We Saw The Sea (12 page)

“I must go down there one day,” Paul said. “I want to see the thing that shrinks my overalls.”

“Oh, drop it,” said Michael. “I don’t suppose your department is all that hot either.”

“By no means.”

Paul, too, had his problems. Outside Machinery embraced all the machinery in the ship which was not covered by definition in other departments. Its scope ranged from the capstan forward to the steering gear aft, and from the freshwater tank on the main mast to the fresh-water pumps below the stokers’ messdeck. “All the odds and sods,” as Ginger explained it to Paul. Paul’s chief assistant was an aged mechanician named Fogarty, a Yorkshireman and a philosopher. It was Fogarty who taught Paul an ancient engineering truth.

“All machines like to be visited, sir,” said Fogarty. “Even if you don’t do nothing, they likes you to stand and look at ’em.”

Paul discovered that there was much in Fogarty’s theory. Paul found that it paid him to make a daily round of his department and he performed it religiously, as though making a daily obeisance at each individual shrine.

Fogarty had no truck with modern methods of maintenance. To each emergency call he took a hammer and a handful of cotton waste.

“There’s only two reasons why it don’t work,” he explained to Paul. “The seamen have bunged it up wi’ paint or it’s stuck.”

Fogarty had yet another remedy.

“If it still don’t work, Ah fetches a bigger hammer.”

Paul had one responsibility about which neither he nor Fogarty could do anything. Paul visited it every morning but was not permitted to do more. It had been fitted by the dockyard before the ship left England and it stood on the fo’c’sle, motionless, tarpaulined and sinister. The ship’s company nicknamed it The Thing and forgot it until The Bodger, reading signals in the wardroom log, indirectly drew attention to it.

“Goddamn a thousand damnations! Talk about security! No wonder the Americans get cheesed off with us.”

The Communications Officer, who sensed an attack on his department, assumed mental guard.

“What’s the matter, Bodger?”

The Bodger ignored him. “Just put me in a sealed room ashore somewhere and give me nothing to read except the unclassified unrestricted signals published every day and

I’ll bet within a week I could tell you the name of every ship in the harbour, its training programme, and its state of readiness for war. Give me a
fortnight
and I could tell you the name of the Chief Cook and the crew of the Captain’s gig! “

“Oh come, Bodger. . .”

“Goddamn it man, you can get a list of ships from the football fixtures! Here’s somebody wants some more duffle coats. They’re hardly likely to be going to the Equator, are they? And here’s
Tadpole
, being visited by the C.-in-C. with his flag flying and getting fuel from a lighter and giving an R.P.C. all on the same day. It doesn’t take an Einstein to work out what they’re doing, does it? Quite correct, they’re leaving the station. All you’ve got to do is lie off the Limoun Pass in a submarine and monitor a couple of wavebands and after three weeks you could go home with a better idea of the working of the station than the C.-in-C. himself!”

“What’s the excitement, Bodger?” asked the rest of the wardroom.

“For months,” said The Bodger, “we’ve had that Thing on the cable deck. It’s so damn secret we’re not even allowed to touch it, let alone know what it is. And now this signal, in plain language, says ‘Mr Merrydown, of Admiralty, trials party of three, and one press representative will be joining
Carousel
a.m. Tuesday for duration of trials. Request usual facilities.’ I ask you!”

“It does seem to be a slip-up in the drill,” the Communications Officer admitted. But the rest of the wardroom were intrigued by the chance of actually seeing The Thing.

“You don’t mean they’re actually going to let us have a look at it?” said the Gunnery Officer. “I thought it was all ‘for Kremlin eyes only, burn before reading’ stuff.”

“I wonder if there’s anything at all under there?”

“That reminds me Bodger,” said the Commander. “Will you look after the boffins when they arrive? Give them cabins and see they don’t fall through any holes in the deck. One of them is supposed to be a very important chappie. He’s the only man in the U.K. who knows how it works.” The Bodger allocated cabins, arranged a boat and forgot about the whole matter until a very stout man in a green sports coat and grey corduroy trousers stopped him in the passageway after breakfast one morning.

“I say,” said the man in the sports coat coyly, “could you tell me where to go to spend a penny please?”

The Bodger’s jaw dropped open.

“A what a what?”

“Spend a penny, please?”

The Bodger tossed the penny to and fro until it dropped. “You must be the trials party?”

“Right. My name is Merrydown. We’ve just come on board. . .”

“But where are the rest?”

“On the quarter-deck.”

The other members of the party were standing on the quarter-deck by a pyramid of suitcases, tape recorders, tripods and strangely-shaped leather cases. Mr Merrydown introduced them.

“Masterson. Known to everybody in A.R.L.E.F. as Bat. This is his show really. He designed it.”

Bat Masterson was a tiny man with white hair which shot straight up from his head.

“Beetle, D.E.E.M.E.D.’s representative and Cowplain, from Barwick and Todhunter’s, the makers.”

Beetle had horn-rimmed spectacles and khaki shorts. Cowplain was bald-headed and had a figure which reminded The Bodger of a Conference Pear. The Bodger shook hands.

“Stephen Ropehead, naval correspondent of the
Daily Disaster
”

Stephen was wearing a chrysanthemum-dotted purple shirt and a green Tyrolian hat. The Bodger shook hands with a wince.

“Don’t I know your face?” he asked sternly.

“I covered the fire in
Voluminous
and the mutiny in
Wave Osteopath
. You may have seen me then.”

“No, it wasn’t then. I’ll remember later.”

“Or perhaps it was the wreck of the
Snarkfish
? Or you weren’t a witness in that incest case were you?”

“No. No. No. Proper Jonas, aren’t you?” The Bodger said. “Gentlemen, the midshipman of the watch will show you your cabins and I’ll have a steward to collect your gear.”

“Is this a happy ship?” The Bodger heard Stephen ask the quartermaster as he went down the hatch.

The news of Mr Merrydown and his party flashed round the ship and a large crowd gathered round The Thing on the first morning at sea when Bat Masterson was seen approaching.

Bat Masterson had longed for an appreciative audience all his life. Conscious of the intent eyes upon him, he very deliberately loosened the guy-ropes and carefully took off and coiled down the lashings. He twitched the edge of the tarpaulin and then, with a quick tug, uncovered The Thing.

Cynical as they were and scornful of anything designed by the Admiralty, the sailors (and their officers gathered discreetly in the rear) could not restrain a gasp of awe and admiration. If Bat Masterson had designed The Thing, then the man was an artist. It resembled a harpoon gun but was bigger and more robust, as though its harpoons were armed with atomic warheads. It looked as light and fragile as a spider’s web but as strong as steel scaffolding. Its long barrel leaped from a pedestal as graceful as a woman’s throat and tapered to a sharp antenna-like point. The butt was a solid block studded with gauges and coloured levers. In spite of their long sojourn under a tarpaulin the paintwork and the glass were still bright and shining. It was a beautiful Thing.

There were two bucket seats upholstered in red leather by the breech. The Conference Pear climbed into the lower and Bat Masterson into the upper. They pulled several of the levers and studied the gauges. The Thing began to hum and slowly revolved through an arc of a circle. The barrel depressed and elevated again. By means of a small joy-stick Bat Masterson controlled The Thing as effortlessly as a conductor waving a baton.

“O.K. Bat?” Mr Merrydown called up from the base of The Thing.

Bat Masterson, assured of his audience and determined not to waste a minute of the limelight, gestured impatiently.

He began to demonstrate The Thing, playing upon it like a sensitive instrument. The Thing was incredibly quick, one moment inching round, snake-like and menacing, and the next lashing suddenly in a half-circle, making the sailors watching drop back a pace.

“Are you all right, Bat?”

Bat Masterson bared his teeth in a grimace of exasperation. The barrel quartered the sky, waving gently like an insect’s feeler, then locked rigidly as though it had scented a target, and tracked steadily across the horizon. The Thing accelerated until it was spinning rapidly on its axis and Bat Masterson was indistinguishable except for his flying white hair.

“Are you all right, Bat?”

The spinning slowly stopped. Bat Masterson reset the levers. The hum died away. Bat Masterson and the Conference Pear climbed down.

“ --- lovely,” said the sailors. “But what’s it --- for?”

The Bodger had the same sentiments. Cautiously, he sounded Mr Merrydown.

“Quite an impressive thing, isn’t it?” he said, cunningly. “What is it exactly?”

But Mr Merrydown was not to be drawn. “Can’t tell you that, I’m afraid,” he said. “This is just a prototype. If it works we’ll build a bigger job ashore and if that’s a success we’ll make another shipborne one. Then we’ll go back on shore again and finally we hope to have something for service in the Fleet.”

“But how long will that take?”

“Years, old boy, years. Rome wasn’t built in a day, you know.”

Mr Merrydown walked away, chuckling.

“Today’s beautiful thought,” said The Bodger.

The ship settled quickly on her passage to the trials area. Conditions on the messdecks and wardroom of
Carousel
, a ship isolated in a tropical climate for most of the year, were ideal for the growth and flowering of individual idiosyncracies; any man who had a mole or wart in his nature found a fertile atmosphere in which to develop it.

Every messdeck had its mouth-organists, rug-makers, marquetry-workers and ship-modellers. Everyone had some means of leisure employment; those who did not knit, or embroider, or write pornographic poems, sat in corners and grew beards or contemplated suicide. In the wardroom, the P.M.O. opened a file on any officers whose behaviour he considered was trespassing nearer than the norm to insanity. The file swiftly included most of the wardroom. The P.M.O. wrote brilliantly reasoned letters to
The Lancet
upon environmental insanity.

A large canvas swimming pool was erected on the fo’c’sle, fed by water from the firemain. In the dog watches, there was deck hockey and clay pigeon shooting on the quarterdeck, boxing on the upper deck, judo and weight-lifting on the boat deck and all over the ship naked sun-worshippers stretched themselves out, burning themselves a darker mahogany brown. Spin-Dryer Boy disappeared one night.

Bat Masterson’s skill with The Thing had made him one of the most popular men on board and such was his personal standing that his invention was nicknamed Miranda. Every morning a large crowd watched Bat Masterson put Miranda through her paces. The sailors came to know all her tricks and recognized all her characteristic sounds. Above all, the sailors enjoyed Bat Masterson’s
pièce de résistance
, when he spun Miranda like a top until he himself became invisible but for his flying hair. The performance was always rewarded by a round of clapping, shouts of “Encore” and, from the Instructor Officer (who was a balletomane) “Bis!” Bat Masterson flourished under the applause; he would bow to each side and descend, flushed and smiling, each silver hair on his head standing rigid with gratification.

At dawn after a week at sea the Navigating Officer informed the Captain that the ship was in position for the trials, midway between Wake Island and the Marianas and more than two hundred miles from the nearest land.

The Captain, who was looking through binoculars at a small brown cloud on the horizon, grunted disbelievingly.

“I’m not so sure about that, Pilot,” he said. “What do you make of that cloud over there?”

“I would say it was a cloud, sir.”

“Would you! I would say it was land.”

The Navigating Officer made a pretence of looking again. It was an important part of his job to humour the Captain in the very early morning.

“It can’t be land, sir. I’m sure it’s a cloud.”

“Trouble is that it’s almost in the sun and I can’t make it out clearly. But I bet it’s land.”

“There isn’t any land there, sir,” said the Navigating Officer aggrievedly. The Captain was blaspheming against everything the Navigating Officer held sacred.

“I
know
it’s land.”

The Navigating Officer heard, in his inmost soul, the sound of the veil of the temple at H.M.S.
Dryad
being rent from top to bottom.

“We’ll go and have a look anyway.” The Captain took a bearing. “Come round to zero four five. I’ve got a feeling in my water there’s something funny going on over there.” As they came nearer it was obvious that it was no ordinary cloud. It was isolated on the horizon, a single stain on the hard blue sky. It changed shape very slowly, elongating and gaining height. It appeared to be hanging over the surface of the sea. At about ten miles distance the Captain could see that the cloud was in fact mushroom-shaped, consisting of a broad hazy head supported on a thick black column. The starboard look-out stiffened and shouted.

“Green four five sir, large eddy on the sea, sir!“

“
Look
at that! “

Broad on the starboard bow, a gigantic eddy swirled and subsided again, as though a huge mouth had opened in the sea.

The Captain ran his finger along the bridge rail. “Volcanic dust, or something like it.”

From two miles, the cloud’s components could be seen clearly. The mushroom head was a dense dust haze and the stalk was a rain of boulders and lava. Beneath the falling, erupting boulders, not more than fifty feet high, but plainly visible, was an island.