Trustee From the Toolroom (6 page)

He had scant faith in it, but it was there. In dead calm weather it would give the ship a speed of about four knots for going in and out of harbour or up windless estuaries, but the wind was now blowing sixty knots or more. This puny little engine, if he could make it work, could not affect the major issues of their course, yet if he could get it going it might serve to pull them out of trouble somehow. It was the last resource still left unused.

He gave the helm to Jo and went below, shutting the companion after him. In the light of bis torch he saw that the battery had been thrown from its crate when the ship broached to and was lying on its side; everything was streaming with seawater. He stood the battery, upright, checked the leads, and tried a light switch. There was the faintest of red glimmers from the filament, which faded as he watched.

There was no help in the starter. He wiped the magneto and the plug leads with a wet handkerchief, having searched in vain for a dry cloth, and tried her on the handle. For a quarter of an hour he laboured over her, and never got a kick. Finally he gave up the effort and went back on deck. There was no help in the engine.

While he was below, Jo sat at the helm in dull despair. The huge efforts needed to pull the tiller continuously one way or the other to keep the ship stern-on to the seas were draining the last of her strength; she could still make them mechanically but she was now near collapse. There was no ending to this storm and would not be for days and days and days; the ship might see it through if she had fresh hands at the helm, but they would not. She was near failure now, she knew; half an hour longer, or perhaps an hour, and she would be no longer able to swing the tiller. Then the ship would broach to and lie swept by every sea; they would be drowned.
Shearwater
would fill and sink, and Janice's future would sink with her. She was too tired now to care about themselves, but Janice was a sharp pain. Keith would look after her and bring her up, and he would do it well. But he would have to bring her up into his own way of life, not theirs; at sixteen she would have to start work in a shop.

John Dermott came back to "the cockpit and took the helm from her. 'No good,' he shouted in her ear.

She shouted back, ' Won't it go ?' He shook his head, and feghe settled down beside him, listless.

About the middle of the morning something in the water .. ahead drew John's attention. He gave the helm to Jo and stood up against the companion, the wind tearing at his clothing, lashed by the spray. Visibility was between one and two miles. There was something different half a mile or so ahead of him; the backs of the seas looked different in some way. Then, over to the left a little, in a quick, passing glimpse, he saw what looked like the tops of palm trees above the waves.

He turned with a heavy heart, and went back to his wife. 'There seems to be an island dead ahead,' he shouted. 'I think we're driving down on to a reef.'

She nodded. She was now past caring.

He took her hand. ' I'm sorry about 'this, Jo.'

She smiled at him. 'It doesn't matter.'

' Can you take her a bit longer
?
' he asked. ' I want to see if we can dodge it.'

She nodded, and he stood up again by the companion. It was clearer now, for they were closer. What he had seen was the backs of great combers breaking on a coral reef; the line of different surf extended both on port and starboard hands as far as he could see. He searched desperately for a break in the surf, something to indicate a passage through the reef into the sheltered lagoon that might lie beyond. If there were any break he would try to steer her off and run in through it, even though they might be overwhelmed in the process. He could see no break at all; it all looked just the same on either hand as far as he could see. There was no escape for them now.
Shearwater
was driving straight on to a coral reef in the Tuamotus somewhere, and would leave her bones upon the coral as many a tall ship had done before. He had not the remotest idea where they were.

He came back to her and took the helm. In bad moments in the last forty-eight hours he had imagined this situation, and had thought it out. Better to take the coral straight, head-on, than to be thrown on to it on their beam ends, to have the hull crushed like an eggshell by the fury of the waves. 'Better to take it head-on, taking the shock on the* lead keel and trying to keep stern-on to the s^as. Reefs were seldom uniform in height; if they had the luck to strike a fissure, a patch where in calm water the coral was a couple of feet or more below the surface, they might possibly be driven over it into the lagoon, and still float, and live. He bent to explain this to his wife.

'I want you to go below,' he shouted. 'When we strike, stay in the hull. She'll probably get full of water, but stay in the hull. Just keep your head above the water, but stay inside.'

She shouted, 'What are you going to do?'

'I'm going to stay up here and steer her on. I'll join you down below as soon as she strikes. It's our best chance. I don't think she'll break up.'

' If she breaks up, she'll stay on the reef, won't she ?'

He knew what was in her mind. 'The keel will, and probably the frames.' He paused, and then leaned across and kissed her. 'Now go below.Tm sorry to have got you into this.'

She kissed him in return. 'It's not your fault.' She stood up, waited her chance, opened the hatch and slipped down below, leaving it open for him to follow her.

She sat down on one of the settees, the first-aid box in her hands. There were now only a few minutes to go. She thought she ought to say a prayer, but it seemed mean to have neglected God and her religion for so long and then to pray when death was imminent; the words would not come. She could only think of Janice, Janice whose future happiness lay buried in the concrete beneath her feet. The concrete would survive upon the coral reef, but nobody would ever know of it but Keith, Keith who had never made much of his life, Keith who had never been anywhere or done anything, Keith to whose keeping she had trusted Janice.

From the cockpit John Dermott shouted above the screaming of the wind, ' Next one, Jo!'

In those last moments the power of prayer came to her, and she muttered in the accents of her childhood, 'Lord, gie Keith a bit o' guid sense.'

Then they struck.

At about eleven in the morning the telephone hell rang upstairs. Keith Stewart stopped his lathe, wiped his hands, and went up the narrow wooden stairs to answer it. The girl said, 'Mr Stewart? This is Gordon and Carpenter. Just one moment - Mr Carpenter is calling.'

In a moment the solicitor came on the line. Keith had met him once before, a heavy, methodical man whose office was in Bedford Square. He said,' Mr Stewart, have you had any news of your brother-in-law and your sister? Do you know if they have reached Tahiti yet?'

'I haven't Heard anything. Not since they left Panama.'

'Nor have I. I would have thought that they'd have cabled their arrival by this time.'

It seemed an unnecessary extravagance to Keith. 'An air letter would do. That's what they've been sending all along.'

'Yes, I know. The airmail to Tahiti is very infrequent, though. All mail seems to be infrequent to Tahiti. They're building an airport there now, but it's not working yet. I -would have expected a cable to say they had arrived. But you haven't heard anything ?'

'No, I haven't. They should be there by this time, though, shouldn't they?'

"The last letter I had was from Panama posted on September agth. Commander Dermott says in that they expect to arrive in Papeete on November aoth. Well, here we are, and it's December ist. We should have heard something by now.'

They discussed the possibilities of delay in arrival and delay in mails for a minute or two. Finally Mr Carpenter said, 'There's no British Consul in Papeete. I think I'll send the Governor a short cable asking if there's any news of their arrival.'

Keith went back to his lathe, vaguely disquieted. He had a great respect for John's solicitor. In his lifetime he had never had much to do with the Law. He had met solicitors from time to time; some that he had met in pubs were clearly not so good. Others had been better; one had come to see him once because he was making the little Burrell traction engine and was in trouble with the governor, and because of that he had handled the purchase of the Baling house for Keith. Mr Carpenter, John's solicitor, was different again, part of the wider world, John's world, infinitely competent and infinitely courteous. Keith would have hesitated to suggest that Mr Carpenter should take his work. - When Katie came in she gave Janice and Keith their tea, and then he read an Enid Blyton book to Janice for half an hour till it was time for her to have her bath and go to bed. Katie looked after that, and he went down to his desk in the basement to write an article about fusible plugs. He sat for a long time fingering the four little screwed pieces that had been loaded with the different solders, the paper ready to his hand, but the words would not come. It was incredible that anything could have happened.

When Janice was safely in bed in the room beside his workshop, he went upstairs and told Katie all about it in the parlour. ' I don't think anything could have happened,' he said uneasily. 'It's just that they haven't got there yet.'

Katie said, 'They wouldn't have got jammed among all that ice, would they?'

He knew that she had it in her mind that John and Jo had taken a course somewhere over the North Pole, but how she had got hold of that idea he did not know. He pulled out the school atlas that they had. 'They didn't go that way,' he explained. 'It's hot the way they went.' He turned to the map of the Pacific. 'Down here.' He traced the route from Panama to Tahiti with his finger.

'Oh, I remember. It looks an awful long way, Keith. All that blue would mean it's sea, wouldn't it?'

'That's right,' he said. 'It is
a long way.' He studied the longitudes with an eye well accustomed to calculations.' It's - it's seventy-five degrees. That's more than a fifth of the way round the world.' He checked the figures in wonder.

She stared at him. 'All in one trip ? I mean, not landing anywhere in all that way ?'

' I don't think so.'

' Well, they might take any time. I mean, the wind might be against them.'

' I suppose so,' he said doubtfully. ' I think it's quite all right. Still, we'd better not say anything in front of Janice.'

'There couldn't be anything wrong, though, could there?'

' I dunno. I don't like that Mr Carpenter sending cables all about the world. Don't look as though
he's
any too happy.'

For the next two days he was restless and ill at ease, mainly because he felt himself to be quite incapable of assessing the situation. He knew nothing about yachts or the sea; the oceans to him were something painted blue-upon the pages of the atlas and no more. He had never been out of England. He had sailed once on an afternoon's excursion in an old paddle steamer from Wevmouth to Lul worth Cove, a distance of six miles; he had liked the look of the cliffs from the water but had been appalled at the machinery and interested in its antiquity till the smells of the engine room coupled with the slight motion of the vessel made him sick. He knew that this experience was no guidance for assessing any hazards that might lie around his sister on her voyage, and his ignorance distressed and worried him.

Mr Carpenter rang him up again on the morning of the 3rd. 'Mr Stewart,' he said, 'I wonder if you could come up and see me ? I've got an answer to that cable, and there's a good deal that I think we should discuss.'

' Have they got to Tahiti ?'

'Not yet,' said the solicitor. 'I'm having further inquiries made out there. But in the meantime, I would like to see you if you could look in.'

'I can come up now, if you like,' said Keith. ' I don't punch a clock.'

They fixed a time; Keith took off his apron and washed his hands, put on his dark suit, and started off towards the bus. It was raining with a cold December drizzle; he wore a greasy old raincoat and an equally greasy old soft hat; he had a shabby muffler round his throat. He was pale with lack of sun and exercise, and running a bit to fat. He looked, as he sat in the trolley bus taking him to Baling Broadway, like any one of thousands of men to be seen in buses in any industrial district, and he was.

He got to the solicitor's office at about half past eleven, and he was shown straight in. Mr Carpenter got up from his desk to meet him. 'I told you that I had an answer to that cable, Mr Stewart,' he said directly. 'I'm afraid it isn't very satisfactory.'

He passed the flimsy to Keith, who could not read it without the steel-rimmed spectacles he always had to use for close work. He undid his shabby coat, fumbled for his spectacle case, and put them on. The cable was in English, and it read:

NATIVES FROM KAUTATVA ISLAND REPORT SMALL VESSEL WRECKED IN HURRICANE NOVEMBER 19TH ON REEF OFF MAROKOTA ISLAND BODIES ONE MAN ONE WOMAN BURIED MAROKOTA STOP SHEARWATER NOW MUCH OVERDUE MAKING FURTHER ENQUIRIES.

ADMINISTRATION PAPEETE.

The solicitor, watching closely, saw the fat, pallid lips quiver a little. The shabby little man stood motionless, staring at the cable. ' Sit down, Mr Stewart,' he said gently. 'I'm afraid this isn't very good news.' He went on talking, as was his habit upon these occasions. 'There's nothing very definite in that,' he said. 'As you see, it seems to be just a rumour brought to Tahiti by natives from another island. We can't come to any conclusion till we get more renews.'