When he emerged, she turned her eyes up toward him, as wary as she was hostile.
“Nice night for a boat ride,” he said.
“Don’t be a fool,” she said, speaking with a rough accent.
“These motorboats are built very tough,” said Kees. “Don’t worry. We’ll survive the night.”
“Jolly right,” Metcalfe said cheerily. Spencer had come to like this tall, bluff, well-intentioned fellow. He wondered how the man could have become such a boon companion to such a petulant and self-centered middle-aged child as the prince. Perhaps that was just the way with well-intentioned fellows. Spencer hadn’t known all that many in his life.
When he finally made his way back to his place by Nora, Edwina sat up, awake. They were but three feet apart.
“Was your copra boat in the South Pacific anything like this?” he asked.
“A damn sight bigger.”
“Would that we could go back to our night with the cloud full of stars.”
“That was a thousand years ago, darling.” She stretched, then pulled her blanket more tightly about her. Before Spencer could speak again, she suddenly clambered over the seat and went to Count von Kresse’s side.
“You must be in agony,” Spencer heard her say.
“It is nothing,” von Kresse said.
“Let me massage your leg,” Edwina said.
“Leave him alone!” screamed the countess. “Geht weg!”
Her shouting awakened several of the others, but it didn’t matter. Her words were followed by the first drops of what quickly came to be a deluge of rain.
Except for the Parker boy, who was dead drunk, all now awakened, some of them swearing, including Wallis Simpson.
“There’s a tarpaulin,” said Kees. “Possibly two. I’ll break out what I can find. They’re up at the bow.” He struggled forward over the now-slippery floorboards. “Bail! The pump’s not going to cope with all this, if I’m even able to restart the engine.”
Duff and a few others reached for buckets or their tin cups and began the dreary labor as requested. Others, most notably the prince, just sat there, shivering.
“This won’t do,” said the prince. “Absolutely not. Wallis is getting soaked.”
“We’re all getting soaked, sir,” said Diana.
“She’ll get pneumonia,” Edward complained. “I won’t stand for it. I want her inside the wheelhouse.”
“That’s our toilet, sir,” said Diana.
“We’ll make arrangements,” the prince said. “Now, Wallis, go to the wheelhouse.”
Stumbling, her dripping hair flat against her skull, Wallis complied with the command with great willingness, avoiding everyone’s eyes as she made her difficult way aft. Kees’s dark-haired woman stared at her with much contempt but made no attempt to obstruct the prince’s favorite.
“You, too, Your Highness,” Lord Brownlow said.
“Oh, no,” Edward protested. “Certainly not. I’ll weather this with the rest of you.”
“That’s foolish, sir,” said Brownlow. “Need I remind you that your father is seriously ill? You are heir to the throne. If you should become ill yourself you’d be placing the stability of the country—of the entire empire—in great jeopardy.”
“Nonsense. There’s my brother Bertie.”
“Sir, your brother is not prepared to become king. You simply cannot endanger your health this way.”
Metcalfe said nothing. For all his friendship with the prince, he thought Brownlow wrong in this.
“For God’s sake, sir,” said Duff. “Your staying out here isn’t going to make the rest of us any drier.”
“Oh, very well,” the prince said abruptly, and he quickly darted up to join Wallis. Once inside the small chamber, they closed the door, all snug, their faces two pale featureless ovals behind the rain-covered glass.
“Scheiss,” said the countess. “Wie sie sind Schwein.”
Kees and the Oriental crewman came aft with the two tarpaulins. They were large and quite heavy.
“We’ll form bailing parties of four, to be relieved every hour,” Kees said above the thundering rain. “The rest of you get under these. They’ll keep you dry.”
Metcalfe, Spencer, Duff, and Mountbatten volunteered to take the first bailing detail. The others crawled under the shelters, the crewman having to drag the sleeping young Parker under the forward canvas. The count remained on his seat, insisting that his anxious sister join the others under the tarp. Moving stiffly, he began to bail, as well, accomplishing much less than the others but working his best.
“It’s a pity we have to keep all this secret,” Duff said. “I’ve half a mind to denounce the damned Dutch government from the floor of the Commons.”
“Not just the Dutch government,” Metcalfe said. “Every Dutchman who ever lived.”
“This was your idea, after all, Metcalfe,” said Mountbatten.
“It wasn’t my idea to start a fire,” said Fruity. “And certainly not for you to come along on this trip.”
“Bail, buckos,” said Duff. “Bugger off quarreling.”
Spencer contributed nothing to this exchange. He felt more cold and miserable than he could ever remember being in the war. The thick wool of his Legionnaire’s costume was heavy with water and rough against his skin, and every movement was a terrible ordeal. But he didn’t complain. No one did.
He was near the section of the tarpaulin where Nora had sought shelter. She was sitting up. He was sure she was praying. By the time they were rescued she would be a nun.
Edwina emerged from under the canvas. Cursing, she groped her way back to the wheelhouse. When the door didn’t open, she banged on it.
“I have to pee!” she said.
The prince opened the door wide enough to lean his head out. “I’m sorry, Edwina darling, but I can’t expose Wallis to these elements a second longer.”
“Damn it all, sir! I have to pee!”
The prince pulled the door closed again.
“Use one of the buckets, Edwina,” Duff said. “Like the rest of us.”
Ultimately she did, in relative good cheer. But in time cheer or misery ceased to matter. It was all the same being under the blankets and tarpaulins or out in the storm as the rain filled the boat. Their movements became mechanical, then numb. The four men kept bailing long past their appointed one hour, but they progressively slowed. At length, the rising level of water sloshing about the bottom began to outpace their best efforts. Kees tried twice to start the boat’s motor so he could get the pump working again, but with no success.
The rain slackened, but the wind and seas were rising. The boat took water over the side.
“Everybody up!” Kees shouted. “I want everyone bailing except for four men on the oars. We’ve got to keep the bow into the wind and ride these waves on the quarter.”
“Oh, go to hell,” said Chips.
“That’s where we’ll all go if you don’t get up and help. We can’t let the boat get swamped!”
Most of them struggled out from under the canvas and did as bidden, though Parker and Emerald remained beneath. Lord Mount-batten and Henry Crowder took up the forward oars; Spencer and the count manned those amidships. Spencer could not imagine von Kresse lasting at this effort more than a few minutes, but the Prussian insisted that he could manage it. He claimed the work would help ease his discomfort.
“I’ve lived with this pain for nearly half my life,” he said. “Why should I not embrace it in this moment of great need?”
To Spencer’s amazement, the count proved good to his word, matching Spencer almost stroke for stroke. Spencer could not decide whether it was a matter of Prussian stoicism or some source of inner strength that could be called up in extremis. He had encountered a few German soldiers like that in the war—not supermen but mortals who had simply put out of their minds that they were human, that there was any reality other than what they were required to do. He had seen the shot-up pilot of a Fokker triplane, its engi
ne streaming smoke, keep fighting until he had shot down two Frenchmen, carrying on until his own plane exploded.
The German fliers had been issued parachutes by that time, yet inexplicably the man had failed to use his. Perhaps he had been wounded so badly he was beyond escaping his cockpit. Perhaps he had realized he was as good as dead and was making this extraordinary effort simply to exact revenge.
It was at that moment in the war that Spencer had at last found himself capable of feeling hatred for his enemy. The two Frenchmen had not needed to die.
He had hatred enough for his own countrymen, as well. The United States Congress had decided to forbid American fliers to use parachutes. The politicians, none of them aviators, feared pilots would sacrifice valuable aircraft at the slightest sign of trouble just to save their own skins. The idiots had not realized that the worth lay in the pilots, not the machines. A flier who managed to survive three weeks of combat and could thus count himself a skilled veteran was worth a dozen pursuit planes.
And at the end of the war the army had found itself with thousands of aircraft that had never even made it across the Atlantic. Some of them were later used for the experimental air mail service. A mail pilot named Charles Lindbergh had lost three of them bailing out on the Chicago-St. Louis run in bad weather.
“Fucking bloody bastard!”
It was Nancy Cunard. Spencer looked over his shoulder to see that she was swearing at a wave that had just soaked her.
By dawn the rain had dwindled to a patter, but that development brought little cheer. The cold gray light revealed the full extent of their predicament and peril.
There was no ship or lifeboat to be seen on any point of the horizon. The waves had become mountainous. In the troughs, they were thirty or forty feet beneath the wavecrests. Kees, steering from his command position at the now-open door of the wheelhouse, kept the bow pointed up into the fierce wind, ascending the steep slope of each great advancing wave with only the most adroit seamanship as others struggled with the oars.
At each summit, they’d catch a grapeshot of wind-whipped foam and then the boat would careen into its next descent, plunging tumultuously into what appeared to be a widening hole in the sea.
It was this way with every wave. Each required a miracle to surmount and survive, and they came on relentlessly, endlessly. They were infinite. This was a hell invented by the most fiendish devil imaginable, a hell far worse than one of mere fires.
A coconut floats. That was the comforting platitude told to Spencer when he was first taught to sail small boats in Lake Michigan.
“But I am too big to sail in a coconut,” he had said. He said it again now.
“What was that?” asked Count von Kresse.
“Nothing.” Spencer felt an impulse to call him a Hun bastard. He was thinking too much of the war in all this misery.
The count looked at him curiously but showed no anger. He just kept pulling at the oar. How could this be? The man had been barely able to help with the bailing—a different motion, a different pull of muscles, to be sure, but an infinitely less vigorous one. Why hadn’t he torn his crippled back apart? Why wasn’t he in agony? Or dead?
Why weren’t they all dead?
A wave suddenly loomed over them from abeam. Kees spun the helm to turn the boat toward it as quickly as he could, but not soon enough. A huge, heavy wall of water came over them, splashing across and down through the boat and thudding against the wheel-house windows, almost knocking Kees overboard. It was a stupefyingly amazing discovery that they were all still aboard, that the little craft still floated.
“Keep rowing!” said Kees. “The rest of you bail. When we’re a bit drier, we’ll get some breakfast together. And something to drink.”
This was nonsense. They were barely able to hang onto their seats. He was saying it only to keep up their morale, such as they had any.
“Duffie,” said Diana. “I forgive you for absolutely everything!”
“Darling,” he shouted back. “You don’t know about everything!”
“I daresay I can guess!”
“Pity His Royal Highness isn’t king,” Chips said, seated just in front of Spencer. “As Defender of the Faith, he’d have some considerable influence with God.”
“I’ve never heard you speak of God before,” Spencer said.
“Dear boy, I move with the times.”
“Bail!” shouted Kees.
It was Nora who noticed young Parker get to his feet at the bow. He had not been helping in any way, and had barely been conscious. But now he stood, looking unhappily about. He seemed to want one of the buckets, but they were all well in use.
Nora had meant to warn him to be careful, but she instead turned away as he unbuttoned his fly and prepared to relieve himself, climbing onto a forward thwart.
Nora turned her back completely to him, hunching forward in fear of what might come in the spray. An instant later she heard him cry out, a sound followed by that of a splash.
Everyone stopped, most in disbelief. Their peril had been brought infinitely nearer. Could their doom be that close at hand—a matter of inches? A simple matter of taking a piss? Was death just the other side of the gunwale? Was all this great vastness of ocean around them a colossal manifestation of the inevitability of death?
“Man overboard!” shouted Kees. “Get the grappling hook! Why in hell isn’t he in his life jacket?”
The Javanese crewman scrambled for the pole, slipping on the floorboards. Young Parker, his eyes wild, his mouth wide open but speechless, was barely able to keep his head above water. His hands flailed about. It seemed to Spencer that he probably did not know how to swim, or was too drunk to remember.
There were those aboard who did. Spencer and Edwina had talked of distance swims they had both completed. The countess had set swimming records in Germany. But no one moved. Except one. There was another splash. Mrs. Parker had kicked off her shoes and flung herself after her husband. Her dark head appeared beside the boat and then slipped beneath the surface. A moment later it reappeared, as she began attempting a painfully slow breaststroke toward him. A moment later Parker himself disappeared in the water. When he became visible again, he was even farther away. Another huge wave was rising over them.
“Get that damned grappling hook!” Kees shouted, his voice screeching with hoarseness.
His poor crewman was trying, but the long pole with the hook on it was hopelessly caught in some coiled line.
Mrs. Parker vanished again. Spencer, gripping the count’s shoulder, turned and stepped onto the seat and then vaulted over the side. He heard von Kresse hiss with pain and then at once he was immersed in the shockingly cold sea, its size and depth and supremacy suddenly awesome. Its frigid temperature was overpowering. He had kept his life jacket on, but it was impeding his progress. He supposed he had only a few minutes to live if he did not get back in the boat.
The water filled his clothing and dragged against him. He fought against the pull, his eyes fixed on the woman’s beautiful head. She was sideways to him but did not look back. She was intent upon her husband, who appeared to be drifting away swiftly.
Spencer took the deepest of breaths and pulled hard. He had only a few feet to go, but they were as good as miles. He was as consumed by fear now as purpose. He did not turn his head but was worried that, behind him, the motorboat could be moving away—miles and miles away.
It took a dozen, and then two dozen painful, exhausting strokes to reach her. He thrust his right arm under hers, then caught her up hard and, leaning backward, held her above the surface. Turning his head back to the boat, he discovered it was only two or three feet away. Kees and the men at the oars had kept it near.
Clutching the gunwale, Spencer found he could scarcely breathe without strenuous effort. But the strong arms of Mountbatten and Metcalfe reached past him and grasped the woman beneath her shoulders. She was struggling, muttering and protesting in anguished cries, fighting to remain in the water.
Spencer seized her thigh and shoved. With the other two men pulling, they got her over the side. The three disappeared from Spencer’s view, and then Metcalfe and the crewman appeared, pulling him up by his arms, wrenching his back painfully as they hauled him into the boat.
He lay motionless, staring upward, listening vaguely as he heard Kees shout, “Try for the husband!”
Spencer, breathing deeply and with great effort, was amazed that he could become so fatigued from a brief minute or two in the water—another surpassing discovery of life. Amazing, too, was that he no longer felt the cold or wet. It was as if the nerves that ran to his skin had been somehow disconnected. His perception of time had also vanished. He stared at the huge and malevolent gray clouds above as they raced past in great, ponderous swirls, trailing ragged edges. He could mark their extraordinary speed. His ears were filled with the strangely pleasant music of the howling, whipping wind. But there was no time.
A human form interposed itself in his view of the true universe. He felt his head being lifted, cradled. The face that came near his was Nora’s, still exquisite despite the abuse of her hair by the storm and her lack of makeup.
She stroked his cheek, saying nothing, her lovely eyes full of sadness, tenderness, and caring. He could hear someone else—a woman—screaming. It was Mrs. Parker.
Spencer sat up. They were all looking out to sea, their faces blank with horror and disbelief. Mrs. Parker’s husband was nowhere to be seen. He had vanished on the other side of one of these liquid mountains, into the maw of a watery valley beyond. He would be sinking now, a slow, tumbling, endless fall through hundreds of feet of petrifying cold and darkness—until the undersea pressure and the gas within his body combined to hold him in suspension. In time, if he was not eaten by the fierce, cold creatures below, this combination would serve to return him to the surface as a dreadful corpse. But by then the boat would have been carried far, far away.
Dance on a Sinking Ship Page 36
