Maddon's Rock (6 page)

We went for’ard to the officers’ quarters. Rankin left me in the passage and went into the mess-room. I heard him say, “I’ve got the Corporal with me.” And then Hendrik’s voice replied, “Gude. Capt’n Halsey’s waitin’ for ye.” There was the sound of a chair being pushed back and then Rankin came out followed by the mate. We cut across by the wash place to the starboard side and
stopped outside the Captain’s door. A voice was speaking inside the cabin. Faintly through the door I caught Hamlet’s words, “….
and my two schoolfellows, whom I will trust as I will adders fang’d, they bear the mandate; they must sweep my way, and marshal me to knavery
.”

“Och, it’s Hamlet he is again the nicht,” said Hendrik and knocked on the door.

The drone of the voice ceased. “Come in.” This sharp and decisive. When I went in, I found myself looking at a pair of black, sharp, little eyes set in sockets that were yellowed and lined with the sun of the tropics. The features were difficult to determine beneath the thick beard which had been black, but was now showing streaks of grey. Wiry hair, thick and inclined to curl, was brushed straight back from the broad, deeply-lined forehead. It matched the beard and so did the thick, beetling eyebrows. Captain Halsey was quite short in stature and very neat in appearance. But I scarcely noticed anything of this at that first meeting. My impression was of a man of violent personality and restless energy and all I noticed about him were his eyes—they were almost unnaturally bright and hard like onyx.

“Shut the door, Mr. Hendrik.” His voice was soft, almost gentle. He was standing by a desk and his dark, lean fingers drummed on the leather top of it. “Are you the corporal of the guard?” he asked me.

“Yes, sir,” I replied.

“I understand your men have opened one of the cases and now know the nature of the cargo they are guarding?” His voice was still soft and gentle, but his little black eyes watched me without blinking.

“Yes, sir,” I replied. “You see they’d no idea——”

“I don’t require your views on their action, Corporal.” Still the soft voice, but there was a strange quality about it that made it almost menacing. It had the patient softness of a cat purring after its prey. “I find it most disturbing that you should have allowed this to happen. Those cases contain just over half a million in silver bullion. It represents some payment by the Russian Government for arms we have sent them. The cargo has
to be delivered to Treasury officials when we dock at Leith and they will not be pleased to find some of the seals broken. The nature of my report on the matter will depend on the behaviour of you and your guard during the remainder of the voyage. The only people who know the nature of that cargo are the four of us here in this cabin and your two soldiers.” He leaned suddenly and swiftly forward across the desk. “It is imperative, Corporal, that they do not talk.” His voice was no longer soft. It was hard and crisp. “Is there any likelihood of their having mentioned it to any of the crew?”

“I’m sure they haven’t,” I said.

“Good. In wartime you can’t pick and choose your crews. I’ve nearly a dozen men on board who’ve never sailed with me before this trip. I don’t want them to know that we carry bullion. Understand? I’m holding you responsible, Corporal, that it doesn’t get around the after-deck. Upon that one thing will depend what sort of a report I make to the authorities on the matter. Is that clearly understood?”

“Yes, sir,” I said.

He grunted and his eyes shifted to Rankin. The interview was over. The others at his invitation stayed. I went aft and communicated the result to Bert and Sills. They both gave me their solemn word that they would not mention it to a soul. But I wondered about Rankin. Ever since he came on board he had been drinking and playing cards with the Chief Engineer.

It was just after eleven then and I turned in to get some sleep before relieving Bert at one. It is difficult now, after all this time, to remember exactly what I felt about things at that moment. I remember I could not sleep. My mind was a kaleidoscope of impressions—impressions of personalities, I think, more than of events. There was the Captain, with his quiet voice and magnetic eyes, his dour mate with the livid white of that scar running down his weather-beaten cheek, that rascally old gossip of a cook—and Jennifer Sorrel with her pleasant, rather sad voice and strange history. And as background to my thoughts the steady throb of the ship’s engines as she
rolled slowly along the southern edge of the Barents Sea towards Leith.

I don’t think even then I had any real sense of uneasiness. The reason I could not sleep was just that my mind was full of so many things. My hammock swung with the movement of the ship. My stomach recorded each swoop. I felt the slight shudder as the bows struck the next wave and then my back pressed hard on the canvas of my hammock as we rose. Sills suddenly tumbled out of his hammock and was sick in a bucket behind one of the cases. His face was green and shining with sweat as he sat with his head in his hands on one of the cases, moaning slightly. The air became foully sweet and nauseating. At twelve-thirty I got up and went outside. “Just going for a stroll round before I relieve you,” I told Bert. “Sills has been sick.”

I went for’ard and stood for a moment in the lea of the bridge structure. The wind was nearing gale force and a biggish sea was running. White-caps went hissing past in the dark, dimly seen blurs of white that gave a frightening picture of black, angry water. Footsteps sounded on the iron plating of the bridge over my head. I heard the Captain’s voice say, “The glass is still falling.”

And Hendrik replied, “Aye. It’ll be a dirty day to-morrow.”

“Suits us, eh?”

They spoke quietly and only the fact that I was standing directly beneath them as they leaned on the canvas windbreaker of the bridge enabled me to overhear their conversation.

“We’ll make it to-morrow night,” Halsey went on. “Have you switched the watches?”

“Aye, Jukes will be at the wheel from two till four to-morrow night,” Hendrik replied.

“Good. Then we’ll make——” Halsey’s voice was lost to me as he turned away. Their footsteps faded slowly over my head as they paced back to the other wing of the bridge.

I did not move. My mind had fastened on one point in that scrap of conversation—they had switched the watches
and Jukes would be at the wheel between two and four the next night. Jukes! According to the cook’s gossip, he was a seaman who had been with Halsey on the
Penang
. They’d a right to switch watches. Jukes was a seaman; no reason why he shouldn’t be on duty at the wheel. But why had Halsey said that it suited them to have a dirty day to-morrow. Had there been a U-boat warning? There were a dozen explanations for the scrap of conversation I had overheard. Yet it is from that moment that I can definitely say I had a sense of uneasiness.

I don’t know how long I stood there under the port wing of the bridge. It must have been some time, for when I became conscious of my surroundings again, I felt wretchedly cold. I walked briskly round the deck and the flying white-caps hissing past us through the darkness seemed to surround the ship with vague menaces.

When I relieved Bert, he said, “You bin for a long stroll, Corp. Thort you’d fallen overboard.” He leaned his rifle against the after-deckhousing and lit a cigarette, hiding the glowing tip of it in his cupped palm the way you learn to in the Army. He leaned against the rail watching the great whale-backed waves slide under our keel. We didn’t speak for a while. But at length he said, “Yer very silent ternight, Corp. Not worried aba’t them seals being broke on that case, are yer?”

“Not particularly,” I said.

“Gosh! You don’t ’alf sound miserable. Wot’s on yer mind?”

For a moment I was tempted to tell him all the little bits of gossip and scraps of conversation and half-toned suspicions that were wandering in a tangled mêlée through my mind. I wanted to talk it over with somebody and have them reassure me that it was all nonsense. But in the end I said nothing.

“Thinkin’ of yer girl, are yer?” Bert persisted. Then he asked, “You ’ave got a girl, ain’t yer, Corp? Never seen no photograph up over yer bed.”

“Yes. I’ve got a girl,” I told him.

“Well, cheer up, for Gawd’s sake,” he encouraged.

“We ain’t doin’ time.” Then after a moment’s hesitation
he said, “You ain’t in trouble wiv yer girl, are you? I mean, she ain’t got tired o’ waitin’ or anyfink like that?”

My mind switched to Betty. She was so sane and practical. She would have cleared my mind of uneasiness in a moment. “No, not exactly,” I said, glad of the opportunity to talk about something else. “But it’s she who insisted on my going for this commission. I don’t want to. The truth is, Bert, I’m not cut out for it—not in the Army. If I’d been able to get into the Navy it would have been different. But not in the Army. But her family is Regular Army and she’s been badgering me to go for a commission ever since I was called up. A few weeks back she wrote saying either I took a commission or she’d break off our engagement.”

“Well, so you oughter take a commission—eddicated bloke like you.” Bert gave vent to a cackle of laughter.

“Cheer up, mate,” he said. “It ain’t as bad as you fink being a jolly awficer. Wish I could shout a’t in the morning—‘Private’ Iggins. Where’s me boots?’”

But my mind had gone back to the conversation I had so recently overheard. “Bert,” I said, “have you had a chat with any of the crew since we’ve been on board?”

“’Corse I ’ave,” he replied. “Don’t we mess wiv ’em? I’m practically a life member. Why?”

“Know a seaman called Jukes?” I asked.

“Jukes? Can’t say I remember the name. But then I knows ’em mostly as Jim or Ernie or Bob.”

“Or Evans?” I asked.

“Evans. A little Welshman wot never stops talking? There’s two of ’em da’n there—Evans an’ a bloke called Davies. Talk aba’t laugh! They’re like a couple of comics. Why do you ask?”

“Point Jukes out to me next time he’s on deck, will you,” I said.

“Okay.”

He drifted off to bed shortly afterwards. At three o’clock I called Sills. He looked weak and ill. But I thought the fresh air would do him good and left him vomiting over the rail.

Next morning, the 4th of March, dawned grey and cold. The cloud was practically down to sea level and a thin, driving sleet reduced visibility to a few hundred yards. The wind was at gale strength out of the nor’-nor’-west and the ship staggered and corkscrewed her way through giant waves, burrowing her bows into their green bellies and tossing the stinging spray across her decks from end to end. Just ahead of us, and yet on the edge of visibility, the blunt stern of the
American Merchant
, a Liberty ship, wallowed through a welter of shaggy white-caps, an ugly slug of a ship, half hidden in spray. Two vague shapes pitched in the sleet-grey void to the south of us and across the starboard rail, just visible, was the sleek outline of the destroyer,
Scorpion
, rolling crazily with the sea washing in a smother of foam across her decks. Behind us was nothing but the white path of our wake, obliterated almost instantly by the raging waters. We were the last ship in the northern line of the convoy. I remember feeling thankful as I went on duty that we were no longer at the height of the U-boat campaign and that there was little likelihood of our having to take to the boats.… It was a vicious sea, with the wind whipping the spume off the breaking wave tops like white curtains of steam.

Twice during the morning the destroyer came alongside to order us to close the
American Merchant.
Each time she thrashed off into the grey sleet to speak to other ships like a fussy little hen overburdened with a brood of ugly ducklings. About two o’clock in the afternoon Jennifer Sorrel came and chatted to me. She looked wan and cold. Her skin had an ivory transparency that made her look as though she had the beginnings of jaundice. She talked of her home near Oban, her yacht, the
Eilean Mor
” which had been requisitioned by the Navy in ’42, of her father. Her dark hair blew about her face and her teeth flashed gaily in the dull daylit misery of our surroundings. Her lips were almost bloodless and she bemoaned her inability to obtain any lipstick in Murmansk as though that were the greatest of all the misfortunes that had befallen her.

I asked her if she was comfortable. She made a wry face. “The cabin’s all right,” she said. “But I don’t like the officers. Oh, Cousins is all right—he’s the young second officer. But Captain Halsey terrifies me and that drunken beast of a Chief Engineer—I’m having my meals served in my cabin now.”

“Why?” I asked.

“It was the Chief Engineer. I couldn’t stand him ogling me across the table. He was drunk, of course, as usual. I thought I’d got used to that sort of thing. But somehow you don’t expect it in your own race.”

“What about Rankin?” I said, feeling unaccountably angry. “He’s always with the Chief. Does he annoy you?”

“Oh, no,” she said with a little laugh. “He’s not interested in women. Surely you realised that?”

We then got on to the subject of sailing. We exchanged notes on all the various types of boats we’d sailed. About two-thirty she said she felt cold and went below. Sills relieved me at three. His face was dead white, but he swore he felt better. I went below for a mug of cocoa and took it into the crew’s mess-room. Bert was in there, cracking jokes with five or six of the crew. I sat down beside him and after a moment, he leaned towards me and whispered, “You was mentioning Evans last night—well, that’s ’im, ’long at the end o’ the table there.”

The man Bert pointed out to me was a little fellow in dirty blue overalls with a thin, crafty face and dark oily hair. He was talking to the man next to him who had a broken nose and the lobe of his right ear missing. As I sat there drinking my cocoa and watching his crafty little face, I began to wonder how he would react if I mentioned the name
Penang.
The man next to Bert suddenly pulled out his watch. “Four o’clock,” he said. “Come on, me lads.” Two others scrambled to their feet. When they had gone it left only Evans, the man with the broken nose and a pint-sized old fellow with a tubercular cough.