Hollow Sea

by James Hanley

  'No, you're not, you're a damn fool,' replied Mr. Hump, and then fled.

  It was the flight of a desperate man, and like most desperate men who take flight Mr. Hump did not vanish unseen. Many eyes were upon him whilst he stared at his superior, and many eyes were on him the moment he turned his back upon them all. Flying, he seemed oblivious of what followed in his wake, a chorus of curses and titters, ribald laughter, a cheer or two, soft and loud swearings; yet Hump seemed indifferent to it all. He had left his superior heavily in the lurch, deserted him in fact, and he was indifferent to that too.

  He flew down the stairs, the sounds of cheering and jeering in his ears, that somehow seemed even to turn the corner with him. But refuge was not far off, and it was with a desperate sigh that he at last flung himself into his room, and slamming the door with his foot, sank down wearily on the bunk and burst out with a sigh of the utmost relief.

  As his pale watery eyes surveyed the deck-head, battleground of many bloody fights as its heavily stained surface showed, Mr. Hump suddenly realized how deep, how lasting and sure was his belief in the craziness of everything. Yes. Even that mad gathering above was crazy.

  He sat up, calmer now, and looked round the untidy room. Yes, even this untidy room mirrored it. One time there would be order and meaning in things and there would be stewards to look after the place. Dust the carpets, make the beds and change the linen. Clean the deck and refill the yellowish looking water-bottles. But to think of that as possible now was like thinking the moon was just outside the door and that one could touch it with one's hand.

  Dirty, stuffy, untidy, cheerless, and not even the consolation of Sherlock Holmes. As for that complete ass Walters he never read anything at all, and the most Mr. Hump could lay hands on in this desperately lonely hour was Under Two Flags, by Ouida.

  It lay on the bottom of Mr. Walters's bed. To Mr. Hump the title seemed to fit in well with the pattern of things. The mere sight of a flag induced feelings in Mr. Hump which quite startled him. He picked up the book and began a casual reading of its pages. Then he flung it down in disgust, turned over on his face, drew the blanket up, covered his head, and exclaimed, 'Hell.'

  'Go to it, man. Go to it, my dearest dear.'

  A chorus of laughs followed this remark which had come from Vesuvius, who sat in the front row and looked condescendingly on the bosun. On his left sat Williams. O'Grady and Turner sat on the other side. Vesuvius puffed away at yet another cigar, and to all gathered there it was obvious where he had got it from.

  A relic of more stormy days, filched from an officer's room during the heyday of other actions. Smoke curled up from it in fat blue spirals, and somehow Vesuvius seemed to be following the trail of it with his nose, for his head was tilted, nose up-thrust and seeming to pursue the clouds of smoke. But nobody took any notice of Vesuvius.

  Williams kept spitting on the canvas matting at his feet, and nobody took any notice of that either.

  In the far corner soldiers stretched out on improvised beds and curious looking deck-chairs coughed and spluttered, for the air was heavy with smoke from pipe and cigarette, not excepting Mr. Vesuvius's excellent cigar, and the soldiers breathed it in, the best and the worst of it, but nobody noticed their discomfiture now.

  All eyes were centred upon the bosun.

  Alone on the second step leading down the grand stairway stood Mr. Walters. He stood waiting, listening. His factotum had gone, deserted him. He felt very much alone, in the wilderness, for there was not a single man in the saloon who liked him and he knew it, and this knowledge only served to increase his sense of complete isolation.

  'Aye,' he thought, 'Hump's free of this bloody mad lot.'

  And now the crowd were shouting and stamping their feet again.

  'Go to it, Bosun. Go to it, man. We can't wait all bloody night for "Sweet Adeline". Come on, man.'

  Everybody started to clap. Surely Mr. Tyrer could not hold back any longer, for this was an appeal not only to his generosity of spirit but to a certain artistic instinct hidden somewhere inside that squat and stocky body, five-foot-three of it that stood posed on the improvised platform made up hastily from what available empty tea-chests there were. He looked down at the assembly.

  It seemed the whole crew gathered there sitting on all kinds of seats, even sprawled about on the canvas flooring.

  Mr. Tyrer stood, head erect, arms to his sides, the short fat fingers twiddling and pulling at his trouser legs, belly out-thrust, his shoulders squared. Short, stocky, even a little perky, in that stance he personified the BOSUN in excelsis.

  'Go to it, man. Ain't shy, are you? Or lost your wind maybe.'

  Then before anybody seemed to realize it the bosun was singing.

  Every eye was upon him as he began in a halting, nervous manner the first lines of 'Sweet Adeline.' By the time Mr. Tyrer had reached the second verse of the song he had flung all shyness to the winds, even to the extent of letting his voice wander where it would, soar and sink, tremble and roar, and by the end of that second verse all the traditions of ballad-singing had gone the way of his shyness so that now Mr. Tyrer sang with great fervour in the manner of a Handelian aria with an affection for the appoggiatura, the glissando and the strepitoso.

  He sang with great earnestness, indifferent to the titters and low warblings now breaking out amongst the audience themselves, the occasional cat-calls, the shrill whistling, the chorus of remarks from that first row in the audience, and to all this he was indifferent. He was deaf to it, deaf to everything but the tones of his own voice, his head seemed to tilt itself higher and higher, his neck swelled, turned deep red, his veins stood out, threateningly.

  He tore his way up the register with innocent abandon, and suddenly his hands began to move. His body swayed, his eyes saw nothing but the head of a soldier at the end of the saloon who had suddenly sat up and begun to cough and he kept his eye upon this person, and held it there.

  Suddenly a voice more powerful than his own rang through the crowded saloon.

  Well done, you bastard, well done.'

  Mr. Tyrer was deaf to that. He soared on, carried away on the wave, the tempestuous wave of the melody of the only song he had ever loved and had ever tried to sing. Then as suddenly he stopped dead, as though somebody had struck him a blow from behind.

  'Go on, man. It's great. Go on, you soft old cow. Don't be so bloody shy.'

  Here Mr. Walters came to the rescue.

  In that last few minutes he had been smiling to himself. After all there was something extremely likeable, even funny, about a singing bosun, and for a moment he quite forgot his desertion by Mr. Hump. He smiled secretly, down that grand stairway in fact, and only when that stentorian voice cried out, 'Well done, you bastard, well done,' did he turn his head and look in the direction of the audience.

  He realized that the psychological moment had come. He dashed up the two remaining steps and stood to view behind the row of tea-chests.

  He lifted both hands in the air as a signal, and exclaimed in a loud voice: 'There's your cue, men. Now let's have it good and proper. All together for the chorus. One. Two. Three.'

  Bedlam began.

  The saloon rang to the melody, the deck-head itself seemed to tremble beneath the orgy of sound, of noise, of roars and hummings and screechings, and it appeared that only Mr. Tyrer himself respected the sheer art of ballad-singing, for in spite of the thunderous voices he held fast to his own voice, determined it would never be swallowed up in those waves of voices that couldn't sing a decent song proper if they tried.

  Mr. Tyrer reflected upon this, whilst somewhere deep inside him he nursed a vexedness, a keen disappointment that his turn should have met with such an unexpected response. Not that he regretted getting up and giving the song, but at the way his singing of it had been jeered at.

  There was one good man, however, backing him up, his staunch person was behind him. Mr. Walters might not know anything about singing himself, but he was a man who had some reg
ard for honest effort. And, reflecting on this, the discomfort inside him began to melt away. He had shut his mouth, given up the singing of the chorus in sheer desperation, for now in the torrent of sounds he could not be heard at all. Should he remain there, simply doing nothing, to be stared at by all that crowd, or should he wait until the row had died down and then give them the last verse? It was a decision he would have to come to very soon.

  Mr. Walters flung his hands into the air, cried 'Whoa!' as though he were bringing to a halt the stampedings of some wild chariot race, cried 'Whoa!' again, clapped his hands, jumped up beside Mr. Tyrer.

  Stamped his feet. Screamed 'Whoa! Hold! WHOA!' and then waited.

  Silence came all too suddenly for Mr. Walters, for even as he was on the point of complimenting Mr. Tyrer and suggesting to him that he should complete the song in a proper manner, and that there were still two more verses to sing, a voice cried out from the back:

  'Duet. Duet there. Now Mr. Walters, best foot forward, you fat—'

  'Ha! ha! Ha! That's the stuff to give the troops. What you going to sing, Mr. Walters?'

  Vesuvius had risen to his feet. All heads turned from the platform to the solitary sailor standing up in the front row. And Vesuvius made a mocking bow to all, then turned his back on them.

  'Mr. Walters, if I may make a suggestion. What about "Home to the Mountains." You know the duet from the opera, what's it called? Let me see.'

  He began scratching his chin. 'Let me bloody well see. I got it. "Il Toreador." That's it.' He swung round facing the audience.

  'What say, folks, Mr. Bosun and Mr. Walters to give this duet from "II Toreador"? O.K. mates?'

  'Sure. Fire ahead. I never heard that jewit in my whole life, Vesuvius, and I reckon Mr. Walters is a fine opera singer. I heard him singing in the storeroom one time, "Victuals! Victuals!" I think he was practising for a jewit with Mr. Hump. Sure. All set, fellers, for this jewit.'

  Mr. Walters and the bosun were completely ignored. Heads kept bobbing up and down, men half rose to their feet, hands rose and fell, necks craned forward. The air was alive with argument, suggestions, impatient booings, low swearings. Mr. Walters looked on at all this but did not turn a hair. Unlike Mr. Tyrer he was used to such things, whereas he felt that in a similar crisis (he called it a crisis) a man like the bosun would just blow with the wind.

  He looked at Mr. Tyrer now, not without sympathy, which expressed itself in a well-meaning grin, and a fat hand on the shoulder began patting the bosun. He was trying to explain something to Mr. Tyrer, though what it was the bosun did not know. He could hardly hear himself breathing under the terrific din. But now and again a fugitive word made its way to his ear, and one of these words was 'try.'

  Mr. Tyrer glared at Mr. Walters.

  'Try,' he said to himself. 'And what in hell's name have I been doing this last twenty minutes but bloody well trying.' And he continued to glare at the chief steward.

  'Damn them and their duet,' thought Mr. Walters.

  He said loudly, appealingly, speaking direct into the other's ear. 'Mr. Tyrer, please. Hadn't you better finish your song. I certainly don't want to sing. In any case I can't sing, and if I stand here much longer then I'll be compelled to do something. Now, Mr. Tyrer, off you go. You know the first line. Fire ahead,' and turning quickly on his heel he retreated.

  Mr. Tyrer opening his mouth as widely as he could, started to sing the third verse of 'Sweet Adeline,' but it was too late. 'Sweet Adeline' was a back number.

  The crowd were shouting for Mr. Walters, who now stood on the very edge of the tea-chest, prepared if the worst came to take a headlong leap down the grand stairway. His shoulders were hunched, he looked like a man steadying himself for a forthcoming blow on the back of the neck. And the blow would come any minute now.

  'DUET! DUET! Come on, you pair of mugs, DUET.'

  'Yes. This bloody duet from "Il Toreador." Come on, chaps.'

  Everybody was standing on tip-toe. There was a wild scramble at the back of the row where Vesuvius, O'Grady and Williams were sitting. These two latter had been whispering to each other for the last ten minutes and for some reason or other enjoying the subject of their tête-à-tête, for from time to time Williams let out a laugh, a kind of guffaw, whilst O'Grady laughed in a thin high tenor. They were left to themselves. Nobody worried about them.

  The focus at the moment was the platform, with a chief steward on the wave of retreat, and a humiliated bosun who was feeling he was being made a fool of. He certainly had begun that last verse, begun in the most heroic manner, arms akimbo, chest thrown out, bosun's cap now set at a most rakish angle on his bald head, and something between a direct appeal and a calm resignation in the expression on his face as he looked over the heads of the crowd, all on their feet now, all caught up in the excitement of the moment, oblivious of everything outside that packed, stuffy, smoke-laden and tempestuous saloon, oblivious of work, of to-morrow, of yesterday, of dark and smelly holds, of the cries of men in dark corners, of calm commands from bridge and engine-room. The map of all reality was wiped out. Here was the only map worth attention, worth exploring.

  Suddenly a forest of hands high in the air, and a roar from which not even Mr. Hump, hidden away under the blanket, could escape. The roar trembled its way above and below.

  'Three cheers for Mr. Tyrer. Hurrah!'

  'Three cheers for Mr. Walters. Hurrah!'

  Miraculously Mr. Tyrer was still singing. His feet were rooted firmly to that tea-chest, he was determined to finish his song, not because he thought he could sing, not because he wanted the men to enjoy themselves, but simply from a determination to assert himself at all costs. To triumph over their stubbornness, their pigheadedness. To show them that though they shouted like a lot of children, and ranted like a lot of lunatics, he still had regard for what he himself would call, 'the loyalties of the occasion'. He would sing, and he would finish 'Sweet Adeline'. And that was that.

  At this moment he shut his eyes, the tone of his voice increased, and the words swelled out, soared into the air, and Walters and his duet could simply go to the devil.

  It was pandemonium.

  Mr. Tyrer passed on from one wave to another, from singing to roaring, and then to shouting, and finally screaming the last words of the song. The words were lost in the confusion of other sounds, lost in clouds of smoke, but at least he, Mr. Tyrer, had kept his word, given his contribution, the only contribution he ever intended to make, now and evermore, and in a second or two he would bow to the whole bloody lot of them, jump down from the platform and return to his seat. That was the sole thought in the bosun's head.

  'Hurrah! Three cheers for old baldhead. Hip hip.'

  'Hurrah!'

  'Now, Mr. Walters. You and Mr. Tyrer there. And soon's you've finished Vesuvius and Williams here they're going to recite the "Trail of Ninety-Eight" and "The Death of Dan McGrew." Isn't that so, Vesuvius, Mr. bloody Williams?'

  Hands were already patting both these men on the shoulders, though neither responded, neither turned his head, seemed quite disinterested and refused, absolutely refused, to be excited about it.

  Vesuvius puffed away at what seemed to be nothing other than an everlasting cigar, whilst his friend and confidant continued to spit, as though his supplies of saliva were inexhaustible. Only O'Grady of the high tenor seemed a little despondent, and that because he had not been asked to do his turn. Not up to now anyhow, and he wondered if that fox Walters would ever catch his eye. Mr. O'Grady knew only too well that all the artists taking part in this concert would receive something more than the ordinary tot of rum which that kind captain above decks had arranged for each man after the concert. He fixed his eye on Mr. Walters and held it there.

  The chief steward knew he could not retreat, so slowly, reluctantly, he turned round, gave one last glance at the bosun and another at the audience, and then walked slowly back and stood by Mr. Tyrer.

  'I said at first the whole idea was crazy and, by God, so it is,
' said Mr. Walters to himself, as he stood facing the crowd, one hand resting on his hip, the other dug deep into his coat pocket. 'Yes, I said so from the start and I'll say the same when the farce is over.'

  'Now, Bosun.'

  He stood as close to Mr. Tyrer as was possible without danger of pushing the little man headlong into the front row and exclaimed savagely under his breath:

  'Now, Bosun. For Christ's sake do something so that we can both get down. Those men down there are determined we shall sing a duet and a duet we must sing. I know the particular thing they want us to do. Do you?'

  Mr. Tyrer heard these words distinctly, and he replied almost as savagely: 'No. Don't I keep telling you I don't know no bloody "Home, Home to the Mountains." '

  Disgusted he turned away from the steward.

  Then follow me, and just hum, or haw or whatever you like. There's so much damn noise that it doesn't really matter what you sing. Now! Are you ready?'

  He raised his arm, held up a finger, as though to signal to the now milling audience that they were beginning.

  'All right, let her go. Damn me, I'm sorry I volunteered at all. I could've sung a song or two all right. I know one or two good songs, but hang me, Mr. Walters, you seem to've put a bloody ju-ju or something on this concert. Well, never mind. Soon's you open your mouth I'll open mine and we'll get through somehow. And a mere tot of rum won't satisfy me either, Mr. Walters, if I may say so. Begin.'

  'When the hell you going to start?' came a voice.

  'Yes, you pair of silly cows. Like a couple of Judies showing their legs for the first time or something. Or maybe you're thinking of something, like that stink below. Come on you two good men. Start.'

  Everybody took up the cry. 'Start, START, S-T-A-R-T.' They spelt the word.

  The duet had begun. And it had not got very far before the whole saloon rang with the loudest laughter any man present had ever heard.

  Mr. Walters and Mr. Tyrer went bravely on, though the bosun did blush, a flush on his round fat face as red as a beetroot, but it was only Mr. Walters at whom they were laughing, and at a particular part of his anatomy, which rose and fell with his singing, shook and shivered under the ordeal, and Williams suddenly remembering Rajah's remark on the night of sailing, cried out a 'Go it. Go to it, man. That'll take the nice curve off your belly, man. Go it, go it.'