Endangered Species (30 page)

Climbing towards the boat-deck, only half-comprehending what had happened and sensing again that elemental shift in the relationship of air and water, he realised the spray had fallen back, that a vague and misty horizon was visible. The surface of the sea no longer wore the scourged, abraded appearance it had done; instead its battered waves seemed to gather themselves, not wind-driven and tumbling crests, but highly charged repositories of kinetic energy released from the thrall of the
taifun
.

On the bridge ladder he paused and turned, scanning the surface of the ocean. This was the very eye of the storm, and as if to confirm his diagnosis the sun finally broke through. Looking upwards he could see the sky, a mighty dome of cobalt blue edged by a great mass of towering cloud, a huge curtain of cumulonimbus on a gigantic scale.

All about the ship the sea was suddenly blue and white and the comparative silence was unnerving after the hours of wind-rushing noise.

‘Is this the vortex, sir?' he asked Mackinnon as he slid back the wheelhouse door and met the Captain's drawn face.

‘Only the edge, laddie, only the edge. The worst is yet to come.'

Stevenson looked at the helmsman. He was steering a course again, and though the
Matthew Flinders
rolled and wallowed and threw her bow in the air and continued to shoot curtains of spray and ship the occasional sea, her motion, bad enough in normal circumstances, was nothing to what it had been earlier. It was clear to Stevenson that Mackinnon had his ship under command again and was making north and east as fast as possible to cut his way out of the typhoon as it moved west-north-west.

‘Did you find anything?' Mackinnon asked.

‘Nothing, sir.'

‘You checked everyone?'

‘Yes.' Stevenson paused, remembering. ‘Oh, except the woman you operated on.'

Mackinnon shook his head. ‘I've just had word from Freddie. He's been with her all night.' The Chief Steward had also let him know the woman had had another dose of morphine sulphate. ‘What about the baby?'

‘The baby, sir?' Comprehension dawned in Stevenson's eyes. Without a word, he turned and ran below, banging from bulkhead to bulkhead, bruising his shoulder again, his heart in his mouth. Of course! The baby . . .'

He was convinced he had been deceived, convinced Tam had been holding the gun in the child's blanket even as she had talked to him. Why else had she looked so guilty? Why else had she refused Braddock the bundle? And why else had she reacted the way she had when he told her they were bound for Shanghai, not Hong Kong.

Now he would have to confess to Mackinnon the refugees knew of the re-routing, knew it from himself, to whom Mackinnon had imparted the news in confidence.

It became imperative that he discover the gun.

She was in the smoke-room, sitting where he had seen her earlier, back straight against the bulkhead, staring in front of her. What
was
she seeing? Her village under the nipa palms, the dusty road on its low dyke, the rice paddies spread out on either side and the range of blue mountains in the distance? Or a noisy, teeming street in Saigon; a street of endless comings and goings, of jostling and haggling.

To his relief the swaddled baby was still in her arms, though it whimpered quietly.

‘Tam.'

She looked up at him, but no warmth kindled in her eyes. She merely gazed at him as he squatted down next to her. The old woman in the corner sucked in her cheeks and muttered to herself.

‘Tam,' he repeated, his hands going out for the baby, ‘you hide gun, eh?'

She thrust the baby at him and it stirred, crying as Stevenson took it. The blanket concealed nothing more than a damp patch. Sheepishly he handed the baby back to her and stood up.

‘You tell me lie,' she snapped.

‘No . . .'

‘You tell me ship go Hong Kong.' Her voice was sharp with accusation, betrayal.

‘Yes.' He nodded vigorously. ‘Ship go Hong Kong, then – he held up his hand to stop her protest – ‘then we have radio message, just now, savvy? I didn't know when I spoke to you before. We have a change of our orders,' he went on, seeing her expression alter and abandoning the attempt to tell her in pidgin. ‘I came and told you when I knew.' He switched to the offensive, dropping down on his haunches beside her and lowering his voice. ‘Tam, those two men. They had the gun, yes? They told you to hide it, didn't they?'

For a moment she stared at him impassively and his heart sank. ‘I not want to go Shanghai,' she said. ‘Everybody all finish.' She was silent, her eyes imploring him to understand
what would happen to them. ‘Okay Hong Kong bad; maybe prison camp but not – not finish.' She whispered the last word. Stevenson thought of Taylor's dead face.

‘Those men,' he began, but Tam interrupted.

‘Not good men, Alex, no, but they maybe fight for us.' She paused, then added, ‘Maybe you fight for us too, maybe you not let me and' – she indicated the whimpering bundle – ‘baby go back to Communists in Shanghai.'

Stevenson could not bear the look in her eyes. What could he do? Whatever happened his loyalties lay with Mackinnon.

‘The gun,' he persisted, ‘where is the gun?'

She lowered her eyes, aware she had lost. ‘Ask Phan Van Nui.'

Deeply troubled, Stevenson climbed once more to the bridge. The ship was moving with an increasingly erratic motion. He was too late, too involved, to carry out his encouraging mission to the engine-room.

‘No luck?'

‘Not yet, sir, but,' he temporised, thinking of the two Vietnamese men running into the saloon in mock outrage, ‘I think they've hidden it somewhere.' He hesitated, knowing he would have to confess he had inadvertently let the refugees know their destination was Shanghai.

‘That's bad,' Mackinnon mused. ‘I think they know by now that we are not going to Hong Kong.'

‘Sir?' Stevenson frowned.

‘When Sparks brought the message about our diversion, Macgregor overheard us discussing it.'

Relief flooded Stevenson. ‘Yes, they know, sir,' he said flatly, confirming the Captain's deduction.

‘There's always one rotten apple in the barrel,' Mackinnon said, and Stevenson's self-esteem shrivelled under this vicarious disapproval. ‘Anyway, we've got to get through this lot yet. Did you find the Mate?'

‘No, sir, I haven't seen him.'

‘Checked his cabin?'

‘No.'

‘You'd better have a look.'

Rawlings was fast asleep, spread-eagled on his bunk, his face slack, almost boyish in its innocent detachment from responsibility. Stevenson gazed at him for a moment, recalling his escapade with his niece, Dawn Dent; ‘Double-D' the crew had nick-named her for her nubility. It took all sorts, Stevenson thought.

‘Leave him be for a bit,' Mackinnon said, staring again at the depressed needle of the aneroid barometer. ‘He'll wake up soon enough.'

And they were not long left in their situation of relative comfort, for as they moved across the vortex and it, in its turn, moved over them, the residue of the wind in which they had been hove-to sent the waves in towards the centre. For some twenty minutes, as they passed out of the wind through the invisible ‘wall' bordering the typhoon's eye, this continued. Then, imperceptibly at first, cross swells ran in, the sea began to heap, to fling itself in the air as unseen waves collided with an increasing turbulence. After the pressing violence of the great wind, all now seemed a random of chaos.

The
Matthew Flinders
was flung about, her hull protesting as a violent roll terminated abruptly in a premature counter-roll, only to turn with a monstrous jerk which bodily twisted her into a sky-climbing pitch from which her suddenly unsupported bow fell with an immense, jarring crash.

There were no harmonics in this anarchy of water, nothing recognisable as a pattern of waveform, nothing in the least predictable beyond the knowledge that the vast energy the storm had unleashed on the surface of the sea, an energy which unimpeded could send an ocean swell from one side of the Atlantic to the other, had concentrated its power to propel a gyration of swell waves to a small centre perhaps twenty or thirty miles across.

Mackinnon clung to the handles of the wheelhouse windows. It was no wonder that the combination of low pressure and the inward heaping of the sea could raise the very sea level by estimated heights of sixty to seventy feet! Indeed, he knew of a ship that had been carried over a shoal which would normally have ripped the bottom out of her. He thought of the words of the psalmist:
They that go down to the sea in ships and occupy their business in great waters; these men shall see the works of the Lord
 . . .

Mackinnon watched the foremast whip back and forth across the blue of the sky with its table, making of it an elongated cross. ‘Let's hope the builders made a good job of her,' he said to no one in particular.

The extreme erratic violence of the ship's motion increased the misery of all on board. Only those with strong stomachs and good sea legs could move about. Without exception the boat people lay down, many choking up their recently eaten food so that the reek of fresh vomit was added to the stench of human neglect filling the accommodation. Rawlings woke, as Mackinnon had predicted, but he dragged his mattress on to the deck and fell upon it, dead to all thought of duty, aware someone would call him out if he were wanted. Freddie Thorpe was driven from his patient's side by sheer exhaustion. He also crashed on his deck-laid mattress, as did the remainder of the crew who were not on duty.

At their posts there now remained only a handful of men. On the bridge were Captain Mackinnon and the duty seaman at the helm; Sparks in the radio-room patiently waited for a further incoming signal he knew was due from the inclusion of the
Matthew Flinders
's call sign on the last traffic list transmitted by Hong Kong Radio. Far below, in the shaft tunnel, Greaser Number Twenty-three, Wang Ho Lee, tirelessly worked his way along the shaft bearings while his colleague, Chan Xao Ping, clung like a limpet above the
generators and main engine and checked dashpots and tun-dishes with an impressive devotion to his duty. Below him, on ‘the platform' beside the engine controls and the terminus of the telegraph, George ‘Geordie' Reed stood listening to the beat of his engine. Somewhere above him Assistant Engineer Curtis again checked the level of the service tanks.

‘Wi' her tossing herself aboot like this, ah doon't want no more fooking air locks,' Reed had told him, ‘or ah'll hae yoor fooking bollocks for a necktie.'

Without seeking permission, Stevenson had left the bridge. Phan Van Nui, he guessed, was one of Tam's boyfriends. He wanted to call him an ‘intimidator', but he was no longer sure. He had been a fool to think a slight rapport could signify anything.

East was east, and west was fucking west, he thought savagely.

He went first to the radio-room. He had no real idea why, beyond acknowledging he should perhaps have been here earlier. Sparks removed one of his headphones.

‘Hullo, Alex,' he said. ‘Bad news about Chas.'

‘Yes.'

‘You were . . .?'

‘Yes, I saw it. Poor bastard.'

‘He wasn't a very happy bloke.'

‘No. I wonder if any of us are.'

Sparks pulled a rueful face. ‘Soldier philosophers are to be admired as historical heroes; sailor philosophers are a pain in the arse.' He smiled, taking the sting out of the rebuke. ‘He's at peace now, anyway, out of this bloody mess.'

Stevenson was about to remonstrate and then he recalled the expression on Taylor's face, the expression he could not quite define, that had mystified him. ‘Yes,' he found himself saying, ‘he is.'

‘You've heard the news?' Sparks went on, ignoring the warning as to the confidentiality of radio telegrams that was framed under glass on the adjacent bulkhead.

Stevenson nodded. ‘Shanghai? Yes. The boat people have got wind of it, too.'

‘It's fucking Dent's,' Sparks said, ‘probably James Dent himself. I was told he'd be out in Hong Kong when we arrived. He'd happily do the government's dirty work for them. Probably sucked his way to dinner with the Governor. There's nothing that bastard likes better than kicking arse. He must get a great big stiffie out of it.'

‘I think there may be trouble with the boat people,' Stevenson interrupted, ‘once we're out of this lot. They've got a gun of some sort. It's my guess they might try and take over the ship.'

Sparks's mouth dropped open. ‘You're kidding.'

‘No, I'm not. I wish I was.'

‘Does the Old Man know?'

‘Yes. I think he's guessed what might happen.'

‘What's he going to do?'

Stevenson shrugged. ‘I've no idea; but I thought I'd better put you in the picture.'

‘Thanks,' replied Sparks ironically. ‘What about Randy?'

‘Rawlings is crashed out,' the Second Mate said, ‘and frankly I don't think he's going to be a lot of good.'

‘No,' said Sparks, ‘he's a bit of a broken reed at the best of times.' He smiled again. ‘You won't forget old Sparky, Alex, will you, if things start to hum? Perched down here at the after end of the boat-deck I'm a bit isolated and they may take it into their heads to fuck up this lot.' He gestured at the radio sets before him.

Stevenson grinned. ‘Okay, I savvy.'

‘I mean I'd hate to end up like poor Chas. My wife still loves me – at least so she says in her letters.'

Outside, on the boat-deck, Stevenson almost trod on the fluttering of an exhausted bird. It was a parakeet of some kind, a tangled bundle of brilliant colours, one wing broken and its long tail feathers bent. He stood for a moment staring at the unfortunate thing, then looked out over the wild
confusion of the sea. He had never seen anything like it, for it beggared all description, a leaping, heaving mass, the tall columns of imploding waves sparkling in the benign sunshine.