The White Voyage

by John Christopher

  She stroked his chin and pushed her fingers against the bristle so that it crackled.

  ‘You haven’t shaved for two days. Another two days and you’ll be unrecognizable. I suppose it could be a week before we get back to a port, and by then you’ll have a beard. I’ll hide your glasses for you – you can say you broke them – and I’ll put dark ones on myself. Then let them take what photographs they like.’

  He held her hand with his. ‘Do you think it would work?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It might,’ he said. ‘I didn’t think of that.’

  ‘We only need a couple of days,’ she said. ‘We can disappear again, can’t we? It isn’t as though anyone will be expecting us to be on the Kreya. They’ll think we went by air to Paris. We can be away long before anyone gets suspicious.’

  He pulled her down and kissed her. ‘You make me feel better.’

  ‘You fool,’ she said, affectionately.

  ‘I know. Middle-aged, bankrupt, a thief, and a fool. Why do you bother?’

  ‘You know why. Look. Something to make you sleep.’

  She opened one of the cases and brought out a bottle of brandy.

  ‘How did you come by that?’

  ‘I got it from the steward. I think it goes on our bill at the end, if the ship doesn’t go down. Drink it. There. Now go to sleep.’

  He still held her hand. ‘Sit beside me for a while.’

  ‘All right.’

  * * *

  Olsen, on the bridge, paced to and fro, stamping his feet harder than was necessary against the deck to keep tiredness at bay. There was little that could be done – nothing of practical value before morning – and his thoughts revolved unprofitably about the central fact of his failure.

  He accepted no blame as to seamanship. The rudder had failed him and after that the ship had been at the mercy of the storm. He had done all that a man could do, and the Kreya was still afloat. If the weather got no worse, and if she didn’t finish up on a lee shore, the Kreya would come through. The owners could not criticize him for his handling.

  Nor would they criticize him for the mutiny. With Carling mad and Herning killed, it was not surprising that there had been panic – that someone like Stövring should have taken advantage of it and that, after the attack on himself and the murder of Møller, there should have been no alternative for them but to carry it through. It would not damage him. He would remain skipper of the Kreya.

  And it did not matter that there would be talk – that he would be known always as the ‘Captain of the Mutiny’. Talk made no difference. Talk was for little people, who were afraid to act. He feared neither talk nor the talkers.

  But the failure remained, unaffected by the justification or condemnation that might come from others. Always the one thing that counted had been his own judgment of his own acts, and in the judgment now he was found wanting. It could not be explained away – he would have disdained to try.

  As far back as he could remember, the deviousness of the acts of other men had surprised him. Life, to him, was a simple matter, conditioned by straightforward rules. A man had needs and appetites, and he satisfied them as the law allowed. There had to be law, for without it there was no security; within it there was all the freedom that a man could want – that a sane man could conceive.

  A seaman, in this respect, was the citizen writ large. At sea, the law was paramount, more circumscribed and more evidently tangent than in the outer world. Olsen had served before he had commanded, and of these two forms of conformity, it seemed to him that the former was the easier to follow. Leaving madness on one side, he did not understand how it was that a man could reject allegiance. He recognized that it happened, but he did not understand it.

  Now it had happened to him, and he sought as best he could for reasons. There had been the moment in which he had felt sure that, by a lie, a moment’s deception, he could have won them back. All had turned there on Stövring and himself, and he had only to dissemble to be victorious. But he felt none of the obvious remorse of the man who looks back and wishes he had done otherwise than what he did. To Olsen it was clear that, given the prescient backward leap into time, given the episode unrolling again towards a variable end, he would have done exactly as he had done before – there was nothing else that was within his powers.

  Command and obedience. Wherever there were men these two necessities must rule. And yet, wherever there were men, they were flouted.

  Thus I refute God, thought Olsen. I do not need to look for wastefulness and cruelty and riot in the jungle or the sea. In the crown and apex of creation there is confusion, disorder, and that is enough.

  Chapter Eight

  The depressions continued their majestic chase across the North Atlantic, but their westward tracks were moving to the north. The anti-clockwise gales that accompanied them moved north too, sweeping new and colder seas. Each tossed the Kreya to its successor. Day after day the wind blew from the south and east. It dropped at times to Force 4 or 5, but only, it seemed, to gain breath before blowing a gale again. They encountered no other ships and made no landfall. In the second night, Mouritzen thought he saw a light on the port side, and sent up flares. He continued to send them up at half-hourly intervals, but when the dawn came there was nothing to be seen but the grey, heaving sea, stretching all round them.

  There was no break in the clouds which would have enabled them to get a fix on their position. All that was certain was that the storms had driven them to the north-west. It was Olsen’s guess that they had passed between the Orkneys and the Shetlands, and were being carried on in the direction of the Faroes.

  There was plenty to occupy the time of the men. Under Mouritzen’s supervision, a crude jury-rudder was constructed; part of the shattered foremast provided a vertical shaft, and planks were sawn and nailed on to make the blade. This took most of a day. In the late afternoon they tried putting it into action, using a metal pipe, lashed to the stern rails, as a sleeve. The bindings tore away, and the salvage operation, though finally successful, proved difficult and dangerous.

  The next morning, a new attempt was made, the sleeve being lashed more firmly and secured with hawsers to the anchor capstan. This time the blade tore loose as it entered the water. Olsen, who had come down from the bridge, watched them as they hauled the mast section up over the rails. The wood showed splintered edges where it had been ripped away.

  ‘You waste time with this,’ he commented.

  Mouritzen drew noisy breath. ‘I think so, too. In a calm sea one might do something. For the present, there is no hope of success.’

  Olsen nodded. ‘Then we wait for a calm sea.’

  Mouritzen straightened his back. ‘Good.’

  ‘Instead,’ Olsen said, ‘there are the horses. I do not like rotting carcases aboard my ship.’

  ‘It will mean opening the hatches.’

  Olsen shrugged. ‘We are no longer shipping seas.’

  Mouritzen thought about it. ‘God in Heaven – what a job! Thirty-five of them. And how are we to wrestle dead horses on to a loading mat?’

  ‘I leave you with that problem.’

  It was the first time Mouritzen had been down to the hold since the night the hatch shattered. The scene, as he flashed his torch from point to point, had a grotesque and savage eeriness. The broken hatch cover cut off most of the view from the forecastle door – one corner rested on the bottom of the hold and two other corners were wedged against the bulkheads – but when Mouritzen had ducked under the overhang of jagged metal, the horrors were in full view.

  Some of the horses had either broken free or been washed free from their stalls, and their bodies lay at various points along the hold. Mouritzen recognized the dappled grey that had at first refused the horse-box at Dublin; its coat was dank and slimy, the bright eyes filmed by death. But the great majority had drowned in their wooden stalls; they lay there in two neat rows, and but for their awkward, distorted attitudes, might have seemed to be a
sleep.

  He moved among them, quickly and with distaste, taking note of the difficulties. The warm smell of horse and hay had given way to the cold scents of death and the sea. Corruption was not yet far advanced, but it pervaded the air. He was very glad to get back above decks. He sought out Josef Simanyi, and told him something of the problem.

  ‘We shall have to open up the No. 2 hatch,’ he said. ‘The broken cover prevents us getting at the other properly. Most of the horses are in that part of the hold. But I do not see yet how we are to raise them.’

  Josef asked: ‘Why not?’

  ‘Nearly all are tied in their stalls. It will not be easy to manhandle them on to a loading mat.’

  Josef shook his head. ‘You need no mat. A rope tying all four hooves together will do, if it is strong enough. Then we get a hook under it and lift with the derrick.’

  ‘Will it hold?’

  ‘If it is well done it will hold.’

  Mouritzen clapped him on the shoulder. ‘That makes you foreman of the hold party. Take Jorgen and Stefan. I will keep Jones here on deck. You will find rope in the aft hold.’

  The others were drinking cocoa in the lounge; Mary was serving it. Mouritzen asked her:

  ‘Where is Annabel?’

  ‘In the cabin, playing.’

  ‘You should go up there, too, I think, to make sure she does not come out.’

  ‘Why?’

  He told her, and she nodded slowly.

  ‘How long?’

  ‘We shall not finish it today, I think.’

  ‘I’ll keep her away.’

  ‘Tell her I will come tonight and tell her a story.’

  Their eyes met. ‘Yes.’

  By the time the approach of night forced a suspension of operations, twenty-three of the carcases had been lifted and dropped over the side. Apart from one occasion when a rope parted and the body was dropped thirty feet back into the hold, all went smoothly, but the working party that came up from the hold and helped Mouritzen and Jones to batten down the hatch for the night was not a cheerful one.

  ‘I stink of dead horse,’ Stefan said with disgust. ‘It will take more than a cold shower to wash that smell away.’

  ‘We’ll get it finished tomorrow,’ Mouritzen said. ‘It has to be done. Otherwise the whole ship would soon stink of it.’

  Thorsen said: ‘There is one crushed under the cover. That will be no easy job. I think I take the derrick tomorrow, Niels. You can have the horses.’

  It sounded like a joke and Mouritzen accepted it as such. He said:

  ‘I will see to the thirty-sixth horse.’

  ‘No.’ Thorsen spoke more loudly. ‘I mean what I say, Niels. You have had it easy today. Tomorrow you can go below and I will stay on deck.’

  Mouritzen said sharply: ‘You will do as I tell you, Jorgen. And I also mean what I say.’

  Thorsen stared at him for a moment in silent hatred. He turned away, and started to walk towards the cabins, but stopped after two or three paces and came back.

  ‘Since you are First Officer, you are entitled to give the orders. Is that right?’

  ‘Yes, that is right.’

  ‘I was named by Captain Olsen as next in command to you. I am the only other officer of the Kreya. Yet you put Simanyi in charge of the hold party.’

  Mouritzen nodded. ‘That grieves you?’

  ‘If we still act under authority, you cannot put Simanyi above me.’

  ‘Josef has been handling animals, alive and dead, since long before you were born. Do not be stupid, Jorgen. No one is taking away your position. For this one job, the man best qualified must instruct the others.’

  ‘Instruction and command are two things, not one.’

  Josef, Mouritzen saw, was watching and listening.

  ‘Josef,’ he said. ‘Tomorrow Jorgen commands down below. Is that all right?’ Josef nodded. ‘But you continue to instruct, and Jorgen accepts your instruction.’

  Thorsen started to say something, and Mouritzen spoke more loudly:

  ‘That will do, Jorgen. We want no further argument.’

  * * *

  Mrs Simanyi had Mary with her in the main galley, preparing the evening meal. Annabel was with them. She had developed good sea-legs and seemed quite unperturbed by the fact that the Kreya was still rolling in heavy seas. Mary had brought her along from the cabins after the hatch had been re-secured; shepherding her along the narrow deck against the wind and pelting rain she had been forced to realize that the child managed considerably better than she did. Now she was helping the two women in a deft competent way that made Mary extremely proud of her.

  ‘She is a fine girl,’ Mrs Simanyi said. ‘It will be a lucky man that gets such a wife.’

  ‘She’s always been good. She’s had to be left on her own more than I liked, but she’s so sensible it hasn’t seemed to matter as much as I thought it would.’

  ‘How old was the child when your man died?’

  She hesitated, unable, as always, to force herself to the quick and easy lie.

  ‘Only a baby.’

  Mrs Simanyi said, with sympathy: ‘That is terrible, to happen to a woman – to be left with a child and no one by. A terrible thing.’

  ‘It wasn’t too bad.’

  ‘The mother and the father – they helped, one supposes.’

  ‘I had some help. And I was able to get a job. I thought …’

  She did not finish. Mrs Simanyi hauled out a lump of beef from the cupboard where it had been thawing during the day and slapped it down on the table. Slicing it down the middle, she said:

  ‘What is it you thought? It is not rude, to ask?’

  Mary shook her head. ‘It was just that I expected things would get easier as time went by. I thought it would matter less when Annabel was old enough to go to a proper school during the day.’

  ‘But no?’

  ‘Some things were easier. Others not. As she got about more – meeting other children with proper homes – fathers as well as mothers. The more she could understand things, the harder it seemed.’

  Mrs Simanyi nodded. ‘And now – you go to Holland to start a new life?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That will be hard, too – in a strange country.’

  ‘I suppose it will. You must have had a lot of that – having to live in strange countries.’

  ‘Not so much. We circus people carry our country with us.’

  ‘Yes. I see that.’

  Mrs Simanyi sliced and chopped the meat with expert fingers. She said, after a moment:

  ‘He is a good man, I think – Lieutenant Mouritzen.’

  Mary said: ‘He’s been very kind to us.’

  ‘He is fond of you – and Annabel. One sees that.’

  ‘You met him when you came across at the beginning of summer, didn’t you?’

  ‘That’s right. You know, there are some men are hard when they know a woman is weak, needs help – others are more gentle then. That is Niels. He is gentle.’

  There were clamps to hold the cooking pots on top of the stove. Mary flicked one open and took the pot over to the table.

  ‘A woman could trust Niels,’ Mrs Simanyi said.

  Mary said, in a voice colder than she had planned:

  ‘On that other trip – I take it he and Nadya got on well together?’

  Mrs Simanyi sighed, and then laughed. ‘She is a fine girl, my Nadya. But she is a wild one. She has the strength of a man; she is stronger than Stefan, and has been since they were little. That is wrong for a woman.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Bring me the carrots, Annabel,’ Mrs Simanyi said. ‘And you may eat one – they are clean. You are a good girl. My Nadya, when she was little, would not work in the kitchen with me as you do – always she was out with the animals and the acrobats.’

  ‘I don’t like animals much, except dogs. I’m going to have a puppy soon.’

  ‘That will be fine. Go bring me a lump of salt, little one. As big as
your hand when it is closed.’ To Mary she said: ‘You think a man who takes one woman lightly is light with all women?’

  ‘Some men can’t help themselves.’

  Mrs Simanyi shook her head. ‘Some women also. The men may make good husbands all the same. The women good wives, too, but that is harder.’

  ‘Until they meet each other again, or someone like each other.’

  ‘A wise woman would not mind too much.’

  With some bitterness, Mary said: ‘Wise?’

  ‘Does a woman leave her husband because he breaks a leg, or drinks too much sometimes, or is a bit of a coward, maybe? No one marries a saint.’

  ‘You talk about the woman leaving. She might be the one that is left.’

  Mrs Simanyi heaped vegetables into the pot.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It happens. A young woman left, maybe with a child, children. So she has to work hard and suffer much to keep them. No surprise she gets bitter. But she punishes herself so. And she punishes the child, too.’

  ‘That’s not true!’ She looked at the older woman. ‘It need not be true.’

  ‘For a child to be happy, contented, then the mother must be happy. Choosing what is good for the child is not the answer.’

  In a low, tense voice, Mary said: ‘Not for the child; for me. I want a husband I can rely on, someone who will care for and look after us both. Nothing romantic, exciting. Just someone solid and dependable.’

  Mrs Simanyi surveyed her, smiling. ‘I think you will be lucky. I think you will be luckier than you expect.’

  * * *

  The storms drove the Kreya north and west, slackening only long enough for the hope of calm to flare up and then once more be snuffed out. The hold was cleared of the dead horses, although they sweated a couple of hours on the carcase pinned under the shattered hatch cover. After that Olsen had them concentrate on rigging a more dependable rudder, for use when the seas moderated sufficiently. Meanwhile, there was nothing to do but plot an increasingly unreliable north-westerly course on the chart.

  ‘Iceland?’ Mouritzen asked.

  Olsen nodded, pursing his lips. ‘Iceland. Or Spitzbergen. Or Murmansk. We are North of Sixty, I think, and South of Seventy. And somewhere West of Greenwich.’