The shuddering continued and I could feel the ship straining, as if trying to force itself forward. I stood stock still, not knowing what to do, trying not to panic. Slowly the immense vibration stilled, and the engines became quiet.
We had stopped.
In the middle of the ocean?
But what had thrown me out of bed? I grabbed a pair of trousers, jumped into them, threw aside the two chairs and the suitcase, picked my way through the broken glass, and rushed out into the corridor. It was then that the bell shattered the silence, piercing my brain like the scream of a banshee.
One of the officers came charging down the stairs leading from the bridge, his face panic-stricken, eyes wide. “Quick, quick! Get your life-jacket and go to your boat station. Please hurry!”
“What’s happened?” I yelled at him. “Why the hell have we stopped?”
He kept moving towards the doors leading to the deck, turning his head to me as he went past. “No time, no time. Get life-jacket and go to boat deck, now! Go!”
There was terror in his eyes.
I shot back into the cabin. But where the hell was the damn life-jacket? I remembered seeing it when I had first arrived on board and had immediately thought of the Titanic. I found it stuffed under the bunk behind the other suitcase.
Nobody had shown me how to use the awkward lump of padding, but somehow I managed to get it on. It seemed to be the right way round. At least the tiny plastic light was at the front.
Right, I had done the first thing he had told me. What was next? The boat deck. It was the one where the lifeboats were kept; only logical I suppose. I raced up the stairwell, two steps at a time, or probably four; my body about two seconds ahead of my brain. I burst through the door and stumbled out on to the boat deck to find nearly half the ship’s complement darting about in a panic. The other half was probably on the starboard side, running around in similar circles.
The crew had the lifeboats swung out and were preparing to lower them. And then it hit me. They were abandoning ship! We were sinking!
The marijuana!
I wanted to scream at them. Never mind the women and children! Save the cargo!
I stood dumbfounded. It wasn’t the thought of being tossed around in a tiny boat in the middle of the ocean that had pole-axed me. It was the grass. All that money and no insurance, no comeback, nothing.
We clustered together; each of us top-heavy in life-jackets. It was the closest I had ever got to any of the women. What a time to think of sex. But at least it showed that I hadn’t completely lost my mind; I still had some of my priorities right.
We must have been out on deck for all of ten minutes, milling around while the lifeboats swayed out at the end of their ropes. It’s a long time when you’re expecting the ship to sink under you at any second.
At the end of that eternity the first officer came down from the bridge and gave the order to stand away from the boats; but to leave them swung out and ready to be dropped. At least I think that’s what he said. My Chinese or Malay is non-existent; but that’s what they did in any case. By this time I’d had enough.
“What the goddamned hell is going on?” I yelled, trying hard to keep my voice from wavering. “Will you people stop all this jabbering and waving of bloody hands and tell me in plain English what the fuck is going on!”
The first officer turned to me. “Please remain calm Mr. Rider.”
Remain calm! That was a joke. All around me people were panicking and running out lifeboats; and he was telling me to remain calm. What the hell did he expect?
I stood with my mouth open as he continued.
“We have hit the reef, and we are still sitting on it. I don’t think we have been holed and we aren’t taking on water.” Oh, terrific! “Please keep your life-jacket on and stay out on deck until the captain issues further orders.”
With that he was off again, back up to the bridge with the captain. Some captain! So damn smart, with his currents and his fancy charts, that he couldn’t even steer clear of a huge great reef!
The all-clear was given about an hour later, and by that time it was obvious that we weren’t going anywhere. Sunrise was still a long way off, but there was enough moonlight to tell that we weren’t moving; weren’t even rolling with the swell. We were stuck fast.
The main engines had been shut down, but I could still hear the auxiliaries humming. Everything else seemed to be functioning: water – both hot and cold – still came out of the taps; the electric power was working; and I could smell food cooking.
There was nothing said by those who came down for that meal, everyone alert, listening, waiting for another sudden lurching of the vessel.
It was still that twilight between night and day, with the false dawn colouring the faint horizon to the east; but it was not yet light enough to take stock of the situation, to see where in the hell we were. The saloon was a hive of conversation, questions being asked and surmises being made. It was the second officer, taking a minute or two for a hurried breakfast, who gave me the few brief details of the ship’s condition.
The engine room had been checked, as had the shaft tunnel. There were no apparent leaks in the engine room and only a couple of minor ones in the tunnel, but both of these were normal, leaks in the propellor-shaft gland and nothing to worry about.
We lingered over coffee. There was nothing else to do but wait for the sun to come up.
After breakfast the whole of the ship’s complement wandered up and down the deck – including the women. There was hardly a breath of wind and the only sound was the hum of the auxiliaries, quietly throbbing away deep within the hull.
The crew stared at me solemnly, as though suggesting that it was my fault, their looks saying that if Pete hadn’t died this wouldn’t have happened. Passengers on a cargo ship were bad luck. I could almost read their thoughts. One or two spat in my direction. Not at me, but the intent was plain. I was the outsider, someone to blame.
The deck was fast becoming a place to avoid. The miserable sons of bitches were capable of anything; so I made my way up to the bridge. With any luck the captain would be on his own, and I had a few things I wanted to put to him in no uncertain terms.
He was not alone. The chief engineer and the electrician were with him, all three grouped around the radar console. The cover was off.
“Well, what in the name of hell was wrong with it?” I heard the captain ask, addressing his remark to the electrician: a wiry Chinese of uncertain age, dressed in a once-white boiler-suit, pockets loaded down with an assortment of screwdrivers and pliers, the boiler-suit undone to the waist.
The electrician scratched his bald head, glanced down at his grimy leather sandals and then back up to Flint. “Nothing that I can see.” His English was good. “It’s working perfectly now. I can’t see any loose connections. The transistors all seem to be operating okay under full load. There doesn’t appear to be any power fluctuation. If there had been, it would have blown a fuse; but it hasn’t.” He scratched his head again. “I can’t find a thing wrong. Are you certain it wasn’t accidentally switched off?”
Flint glared at him and was ready to explode, but saw me out of the corner of his eye as I stepped into the room; and then he let fly. “What the hell do you want, Rider?”
“Flint!” I yelled back at him. “When I took this bloody ship, I didn’t expect to wake up in the middle of the night and find myself flung out of bed to the sound of screaming alarms. Never in my wildest dreams did I expect to be told to take to the boats like something out of the Wreck of the Titanic! And yet here we are, shipwrecked on some bloody reef out in the middle of some bloody ocean!”
I was starting to get steam up. He stood to his full height, glowering, sun-cracked hands on hips. But there was no stopping me once I got going.
“I thought maybe you might at least be kind enough to tell me a bit more about the situation.” I snapped sarcastically. “Are you going to get this bloody boat off this fucking reef? Or are we
going to sink to the bottom of the goddamn sea, cargo and all; or fucking what?”
I realised too late that I had expressed concern for the cargo.
He didn’t move a muscle, waiting for me to get it all out. Then he spoke, a steely calm in his voice.
“Mr. Rider, I didn’t invite you on board my ship, and at the moment you are the least of my worries.” He paused. “But, in order to put your mind at rest, and to get you off my back, I can tell you that there’s no chance of the ship sinking at the moment.” He moved over to the wide windows overlooking the bow of the ship. “We are hard up on this fucking reef – as you so delicately put it – and we’re likely to stay here for a while; unless we can get her off on the high tide. As soon as it gets light we will have the hatch covers off and examine the holds for damage. As far as I can tell, we haven’t taken on any water.” It was getting better all the time. “With luck we might be able to back her off on the high tide this afternoon …., at about one o’clock.”
He sounded confident, but he sure as hell didn’t look it; and if he thought that was the end of it as far as I was concerned, then he was mistaken.
“Okay, Captain,” I said, quieter now. “That’s point number one. Now for the second point. How the hell did it happen?” He straightened up even further, chin jutting forward. “You told me there would be no problems until after we rounded the tip of New Guinea; and even that would only happen if the weather cut up rough. So, what did bloody happen?”
I had calmed down; but it was a deadly calm. They had done about as much to me as they could do. This time I was fighting back; letting them know that I was not something to be ignored. My cargo was at stake; my entire future on the line.
He looked at me and then at the other two; but they turned their heads to the radar. It wasn’t their fight. This time it wasn’t the booze that turned his face crimson – it was fury. I was criticizing him and his ship. He was shaking, his lips quivered, but I held my ground, my anger matching his. I could see veins throbbing in his temple.
And then he realised that he was captain, that he was in charge and that it was up to him to defuse the situation before we were at each other’s throats.
“I don’t know,” he finally replied, holding his temper back. “The ship was on automatic pilot, with the third officer on watch. He checked the compass bearings at about three in the morning. We were bang on course.” Not an apt choice of words, but I let it pass as he continued. “The radar was functioning normally when he went into the chart room to plot the next change of course. He says he was only in there for ten minutes or so; spending the rest of the time in the wheelhouse. During the watch he checked our course on the radar every fifteen minutes.”
So far so good. Everything normal and yet we still end up on a reef. He went on: “Some time before four o’clock the officer realised that the wheel wasn’t moving from side to side, as it should have been. He called down to me on the bridge phone and I told him to check the course on the radar.” Here comes the crunch, I thought to myself. “It wasn’t working, so he called me again.”
He was sweating, and the sun wasn’t even up yet. I wasn’t certain whether he was hiding something, or having trouble getting his thoughts in order.
“Go on,” I said. “What happened next?”
“Before I could get out of the cabin door, I felt her ground. I raced up here, pushed the boat-stations alarm and rang for full astern. But it was no use.” He paused. “We have shut down the main engines until we can assess the position. Hopefully, we’ll be able to get her off with the engines at high tide, but we can’t really do anything until then.”
“Well?” I asked. “Was the radar working when you got up here?”
“No.”
He started to sweat again. He was worried about something; something that he didn’t want me to know.”
“But I just heard the three of you talking about it. I heard you say it’s working now. I distinctly heard the electrician say there’s nothing wrong with it. So what gives?” It didn’t make sense. If a thing was out of order, then it normally stayed that way until it was fixed.
“When the third officer called me in my cabin, he told me it wasn’t working. As soon as the engines were moving at full astern, and I was certain the crew had moved to their boat stations, I checked it myself. It wasn’t giving a read-out.”
“When did it start working again?” I asked.
I was getting nowhere fast.
“She wasn’t budging,” he continued. “So I rang for the engines to be shut down. Then I went below to check out the engine room and the lower decks with the chief engineer. When I got back to the wheelhouse the radar and the autopilot were both functioning again.”
“What’s this about the autopilot?” I asked. I still hadn’t found out why we had gone so far off our course to be able to strike the reef.
“The autopilot steers the ship without the need to have somebody on the helm. It’s driven by an electric motor and directed by the master compass. As far as we can figure out, some fault in the electrical system blacked out both the radar and the autopilot.”
“So in other words, Captain,” I said. “Somebody must have tampered with both units.”
His complexion, which had subsided to its normal ruddy glow, went crimson once more.
“Don’t be bloody ridiculous!” he snapped. “Why don’t you bugger off and let us get on with our job!”
I had struck a nerve. There was only one explanation as far as I could see. Someone had entered the wheelhouse and shut off both the radar and the autopilot without the third officer knowing anything about it. He had probably pulled out the fuses, or some such thing; and the only way he could have done that without the third officer knowing, would have been if that bastard had been asleep. It was either that or he was involved.
For some reason somebody didn’t want the cargo to reach Singapore; but what good would it do them sitting out on a reef in the middle of the ocean? It didn’t make any sense – unless we had competition. Perhaps they wanted to destroy the cargo so they could supply Tek with their own grass.
I ambled down the steps from the bridge. The captain had told me to leave him alone, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t have a chat with certain other people: the third officer, for instance.
I knocked on the cabin door. There was no answer, so I knocked again, putting my ear to the panel and hearing a low moan coming from the other side. The knob turned easily in my hand as I opened the door and walked in.
He was lying on his bunk, still fully clothed, staring up at the ceiling, his shoes lying on the floor where he had kicked them off. I pulled a chair across and sat down facing him, not saying a word. He didn’t look too pleased with himself; but then who would in his position? It isn’t every day that a young third officer manages to put a ten thousand ton ship, and forty people, up on to a reef.
“How do you feel?” I asked. It seemed the best way to start the conversation; making him feel as though I was interested in his welfare. He glanced over at me.
“Very tired. I am so tired.”
His eyes were red and bloodshot, the pupils mere pinpricks.
“Is that why you fell asleep on watch last night?” I asked quietly. It was a shot in the dark; but I didn’t think it was too far off the mark. He jerked up, nearly hitting his head on the top bunk.
“Who said I fell asleep? I was on watch. There is no way I would fall asleep on watch. The whole ship is depending on me.”
He was scared; his face now ghostly white. I leaned closer.
“I happen to know that you did fall asleep last night, Third,” I whispered. “Don’t ask me how I know. I do, and there’s no use denying it.” I could see the blood drain even further from his face, if that were possible. “But if it’s any comfort to you, the captain doesn’t know.”
His eyes pleaded as I continued.
“And he won’t hear it from me ….., provided you tell me exactly what happened.”
&nb
sp; He looked at me in terror. If the truth got out it would be the finish of his career at sea. The shame would probably kill him; if the rest of the crew didn’t get to him first.
He swallowed and wiped the back of his hand across dry lips. “Do you give your oath that you will not reveal what I tell you?” he asked, beads of perspiration sliding down his forehead. He looked sick, and I thought I knew what had caused it.
“If you’re telling me the truth, then your secret is safe. Go ahead.”
If he thought it was going to end right there, he was very much mistaken. If I had to lay the bastard before the captain to get the rest of the story, I wouldn’t hesitate for a minute. I had too much to lose. I didn’t want the crazy maniac behind this mad scheme opening up the sea-cocks, or whatever it takes to sink a ship.
He lay down on the bunk and went back to staring up at the ceiling. I sat and waited.
“I went on watch at two o’clock,” he finally said. “The second officer went through the course settings before he handed over to me. I checked our heading on the radar and there was no deviation. Then I went into the chart room to see what distance we had travelled since I had been on watch early yesterday morning. After that, there was nothing else to do, so I sat in the master’s chair.”
He was more relaxed now, relieved to get it off his chest. I nodded and listened as he went on with the story.
“At about half-past two, the steward brought my coffee.” It was what I had been waiting for. “I took it into the chart room and sat down at the chart table. There was a magazine lying on the table, so I started to read it. The next thing I knew, I woke up to find that I had fallen asleep across the table. I felt terrible.” I bet he did. There had probably been enough of something in the cup to knock him out for the rest of the night. “My head was heavy and I had trouble shaking off the drowsiness. It was like waking up after falling asleep in the hot sun.” He paused, remembering the feeling of stupidity. I had to keep him going. I couldn’t let him dwell on it or his drugged brain might put two and two together.
THURSDAY'S ORCHID Page 17