The Watch Below (12 page)

"My intentions aren't -- I mean, I don't
have
intentions!" Wallis
protested, almost laughing.
"Requiring tact and understanding from those who are already married and
have experienced and surmounted these difficulties," Dickson went on as
if Wallis hadn't spoken. "The first problem may be that of the marriage
itself, which turns out to be the easiest of all, since as a first officer
with a master's ticket, and bearing in mind the fact that in the merchant
service we marry people at sea much more frequently than they do in the
Royal Navy, I would be glad to officiate and return the favor already
done me. A simple case of you marry me and I'll marry you. Not
you
,
of course -- I mean the two of you."
"I understand," said Wallis.
"The next difficulty," Dickson resumed, "may be that of ignorance.
The complete or partial ignorance regarding, uh, geography and, uh,
technique. I mean, there's this business with the birds and the bees -- "
"I kept rabbits as a boy," said Wallis gravely, "and my stern old father
told me about people."
"Good!" said Dickson. "You have a grounding in birds, bees, rabbits,
and people. You understand the subtle urge -- nothing to be ashamed of,
mind! -- which brings the two sexes together. What you perhaps do not
fully appreciate is the purely physical problem, a problem which normally
does not exist with bees and rabbits and even people, of bringing them
together closely enough when in so doing for a single unguarded movement
or carelessness in arranging the sacking could let in a blast of cold
air which would certainly ruin the warm, tender, and romantic atmosphere
it is one's intention to create and which might result in pneumonia or
rheumatism besides -- "
"Where do you find the breath," said Wallis, wanting suddenly to change
the subject again, "to pedal and talk at the same time?"
"It isn't because of fresh air and exercise," the doctor said, adding,
"or, I suspect, from clean living."
Ignoring them both, Dickson went on delicately, "My own hard-won experience
in this matter may be of interest, and possibly of value to you. To begin
with we shall assume that the two people of opposite, uh, gender are under
their heap of sacking and that the psychological climate is right, that there
will be mutual cooperation during the forthcoming project. The problems
which then remain are basically those concerning clothing, the need for
operating in a confined space in darkness, and the necessity for silence,
so as to avoid the embarrassment of people . . ." He looked pointedly
at the doctor, " making cracks at breakfast time. The first thing you
must do . . ."
Dickson went into detail regarding the first thing, the second thing,
and the third thing. He spoke quietly and gravely, and if his tongue
was in his cheek the fact was not at all obvious. When he had dealt with
the fifteenth or sixteenth, and last, thing, it was the doctor who broke
the ensuing silence.
"Better change the subject again, Dickson," he said, smiling. "I think
you're making the commander feel uncomfortable."
"The word," said Wallis, "is overstimulated."
A few days later it became impossible to talk while at the generator,
and gradually it became the accepted thing for one or other of them to
black out while pedaling and need to be revived with pure oxygen. The
only comfortable place was in the garden when the lights were on, but
then only two of them could use it at a time. The most uncomfortable
time was the period between sleeping and working the generator, when
they had nothing to do but think and when they thought so much that it
was nearly impossible to sleep at alL
They all breathed too fast and sweated despite the cold and snapped at
each other for nothing at all. At first Wallis had tried to use his
authority to stop this continual bickering, but he had a constant,
thudding headache which soured his every waking minute and which throbbed
in the background of his dreams, and more often than not he found himself
snapping and snarling as badly as the rest of them. By far the worst
offender was Margaret Murray, who had begun to have waking nightmares
about her time on the raft again and who had begun to cry all the time
and cover her burnt face again despite all that Wallis could do. In the
doctor's opinion Wallis wasn't doing enough.
"Your winking isn't having much effect these days, he told Wallis on an
occasion when they were alone in the garden together. "Whatever it was
that you did to make a wink have such good results -- well, to put it
bluntly, sir, she needs a booster shot."
Wallis had to administer several booster shots, because the law of
diminishing returns seemed to have come into force in this particular
situation. But the medicine was pleasant to administer so he did not
mind. He felt, in fact, that it would have been very pleasant indeed if
it had not been for the frigid, stinking air, which gave them headaches
that threatened to blow the tops off their skulls and which made them
pull away gasping desperately for breath after a kiss lasting only a
few seconds. Dickson discovered them several times in what he was fond
of describing as a compromising situation and as many times suggested
that somebody should make an honest woman out of someone. The doctor,
however, was strongly against this, for the time being anyway. He said
that they should all remain as calm as possible and should not indulge
in any strenuous activity, other than on the generator, which might
waste oxygen. . . .
Being able to breathe became much more important than feeling warm.
Radford and Wallis, and even the Dicksons, split up during the so-called
sleep periods. Perhaps it was a psychological thing, but they felt too
stifled under their shared heaps of sacking. So they slept alone with
their faces uncovered and their breaths puffing up into the darkness
as if they were so many steam locomotives. It was nearly impossible to
sleep. All they could do was lie and gasp for breath, and think.
"I've been thinking," said Wallis one "night" toward the end of July.
"On lifeboats we hear of people singing and playing games to keep awake.
Our problem is not to stay awake but to keep from going stark raving mad
because we can't sleep."
He stopped to catch his breath and then went an, "In one way the situation
is the same. We have to exercise our minds so as not to dwell too much on
our surroundings. Physical exercise is out, but there's nothing to stop
our exercising our brains. I had in mind a sort of quiz."
"Talking uses oxygen," said Dickson. "Besides, we already know how each
other's minds work. We've talked about ourselves often enough."
"I'm not so sure that talking wastes all that much oxygen," the doctor said.
"In any case the mental benefits outweigh the extra risk if the quiz game
really takes our minds off our physical discomfort. Provided we don't shout
or get excited, it should be okay. But I must forbid singing for the
time being."
"Pity!" said Margaret Murray. "I'm a top soprano."
"Me, too," said Jenny Dickson. "And I don't much like quiz games."
"I'm a Gilbert and Sullivan man myself," the doctor joined in. "In the
school operatic society I was Pooh-Bah one year, and another time I
understudied the Lord Chancellor in
Iolanthe
."
"You never told us
that
," said Dickson accusingly. "I would have let you
hear me do 'Frankie and Johnny.'"
"All this is news to me, too," said Wallis firmly, "but I must repeat that
singing is out for the time being. And it seems plain that we
don't
know
everything about each other as yet. Also, if this game works out the way
I'd like it to, we will do very little talking and a great deal of thinking,
so that the oxygen wastage will be negligible. . . ."
The questions in this quiz game would not be easy, Wallis went on to explain.
They would, in fact, be next to impossible. The game would begin by each of
them being set a memory test. Something like "How much can you remember
about your eleventh birthday party?" or "What was in the last Sunday
paper you read, besides pin-ups?" Later the questions would become more
difficult, such as how much could be remembered of a particular chapter
in a particular book or how much could be recalled of a certain day in the
past chosen completely at random. They would each tell what, if anything,
they could remember regarding their individual tests, then they would
go back repeatedly and go over the memory again and again until it was
as complete and detailed as possible. At intervals they would report
progesss on their particular assignments, but, as they could see, most
of the time would be spent thinking.
Radford joined in at that point to say that many psychologists believed
that no memory was ever lost, that memories were allowed to fade but could
be recalled in their entirety by patient and persistent questioning. That
they would be asking the questions of themselves made no essential
difference. The girls, Dickson, and Wallis himself suggested modifications
to the game and they talked about it for a very long time, so much so that
they began to fall asleep before they actually got around to playing it.
The next "night" they started playing the game, awkwardly and self-
consciously at first. But very soon the Game took a firm hold on them --
it was competitive, endless, difficult and nobody either won or lost.
During the early part of their sleep period it was normal for them all
to lie still and silent, breathing and thinking hard, but not thinking,
or worrying, about breathing.
But the air became steadily more foul. The generator was operated by one
of them at a time, using a jury-rigged oxygen tent fed by their steadily
diminishing store of tanked gas, while the others stayed in the relatively
fresh air of the garden, which now covered most of the floor of Number
Three. At "night" the Game helped, but still they struggled awake,
shouting and kicking, from nightmares of drowning or worse. They all did
this, the girls a little more often than the men. The worst part of it was
that when they did wake they still felt as if they were choking to death.
It became impossible to sleep at night, so they slept in the garden
during the electrically lit "day" instead, passing the night by playing
the Game. This helped everyone for a while, until the ship began to sink
once more, and once more the angry, bitter arguments raged over whether
they should use their remaining oxygen to reduce depth or keep it to
breathe and have the hull cave in on them, whether to die of asphyxiation
through carbon-dioxide poisoning or through simple drowning.
Then the hull began to emit creaking sounds, very soft as yet, and a sort
of loud, metallic sighing. Gulf Trader was beginning to break up.
XIII
It was an incredibly slow process, so slow that they had time to get over
their private or public panic and settle down merely to listen to the ship
breaking up all around them -- though, to be quite accurate, most of the
noises seemed to be coming from the stern and the others may have been
reverberations.
With the irregular sighing noises aft there came the grinding and the
hollow, underwater screaming sounds of tearing metal, also irregular
but increasing in frequency. They could feel the deck shuddering under
them even through the sacking. The grinding and tearing seemed to go on
for hours.
"This is going to take a long time," said the doctor suddenly. "The air
would be . . . fresher in the garden with the generator going. Lying here
just listening is . . . making me feel morbid."
"The salt water will ruin your crops," said Dickson. Jenny was hanging onto
him tightly and looked ready to cry again, so he probably felt obliged
to make a crack to keep up her morale, or both their morales. Wallis was
holding Margaret Murray's hand, and she was holding his so tightly that
his fingers ached, but he could not think of anything smart or cheerful
to say.
"I wonder why all the noise is coming from the stern," he said. "We're down
by the stern, but not more than twenty or thirty feet and that . . . isn't
enough to make a big . . . pressure difference. The engine room took a hit,
so the hull is weak there, . . . but so did the bow, and nothing is happening
for'rard."
A few seconds after he had stopped talking there was a tearing crash from
the bows and the sound was repeated at short intervals, seeming to come
closer along their starboard side. With each crash the deck shook and
the Trader began a definite list to port. It was easy to imagine the
steadily mounting pressure finding weak points in the hull where the
two torpedoes had struck, then slowly squeezing open the hull along the
line of one of the longitudinal welds. There was another crash for'ard
and grinding, tearing sounds marched remorselessly towards them, this
time along the port side.
"You and your big mouth," said Dickson, quickly adding, "sir."
They lay waiting for the tank walls to buckle inward and for the crushing
weight of water to smash down on them, spin them about, and thrust its
way into their straining lungs. The din around them reached a crescendo,
but still the walls held, and there was no sound of water flooding
through the holds even when the crashing began to die down. Wallis,
who had been gripping Margaret's hand as tightly toward the end as she
had been gripping his, pried open her fingers and felt around for the
torch. When he switched it on he saw that the walls of the tank were
still bone dry. A few minutes later after a single and relatively soft
crash the ship became silent and still again.
"You know," said Wallis, in a voice which was nearly falsetto with joy,
"I don't think we're sinking at all! I think we've run aground!"
They did not believe him at first, but then they considered the facts in
the shape of the recent crashes, creaks, and bumps in conjunction with
this new theory and found that they fitted it very well. Trader might very
easily have drifted under the influence of tide or current onto a gently
sloping bottom, the stern touching first so that the ship had swung around
to continue the drift bow first. The shelving bottom must have been sandy,
judging by the earlier sighing sounds, but with many outcroppings of
rock. The more dramatic noises must have been caused by plating loosened
by the torpedo astern being pulled off as the ship touched bottom, and
later by the hull drifting over or alongship rocks. Eventually the ship
had come to rest -- at high tide, presumably, because there were no later
indications that she would drift off -- and jammed herself solidly onto
a sea bed whose slope followed the original stern-down attitude of the
ship so closely that to those inside there was no detectable difference.