The Golden Reef (1969) (6 page)

After the brilliance of the light outside it seemed gloomy in the alleyway, and there was a constant sound of water swilling back and forth as the ship rolled. It was not a cheering sound, and the water itself, some two or three inches deep, was thick and scummy, as though it had been washing into dark corners and finding all the dirt that was hidden there.

Bristow shivered and his voice was hushed; he seemed to be overawed by this silent ship which so recently had been alive with men.

‘Listen‚’ he said, clutching at Keeton’s arm. ‘Listen.’

‘What is it?’

‘I thought I heard somebody laughing. A kind of low chuckle. It’s gone now.’

Keeton pulled his arm away. ‘You’re imagining things. Look, Johnnie, you won’t find anybody else alive on board this ship and you’d better make up your mind to that straight off.’

‘Maybe not alive.’ Bristow shivered again and glanced apprehensively over his shoulder. ‘Maybe the other kind.’

Keeton swore at him, for his own nerves were sufficiently on edge without Bristow’s fancies. ‘Snap out of it, can’t you? You start that sort of thing and you’ll soon be ready for the looney bin. Let’s find that grub.’

There was water in the galley also. It had collected at the lower end, where it was trapped in a filthy pool. A cork floated in it, two lemons, an empty beer can, all black with coal dust that had been washed out of the cold stove.

And then Keeton saw the cat. It was standing on the stove and eating out of a saucepan that was prevented from sliding off the inclined surface only by the iron fiddles that were fitted to it. The cat looked up and mewed. It stretched itself, jumped off the stove, and avoiding the water with disdainful paws, walked up to Keeton and began rubbing itself against his leg. He reached down and stroked it. The cat began to purr.

‘Well, what do you think of that?’ Bristow said. ‘They even left the cat. Just shows, don’t it? Bastards!’

He took an aluminium dipper from a hook and went to the fresh water pump over the sink. He filled the dipper and took a long drink.

‘I never knew water could taste so good. Ship’s water at that.’

Keeton also took a drink and they began to hunt for food. There was no shortage. They ate slabs of corned beef and hunks of stale bread washed down with more water. They sat on boxes and the cat watched them and rubbed against their legs and purred, grateful for this human company. The ship rolled and the scummy tide came towards them and retreated again, slapping against the sides of the galley and washing under the dead stove.

When they left the galley the cat followed them, as though unwilling to let the men out of its sight, stepping gingerly and shaking its paws whenever the water touched them.

‘We’ll have a look at the engine-room‚’ Keeton said. ‘That’s where she took the damage. Some of it anyway.’

‘You aren’t thinking of getting the engines started again, are you?’ Bristow was feeling better with the food inside him.

‘Funny man. You should go on the stage. You’d kill them – if they didn’t kill you first.’

The engine-room was a wreck. Keeton wondered whether this was all the result of the shell that had demolished the funnel or whether another had also pierced the upper decks and spread its havoc here in the heart of the ship. Standing on one of the iron gantries that was still remaining he was able to look up and see the sky through a jagged hole, and then he could look down and see the tangle of metal that had been the engines.

There was water at the bottom; it was like the dark, muddy
pool in the depths of a pit. The body of a man lay there half-submerged, and his hair floated like a weed on the surface. Another body was caught between two iron rods, once handrails, that had been twisted round his chest so that they held the man suspended in mid-air as in a kind of rigid gibbet. His arms and legs hung free, and his head was flung back with the mouth wide open, so that Keeton, looking down upon it, could see the white teeth and the dark cavern of the throat.

He knew this man; it was the third engineer, young, not more than twenty-five; a man who had loved life, now dead, crucified on his own machinery.

‘He died with his teeth clean‚’ Keeton said.

‘God, Charlie‚’ Bristow said. ‘How can you make a laugh of a thing like that?’

‘If I didn’t laugh I might cry. It’s better to laugh.’

The cat jumped on Keeton’s shoulder and rubbed itself against his ear. He could hear its purring like an engine running inside the animal. The cat was happy even if the men were not.

‘We’ll see what the boat is like‚’ Keeton said. ‘We may need it.’

The boat, as he had feared, was in no state to be used; it scarcely needed a close inspection to make that apparent. A hole had been ripped in one side as big as a cask, and the rest of it was perforated with smaller punctures. Some of the boards were splintered and their edges charred, as though a small fire had started but had gone out, perhaps extinguished by the rain. As it was, this boat was as useless as the one that had been cut in halves.

‘Nice work‚’ Bristow said. ‘Mr Rains left us the best of everything.’

All around were strewn the jagged pieces of the funnel, and in the boat-deck was the gaping hole that led down into the engine-room; but forward of this the ship appeared to have suffered less damage. The bridge was intact and the two Oerlikons pointed their naked barrels at the sky, thin and black, like the scrawny fingers of prophets giving warning of the wrath to come.

They picked their way through the wreckage and came to the ladder up to the bridge, and climbed this and stood where the navigating officer might have been standing if there had been a
navigating officer on board. The windows of the wheelhouse had been shattered by the blast and broken glass was scattered inside.

‘Mind your step‚’ Bristow said. ‘That stuff could give your feet a nasty gash.’

The cat, still accompanying them, jumped on to the binnacle and began to wash itself.

‘There’s one boy that’s not worrying‚’ Bristow said. He sounded envious. ‘Wish I had his nerve. This ship gives me the willies.’

It was the sense of desertion that frayed the nerves. The ship was at sea and there should have been men on the bridge, directing her course, keeping watch, steering. Instead, there was nothing – just the broken glass and the abandoned wheel, the cat perched on the binnacle and the silence.

They went into the chart-room, and that too was deserted. A few charts lay on the table, some instruments, drawing pins, an india-rubber. On the bulkhead the brass chronometer was still going. The time was twenty minutes past eleven.

‘They’ll have taken the log‚’ Keeton said. ‘They’d have to take the ship’s papers. Even Mr Rains wouldn’t forget that.’

Strewn about were the fragments of a broken coffee cup and a ham sandwich, one bite taken out of it, the bread curling back as it dried. The spilt coffee had painted a dark stain on the boards.

They went next into the wireless cabin, driven by a kind of compulsion to see all. No one was there.

Keeton looked at the transmitter. ‘Know anything about using one of these, Johnnie?’

‘Not me‚’ Bristow said. ‘Do you?’

Keeton shook his head. ‘Not a thing. It’s a pity. We might have sent out an S.O.S.’

‘I wonder whether Sparks did that before he left?’

‘Could have. But we must have drifted a hell of a way in the night; we’ll be miles off the mark by now. Besides, if anybody is picked up from the boats they’re bound to say the ship was sunk. Couldn’t say anything else, could they? Nobody’s going to hunt for us, so you can put that idea out of your head for a start.’

‘I expect you’re right.’ Bristow’s shoulders drooped and he
moved towards the door. Then suddenly he turned and gripped Keeton’s arm, shaking it in his excitement. ‘I just thought of something.’

‘What?’

‘The gold. It’s all there and it’s all ours, yours and mine, Charlie. We’re rich, rich.’

Keeton said roughly: ‘Don’t talk like a fool. What’s the use of gold to us? How do we make use of it? Put it in a leaky boat and row home with it? Or do we use it to buy a yacht? Talk sense.’

The fire went out of Bristow. ‘You’re right again, Charlie. You’re always right. There’s a fortune down there for the taking and we can’t take it.’

‘Forget it‚’ Keeton said. ‘Let’s go over the rest of the ship.’

They went out of the wireless cabin with the cat at their heels.

Keeton felt like an intruder when he went into the captain’s cabin. It was a room he had never entered before, and the contrast between it and the gunners’ quarters was marked. Here there was a carpet underfoot, curtains over the scuttle, a mahogany book-case, pictures, comfortable chairs; in fact, all the marks of civilised living that were conspicuously absent from the improvised accommodation aft.

‘Did hisself well, didn’t he?’ Bristow said. ‘Lived like a lord while we was living like pigs. That’s equality for you. Is it any wonder there’s Communists?’

‘He had the responsibility.’

‘Give me a cabin like this and I’d take the responsibility.’

‘No you wouldn’t, Johnnie. You’d be scared.’

‘All right‚’ Bristow said. ‘Maybe that’s true enough. And maybe you wouldn’t be so keen on it either.’

‘I don’t say that I would.’

There was a doorway leading into an adjoining room which Keeton guessed was the captain’s sleeping quarters. Feeling even more like a trespasser on private property, he pushed open this door and went inside.

It was not a large room. Along one side of it was the bed and on the opposite side an open porthole. The room was hot and close; it had the confined, distasteful odour of sickness. A beam
of sunlight slanted down from the porthole and fell upon the bed, throwing into sharp relief the face of the man lying there. The face was gaunt and grey, with a thin stubble of white beard. It was the face of the
Valparaiso
’s
master, of Captain Peterson.

As Keeton stared in amazement he saw Peterson’s eyes slowly open and gaze at him.

With the approach of night the wind came again, softly at first, then growing ever stronger until it was blowing spray over the
Valparaiso
’s
sloping decks. The ship staggered before the wind, sometimes turning her great blind starboard side to the attack, sometimes the stern and sometimes the bows.

She was lower in the water now and often her port bulwarks dipped under. The tackle still hanging from the davits on that side trailed in the water like the tell-tale rope by which a man might have escaped from prison. The logline, drooping from the taffrail, was knotted and tangled; it no longer rotated, no longer registered the miles of the ship’s voyage. It was as though every yard that the
Valparaiso
moved forward now were an unofficial yard, made without authority and not entered in the records.

Keeton and Bristow had given the dead men on the poop their burial. They had read no funeral service; they had said no prayer; but they had taken the bodies one by one and had rolled them over the side. Bristow had hung back, but Keeton had cursed and threatened him, and at last he had done his share of the work.

As they dropped one man overboard Bristow said with a wretched attempt at bravado: ‘That blighter owed me a dollar. I’ll never get it now. I hope it don’t lay too heavy on his soul.’

Hagan was the last to go. They lifted him over the taffrail and let him slide down head-first, holding his feet and releasing their grip together. Hagan might have been a diver taking the plunge;
he went with scarcely a splash, and they turned away and never saw him again.

They had to leave the dead men in the engine-room because there was no way of getting them out. When Keeton looked down into that jungle of wrecked machinery in the late afternoon he could see that the water had risen perceptibly. It was coming in somewhere and might, for all Keeton knew, be leaking into the holds also. There could be little doubt that the
Valparaiso
was slowly sinking and it was doubtful whether she would survive the night.

‘If it comes to the worst‚’ Keeton said, ‘and the old girl goes down, we shall have to take a raft.’

Two of the rafts had been destroyed, but there were still two others resting on their cradles; it would be necessary only to knock out a pin to send one or other of these down the slides and into the water. They chose the one on the port side and lashed to it stocks of tinned foods, biscuits and condensed milk, of which there was an abundance in the ship’s stores. They filled water containers and fixed these to the raft also, and hoped they would not need to use it.

‘What hope on a raft?’ Bristow said. ‘All you can do is drift.’

‘Plenty of men have been picked up from rafts.’

‘And there’s a hell of a lot that haven’t.’

‘If the ship goes it’s our only chance. We’ll have to get the Old Man on it too.’

Bristow stared unbelievingly. ‘Him! Where’s the sense in taking him? He’s as good as dead anyway.’

Keeton said stubbornly: ‘We can’t leave him behind.’

‘The others left him, didn’t they? And they had boats.’

‘I don’t care a damn what the others did‚’ Keeton said. ‘If we go, the Old Man goes with us.’

‘You’re crazy‚’ Bristow said; but he did not press the argument.

Keeton knew that Bristow was right in saying that Peterson was almost dead, but he also knew that if he were to leave the captain to drown Peterson’s eyes would haunt him for the rest of his life. Only the eyes moved in Peterson’s body; the rest of him lay like a corpse on the bed. But the eyes were alive and intelligent.

Keeton felt that there was a brain working in this man, that he knew that he had been abandoned by his officers and crew, and would know also if he should be deserted by Keeton and Bristow.

Bristow sneered. ‘Maybe you’re afraid his ghost will haunt you.’

‘Maybe I am‚’ Keeton said.

He talked to Peterson; he told the captain just what had happened to the ship, and the way he and Bristow had been trapped in the magazine.

‘The others must have got away. Two boats are gone. They left us behind. They left you too, sir.’

Peterson made no answer. Keeton could not tell whether he heard or understood. Only the faint sound of breathing and the eyes moving slowly in the gaunt head gave indication that he was still alive.

‘They must have scuttled away like rats. Though in fact, I suppose, the rats are still with us. I don’t know how much longer the ship will last. The engine-room’s flooded. If we get some more bad weather there’s no telling what will happen.’

He wondered why he was talking like this to Peterson; there was no need to tell the captain how perilous was the situation of his ship; for if his brain was working he must know only too well how bad the prospect was. Yet somehow Keeton felt a compulsion to talk to and confide in this man to whom he had spoken scarcely half a dozen words in the course of his duty.

‘If she does start to go‚’ he said, ‘we’ll take you with us on the raft. We won’t leave you.’

It was a bad night. The wind blew strongly and there was more rain. The rain drove against the sides of the accommodation and made a constant drumming sound on the iron-work. There was no electricity in the ship, but Keeton had found an oil lantern amongst the stores, and this he had lighted and hung up in the captain’s cabin. He and Bristow moved in and took up their quarters there.

‘It’s comfortable anyway,’ Bristow said. ‘There’s no telling how long we’ll be able to enjoy it, but it’ll be cosy while it lasts.’

They decided to keep watch by turns, one sleeping on the settee while the other stayed awake, alert to any obvious deterioration in the ship’s condition. They knew that they might have to get away quickly if the worst came, and they had provided themselves with torches so that there would be no difficulty in finding the raft. Peterson was the big problem.

‘If we stop for him‚’ Bristow grumbled, ‘we’ll likely all go down together. It ain’t worth it. He’ll die anyway. Besides, maybe he’d rather go with his ship. That’s the proper drill. We ought to leave him.’

‘We take him with us‚’ Keeton said. Bristow might argue as much as he liked, but Peterson was not going to be abandoned a second time. ‘We take him with us and you’ll help me. Let’s toss for first watch.’

The spin of the coin gave Bristow the privilege of using the settee first. In less than a minute he was fast asleep. Keeton sat in an arm-chair listening to the rain and the wind. The ship rolled sluggishly and shuddered when the sea battered her. The lantern swayed and flickered, casting uneasy shadows in the cabin.

Keeton got up and took an oilskin coat and sou’wester off a peg and put them on. The coat was too small, but he managed to struggle into it, his wrists protruding from the sleeves. He took an electric torch and went out on deck.

Immediately the rain lashed at his face and the wind wrenched at his coat, flapping it wildly against his legs. He went to the port side and leaned against the rail and shone the beam of his torch on the sea. There was a glimmer of phosphorescence on the breaking water and where it fell on the decks the phosphorescence dribbled away in little islands of moving fire.

It was difficult to tell whether the ship had settled lower. The night was so dark that even the outline of the
Valparaiso
’s
superstructure was indistinguishable from the background. Standing there, it seemed to Keeton as though he were perched on a tiny rock surrounded by an invading ocean. But this rock moved; it rose and fell; it shifted this way and that; and every now and then it shuddered as though in fear.

Keeton shone his torch on the raft; it was hanging in the slipway
ready to go; and he wondered just how long men could hope to survive in such a sea on such a primitive craft, a framework of slatted timbers given buoyancy by iron drums.

‘Forget it‚’ he muttered. There was no point in worrying about questions like that.

He went back into the shelter of the accommodation and shone his torch down into the engine-room. The white beam touched the man hanging in the cold embrace of twisted iron, and his grotesque shadow danced and postured as though the devil had been in it. Keeton could hear the dismal sound of water slopping from side to side as the ship rolled, but he could not be certain that it had risen any higher.

He returned to the cabin and found Bristow snoring with his mouth wide open. For a moment or two he gazed down at the slack, soft face and then walked into the adjoining room, leaving the door hooked open so that the light from the lantern shone through.

Peterson looked exactly the same; his eyes were still open.

Keeton said: ‘I’ve been out on deck. It’s a rough night.’ He slipped out of the oilskin coat and hung it, dripping, on a peg. ‘I borrowed this.’ He moved closer to the bed, hoping that Peterson would show some sign of understanding. ‘I had a look at the engine-room. I don’t think the water’s coming in all that fast, but it’s a job to tell.’

Keeton could not help reflecting on the strangeness of the situation. Here he was, talking to a paralysed sea captain in the cabin of a derelict ship which was being driven blindly through a pitch-black night. And still he felt a compulsion to go on talking.

‘I wonder where the boats are now. If Mr Rains and his lot caught this weather they’ll be having a nasty time of it. Of course they may have been picked up by now.’

The cat came into the room and jumped on to the foot of the bed. It curled itself up and went to sleep.

‘There’s one joker that doesn’t think the ship’s going to sink,’ Keeton said.

He walked to the porthole. He could see drops of water running down the outside of the glass, but beyond that all was
black and impenetrable darkness. A sudden roll of the ship caught him off balance and flung him on to the bed, and he could feel Peterson’s thin body under the covers.

‘Sorry‚’ he muttered. ‘I’m sorry, sir.’ But there was no reaction from Peterson.

When Keeton got up he discovered that it was more difficult to stand because the deck was sloping more steeply. There could be no doubt that the ship’s list had in the last few moments increased to alarming proportions. The cat still slept, but the bed had tilted so much that Peterson’s head was now far higher than his feet and he was in effect resting on an inclined plane.

Keeton heard a sound behind him and found Bristow standing in the doorway. Bristow’s voice was hoarse and frightened.

‘She’s going. There’s no doubt about it. She’s had it now for sure. We’ve got to get away.’

Keeton said: ‘That raft is going to be pretty bad in this sea.

‘It’s that or an iron coffin.’ Bristow’s hair was sticking out in spikes, as though it had caught the atmosphere of terror. ‘Are you coming?’

Keeton pointed at the bed. ‘There’s Captain Peterson.’

‘Leave him. Leave the corpse.’

‘He’s alive.’

‘He’s as near dead as makes no difference. Leave him, I say.’

‘No‚’ Keeton said. ‘We’ll take him with us. Give me a hand.’

He moved to the bed and put his arm under Peterson’s shoulders. It was easy to lift the man; there was no weight in him.

‘Take his legs, Johnnie.’

‘Damn you,’ Bristow said. He was almost weeping with terror and frustration; but he obeyed Keeton. He pulled off the coverings and gripped Peterson’s legs. Peterson was wearing blue and white striped pyjamas and his legs were lost inside them. Together they lifted him off the bed.

‘You go first, Johnnie.’

‘Damn you‚’ Bristow said again. He started to back towards the door and the cat got under his feet and squealed as he trod on it. Bristow stumbled and dropped Peterson’s legs.

‘Be careful‚’ Keeton said.

‘It was that cat. Nearly had me down.’

‘Never mind the cat. Get a move on.’

Bristow picked up Peterson’s legs again and backed out through the doorway. Another wave struck the ship and Bristow stumbled and fell. Keeton yelled at him.

‘What’s wrong with you? Get up, you slob.’

Bristow got up, but he did not take Peterson’s legs.

‘I’m going. It’s time to go. If you want to drag that corpse along with you, that’s your concern. But not mine, not this boy’s. I’ve had enough.’

He turned and clawed his way towards the outer door. Keeton snarled at him.

‘Come back, you bastard.’

Bristow did not even look at him.

It happened just as Bristow was about to go through the doorway. He did not get through because the shock sent him reeling backwards and he fell heavily against the settee.

There was a harsh grating and grinding noise, a noise that seemed to push its way up through the decks. It made Keeton’s teeth chatter, as though he had become an integral part of the ship and the tremor that ran through the
Valparaiso
was running through his body also.

And then he realized that the ship had stopped moving; she was no longer rising and falling, no longer swinging drunkenly from side to side; and had it not been for the shuddering as the waves struck her it might have been imagined that she had at last come safely into harbour.

Bristow sat up, rubbing his bruised head. ‘What happened Charlie?’

He gazed about him in amazement. The carpet beneath him was no longer sloping steeply; it had returned almost to the horizontal. Moreover, the lack of motion in the ship was so strange that it was frightening. Again he muttered: ‘What happened?’

‘I think we’ve run aground,’ Keeton said. He spoke in a hushed, awed voice, hardly able to believe that this could really be true, yet unable to think of any other explanation. ‘What else could it have been? There’s something solid under the keel. Must be.’

Bristow got to his feet. His voice shook with excitement. ‘It’s
land then. We drifted to land. We’re safe.’

Keeton could hear the thunder of the seas and he could feel the ship trembling as they struck. He did not believe their troubles were over.

‘What kind of land? A rock? How long before the ship breaks up?’

The hope faded from Bristow’s eyes. ‘You think it’s like that? Just a rock?’