‘Wotcher gettin’ at?’
‘Well, you and I are trying to find out things, aren’t we? Tell me—where was the chloroform, if it wasn’t in your pocket?’
‘On the grahnd.’
‘I see. And have you any idea how if got on the ground?’
And then Ben committed his blunder—the blunder he had been trying to avoid all this while.
‘P’r’aps you’d come back ter look fer it,’ he said.
His heart gave a leap the moment the words were out of his mouth. Now he’d done it! Lummy!
‘Come back to look for it,’ repeated the third officer slowly, and the point of his tongue appeared for a moment, as though to moisten suddenly dry lips. ‘Come back to look for it?’
‘’Ere, lemme go!’ exclaimed Ben, his anxiety growing. ‘Wotcher keepin’ ’old of me for? Yer gits me orl tied hup, and tha’s a fack. ’Oo sed anythink abart comin’ back? I ses p’r’aps yer ’d come ter look fer it—well, that don’t mean nothink, does it, when a feller’s bein’ got at like a Spannish Hinniquisishun. Lemme go, or I’ll ’it yer!’
To his surprise, the third officer let him go. The abrupt release gave the wind its chance, and sent him spinning towards the rail. He clutched it frantically.
‘Now you can begin your polishing,’ said the third officer, making no attempt to veil his sarcasm.
Polishing? Not it! It was clear by now, if it had not been all along, that Ben had not been brought to this deserted boat to do polishing. Then what had he been brought here for? The reason leapt at him with terrifying clarity. He had sensed it in his heart from the beginning, but had not known how to avoid it.
Ben’s world was no longer cheese and cigarette ends and Faggis and the girl. It was not the white-haired man with the sack even. It was the third officer, standing over him with piercing eyes and the expression of a man who has been driven inexorably to a purpose.
He tried to run, but now his arm was gripped again, and this time with iron firmness. The third officer glared directly into his eyes, but still kept up his game of bluff, even though their two souls were naked to each other.
‘Fool!’ growled the third officer. ‘What are you running for?’
Ben did not reply. What was the use?
‘Trying to get to the captain still, eh?’
Just keep quiet, that was the ticket. Get him off his guard, and then hit him. Biff and bunk. Biff and bunk. Biff and …
‘Tell me—how long had you been in that coal bunker before I found you, eh?’ came the third officer’s voice, like a low flaw in the wind. ‘Let’s have the truth this time!’
‘When ’e gits ’is fice a bit closer,’ thought Ben. ‘Then ’e’ll ’ave it!’
Of course, he could shout. He even prepared his throat at one moment to give the greatest bellow the world had ever known. But he knew his throat. It wasn’t doing what he was trying to make it do. And he knew the ineffective squeak that came from his throat when it was disobedient. It sounded like a hen swallowing a lozenge before it meant to. And then there was the wind. Who’d hear a shout in this wind? If they’d been on the weather side, there might have been a chance, but Ben was an old sailor, and he knew where you couldn’t spit.
The face was very close now. The words that came from it almost burnt.
‘Won’t answer, eh?’
‘Yus, I will!’ squeaked Ben, seeing red, green, blue, and every other colour. ‘Yer a dirty wrong ’un, and, tike that!’
He struck wildly. He hit the face. It was a moment worth living for and dying for. Well—living for. When he found he was going to die for it he rebelled. He rebelled with his arms and his legs, and his head and his mouth. Discovering that all these were useless, he went on rebelling with his mind. He drew a great picture of himself smashing the third officer to bits. He seized the bits and threw them high into the air. There he went! Up, up, up! Down, down, down!
‘Gawd—it ain’t ’im—it’s me!’
Realisation came back to him a blinding flash. He shot out his hands as space shrieked up to him.
12
Hanging over Space
By all the rules, Ben should have died. His ill-nourished body should have descended into the sea, and he should have passed on to whatever fate lies in store for human derelicts. But Ben did not respond to rules. If unexpected things were constantly happening to him, he constantly did unexpected things back. And he did one of the unexpected things now. He flung out his hands; and his fingers, instead of coiling round ungraspable wind, coiled round a thin wisp of solidarity.
Of course, it was ridiculous to imagine that the thin wisp would hold. In mental experience, you were already in the water before your fingers grasped the wisp. You had left your yellow penknife to your next-of-kin, you had come up three times, you had failed to come up the fourth time, you had drowned, and you had woken up in a little golden bed with angels standing all around you with plates of illuminated cheese. But here was this thin wisp bumping into Time and sending it backwards again. Time’s engine had been travelling at six thousand miles an hour, and now it had met another engine on the same track, had had a head-on collision with it, and had been shot back to the station it had started from. And here was Ben, clinging dizzily to one of the pieces!
‘Then I ain’t dead?’ he reflected.
It seemed not. The discovery, however, was not as consoling as it ought to have been. It brought new terror—or, rather, it revived the old. Had he been dead, life would have been over and done with. Now death lay still ahead of him, with all its pulverising horror.
The wisp he was clinging to was a rope. It was looping somewhere or other along the side of the ship, and it was below the level of the boat deck. Ben’s head, therefore, was also below the level of the boat deck, and he appeared to be facing a vast wall. He could not say what his legs were doing.
Well, there was only one course to pursue. That was to hang on. The vital question was, would the rope also hang on? Every moment Ben expected it to give way, and to accompany him on the postponed descent.
The rope did not give way. Evidently, he was doomed to remain suspended until he gave way himself. His strength was decreasing every instant, and he knew he would not have long to wait. The swaying of the boat too, did its best to shorten the time, bringing the wall towards him at one second, and then carrying it away the next. Now he was pressing too hard against the side, now he was rudely separated from it, and wanting it. Push … pull … push … pull. Like a lift that had toppled over and was breathing sideways. No comfort anywhere.
And then there was the wind. That often took a hand, as though it wanted a little of the credit for dislodging him. When the wall bore towards him and down upon him, he was sheltered, but when it bore away the sheltering roof disappeared, and the wind poured upon him, determined to be in at the death.
Oddly, the idea of shouting did not occur to him for some while. When it did occur, there seemed little hope in it. His shout would probably bring the third officer’s face over the rail above him, and the rope that separated Ben from eternity would be speedily loosened or cut. But as his fingers began at last to slip and slide, and his shoulders scarcely seemed any longer to be connected with his arms, a cry rose from his clenched lips. He was beyond adhering to any policy by now, for he was almost beyond adhering to the rope …
There came a blank, and then a moment of queer clarity. ‘All hover!’ he muttered, and said good-bye to the world. The world waved back. It ought to have been a handkerchief. That was what you generally waved with, wasn’t it? Well, then, why wasn’t this a handkerchief? Why was it another bit of rope?
The new bit of rope was undoubtedly waving to him. There it was, waving above his head, as his fingers on the old rope grew looser and looser. Backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards, now swooping down on him, now jerking up away from him, now swirling round him, like a seagull gone mad. All at once, through the glaze of Ben’s mind, dawned the glimmer of a purpose. Yes, the rope s
eemed to have a purpose. It wasn’t merely waving to him. It was trying to speak to him. ‘Don’t you see, I’m a loop!’ it was gasping. ‘A loop, man! A loop!’
Gawd, so it was! And the loop was descending lower and lower in its mad dance around him. For one insane second Ben thought it was a halo being lowered to him by God. Then a more earthly theory bounded into his mind. The loop was no longer gasping. It was shouting. ‘Get in me, man! Get in me, man! Get in! GET IN!’
His fingers on the other rope gave way, and opened wide. At the same moment, the loop of rope also opened wide, and swam down over his head. A convulsion occurred in space. A human knot writhed against the laws of gravitation and of logic. Had Einstein observed the human knot, he might have evolved an entirely new theory … And then something tightened round Ben’s waist, and his fingers found a new anchorage.
He no longer swayed in and out. He revolved round and round. Sometimes the wall came forward and hit him, but he didn’t mind. He just hung, letting whatever happened happen. It occurred to him presently that he was rising slightly. He wondered if he had turned into a tide. Then something else occurred to him. He realised that, by jerks and wriggles, he could assist the rising tide he seemed to be.
And with this realisation came hope and all its madness. When you know, for a certainty, that you have been dead, it is not easy to keep your wits about you. In a frenzy Ben clawed at the rope that gripped him, pulled on it, lurched up at it, jumped up with it, rose higher and higher with it. He began to laugh. His laughter was noiseless, for it was only in his mind. Higher and higher … higher and higher …
Now his hand was gripping something else. Something hard. Something soothingly unbendable. And now something was gripping him. Something he vaguely recognised. What was it? Something warm.
Ben sprawled over the hard thing and lay flat. The warm thing bent over him.
‘Quick!’ it whispered. ‘For God’s sake, quick … The boat!’
13
Grim Preparations
If ever you meet Ben and ask him to talk about his unexpected trip abroad, he will tell you of many things. He will tell you of ladders and of coal, of corpses and of sacks, of eyes that frightened him and of other eyes that comforted him—as, for instance, the brown eyes that looked down at his own dazed ones while he lay on deck sprawling back to life. He will tell you of an amazing journey in a small boat, and of an even more amazing journey on land that followed it, a journey through terrifying mountain tracks and haunted woods.
But he will not be able to tell you how he got into the small boat. That, to him, will ever be an impenetrable mystery.
He remembers the exhortation, ‘For God’s sake, quick! The boat!’ He remembers the conviction that somebody was asking him to achieve the impossible. Might as well ask him to jump over the moon! He would require at least a month before he could get back enough strength to move an inch from where he lay soaking the boards beneath him like a full sponge. The tiniest pressure on him produced a waterfall … And then, his next recollection is of lying in the boat, and of somehow having achieved the impossible!
He was on his back, staring up at stuffy, dark canvas. His mouth was wide open, and he was gasping like a caught fish. Of course, the achievement was not really his. The credit belonged to the owner of the brown eyes, who had prodded a dormant body into miraculous activity, and had assisted it, with only a few seconds to spare, into cover.
Now they lay side by side, eyes fixed unmovingly on the protective canvas, and ears alert for what was going on outside. The canvas covered them completely, making a low, tent-like roof. Ben’s companion was thoroughly efficient, and no opening had been left to mark the spot where they had entered …
Footsteps fell upon their ears. Ben often wondered why God had created footsteps. Life was much happier without them. The footsteps drew nearer, and stopped almost beneath the little boat. They stopped on the very spot where, only a few minutes earlier, Ben had stood with the third officer. Then low voices rose from the spot.
‘Here,’ said one of the voices. The third officer’s.
‘H’m! Made a bit of a splash, didn’t he?’ answered the other voice. Sims’s! The man with the sack!
There was a pause. Ben’s heart pumped, while he visualised the two speakers staring at the little lake he had made. He hoped there were other little lakes, to reduce the significance of his own.
‘Well, there’s been a bit of spray,’ remarked the third officer. ‘I don’t suppose he splashed quite as high as this.’
‘Probably not, probably not,’ said Sims. ‘Poor fellow! Fancy his falling in like that. What’s your theory? Suicide?’
A soft chuckle followed the suggestion, and an oath from the third officer followed the chuckle.
‘Shut that!’ the officer growled. ‘He toppled over. Working on the rail, you know.’
‘Yes, exactly,’ said Sims. ‘Exactly. And you weren’t quite in time to save him. Or perhaps you weren’t there at the unfortunate moment? What do you think? You’d come to see me about something perhaps, eh?’
‘Trot out what you think,’ retorted the third officer, rather irritably. ‘Let’s stop being funny, and have your opinion.’
There was another pause. When Sims resumed the conversation, his tone had altered slightly.
‘I’ll tell you my opinion, Greene,’ he said. ‘My opinion is that if you were present when our poor friend toppled over into the sea, your first duty would be to report the matter. You wouldn’t waste time chatting with a passenger, would you?’
‘Yes, but for our purpose he needn’t have fallen into the sea just yet,’ rasped the third officer.
‘That’s true,’ replied Sims. ‘He mustn’t have fallen into the sea just yet.’
‘’E ’asn’t,’ thought Ben.
A slight pressure of the body beside him implied that his thought was shared.
‘But his absence will have to be explained in due course,’ continued Sims, ‘and what we’ve got to do is to ensure that the explanation helps and doesn’t hinder us. And, by the way, I haven’t told you all of my opinion yet.’
‘P’r’aps I don’t want any more of it,’ interposed the third officer, smarting under the other’s sarcastic tone.
‘You’re going to have some more of it, just the same,’ answered Sims. ‘My opinion is that you’re a bungler, Greene, that we’re in our present nasty situation through your bungling—’
‘Here! Watch your tongue—’
‘… And that it is entirely due to your bungling that we shall be forced to alter the details of our scheme, and to act before we are quite ready to. In fact, Greene; through you we shall have to act now. Now!’
‘Well, and why not?’ demanded the third officer. ‘The position’s all right geographically. We’re across the bay.’
‘And any port in a storm, eh?’ said Sims. ‘It won’t be the particular port we’d decided on, you know.’
‘It won’t be the port we finally decided on,’ the third officer corrected him; ‘but we always had this one as an alternative—’
‘If things went wrong!’
‘Bah! Things haven’t gone wrong! North Spain’s as good as South. Don’t make difficulties! And, look here, Sims, you’re pretty glib with your criticisms! How have I bungled? Tell me that?’
‘How haven’t you bungled?’ retorted Sims. ‘That would be the difficult question to answer! In the first place, you bungled with the first stoker you selected to assist us. Why didn’t you wait? You should have waited till Tilbury. Then you’d have had my brain to add to the thing you call yours. But, instead, you show yourself a bad judge of character, dangle your prize before the wrong sort of man—and also before it was necessary—’
‘Well, I didn’t want to leave anything to chance, you fool!’ interrupted the third officer.
‘… And put the wind up him by asking him to help you in a job that now won’t have to be carried out at all! Because, obviously, we won’t be making use of the
coal bunker now, will we?’
‘Obviously not. Or of your sack.’
‘The sack? Ah, there I’m not sure. We’ll come to that.’
‘What about coming to it now?’
‘No, not for a few moments, Greene,’ said the owner of the sack. ‘I’ve got to impress you first with a sense of your inefficiency, so that, when we do discuss the sack, you won’t interfere with the project of a better brain.’
‘I’ve had enough of this, Sims! Do you want to join our friend and help him feed the fishes?’
‘To continue with the story of your bungling,’ the other went on calmly; ‘you allowed the stoker to escape. He’d never have wanted to escape if you hadn’t followed up your unsuccessful persuasions with bullying and threats. No wonder the fellow got scared!’
‘I was afraid he’d split—’
‘Finesse, Greene, finesse. Subtlety. Tact. The third officer of the Atalanta should be a master of them. But you don’t begin to understand them. And therefore you frightened this man, and he escaped from the ship to run about wild with a story he’d blurt out to the first policeman—’
‘You seem to forget, his mouth was closed rather effectively a minute or two after he escaped!’
‘Through no credit of yours. Having dodged you, he meets another man on the dock; imagines the other man is after him; the other man, who has just committed a murder in Hammersmith, imagines the same; there is a tussle, and the Hammersmith murderer commits his second murder in twelve hours.’
‘And I was a fool, I suppose, to seize a perfectly obvious opportunity?’ rasped the third officer, while Ben, a few feet away, revisualised the incidents at the dock, this time in all their correct detail. ‘Here was this other man—this fellow Faggis—wanting to quit the country; and here was I, wanting just such a fellow as Faggis! Terrible bungling that, wasn’t it?’
But the third officer’s sarcasm had no effect upon his critic.
‘The idea was all right, if you hadn’t rushed it,’ replied Sims. His voice, at moments, was like hard steel. ‘If you’d tested the position first—’
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