Down The Hatch (17 page)

Dangerous Dan took out a handsome green leather diary and opened it on the wardroom table. As Dangerous Dan thumbed through the pages, Dagwood could not help noticing that every day in Dangerous Dan’s year seemed to be marked by a prominent social or sporting occasion, from the Cheltenham Gold Cup through The Trooping of The Colour to the Chelsea Arts Ball, by way of the Braemar Gathering.

“Here we are. The International Targa Mango da SanGuana. It’s one of the big races of the year. It counts towards the World Racing Driver’s Championship.”

“When is it?” Derek asked.

“Next Sunday.”

“When are we due to get there, Gavin?”

“Friday morning. That’s if your donks don’t give any trouble.”

“Don’t worry,” said Derek. “They won’t if there’s any danger of me missing the race. I’ll speak to them kindly.”

“Taking it by and large, it should be a good time to visit the place,” The Bodger said.

It was an excellent time to visit Cajalcocamara. The city was already decorated for carnival in honour of the motor race, and the visit of two warships completed the SanGuana’s celebrations. The citizens of the young Republic had not forgotten the part the Navy had played in winning them their independence. As
Seahorse
approached her berth she was played in by two brass bands and a native SanGuana orchestra playing on reeds and gourds. The dock buildings were decked with flags and the jetty was a packed mass of beaming faces. On the jetty’s edge stood a welcoming committee of the city’s most important citizens, including the President of the Republic, Aquila Monterruez himself, his cabinet, the British Consul, the Mayor, the Gieves Representative, the Principal of SanGuana University, the Man from the Prudential and the sporting editor of
The SanGuana
, the official organ of the Republican party.

“I don’t see any sign of
Beaufortshire
?” said The Bodger.

“Golly, we’ve certainly got the first eleven out to meet us. Who would you say that little man in the yachting cap was?”

“The Admiralty Representative, sir,” said Wilfred.

“My God, I expect you’re right!”

The Bodger marvelled, as he had marvelled many times in the past, at the wideness of the Admiralty’s net.

“I bet if you paddled a canoe right up the bloody Amazon you’d find a little man from the Admiralty at the top waiting to come on board and tell you you’d already used up your year’s allocation of parrots! “

The Bodger barely had time to get down to the casing before Aquila Monterruez was on board.

“My dear Bodger!” he cried, advancing with hand outstretched. “How very refreshing to see you again! But how are you?”

“Very well indeed, Beaky,” said The Bodger. “And you?”

“
Thriving
, me dear fellow! Do you know, this is the first time I have
ever
been on board one of these inventions. Perhaps I’d better make the introductions. I won’t introduce my cabinet, they’re a very mundane lot. The British Consul, though. . . .”

The British Consul shook hands stiffly. He felt that his position had been usurped by the ebullient Aquila. He was a tall man with weary blue eyes and shaggy eyebrows. He reminded The Bodger of one of those indolent baboons at the zoo which lean up against the bars of their cages and ignore the passing public.

“And this little man who looks as though he’s carrying a heavy weight about on his head is one of yours, Bodger. The Admiralty Rep.”

Absent-mindedly patting the Admiralty Rep. on the head as he passed, Aquila followed Wilfred down to the wardroom.

“Very cosy,” he said when he saw it. The Bodger introduced his officers and Dangerous Dan. “Very cosy indeed. Is there room for a bar?”

Wilfred hesitated, but The Bodger nodded. It was a quarter past nine in the morning but The Bodger was not one to deny hospitality to a President in his own country.

Besides, now that he came to think of it, a drink would go down very well indeed. The Midshipman poured out gins and tonics all round except for the Admiralty Representative who asked for whisky and said unexpectedly: “Salud y pesetas y fors en las brigitas! “

“Hear hear,” said Aquila.

The Signalman, who was also the ship’s postman, appeared at the wardroom door.

“Mail, sir,” he said shortly. He passed The Bodger a bundle of private and official correspondence.

“Hullo?” The Bodger examined one letter. “A letter for the Midshipman postmarked Oozemouth! What’s all this, Mid?”

The Midshipman blushed delicately. “There’s a girl there who writes to me occasionally, sir,” he said.

“Voi che sapete, che cosa e amor?” hummed Dagwood.

“. . . And one for Pilot with a pink envelope and. . . The Bodger sniffed. “Perfume! You’ll be making the Steward jealous, Pilot.”

“Her letters are a lot more attractive than she is, sir,” said Gavin.

“Come, lad,” said The Bodger, sternly. “Think of the lovin’ ’ands wot penned this ’ere missive. A man hasn’t grown up until he’s been embarrassed by a few love letters.”

The Signalman reappeared. “Santa Claus has remembered you, sir,” he said to Derek.

“Has he?”

“Bloody great package on the casing, sir. They’re trying to get it through the fore hatch now.”

Aquila clapped his hands. “I’m dying to see what this is! It came a fortnight ago in the diplomatic bag and it’s been hanging around the British Consulate ever since.”

“How did you know that?” The British Consul inquired sourly.

“My dear Fruity, you’re so naive only the British would employ you. I’ve been keeping my Chief of Police, a crude man, off it ever since it arrived. He swore it was a time bomb but I reassured him. I told him that the British, like the Americans, only send time bombs to their friends. But open it Derek, do. I’m all agog! “

Just then the Chief Stoker and his store-keeper Ferguson staggered past the wardroom, bent under the weight of a large black wooden packing case. As he passed, the Chief Stoker directed at Derek a glance of such concentrated hatred that Derek hastily finished his drink and hurried out to the control room.

The packing case seemed to fill a good part of the control room. It lay between the periscopes, already surrounded by a crowd of curious sailors.

“What have we got here, Chief Stoker?” Derek asked cheerily and, in the opinion of the Chief Stoker, stupidly.

“Don’t know, sir.”

“It’s a spare Chief Stoker!” called Able Seaman Ripper.

“We already got one spare --- ,” replied another, anonymous, voice.

“Quiet there,” the Chief Stoker growled. “Got that crowbar?”

The top planks were prised off, uncovering strips of foam rubber which themselves enclosed another metal box with a screwed lid.

“Got a screw-driver?”

The lid was unscrewed and a further box wrapped in oiled paper appeared. The Chief Stoker set to work with the crowbar again.

“It’s getting smaller and smaller, anyway,” Derek said.

The Chief Stoker grunted and wrenched off the lid. A mass of straw spilled over the deck. Parting the straw, the Chief Stoker lifted out a brown paper parcel the size of a shoe box bound with transparent adhesive tape.

“Got a knife?”

Able Seaman Ripper produced a knife. The Chief Stoker slit the tape and, like a conjurer, produced a small cardboard box.

“Abracadabra.”

“You’d better open this, sir.”

Derek opened the box and took out a small brass gauge with a round dial six inches in diameter. It was a combined pressure and vacuum gauge of the kind used on submarine distillers.

“Was it a time bomb?” Aquila asked.

“No,” Derek said brusquely. “It was what is known as Preservation, Identification and Packing.”

The rest of the mail was by comparison undistinguished. All the wardroom received tailors’ bills which were all thrown into the waste-paper basket.

“Have another drink, Beaky,” said The Bodger.

“Thank you, Bodger. Talking of tailors’ bills. . . .”

“I remember getting a rude letter from my tailors when I was at Oxford,” said the Admiralty Representative, again unexpectedly. “I settled them quite simply. I told them that it was my custom to put all my outstanding bills in a hat at the end of the month, draw one out, and pay it. I told them that if I got another letter like that theirs wouldn’t even go into the hat!”

At that moment it occurred to Derek that if he wanted a good view of the motor race, Aquila was just the fellow to ask.

“How’s your glass, sir? Let me get you another.”

“What a very Christian idea, my dear Derek! “

“I hear you have a big motor race on Sunday, sir?”

“Indeed yes. The International Targa Mango da SanGuana. Rather a pretentious, pompous name I’ve always thought but the press like it. It looks so well on paper. Rolls off the tongue, too. You must all come as my guests, I won’t accept any refusal. My Chief of Police, though a very obtuse man in many ways, will arrange seats for you.”

“Thank you
very
much, sir!” cried the wardroom in chorus.

“A pleasure. I shall be there myself of course, for political reasons. But I’d just as soon not. The
noise
, and all those impossible
people
! Some of them seem to think that just because they can drive one of those beastly machines at more than a hundred miles an hour I should offer them my own bed and toothbrush! It’s too much. I had a go myself one year and some ill-mannered boor rammed into the back of me before I had gone three hundred yards, to say nothing of three hundred miles.”

“Can anyone drive then, sir?” Dangerous Dan asked. The Bodger looked suspicious; for a moment he thought he had recognized an undertone in Dangerous Dan’s voice which reminded him of the past.

“Of course,” said Aquila. “The race used to be open to all comers but the whole thing has grown so much that everyone except the big boys have been squeezed out. I’m told the race is now as important as Le Mans or the Mille Miglia, whatever they may be. There was a rather trying argument one year because the slower drivers were supposed to be getting in the way of the faster ones. I couldn’t understand what they were arguing about myself. The whole
thing
seemed equally fraught with peril to me. Anyhow, I stopped it. But there’s no reason why I shouldn’t start it again. After all, I
am
President. It’s my race. Why,” Aquila said, draining his glass, “do you want a drive?”

“
Would
I?” Driving in a motor race of such magnitude would be, in Dangerous Dan’s eyes, second only to opening for England in the Lords Test.

“How’s your glass, sir?” Derek said.

“My dear hospitable Derek. . . .” Aquila relinquished his glass.

“Really Monterruez,” protested the British Consul. “You’re not seriously suggesting. . .

“Consul,” said Aquila solemnly. He had had just enough alcohol to make him argumentative. “You are forgetting that our host, Commander Badger here, received the Freedom of Cajalcocamara for his valiant part in my revolution. To a Freeman of Cajalcocomara, all things are possible! How about it, Bodger?”

The Bodger caught the British Consul’s eye.

“No really, Beaky, it’s very kind of you but I’m afraid I must refuse.”

“I’m disappointed in you, Bodger.”

The shape of the Second Coxswain loomed in the passageway.

“
Beaufortshire
just entering harbour, sir.”

“Dear God, that dreadful man,” Aquila said wearily. “He visited me last year and bored me almost into an asylum. Do you know that sensation as though someone were drilling steadily into the top of your head? That describes it exactly. He reminds me sometimes of Chief

of Police. He has the same inability to think of more than one thing at a time.”

“Who’s that?”

“Commodore Richard Gilpin.”

“Is
he
here?” said The Bodger hoarsely.

“He’s Commodore Amazon and River Plate and how’s your father. But I must go. Let him call on us. Come on Fruity,” Aquila nudged the British Consul, “down with that one. We must be off.”

As he stepped out into the passageway, Aquila collided with an agitated Petty Officer Telegraphist.

“Signal from
Beaufortshire
sir: You are in my berth I”

“Nonsense,” said Aquila sharply. “A Freeman of Cajalcocamara can berth anywhere he likes. Just you send him this message. . . .”

“That’s all right, Beaky,” The Bodger intervened hastily. “We’ve got to shift berth anyway. He’s going to give us some fuel.”

“Oh, very well.”

Aquila marched across the gangway to his little car, pushed the British Consul into the passenger’s seat, and prepared to drive off. He appeared to have some difficulty in finding the starter but at last the engine fired, the car backed and filled for a time, and then moved off in low gear.

Meanwhile, The Bodger was manoeuvring
Seahorse
away from the jetty and out of
Beaufortshire’s
way. He was only just in time.
Beaufortshire’s
bows slid in behind
Seahorse
’s stern as The Bodger backed out.

“What a rude man,” said The Bodger quietly.

Seahorse
lay off while
Beaufortshire
secured in a flurry of bugle calls, band music and arms drill.

“
Beaufortshire’s
flashing us, sir.”

“So I see. What’s he saying, Signalman?”

“You--May--Salute--My--Flag--At--Noon, sir.”

The Bodger blinked. “Has he gone mad? What does he think I’m running here, a Royal Naval Barracks?”

“It’s five minutes to twelve now, sir.”

“I know.”

The Bodger had already been nettled by
Beaufortshire’s
signals. He was well aware that his own ship, with rusty sides and gaps in the casing where plates had been torn bodily away by the sea, compared poorly with Beaufort-shire’s spotless paintwork. He had been goaded almost beyond endurance by
Beaufortshire’s
white uniforms and bugle calls, a display of ceremonial which he had hoped to avoid for his own ship’s company who were weary after a long sea passage. But the order to fire a gun salute was too much. The last bond of restraint snapped in The Bodger’s mind.

“How many guns does a Commodore get?”