tall figure in white overalls to put the poison in the food.

  He came into the galley with the plan already formed in his mind, hesitant only about the final touches. Aware that he was unlikely to remain undisturbed for long, he paused, enjoying the pressure. He did not want what he was doing to take immediate effect but he needed it to be active at a certain time, in a particular place. Under predetermined conditions.

  Yes! That was it! What did you consume under one set of circumstances that you tended to avoid under others?

  He smiled grimly and went to work.

  The storm came whirling out of the east two days later.

  They had been trimming the edge of a seasonal high ever since they had left the Mozambique Channel and the barometer had been standing at 1025 for days, with wide skies and quiet seas to show for it. On the afternoon of the 5th it began to rise rapidly. By sunset it stood at 1037 and John was shaking his head while everybody else was perspiring in the sort of heat they should have left in the Gulf.

  “I don’t like the look of this at all,” observed Ben when he relieved Robin at midnight.

  “What can we do?” The third mate shrugged—she could shrug now with no discomfort to her shoulder, and was back on her first late watch. “I’d keep my eyes open, though.”

  “That’s sensible,” Ben agreed. “Only wise thing to do.” But his tone was distant.

  Robin didn’t need to ask why. He was checking her records. She waited. “Back down to 1025 millibars,” he observed.

  “Yup.” She shrugged again, wearily.

  She went to bed.

  By four, the barometric pressure stood at 1020. John noted the fact in the log when he relieved Ben.

  By dawn later that morning, the 6th, John was on the port bridge wing looking narrow-eyed into the heart of the pressure system that was all that lay between them and Australasia. The glass was falling fast. The sky was still blue, but its cerulean face was marked with high streaks of cloud and the distant horizon was dark.

  When Richard came onto the bridge at 07.15, John was still out there. Richard went out and stood at his side, following his gaze.

  After a while, John said: “‘Mackerel skies and mares tails/Make tall ships wear short sails….’ There’s a nasty one coming.”

  “The glass is at 990,” observed the captain coolly. “Of course there’s a nasty one coming.”

  During the next twelve hours, they altered course a point or two south, letting the coast of Africa fall away west on their starboard, giving themselves more sea room. When the monster hit, they were at 30 south, 40 east, fiv
e hundred miles off Durban.

  They had more warning than the falling glass and the darkening sky. They had more substantial danger signs than the increasingly agitated surface of the ocean and the hot, vicious gusting of the wind. Tsirtos started picking up distress signals as soon as the thing reached its full force to the east of them. Small ships and then large ones began reporting wind strengths off the Beaufort scale, mountainous seas, and unbelievably destructive electrics. They started asking for help, but nobody, it seemed, was too keen on going in to get them out. And as the day wore on, some of them started falling silent. Tsirtos’s mood went dark, then foul, like the weather. After the briefest communication with the desperate men, he felt as though he were losing personal friends to the storm.

  But soon enough he had worries of his own.

  The first he knew about their own position was an unexpected lurch that he felt even in the shack, as though Prometheus had hit an impediment solid enough to stop her for an instant. Everything loose in the little room seemed to spring forward. Some of it hit the wall in front. Most of it went onto the floor. Tsirtos looked blearily around. He had been concentrating so hard on his messages he had lost all track of time. It was 19.14: an apt enough hour for war with the elements to be declared.