Uncharted Seas (2 page)

Countering a heavy lurch of the ship, he snatched back the refilled glass and his glance fell upon Synolda Ortello. She appeared to be asleep, or comatose, stretched out at full length on a divan. In the last few days he’d wondered a lot about her. She was a South African of British extraction; twenty-eight or thirty perhaps and, rumour had it, the widow of a Spaniard. She was pretty good to look at, or had been a few years before; vaguely
reminiscent of Marlene Dietrich, but Marlene in a part where she was a bit shop-soiled and prematurely old. Much too much makeup and a shade careless about her clothes; troubled, too, apparently about some secret worry of her own, so very reticent and difficult to get to know. She’d lived in Rio with that Spanish husband for several years, so she said, and the passenger list showed her to be returning there, presumably to her home. All the other women on board had hated her on sight. That wasn’t her fault as she’d done nothing to encourage any man’s attentions, rather the reverse, but half the men in the ship, from the youngest officer to the senile-looking old Greek, could hardly keep their eyes off her whenever she appeared.

Between bouts of drunkenness Basil had watched the comedy of their advances with much amusement. Watching other people, getting blind most nights, and occasionally turning a pretty piece of satirical verse, which he destroyed immediately afterwards, was about all the fun he had in life.

If only his uncle’s money had come to him when he was a little older things might have been different. As it was, with the recklessness of youth and a few people like Barbara La Sarle to help him, he had blown the lot.

After two marvellous years he had woken up one morning to find himself bankrupt without really understanding how such a thing could have come about. The friends of yesterday had melted away like snow under a summer sun; nothing remained of his handsome legacy except outrageously extravagant tastes.

He had turned to and got a job on the strength of his having been supposed to know everyone in Mayfair; but it was with the wrong kind of people. A criminal prosecution had followed as a result of which a parchment-faced judge had sent most of Basil’s share-pushing associates to push needles through thick canvas, an operation necessary to the making of mail-bags in His Majesty’s prisons, but the shrewd old man had sensed that Basil was an innocent party to the frauds and directed the jury so that he was let off with a caution.

The family had then loomed up again; aged aunts and uncles, neglected during those hectic years. Their offer had been considerably better than going on the dole; £400 a year paid to any bank he chose, provided he kept out of Europe and prison; they wanted no further scandals connected with the family name. Hating the thought of going into exile, his fight to retain his independence had caused them to increase their offer to £500.
Four weeks later, absolute necessity forced him to accept their terms and he had gone abroad.

During the last three years he had made his way via South Africa, India, and the Straits Settlements to China and back. For a month or two here and there he had managed to get a job, but he loathed routine and the practical side of business. In every case he had either been sacked or anticipated his dismissal by walking out. If there had been no allowance coming from home he would have had to stick it, but with £10 a week he could afford to slack when he got bored, or move on by cheap routes to fresh places in the vague hope that he might find them more congenial.

The wind howled and blustered through the rigging overhead, the spray hissed against the portholes like driven rain, every piece of woodwork creaked infernally under the frightful tension. The ship was rolling with a horrible twisting motion caused by her pitching as the Swedish skipper fought to keep her head-on to the storm.

Half a dozen dripping figures, oilskin-clad, lurched up the companionway at the far end of the lounge. Their leader, Juhani Luvia, a herculean young Finn, was the ship’s Second Engineer. He had served four years in a United States shipping company and so spoke passably good English with an American accent.

‘Next spell,’ he bellowed above the thunder of the rushing waters, and repeated his demand in German and bad French.

Basil knew his turn at the pumps had come and slithered half the length of the narrow room to take over a suit of oilskins from the French Army Captain, Jean De Brissac, who was wriggling out of them. ‘Well, how are things?’ he muttered.

‘Not good,’ the Frenchman shook his head. ‘The water in the forehold gains a little always in spite of our great efforts.’

‘D—d’you think she’s going down?’

Jean De Brissac shrugged his well-set shoulders. ‘Who shall say,
mon ami
. I would prefer to be in the deserts of North Africa, facing half a dozen hostile Toureg—but then I am no sailor.’

The Finnish engineer overheard his words and smiled. ‘The water wouldn’t be gaining any if we had a dozen men like you among the passengers,
Monsieur le Capitaine
. We’ve no cause to get rattled though and your chances are plenty better than they would be in North Africa.’

He turned and favoured Basil with a disapproving stare. ‘Come, Mr. Sutherland, we must get to it.’

Another of the pumping squad who had just come off duty
gripped the Finn by the arm. ‘Chances?’ he repeated in a guttural voice, ‘surely you do not mean there is
any
chance that the ship should sink?’

‘Certainly not, Señor Vedras.’ Juhani Luvia looked down from his great height on the squat middle-aged Venezuelan who had spoken. ‘I’ve been in ships that have weathered much worse storms.’

‘Yes, but they were bigger and better ships—not little old tubs like this,’ Basil Sutherland snapped. ‘Still, go ahead. Lead me back to your filthy pump.’

A door banged loudly somewhere and there was the sound of smashing crockery. Luvia cocked a blue eye in the direction of the galley, then took the new shift below.

Jean De Brissac and Vicente Vedras commenced a zigzag course towards the bar. The Venezuelan was a man of forty-five who had lived well; showing it by his heavy jowl and increasing waistline. He was very dark with a swarthy complexion, and heavy black eyebrows that almost met in the middle of his forehead.

The Frenchman was ten years younger; dark, too, but of a finer mould. His skin was tanned a healthy nut-brown from the years he had spent as a member of the Military Mission in Madagascar; his brown eyes held a laughing impudence that had made many a lovely lady eager to know him.

As French officers habitually wear uniform, their wardrobe of civilian clothes is small, so, although he was sailing under the Swedish flag,
en route
for Guadaloupe, he had obtained the Captain’s permission to wear his military kit. A little vain by nature, he was conscious, even in these anxious hours while the ship was battling against the hurricane, that he cut a dashing figure in his breeches and tunic of horizon blue.

‘You will drink?’ he asked the Venezuelan courteously.

‘
Mille gracia, une Cognac.
’

‘
Deux fines
,’ De Brissac told the white-coated Hansie.

Vicente Vedras’s eyes flickered in the direction of Synolda Ortello, the South African girl. He leaned over to the barman. ‘For me separately, a bottle of champagne also. Two glasses. I take it to the Señorita there who is not well.’

The Swede pushed a bottle of Hennessy towards De Brissac. Judging the roll of the ship with commendable accuracy, he poured two portions.

Vedras took his glass and bowed politely. ‘This storm—it is ’orrible, but that we are in no danger is good news. For some little
moments I was afraid.’ With a quick movement he tossed off his drink.

‘So was I,’ confessed De Brissac. ‘But these heavy seas will probably go down by morning. Here’s to better weather!’

He drank more slowly and glanced round the saloon. It was not a pretty spectacle. The dozen odd passengers were lolling about in various degrees of discomfort and abandon, their canvas-covered cork lifebelts near at hand. The elderly Greek was being abominably sick. A plate of stale sandwiches, with their pointed ends curling upwards, reposed on a near-by table. The air was heavy with tobacco smoke. As the ship’s only common room and bar it was the natural refuge of the men who had been working at the pumps, and for hours on end they had been cooped up there smoking at an abnormal rate owing to the tension of their nerves.

With a muttered: ‘You will excuse,
mon Capitaine
,’ the Venezuelan signed his chit, clutched the bottle of champagne to his breast, and stuffed two glasses in his pockets. Making a sudden dash across the room he landed up beside Synolda.

Jean De Brissac advanced with a more cautious step towards the two nuns. He brought himself up a little unsteadily before them.

‘
Mes sœurs
,’ he said, and continued in French, ‘if I can be of any service to you I pray you to command me.’

Neither of the women looked up from their rosaries, but they knew him by his polished riding-boots and beautifully cut breeches.

‘Thank you,
Monsieur le Capitaine
,’ the eldest murmured, and he could only just catch her words above the pandemonium of the storm. ‘But we have placed ourselves in the hands of the Holy Virgin. You can only add your prayers to ours.’

He managed a bow, rocked unsteadily for a moment, and in two quick strides was back clutching the bar. ‘
Encore une fine
,’ he grinned at Hansie, showing his magnificent white teeth.

Turning, he stared again at the groups of miserable passengers. Unity Carden was sitting bolt upright beside her father. Game little devil—De Brissac thought—queer people the English, and particularly their colourless, flat-chested women. Looked as though they would faint at the sight of a spider, but actually tough as the horses they rode so well. She was pretty in her way, he conceded, but she lacked nearly all the feminine attributes which appealed to his Latin temperament. He wondered if she’d ever see those friends with whom she and her father were intending to
spend a pleasant month in Jamaica before returning home to the English spring.

Personally, he would not have staked a fortune on her chances, or his own of reporting for duty to the Military Commandant’s office in the French colony of Guadaloupe. It was all very well for that hulking Finn to keep a stiff upper lip and talk optimistically. He was one of the ship’s officers, so it was his job to do so, but M. le Capitaine De Brissac had travelled a bit in his time and he didn’t at all like the way things were shaping. The
Gafelborg
was an old ship and it was no reflection on her officers that she could not face up to these devilish seas which were throwing her about as if she were a cork in a mill-race.

He stroked his small D’Artagnan moustache and began to make a mental list of the really vital things to collect from his cabin if it did come to the point where they had to abandon ship. There seemed no immediate urgency about the matter. The old tub was probably good for a few hours yet, but if the storm didn’t ease, the constant pounding on the sprung plate would loosen it further, and once the forehold had filled with water the position might become critical.

A sudden thought caused his handsome face to cloud with acute annoyance. Among his heavy luggage in the hold there was a packing-case containing the parts of a new type of machine-gun; his own invention upon which he had been working for over two years. It was impossible to get the crate up now; if the ship did go down the precious gun would be lost. He decided swiftly that he had much better put any nightmare pictures of the ship actually sinking out of his mind, and at that moment his eyes fell on Synolda.

She was sitting up now talking to the Venezuelan. De Brissac wondered vaguely what she could possibly see in such a bounder. He thought her most attractive and would have liked to have known her better but she had been almost offensively curt on the few occasions he had spoken to her, whereas she had accepted Vicente Vedras’s attentions right from the first day of the voyage.

‘Please, Synolda,’ Vicente was saying, his words inaudible to the others in the roar of the storm. ‘A little champagne and a dry biscuit. Something to fortify you and keep your insides going. Champagne of the best and the little biscuit; believe me that is the thing, ‘owever bad the sickness.’

She looked at him through half-closed eyes. ‘I feel so ill I wish
I were dead. We’re all going to die—aren’t we? The ship’ll be shaken to bits if this goes on much longer.’

‘No, no, no!’ he protested. ‘Things are not so bad. The Second Engineer ’as said there is no danger. ’E can judge—that one—the big, blond man.’

Vicente was so passionately anxious to believe the best that he had accepted Luvia’s statement without question. The future was rich for him, rich beyond his wildest dreams with the gold just discovered on his brother’s farm in South Africa; rich, too, in hopes of getting his way with Synolda whose beauty had inflamed his desires to fever pitch. He leant towards her:

‘Be of good cheer, little one. The storm by morning will be finish. Soon your Vicente will make for you a paradise in Venezuela.’

She screwed up her wide mouth and shrugged slightly. ‘I’ve told you twenty times I’m leaving the ship at Rio.’

‘Oh, no,’ he said with sudden fierceness. ‘You come on with me to Caracas, otherwise it may be that you will meet bad trouble.’

Her eyes hardened. ‘You’ve hinted at that sort of thing before, but laughed it off each time I’ve questioned you. Just what do you mean?’

‘You know, my beautiful Synolda. I am not one to threaten. I ’oped you would appreciate my delicacy—my patience—in the week of days since we left Cape Town. A week is a long time for us Venezuelans who are ’ot-blooded people; particularly when the sun shines as it did until—until, yes, the day that preceded yesterday. You are the loveliest woman I’ave ever seen. You will be kind to Vicente or there will be questions. The people at Rio will want to know things about your ’usband.’

‘He’s dead,’ she declared sullenly.

Vicente nodded. ‘But it might be that some curious people would make the inquiry to know why you left South Africa without any luggage and all that—eh?’