The Strode Venturer (23 page)

So far we had had good weather with almost no wind, clear skies and very little humidity. All that was changed now. Several times I woke during the night to the lash of rain on the deck beyond the porthole and in the morning the sky was heavy and louring, full of low cloud that hung over us quite stationary. There was still no wind and the air was hot like a Turkish bath. Around ten o’clock the atmosphere gave up. It was like a sponge, heavy with water, which it couldn’t contain any longer. It fell—solid, breath-stopping water—and suddenly visibility was barely a hundred yards.

I was ashore at the time and it caught me half-way between the quay and the camp. There was no cover at all and I just stood there, my head bowed, gasping for air, whilst at the edge of the road a rivulet thickened to a blackened flood that poured down a gully into the bay. After ten minutes the rain stopped like a tap turned off. A shaft of sunlight showed the island gleaming bright and every crevice running water.

It was like that all day, the air filling up with moisture and then dropping its load and starting the process all over again. It was so oppressive you could hardly breathe. The barge was towed out to the ship with more water in it than ore. The work went slowly and tempers frayed. Reece was ashore again in the afternoon. I had driven a truckload down to the loading quay and I stepped out of the cab almost on top of him. “… Number Two about a third full
and the other two empty. At this rate it’ll take the better part of a fortnight before all four holds are loaded.” He was facing Peter, his cap at its usual rakish angle. What he wanted was night shifts.

“You try a day’s work shovelling ore on to the conveyor belt in this heat,” Peter told him sharply. “You wouldn’t talk about night shifts after that.”

The line of Reece’s mouth tightened, the muscles at the side of his jaws knotting slightly. Right in front of us the conveyor belt leaned over the barge dribbling a small stream of ore. He let the silence run on, making no comment. Finally he turned to me and said I could have six of his crew to work through the night if I’d supervise them.

“All right,” I said. “But you put one of your officers in charge of them to-night.” I was as anxious as he was to speed our departure, but I was tired now and very dirty. “We can work it on a roster.” But he didn’t seem to like that. His eyes hardened and his face went wooden. “Thought it would help you, that’s all.” And then suddenly he was smiling. “I’ll talk to Blake about it.” And he left us then, the boyish debonair look back in his face. He was whistling through his teeth as he leapt a pile of ore and went with jaunty stride down to the sea’s edge where he bawled one of his lascars out for not keeping his boat properly fended off. We watched him as he went puttering out between the shoals and headed for the ship, the jolly boat cutting a sharp V in the still waters of the bay.

“Why is it,” Peter said, “that every time that man suggests something I start wondering what’s behind it?”

I didn’t say anything for I thought it was the heat, the dreadful oppressiveness. As we walked together up the wet track of the road and across the hump of the island the next storm was already looming, a dark anvil-headed column of cu-nim. Flashes of lightning forked across its black belly, but as yet there was no sound of thunder. All about us the sea was flattened by the weight of the atmosphere, so still and leaden it might have been metal just congealed. It lay against the sides of the bay and around the shoal backs,
torpid and listless, without even enough energy to suck at the land.

“It’ll be bad to-night,” I said, and Peter nodded. “The Pakistanis hate it here. I’ll be glad when the loading is done by Adduans.”

We had a cup of tea in the base camp canteen, standing at a trestle table. One of the Pakistanis was seated on a bench, his head in his hands, rocking back and forth and moaning to himself. Another was re-winding his turban. He had short, grizzled hair and it seemed literally to be standing on end. “Electricity,” Peter said. “The air’s full of it.”

I ran my hand through my own hair and it crackled like nylon. We had moved to the open doorway then for the canteen was cramped, just an annexe to the main body of the hut which was a bunkhouse. A shaft of sunlight picked out the
Strode Trader
lying broadside-on to us. The barge was alongside and the crew were loading into No. 3 hold. One of the landing craft was waiting by No. 2 and the other was nosing its way out through the shoals, a grey box of a vessel following the channel we had marked with dan buoys.

The shaft of sunlight was suddenly snuffed out. The sky darkened. We stood there listening to the grumbling and growling of the storm. And then with a crackling stab of lightning it was on top of us. The sky opened and ship and landing craft disappeared, engulfed in the downpour. There was wind this time and it took the surface clean off the bay, turning the sea at the edge of visibility into a seething foam of white. Lightning forked and stabbed and the thunder reverberated. Men joined us, running for shelter, their clothes clinging to their bodies and streaming water. The whites of their eyes showed in fear and they echoed the moaning of the man on the bench as the hut shook to the onslaught of the wind.

It lasted longer this time, and even after the rain had ceased, the sky remained dark and lightning flashed incessantly to the accompaniment of great claps of thunder. And then at last it was over, the black cloud rolling seaward, and
the sunset blazed on the back of it like the reflection of a great conflagration. But only for a moment and then the fire burned itself out and the sky had a livid sick look. It was past six and the vanished sun already setting, night was closing in. “Time you got back to the ship,” Peter said.

I toyed with the idea of staying ashore, but he wouldn’t hear of it. “I’ve got to stay—otherwise these poor sods would go crazed with fear.” He gave a wry smile. “We should have shipped a sociologist. A place like this soon shows just how deep most men’s religion goes. For instance only three of these men really believe in Mohammed. The rest have a whole series of devils and hobgoblins they fall back upon when all hell breaks loose as it did during the night. It’s a breakdown of the intellect in the face of conditions that promote more instinctive reactions and the result is pretty shattering.”

“It’ll be worse to-night,” I told him. “Wouldn’t it be better if I stayed ashore with you?”

“No. I’d rather you were on the ship. I like to think my line of retreat is absolutely secured.” It was the only time he admitted to any fear of the island.

It wasn’t until I got down to the loading terminal that I remembered I had seen the second landing craft leaving for the ship. That left only the runabout which had been holed the previous day when some fool of a mechanic, testing it after repairing a broken fuel line had run it at full throttle on to a shoal. It was beached at the head of the bay. I looked round for somebody to help me launch it, but the terminal was completely deserted, not a soul in sight. An engine roared up at the workings and the tumble-bug moved on the sky-line like some prehistoric monster. But night was closing in fast and I hurried scrambling round the shore of the bay, hoping I would be able to manage it on my own.

By the time I reached the boat it was almost dark, and yet not really dark for everything seemed limned in a curious luminosity. The air was very thick and charged with electricity. The runabout had been dragged up clear of the tide mark, stern to the sea, and it was half full of
water. I managed to tip most of it out, but it was a heavy boat and it took me some time to drag it down the beach. Once it was afloat I could feel where the damage was—one of the planks had been stove in close up by the bows. I rammed a piece of cotton waste into the crack and started the engine. Lightning sizzled beyond the back of the island, but when my eyes had readjusted themselves to the dark that followed the flash I could see the lights of the
Strode Trader
again, clear and bright as she lay to her anchor a mile off-shore. I was thinking of a cold shower and the evening meal as I headed out to the first shoal. It never occurred to me that I might not reach the ship.

I got to the first shoal all right and the slender stick of the dan buoy slid past the bows, illumined in a triple flash of lightning. The flag was fluttering, the ends of it already badly frayed. The sound of the thunder came to me only faintly above the noise of the engine. More lightning and in its photographic flash I saw the cotton waste was doing its job. There was very little water in the boat.

The wind came up from astern so that I didn’t notice it at first. And straight ahead were the lights of the ship, nearer now and brighter. Lightning struck again, a jagged fork splitting the blackness of the sky, stabbing at the dark line of the bay’s southern arm. I heard it strike and in the same instant the shock wave of cloud meeting cloud rammed against my ear-drums like the broadside of a battleship. Then the wind came in full fury, hitting me like a blow between the shoulder blades, lifting the surface of the sea so that the air was full of spray and I could hardly breathe. The lights of the ship were gone, engulfed in the curtain of wind-blown water.

I was close to the second shoal then and I only saw it because of the line of foam where the waves broke. And then suddenly even that was gone, drowned by the rain. It was as though a torrent flooding through the sky had reached a point where there was no bottom. It was a cataract so violent that it killed all sound, even the sound of thunder, and the lightning flickered only dimly. I held my
course as best I could, crouched low, half-flattened by the weight of water pouring down on me. And then the deluge ceased abruptly and lightning flashes showed me the clouds whirling in convoluted masses overhead.

The ship was nearer now. I could see her quite plainly. But astern of me there was nothing, only black darkness—the next rainstorm coming in. I began to bale then, for it never occurred to me to turn back. I was intent only on reaching the ship, which was now showing the red and green of her navigation lights. She had her steaming lights on, too, but I had no time to think about that for the next storm was on me with a roar of wind and the flash of lightning. I was clear of the shoals now, in the open sea, and I kept on running with the spray driving past me and the waves building up. The lightning was almost incessant again and seen like that, in the flashes through a murk of spray, the
Strode Trader
looked a grey ghost of a ship. She was lying bows to the wind, facing straight towards me, and I came down on her fast. But not fast enough, for she began to swing, presenting her starboard side with the barge lying alongside, butting at her flank like a whale calf seeking its mother’s milk. And then, when she was broadside-on, she seemed to hold her distance.

A great ball of fire burned for an instant in the clouds behind her. She was a black silhouette then with the tiny figures of men moving on her bows. They were fetching her anchor, and in the next flash of lightning I saw it was already up and down. I knew then why it was taking me so long to reach her. She was broadside to the wind and drifting with it. In the jet darkness that followed the flash I was suddenly afraid, for there was no turning back to the island now. Out here the waves were steep and breaking, the runabout little better than a cockleshell.

My whole mind, my every nerve became instantly concentrated on driving the boat forward, intent on reaching the ship before she got under way. I had the throttle wide open, leaning forward over the engine casing as though I could by sheer will-power drive her faster. The stern sank
in a trough and I heard the break of the wave almost at the moment it thumped me in the back, spilling across the stern, flooding over the gunn’ls as it carried the boat forward like a surf-board. And at the same moment lightning forked across the ship, showing it very near now, so that I could see the prop beginning to thresh the water. The thunder crashed. The barge was swinging away from the ship’s side and it was the barge I hit. And as the bows splintered and the boat began to sink under me I jumped, caught the steel edge of the barge’s side and hauled myself aboard. Lying there, panting, on the grit-grimed plating, I could feel the strong pulsing beat of the
Strode Trader
’s engines transmitted through the barge’s hull every time it rammed its blunt nose against the ship’s side.

I tried to attract their attention, of course, but no human voice could be heard above the turmoil of the storm. A wave broke and then another. The barge’s flank was like a breakwater, the waves pouring over the side and cascading down into the half-empty hold. I struggled to my feet, balancing myself to the pitch and roll of the ungainly hulk and in the next flash of lightning waved my hands. But there was nobody on deck. There was a shuddering jar, the clank of steel on steel, and beyond the open cavern of the barge’s hold I could see the dark side of the ship towering above me. Food and warmth, the cosy familiarity of my cabin all so near, but nobody to tell Reece to stop his bloody engines and get me off the barge.

The ship was gathering way fast now. She had turned her fat stern to the island and was running down wind. The barge yawed, grinding its bows. I stood and waved and shouted, and still nobody answered.

I began working my way for’ard then. I had almost reached the broader platform of the bows when the stern of the barge was lifted and flung sideways. She lay wallowing for an instant, rolling her topsides into the waves, water pouring over me. Then the bow line tautened with a jerk. It steadied her and I started forward again. It was a mistake, for the bows swung in, both vessels rolling towards
each other. The crash as they met caught me off balance. I can remember falling, but that’s all.

I came to, gasping and sobbing for breath, a great roaring in my ears. I knew I was drowning and I fought with all my strength, clawing and kicking, with the water gurgling in my lungs and throat and one little horrified corner of my brain aware that my hands and feet were motionless as in a nightmare where the struggle is in the mind and not transmitted into physical action. My brain, groping towards full consciousness, recorded sluggishly—the feel of grit under the palms of my hands, the hardness of solid steel beneath my body, the slosh of water resounding loud as in a tank.