In Hazard (18 page)

But it is not much use sending out a call for urgent help unless you know your actual position pretty certainly. There are methods by which other vessels can get a rough idea of your direction: but even then they may have a long search before they find you.

The estimated position Captain Edwardes sent out was plainly very wrong, by the messages that presently came pouring in—from vessels near that position, who found no “Archimedes,” nor even weather like hers.

If they had to make a prolonged search, help would arrive too late. For if the “Archimedes” was going down, she would do it quickly.

But if she did not sink in the next hour or so, with the wind gone the sea must presently moderate. Then she would be comparatively safe.

But still the sky was obscured: no chance of a sight of the sun, to tell him where he was.

One message that came was relayed from Boston—it was from his Owners, in Bristol:

“
Master Archimedes. Salvage vessel Patricia been searching you three days stop are you sinking condition query Endeavour utmost to ascertain your true position stop Sage.”

Captain Edwardes, his brown eyes staring brightly and his lower lip drawn over his teeth, seemed suddenly moved by determination and a kind of anger. He fished out a sodden wireless form from his pocket, dented it laboriously with a stubby blacklead:

“
Sage, Bristol. Hurricane moderating. Am confident of safety of ship will proceed Kingston. Edwardes
.”

He pushed the original and his reply under Mr. Buxton's nose.

The latter whistled faintly through a hollow tooth.

“Will proceed?” he said.

“Will proceed,” answered the captain.

Captain Edwardes blew a double blast on his whistle, and a little quartermaster came padding along.

“Ask Mr. MacDonald to step on the Bridge.”

Presently the Chief Engineer appeared: his eyes wild and bleary, his false teeth in his hand.

“Mr. MacDonald, what is it prevents you getting steam on the Donkey?”

“Nae funne'.”

“Well, the wind has moderated now. What's to prevent you rigging a jury-funnel? I want enough steam for the pumps in two hours. Can you do it?”

“A canna,” said Mr. MacDonald: “Bu' A can 'ry.”

So the engineers broke off one of the few tall, hooded ventilators that had remained unsmashed: and with the help of some cement stepped it on the stump of the old donkey-funnel: they guyed it very firmly with wire guys (which was very clever in that motion): then went inside again to try to light the donkey-furnace.

Four hours, not two, had passed when they had reluctantly to admit it was still no go. Even with a jury-funnel, the hot oil still ran out of the furnace door.

Captain Edwardes set his teeth, his bright eyes seeming concentrated on the problem of the present: but in reality his mind was travelling back into the past. His own past, before he joined the Sage Line: when he was still in Sail. For like every other senior officer in the fleet, his training had been in Sail, not Steam. It is only lately, when the supply of sail-trained officers has begun to run short, that most of the first-class steamship lines have begun to accept officers trained in Steam alone: have begun to train such officers themselves.

This seems an anomaly, to landsmen: that steamship companies should actually require their officers to have been trained in sail: landsmen are inclined to smile, as at a piece of foolish conservatism—as if London Bus-drivers were required to serve for seven years as stable-boys and grooms, before they were allowed to handle motor-buses. With so much technical knowledge to acquire anyhow, why waste the man's time in learning a useless and outmoded technique as well?

The answer is a matter of Virtue, really. For an inclination towards virtue (such as sent Mr. Buxton to sea) is not enough in itself; it must be trained, like any other aptitude. Now there is a fundamental difference in kind between the everyday work of a sailing-vessel and the everyday work of a steamer. The latter does not essentially differ from a shore job: it is only occasionally, rarely, that emergencies arise in Steam. But every common action in the working of a sailing-vessel, all the time, partakes of something of the nature of an emergency. Everything must be done with your whole heart, and a little more than your whole strength. Thus is a natural aptitude for virtue increased by everyday practice. For changing a jib in a stiff breeze is a microcosm, as it were, of saving the ship in a storm.

So the officer in Sail acquires a training in virtue that may later, in Steam, mean the saving of some hundred lives, and a million or so of property.

If this had been a sailing-ship, Captain Edwardes reflected, now something could have been done. Jury-masts rigged, jury sails bent, so she could escape out of the seething of this hell-broth. But what can you do in a steamer?

He remembered one of his early voyages, in a little Portmadoc schooner of a hundred and fifty tons. They were dismasted in a North Sea gale, fastened themselves below and rolled helpless as the “Archimedes” now rolled. They were bringing home a cargo of timber; the holds were packed tight with it, and their decks had been piled high with it too till the storm washed those decks as clean as a brass door-plate. Presently she had rolled clean over—and up the other side. I know it sounds incredible—but that is what happened. For proof, there were the burns on the cabin ceiling, where hot cinders from the cabin stove had fallen on it! (But if the “Archimedes” rolled over like that, she would not come up again before the Day of Judgment.)

Once the storm relaxed, captain and crew of the schooner had reappeared—like head and legs out of a re-assured tortoise. Her masts were gone: but they had plenty of timber below decks, with which they built up small masts, and stepped them in the pumps. She would not come to windward under this improvised rig: but she made a port to leeward without too much difficulty. No salvage-ship was sent combing the seas for
her
!

And then Captain Edwardes recalled his first voyage as a steamship officer. On watch on the bridge, he had seen a squall coming. In a sailing vessel, there would have been plenty for the officer of the watch to do. But what do you do on a steamer, when you see a squall coming? Nothing, except stroll into the wheel-house to shelter from the rain.

It cuts both ways. The knight in armour could laugh at the slings and stones of the footboys. But once he fell off his horse, there he stayed—he could not even stand up again on his feet without help. The steamship officer can laugh at squalls, and contrary winds. But once he is in a real hole, there he stops.

And yet, surely something could be done. For a moment Edwardes had a mad idea of putting the “Archimedes” also under jury-rig: sailing her to safety. Bend awnings to her few remaining derricks. But all the awnings were cut up, for hatch-covers. And again, without steam how could he shift the bloody rudder? It is no good sailing if you cannot steer.

Well, they could rig tackles on the rudder-head: and perhaps all heaving together they could shift the rudder, in time. But that is not steering: why, it might take ten minutes to shift the rudder a few degrees.

Still, perhaps it might be done ... and at least the sails might stop her rolling like this....

Again he remembered that his awnings were all cut up, now, for hatch-covers: there was nothing to make sails out of.

If they were ever to move again, it must be by steam. And the oil would not burn.

After all, she was a
steamer:
everything in her depended on steam. You could not carry her back into the days of sail, not effectively. If you improvised anything, it must be a way to raise steam you improvised.

In short, if the oil would not burn they must burn something else.

Captain Edwardes sought out Mr. MacDonald, and found him staring at the still dribbling donkey.

“Mr. MacDonald,” he said: “what about solid fuel?”

“Aye, gin we had coal, an' fire-bars. But we ha'e nae coal, let be fire-bars.”

“Wood?”

Mr. MacDonald looked at the captain for a moment as if the latter had gone insane: then he gave his thigh a great slap.

At first sight it would appear as difficult to burn solid fuel in an oil-furnace as to stoke up your gas-ring with lumps of charcoal. But it is not so bad, really. The chief thing you need is fire-bars, for the fuel to rest on. Some ships (though not many nowadays) actually have convertible furnaces, and carry fire-bars so that they can change over from oil to coal fuel if necessary or convenient. The “Archimedes” did not: but all the same, fire-bars could surely be improvised.

So Mr. MacDonald set the engineers to work on a new task: they collected a number of super-heat elements (these are fasces of thin tubes, four or five together) and with hack-saws cut them off to the length of the furnaces, supporting them on fire-bricks. The short ends they laid over them cross-wise. Then the furnaces were stuffed with dunnage and broken furniture, and they were fired.

By the time they came to fix the bars her motion must have been noticeably easier: or they would never have succeeded in doing it.

Indeed it was certainly easier, that afternoon: and Captain Edwardes began to believe that the confidence which he had expressed but not felt had been after all justified. The pooping was rarer: until at last it was possible to cover No. 6 hatch properly. After that, no more water went below. But she must have eleven hundred tons in her at least, by now: she was listed at 35° and down by the stern: head up and only one ear cocked, as it were. The position was still critical.

Now that the danger seemed somewhat relaxed, and the incessant buffeting was over, the famishment of everyone became very serious. Dick took to walking about in a slightly bent position so as to ease his emptiness. Then the First Officer suggested that it might be possible, now her motion was eased, to get something at last out of the flooded store-room. The store-room was right forward, under the fo'c'sle. No one could possibly have entered it while her motion was still fierce, even during a lull.

The ladder down into the store-room had broken loose, broken a hole in the floor, broken itself, and disappeared. Beneath the floor were bags of rice: and swelling in all that sea water they had burst the whole floor up, and then begun to ferment horribly. If they had had time, they would have made it impossible to enter the store-room at all without a gas mask; but they had only just begun fermenting now. So Dick was lowered down, sitting in the bight of a rope, with an iron hook in his hand. It was a dizzy business: he swung on his rope one way, while the water beneath him sloshed the other way. So he, and the cans and cases he was trying to grapple, rushed about with great violence in many directions, but (like two relatives who have arranged to meet in a huge crowd) never seemed able to collide.

At last however he managed to grapple two cases, and they were pulled up. One was a case of Bass, the other of tinned peaches. Then he was hauled up himself—half unconscious, what with the swinging and the gases from the rice.

The Chief Steward, of course, was at hand to receive the stores: and at once he issued the canned peaches. But he would not allow one single bottle of the Bass to be opened, till he had found his book of chits. He did not like irregularity of any kind.

When the cans of peaches were first opened, the glands in their jaws hurt excruciatingly at the sight. For this was Sunday: and they had only had one other snack since Thursday morning: no proper meal for nearly a week.

By now the engineers were beginning to cry out for more wood. There was no dry wood to be had, of course: but apparently once the centre donkey furnace was going they could dry wood sufficiently by it to light the other two. The thing was now that they must have quantities of wood: for the furnaces had to be kept roaring if they were to raise any steam, and wood burnt away in no time. So everyone was kept running hither and thither for more. It was like trying to get a kettle to boil, at a picnic, with only bits of paper to burn. There was plenty of spoilt stuff of all kinds on the “Archimedes,” from packing cases in the holds to the saloon furniture: the only job was to break it up and to bring it up to the donkey-room fast enough. So all the officers hacked with axes, breaking and splitting and busting, and all the Chinamen ran with bundles of faggots—earning their blessed “cumshaws.”

It is wonderful how the free busting of anything, especially valuable stuff, goes to your head. Dick grinned with pleasure as he cleft bunks into faggots. Even Mr. Buxton grinned as he chopped at the broken mahogany turned legs of the saloon table. The Chinamen, carrying the stuff, wore broad grins. Mr. Rabb, now working as hard as anyone, was the only one who did not grin: but his axe fell with the unerring skill, and the force, of personal enmity.

Soon the donkey-room, and all spaces near it, were piled high with wood like a junk-yard. And the engineers everlastingly stoked like devils. They would have to keep it up all night, though, if they were to raise the steam to any usable pressure.

Dick was on watch, that night, from twelve till four. As he climbed the bridge he noticed a change in the air: a softness. Rain still fell in showers: but they pattered on your face delicately, refreshingly, instead of lashing your skin like dog-whips. Being (like them all) very deaf, the quiet seemed to him unnatural. The sea now had settled down to a steady, very long swell.

All was dark, except where a glow showed from the donkey-room: occasionally broken by a dark figure passing in or out. The stoking, the carrying of wood still went on.

Visibility was not very good: the night seemed very dark, the clouds low and close, so that you could not tell the level of the horizon at all: a warm, moist, woolly night.

Suddenly the heavens opened, and a patch of brilliant starlit sky appeared. At the same time the horizon showed, stark and clear. After so long in the dark, the stars seemed to shine with an almost blinding, icy fire. Dick caught his breath in wonder: then made a dash to the chartroom to get out his sextant.