Hollow Sea

by James Hanley

  'My heavens, I should think so. But what about the others, the ones who were no soldiers of fortune, the drowned, and the suffocated, the savagery, the indifference? And why had they said "proceed to Alexandria?" Because they weren't sure. They had never been sure, and to have stayed longer was to invite complete annihilation. Yes. Yes. We know! And the world knows by now that some have landed, and the sun is hot, the water will not flow, flies abound, but they are not forgotten. They will get their rations, so will the flies. And I knew all along it would be a failure, and you knew and everybody knew. The whole thing is disgusting and when I reach England, I resign.'

  Mr. Deveney stared at him.

  'You are upsetting yourself, sir,' he said. 'I know it was pretty filthy. An awful mistake, though it will take time for it to soak into their heads. But it's done. I am with you there! I stand by you, Mr. Dunford. We have our orders. We carry them out, but still, at the same time, but still—'

  'Still, what?' growled Dunford. 'Still, what?' He blew his nose vigorously into a maroon-coloured handkerchief, and, for some reason or other, held it to his nose all the time Mr. Deveney was speaking.

  'I am speaking of the dead men in the hold, Mr. Dunford. It's a matter of urgency, health. It's rather dangerous. I hear the men for'ard grumbling.'

  'I shall see to that,' Dunford snapped at him. 'Their tale is only two days old, Mr. Deveney! I am responsible for every single person aboard this ship, living or dead. And if I made a thousand notes, a thousand jottings in the log, hundreds of inventories, it would not satisfy me – my conscience! We are on the high seas, dangerous seas, I am master of this ship. And tomorrow evening I shall land at the quay at Alexandria. Land everybody at Alexandria. There are times for explanations, and I can make mine when the time comes. The men complain. I am with them. But I won't give way, sir! I won't do that! Let the ship stink to high heaven. I was here when all this began. Do you follow me, Mr. Deveney? You remember that officer, you heard him, didn't you? In one of his remarks I plumbed to the core of a great human failing, one perhaps, you don't understand! He said, "Dump your dead." Now, work it out for yourself.'

  Mr. Deveney thought of something quite different. It was outside the ship, outside war, orders, Mr. Dunford's conscience. He heard Dunford pass and re-pass. He thought of 'Fernlea,' Beresford Road, Knockhampton. Of wife and four children. Of the garden, and winter evenings, warm fires, tea, and real bread and butter. He thought of that life, of its fullness, its simple pleasures, its disappointments, occasional raptures. Its monotony and its serenity. He thought of a boy and girl at school, of two others, too young for that, of letters awaiting him at Alexandria. And as he thought of those things, he watched the men rigging up a great canvas awning, of blankets and pillows, pillows filled with straw, blankets full of lice, bloody, smeared with vomit; he saw these things, they did not mean anything at this moment. Thoughts had taken flight, winged their way towards home and children. The eye that saw, felt nothing, these things had no meaning, they were overshadowed by things that had meaning, his home, wife, children, their significance grew, took shape from those very things upon which that dead eye now rested, took shape from chaos, from the surrounding wilderness, eternal waters, throb of engines, cries of men. Yes, cries of men. The ears satiated with cries.

  Well – letters – some letters at Alexandria. 'There are no letters for the dead,' he found himself muttering. So the wounded were coming up at last. Not before time, the heat was increasing, the hold was an inferno. Yet Mr. Dunford had been right. He felt sure he had been right! Right in putting these men on the wooden deck, in the clean air to-day. They would lie under the awnings. And each watch he would see them, sleeping or waking. Struggling and calm.

  'I wonder how that rating got on? Did he land? Hang it! How unfortunate about the other fellow. Odd creature. Iago and Falstaff rolled into one, Dunford had remarked once. Poor fellow! He knew nothing. Felt nothing.'

  He went up to Dunford, who halted in the middle of the bridge. How he strode. A slave to wild, aimless, spasmodic pacings from port to starboard.

  'I'd rather not go aft at midnight, Mr. Dunford,' Deveney said, looking up into the younger man's face.

  'Why not?' How brusque, even to the point of surliness, this man could be, he said to himself, as he looked at the expression upon the other's face.

  'I just prefer not to,' Deveney said.

  'Then you must stand by here, as Mr. Ericson and I will be on the poop.'

  The poop! But why the poop? Oh, this dipping of the flag, of course! What a martinet he was at times. Dipping a flag in the dark. What meaning would that have for a dead man? He had not seen Bradshaw, had no intention of seeing him, he was in good canvas now, anyhow. But he, Mr. Deveney, had a horror of the dead, not the silenced voice, but the prone figure, the man lying on his back.

  Mr. Dunford said, 'Please yourself.'

  Once more he was left to himself, once more thought was crowned by things far from the considering, the urgency and purpose of that hour. More and more he thought of the letter from Patricia, saw the envelope, the well-known handwriting, the calm voice calling across the frenzy and fret and welter of things. Something in him seemed to burst, something swelled in his breast. Thousands of miles away. Dreamland! Home was Dreamland now.

  'Bosun's mate there!' shouted Dunford, and Deveney gave a little jump.

  'Bosun's mate there!'

  'Yes, sir?' The man dropped the rope from his hand and looked up.

  How long are your men going to be rigging up those awnings? I want D deck doors closed and hatches battened down. I gave that order to the bosun before twelve o'clock.'

  They looked at each other in silence for a moment.

  'We're going aft in a few minutes, sir! It'll be done before this watch goes off, sir.'

  He stood waiting for a reply, but when Mr. Dunford went across to talk to Deveney the bosun's mate picked up the rope again and carried on where he left off.

  'Hurry up, you fellows,' he said. 'You heard what was said. I have reason to believe the goddam lot of you are just hanging the bloody latch! But damn it, man, dead men can't do you any harm, they were like you yesterday! Haul on your guy-rope, there!' The men worked in silence, whilst stewards came and went.

  'There'll be no bloody decks washed down on this ship, anyhow,' thought the bosun's mate. 'No bloody sir, and the men won't care a damn, I'll bet. But I wish to the Lord Harry I'd known what I was signing on. I never expected this. That fellow up there must be balmy. An' what'll they do with them anyhow when you reach port? It's bloody silly, that's what I say. You can get a cheap funeral at sea and no fuss at all. It's a goddamn shame. But he has his orders, and he'll carry out his orders – that's Mr. Dunford all over. Orders is orders, my lad.'

  'Can I go for'ard for a smoke?' asked one of the sailors. He wore gloves.

  'No, you can't go for no bloody smoke. Right, you fellers. This way. And I don't want to be down below any longer than any of you, so shift your bloody backsides, lads. There's a war on, and I don't mind telling you, either.'

  They fell into line along the narrow alleyway.

  'I can understand one or two things,' the bosun's mate was saying to himself. 'For instance, we were farthest away from the shore. It must have been a bit of a sod for those other boats. And I can even understand their giving the order – "Pick up as many men as you can get out of it." Yes, get out while the going's good! A lovely, bloody mess. Aye, and the funny part of it is they give this goddam order, and they must have known how daft the whole bloody thing was. Aye! Bit off more'n they could chew, seems to me. The moon beggared them, too. But looking at it from a commonsense point of view, I can't see they could do anything else. They must have lost thousands, aye, bloody thousands, drowned, suffocated, burned, shot like rats. An' nobody could do anything, All in a mess. And so they suddenly thought, well, goddam it, it's a wash-out, so you, A.10, get clear, right away, and take as many wounded as you can. Lord! And no doctors aboard, and lots of them wh
o never even got a chance to get off the damn boat at all. Every time I come on this deck and go walking about I expect to see more of 'em turning up. I suppose they'll get as nearly back to Alex, as they can, and just leave 'em there, while they work out another stunt. Marvellous. Bloody marvellous. Still, we're out of it – thank Christ! And only a few hundred miles from Alex. We've passed a cruiser and two destroyers today, and barring the one that hove us to, they took no notice of us. Why should they? Every man Jack for himself in this bloody game, and it's getting that way now that skippers are scared of taking any orders while under way, in case the next minute somebody else wakes up from a long sleep and suddenly remembers you're knocking about somewhere, and bang goes another order. But they won't worry us much now. No, sir! The smell's too much for them! Aye! That'll scare them off. Bloody death-ship. Good idea of Mr. Dunford's.'

  He shouted at the top of his voice:

  'I say! What the hell's this?' The men were standing in a group by the house door. 'Aren't you going down, you fellers? You look as though you were going to a funeral! Come on now, lads!'

  'Aren't we?'

  'I dunno.'

  'Well, then, don't talk through your bloody hat, for Christ A'mighty's sake! Hold your nose instead! That's the new racket, d'you see? Hold your nose. We are going below.'

  One by one they passed through the door and descended into the 'tween-deck. A sudden silence fell upon them, as though some invisible hand had been clapped over their mouths. Of the cluster of six lights, only one was working. Nobody had bothered to attend to the others. Perhaps it was not necessary after all.

  'You can't see very clearly here,' came a voice from a dark corner of the hold. They heard the man stamping his way about the main-deck. When the bosun's mate sat down on a wooden box and took out his pipe to light it, a long row of white faces looked up at him. But their mouths were sealed, their thoughts were cooled now, they were no longer tied to things. The sickly light fell upon their faces, still hands hanging downwards, across the breast, above the head, stiffly, at their side. The bosun's mate looked at the dead, but they had no meaning for him. He suddenly called:

  'Jackson!'

  A short, stockily built man with red hair came over to him. 'Sit down.' The man sat down. They both looked at the dead. Rows of dead. The other men were already busy, their 'hey-hey' and 'ho-ho,' were whispered into the stuffy air as they drew the door to. 'You're pretty fine on your accordion,' the bosun's mate said. 'Do you ever think of anything else besides that?'

  The man smiled: 'What are you getting at, Bosun?' he asked.

  'Nothing! I only wondered. I often do wonder! Take you fellers, for instance. You go about your work, you eat, you fall asleep, wake up again, but beggar me if a man knows what you're thinking about half the time!'

  'Well, goddam, thoughts is private, aren't they?'

  'Yes. I suppose so! But I wondered how you could play that accordion on the hatch of an evening whilst all these fellows are lying here?'

  'Did you? Well, for your information I never think about them. It's hard lines on them, it's lousy being dead, we know that, but blast it, man, a feller has to keep cheery or go off his nut. May I ask you a question, Mr. Bosun? You say you wonder what we think! How d'you know we ever think? But I'll tell you what we've been talking about in that fo'c'sle.'

  'What?'

  'Why, about having these men on board at all. They ought to be buried.'

  'Sure! Everybody says that,' replied the bosun. 'But the Captain had orders, didn't he? He can't go over the orders! Do you really think that we're rushing to Alex, just to get the few wounded ashore, and all these men here? Forget it! Let me tell you something. They've forgotten all about these fellers. Long ago! Yes, sir! Long ago! That's how it is in a war, d'you understand? Forgot clean about them. We're rushing to Alex, to load up more, my lad – hundreds more – thousands more. To chuck 'em into that bloody hell-hole. A dead man isn't worth twopence. After all, I can't see anything so very queer about it. It's just an accident we had so many dead aboard. They'll bury 'em in Egypt, and that's that. I tell you there won't be time for thinking on 'em, there's a war on, man. Of course you can't put a couple o' hundred dead overboard, and clap your hands and say, well – that's that! That's done with! Now what's next? No, my lad, you can't do that. Every dead man has a number, same as he has a name, but names mean sweet beggar-all to them, they have numbers, they have relatives. Relatives have names, of course. They get little knick-knacks, letters, photos, an' things like that. All this has to be put on paper, in case of accident. Also they want them for other things besides, but that's where you and me don't come in. It seems a terrible thing, just the same. I've got a missus, laddie, and if she saw where I was now, she'd just screech an' say: "Johnnie! Johnnie! Oh, do come out of that!" God love 'em! They don't understand, women don't. I've a kid at home and he wants to go to sea, but I say no, and I means no. All right, lad, get over there and give them a hand with the other door.'

  'Righto!'

  And Jackson went to the other men and began his work. The bosun's mate still sat, still looked at the rows of dead, but they meant nothing to him. He had been in 'tween-decks many a time, he had looked at ballast and coal and cargo and dunnage.

  'Funny idea got into my bloody head then,' he found himself saying. 'Suppose one of those blokes suddenly sat up and looked at me, then at all the others alongside him. I wonder what he'd say. God knows. Anyhow, the beggar of it is they never will! Christ! The stink! The stink!' He got up and went across to the men. He put his hand to his forehead and exclaimed:

  'Well, damn it! Fancy that!' The men paused in their work to look at him. 'I've been sweating like blazes, fancy that, just sitting doin' nothing on that there box, an' you wouldn't say it was fumin', 'xactly, would you?' He mopped his face.

  'Lend us your disc, Bosun, this blasted door won't come! Hanged if it will.' The door closed. Their only exit was by the hatch-ladder. On deck they stood breathing in clean air, expelling foulness from their lungs.

  'Funny,' a man said. 'We haven't seen a ship for years. An' yet we're getting near the land. Carpenter told me that. Suppose we'll be taking soundings soon. The air is lovely here, Bosun.'

  'Listen! I don't want you standing there, gawping like a herd of cows. Don't you know they're watching you from the bridge? Get into the alleyway, men. I don't want to have to rush you somewhere else for another job.'

  'I say there, bosun's mate?'

  'Hello! Hel-bloody-lo! Who wants me now? Oh! It's you, Mr. Walters.'

  'Yes. It's me! I want a couple of your men to come below with me. Can you spare me a couple? I don't want to worry the bridge at the moment. They're like hens on hot griddles up there.'

  'What you want them for?' asked the bosun's mate. He knocked his greasy peaked cap to the back of his head. Mr. Walters began scratching his neck.

  'I want them to carry men up on deck. Very soon I'm afraid we'll all be sleeping on deck, Bosun. I had to shift my stewards from the glory-hole this morning.'

  He looked anxiously at the bosun's mate, then at the men, his expression seemed to say: 'DO come. Right away!'

  'Jackson! Morley! Go with Mr. Walters.'

  'Righto! Sittin' will soon be as awkward as standing on your bloody hands in this ship,' the man, Morley, remarked. 'By God! They don't half keep you on the move, here. One minute you're here, the next minute you're there. . . '

  'Mr. Walters has a kind heart! You'll be able to bum a drink from him. The rest of you can just cut for'ard for a smoke. But no more'n five minutes. All right! Off you go.' He followed behind them, up the alleyway, turned into his own room, and sat down on the settee. His mate peacefully snored. How the time flew! And three changes of weather in as many days. His eye fell on a cockroach. He followed it as it crawled up the bulkhead. The fo'c'sle door shut with a bang, cutting off the wave of sound that flowed through the open door. 'Up you go, my hearty; up you bloody well go!' said the man to the cockroach.

  Men sprawled
in the fo'c'sle. Sat on the edge of bunks, leaned on the table.

  'This cold tea isn't bad! Good for rinsing your mouth out, anyhow! Hang you fellows snoring away there, don't make so much bloody row!'

  A sleepy voice: What's doing lads? Any land in sight, yet?'

  'No! We're carrying dead. That's what we've been doing. And these can't even land, no, there isn't any land, there's nothing but goddam water. Now drop your head back, mate, and dream sweet dreams.'

  'What's the idea, anyhow!' somebody asked. The speaker's head was almost buried inside the opening of the huge tin can which he had lifted up to drink from. It lay against his chest. He embraced it, and turned its end up. His voice had a curious hollow sound about it.

  'There's nothing in it, mate! Ask Williams, there! He's an authority on "bleeders," he is. He can tell you something, he can. He once buried three hundred on the Clio. Hello! There he is again. Goddam, three minutes for a smoke.'

  Williams woke up. Vesuvius woke up. O'Grady and Rochdale woke up. The men went out.

  'Shut that door, if you don't bloody well mind,' called O'Grady. The door slammed to.

  'I say, Vesuvius, will you shift that rotten mug of yours from the back of that door? It's done nothing but rattle, rattle ever since we sailed. Enough to drive anybody balmy.'

  'Anybody going whacks with you when we get to Alexandria?'

  'Ask me another! What's for tea today, I wonder? Yesterday we had roast chicken, ham and iced-lager. I hope we don't have chicken again. It bores you bloody stiff having the same thing twice! Still, it's better than the Starvation Army. What say, fellers?'

  'I like that surprise pie best. We usually get it on Wednesdays. Walters has been bloody generous these last two days. My! he ain't half in a sweat, who'd dream of Mr. Walters running about with a pot? But he does, he has to. And all the others are running round with pots, too. There's about thirty of those chaps pegged out already. But what can you expect on this ship? Fairy tales. There she goes, my lads, seven bloody bells!'