“Denny’s been around quite a bit, hasn’t he?”
“You bet. I wished I was as smart as that guy! Shucks, I’d never go to sea anymore!”
“Do the men aft like him? I heard there might be some trouble.”
“Most of them like him. Tex sure thinks he’s okay. Mahoney hates him because Denny whipped his ears down, if that’s what you’re askin’ about. Slug doesn’t like him either. But those two stick together, Slug and Mahoney.”
“You going to stay with this ship?” Harlan asked, turning to look at Shorty. “When we get back to ’Pedro?”
“I don’t know. She’s a good ship, except the food could be better. But maybe I just got the willies. I don’t know, I guess it’s all that naphtha tanker stuff; a guy can’t forget it. Denny says it’s the subconscious mind. He was going on the other day about those after tanks.”
Harlan turned again, sharply. “What about it?”
“Well, nothing you don’t know, I guess. But he was saying a tank that’s not full like that was dangerous. It gives the gas a chance to gather. He said there could be enough gas in there to blow the whole stern off!”
Harlan nodded thoughtfully. “Yes, he’s right about that. But it would take a spark or some flame to set it off, and the tanks are sealed at deck level and vented up above. The real trouble is if gas escapes belowdecks, then collects in a pocket somewhere else in the ship. But the Lichenfield is just out of dry dock. They even replaced quite a few rivets on one of those tanks you’re talking about. If you ask me, I think we’re as safe a ship as you’ll find on the water.”
“That’s good to hear, Mr. Harlan. But you know what they say: When you get to the point where you’re thinkin’ about it too much, it’s time to change ships.”
* * *
—
As Shorty sounded eight bells, Borly Shannon came up the ladder to the bridge. “Anything in sight, John?” he asked. “I figured you might be running into the Jap fleet out here somewhere.”
Harlan smiled. “What would you do if we did?”
“Nothin’, I’m a peaceable guy. Still, if anybody starts trouble we can break out our Lyle gun an’ let ’em have it! We could shoot ’em enough line to hang themselves with, anyway.”
“War’s something I don’t want any part of,” Harlan said, shaking his head. “It’s a silly business for supposedly civilized people. And no one gains. I seriously doubt whether they’ll ever finish another war.”
“Yeah,” Shannon said thoughtfully, “they’ll fight till the novelty wears off and then they’ll quit and come home. They’ll quit in droves just like the Russians did, and like the French tried to do. And like I wanted to do.” He grinned. “Killing people isn’t my idea of fun. I like to do my fighting with my fists!”
Shorty Conrad put the wheel up a couple of spokes to bring her right on the course. Deek Hayes came in to take over, and winked. “There’s a good poker game aft! Better cut yourself in—they need somebody with some money to lose!”
“Nuts t’ you, Sailor!” Shorty said, and spun on his heel, leaving the wheelhouse.
The afternoon sun had taken a downward slant toward the horizon, but long after it was dark back there in America, it would still be light here. Back there in America where Doc Dunlap, Mrs. Haley, and Faustine were living. Or were they? Might they all not be dead now? Gone?
Shorty Conrad paused by the rail and stared back toward the eastern horizon. Dead. It gave him a sinking feeling inside, a feeling of such sadness as he had not known before. His mother was dead. His father, a good-for-nothing dreamer, was no doubt also dead. His sis—he found himself wishing suddenly that he hadn’t come, that he had stayed ashore this trip, and put all his time to finding his sister. After all, someone in Hollywood might have heard of the family she went to live with. There were so many show people in town, and someone might know about the Mallochs or people in the British theater. He would have to ask Denny. He might know where to start asking around.
THE PRIVATE LOG OF JOHN HARLAN, SECOND MATE
March 26th: Borly Shannon was in a talkative mood yesterday, and I stayed on the bridge with him for almost an hour. He is a big fellow, with broad shoulders, a thick chest, and big hands. Shannon is a cool, careful officer with a way of getting things done, and having seen him twice under the stress of an emergency, I can appreciate the way his mind works. Danger sharpens his wits and every iota of knowledge he has accumulated suddenly falls into the proper place.
He was in a reminiscent mood yesterday and was telling me a strange story of an experience he had some twenty years ago down in the South Pacific. He was an able-bodied seaman then, sailing out of Melbourne by way of South Africa and on to Liverpool with a cargo of grain. Heading for the cape, they struck a heavy blow and were taken far south of their course. The storm blew itself out after three days of frightful winds and terrific seas, and Shannon’s description was vivid to say the least. In fact, with what came later, it was enough to make your hair stand on end.
It seems that somewhere (they weren’t certain, as it was heavily clouded and they hadn’t had a shot at the sun), probably in the vicinity of Latitude 57 degrees south and Longitude 123 degrees west, they sighted a sinking vessel. When they drew nearer they made it to be an ancient and very battered tops’l schooner with all the canvas blown away except for a jib. The mainm’st had crashed across the deck and left a tangle of rigging and broken spars. The decks were awash; it was a miracle the craft was afloat at all. They had lowered a boat and gone alongside, and there a strange spectacle presented itself. I wish I could write it here exactly as Borly Shannon told it, and will do my best, but his story was much better than I could possibly tell in any cut-and-dried narrative.
“You should have seen it, John. Sure’n a sight it was, like one of these here pirate yarns a fellow used to read when he was a mite of a lad. There was this man a-settin’ in the stern sheets lashed to the bloody rail, and fair mad with shock or hurt. His hair was blown by the wind, his face was unshaven, and his lips were cracked, but a handsome man he was for all of that. There was a knife stuck inches deep in the railing just to the left of him, and you could see with half an eye it had been throwed by someone who knew the way of it. The man was holding a pistol and cursing a blue streak. In all me days at sea I’ve not heard the like; poetical, but cursing that would still turn your hair.
“We took a look around, and you could see there’d been a bit of hell aboard that schooner even before the blow struck. There was another man a-lying sprawled in the companionway. The cabin was breast-high with water, and we didn’t go in, but there was two bodies a-floating in there that hadn’t come by death in the natural way of it. On deck we found another one: big and with a shock of red hair. He had taken some killing, that one had. But he was dead too.
“We got to the man in the stern and shook loose his lashings, and after a bit of work got him aboard our own ship. We was just hoisting our boat aboard when one of the hands give a yell, and we looked up to see the old schooner dip her nose under a big one. When that wave had gone on, there was no more schooner. A body would’ve thought the old scow just stayed afloat a-purpose to give us time to get our man off and away.”
“Did he recover? What was his story?” I asked.
“No, he did not recover. He’d been fetched an awful clout over the noggin with something, and when they peeled off his clothes they found he’d been shot through the belly, too.
“Guts, John. You’d never’ve thought it to look at him. A slim fellow he was, with pretty hands, and a body nicely made, but no great strength. You could see with half an eye he was not used to work. But he was a gutty lad, that one.
“We got his yarn, though, pieced it together from his ravin’ and loose talk. Three of them had come to a lonely island near Cook Bay, not far west of the Horn. One of them, a lad by the name of Tracey, he had a map showing where a powerfu
l lot’ve gold had been stashed. An old treasure it was; the Spanish from up north in Peru, they buried it there.
“Anyway, they found it. They hired the schooner and its crew and, by the luck of God, they found it. Then one of them lined up with the schooner crew and tried to take the gold. They had a fight, and killed Tracey, but our lad proved a stiffer sort than they figured on. Strange, but even as he was dying he was quoting poetry. I remembered it when I heard you reading Hamlet down there. He’d quote that stuff till you’d be blue in the face just from listening, and then he’d bloody well get to raving on this business aboard the schooner, mumbling something about the best role he ever had and not a bloody soul to see him!”
“An actor?”
“Aye, perhaps he was. Tracey, they figured, was the hard one. But this bleeding actor, he comes a-walking down there, playing it like there was an audience. Of course he would know what to do! He had played a hundred such scenes, but this one was kill or be killed…that was clear.
“And then the blow. That was the final touch. The old schooner battered and broken, slowly sinking in those cold, miserable seas, probably the last of them killed by the storm, for he’d been holding them at bay with an empty gun—those rats in the cabin thought he was just another man, they didn’t know he was d’Artagnan, Monte Cristo, Cyrano, any of a hundred heroes.”
And the man…the actor? I asked Shannon. I could tell this story appealed to his romantic nature.
“He died a day out of Punta Arenas.”
So, to end the story, he died and they found only one thing that might identify him, a bit of a letter and an old book in his pocket. Shannon has the book now. It is a copy of Macbeth. The name, written on the flyleaf in a large flowing hand, was Raoul Carmody. The letter, he said, was evidently from the man’s wife, but the postmark had been obliterated by the sea.
* * *
—
Today the sky is clouded, which, except for the warm temperatures, reminds me more of the North Atlantic than the Pacific. The low gray clouds seem scarcely above the ship’s topm’sts, and there is a slight sea running. Twice there have been brief dashes of rain. Maybe we are about to pay for all our fine weather; ships to the west of us are reporting a series of storms and we are headed directly for them, or they for us.
I expect I had better get my gear together, for I have to take a shot of the sun at noon, and Mr. Wesley will, as usual, want to be relieved on the instant. A nice boy, Wesley, but I’m afraid there isn’t much of a demand for his type. I have never seen a man so lacking in imagination. He is soon to be married, and I do not envy his wife.
Rain spattering against the glass of the port. It will be seaboots and oilskins today. I hear McGuire coming to call me now. I know his walk.
There, he is gone again, and just a few minutes now before eight bells, just long enough to add the last touch to the log for today. I told McGuire to get Shannon to tell him the story of the man they picked up in the South Pacific. I didn’t give him the details, for Shannon will do that better than I. It’s McGuire’s sort of tale, full of mystery and adventure and perhaps made all the better by an added detail or two.
I opened the door and McGuire was standing there, his black oilskins glistening with rain, his dark curly hair sparkling with it. He almost never wears a sou’wester, no matter how rough and dirty the weather.
“Looks like it was wet up there,” I said.
“Yeah, wet and rough,” he said, smiling grimly. “Why, it’s so wet we were sailing upside down for half the watch before Mr. Wesley discovered it. He tried to take a bearing and got a fish in his eye.”
“Come in,” I suggested, “and we’ll splice the main brace. Not,” I added, “that I approve of drinking on duty, but you’re going off watch, and from what you say I’ll not be able to see anyway!”
He laughed, and waited while I poured a drink for each of us. “Here’s to a good cruise, and a short voyage home!” he said. When we put down our glasses, I looked at him.
“McGuire,” I said, “I’m not going back. This time I’m staying out East.”
He started to say something, and then smiled. “Why not?” he said thoughtfully. “I might do the same thing myself, someday. There’s people who say there never was a Far East like Conrad and Kipling wrote about, but Mr. Harlan, they’re wrong. The gold and the glitter, the bright-colored batik, the deep green of the trees; the beauty, the crime, the death—you can find it all.”
He started to leave, and then stopped, his hand on the door. “Yes,” he said, “that is what you should do. You’ll like it, Mr. Harlan. There’s still brown sails on blue water, and lots of sky and clouds and little green islands.”
He went out, and I turned back to the sideboard and put the bottle away. Then I lifted my glass. “To Helen,” I said, “with the best of luck!”
GEORGE WESLEY
Third Mate
Mr. George Wesley appraised himself in the mirror. His carefully combed hair pressed smoothly against his skull, and the small, neat face beneath it pleased him. He turned carefully, adjusting the set of the blue uniform coat across his shoulders. He did not smile.
Daisy said he was good-looking. Well, perhaps not as much as some, but neatness and efficiency had to count for something. Poise too. At least he wasn’t like the second officer, John Harlan. Harlan allowed the men to think they were his equals. He had actually been back in the fo’c’stle talking to McGuire the other day. Wesley frowned into the mirror.
Even though the man was on his watch, Mr. Wesley disapproved of McGuire. He was too free and easy. A good seaman, he’d give him that. But wasn’t that what he was supposed to be? At least McGuire never tried any of that casual stuff with him! As for Worden, well, Wesley knew that story of the Rarotonga, and had his doubts. Worden a hero? Why, the man was a thug, a perfect roughneck!
Mr. Wesley stepped out into the passage, closed the door carefully, and started aft. During the life boat drill four days earlier he had noted a sticking pulley, and last night the weather had been rough and Sparks claimed that there was more to come. The pulley was the sort of minor malfunction that irritated him and he had it in mind to order either McGuire or Worden to fix it on the next watch. Safety was critical on a tanker and as third mate such things, especially when they related to the boats, were his responsibility.
The rain had cleared for the time being, and he passed several of the men playing cards. His lips compressed. They might at least stay inside or out of officer territory. It wasn’t his place to say what the men should do or not do when off watch, but someday he would be master of his own ship and then he’d see there was no card-playing.
McGuire was sitting on a crate near them washing a pair of dungarees. He looked up, nodding. Mr. Wesley nodded in return and looked down at McGuire, but the handsome seaman had already gone back to his work. Wesley blinked; somehow it was as if he had missed the opportunity to speak. McGuire had a reputation as a bit of a celebrity, and Wesley found himself both resentful and curious. Maybe it hadn’t been McGuire he’d seen in town. Still, it did look like him, and what right had a seaman knowing such people? A few questions before they got down to business would clear things up, they might even put the man in his place.
Mr. Wesley cleared his throat, and McGuire looked up. There was something disconcerting about the man. His eyes were so grave and yet there was always a glint of humor behind them somewhere. Mr. Wesley felt irritated. “Did you find work while we were in dry dock, McGuire?” he began.
“Me? I tried doing stunts in the moving pictures. Success has mostly eluded me, however.”
“Mr. Harlan said something about you fighting, that you were a prizefighter, or something of the sort. Is that right?”
“Yes, I’ve fought some.”
“You don’t look like a fighter, McGuire,” Mr. Wesley said, smiling a little. “Not exactly the type, are you?”
“What does a fighter look like?” McGuire asked, rubbing at a spot of paint on the dungarees.
“Well, I’d certainly say you don’t resemble one! I don’t imagine you fought very much, did you?”
“A great deal, as it happens,” McGuire continued. “Have you known many fighters, Mr. Wesley?”
“I? Of course not! Why?”
“I supposed, of course, that you did, as you were saying I didn’t resemble one. A man could hardly say that without knowing something about them, could he?”
Mr. Wesley was growing more irritated. He had left himself wide open, and felt it. “I don’t think that makes any difference,” he said. “The type is one I’m not interested in, but obviously it isn’t a profession that would attract a gentleman. The fighters I have seen resembled thugs.”
McGuire shifted a little on his seat and looked amused. “Well, Mr. Wesley, I guess I’ll have to take your comment as a compliment, then. I do believe, however, that the matter of a fighter being a gentleman or a gentleman being a fighter is one that depends entirely on the individual. Some men play golf, some play chess, some play with business. As for me, Mr. Wesley, I was a boxer, and I’d like to believe that, under the right circumstances, I could be again. As for fighters resembling thugs, I scarcely imagine you’ve seen many. I might mention Jimmy McLarnin and Tod Morgan as a pair who looked like nice schoolboys even when they were champions.”
“Well, maybe we’d better drop the subject. I think we scarcely agree.”
Wesley looked aft, where Worden stood by the rail talking with Sam Harrell, an oiler. “You have a double, anyway, McGuire. I saw a fellow at Hollywood Bowl the other night that might have been your brother. With a young lady I was told was an actress.”
“Double? No, I’m afraid that was me.” McGuire looked up. “I was with Faustine Carmody. I’m afraid she doesn’t share your prejudice against fighters, Mr. Wesley.”
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