The Leper Ship

by Peter Tonkin

  ‘You must see, John! Wake up for heaven’s sake! It’s a dead man’s passport with an American Visa in it.’

  John’s mouth fell open. Automatically he turned towards his office and the safe. ‘My God!’ he said. ‘I’ve still got Gina Fittipaldi’s passport too. That means we have a passport for each of them. If neither of these has been reported missing during the last ten days, we have a fighting chance of getting both Salah and Fatima safely off the ship in Sept Isles.’

  ‘With luck, we could even get them into the United States!’

  ‘I’ll check at the earliest opportunity.’

  In the short term, however, sleep was a higher priority. And, as it turned out, there were distractions in the long term too.

  22

  When a great storm crosses a continent, it is the clouds that come first. When it crosses an ocean, it is the waves.

  There are other differences. On land there are forecasts; at sea, warnings. If the wind folded fields into hillsides and sent them rolling across the landscape at fifty miles an hour, it would be different; if it tore off their topsoil and hurled it through the air in streaming clouds, if it caused city blocks to rise up and fall upon transports full of people, then there would be warnings. But the wind does none of these things on land. Not so at sea. At sea it can do all of these things.

  They knew when the storm left its lair in Hudson Bay because Jesus started getting storm warnings. They knew the look of it, for Niccolo could draw its shark’s fin shape, tracing the fronts which met at the low that had spawned it. They heard tell of it, for there were ships to the north and west of them who met it first as it was beginning to flex its muscles, and they radioed to each other and to them, for Jesus had made wide contact as part of the preparations, and to Cape Race radio station in Labrador who broadcast their warnings more generally.

  The first they actually saw of it, however, was the rising of a north-easterly chop which cut across the south-westerly set of the Western Ocean groundswell. The new waves seemed to have a different colour, and perhaps they actually were different, for they were reaching over Flemish Cap and Grand Bank before they came to Napoli, and there the depth could be as little as twelve scant metres, and the bottom mud came up with each billow.

  A dull brown stain was coming south, with the new waves cutting over the green rollers that had kept Napoli company since Fastnet. Richard and John saw it when they came on to the bridge the next morning, the new colour and the new set of the sea. Both of them had felt Napoli’s new motion even before their feet had touched the deck, but there was nothing yet to make them hurry aloft and they both showered, shaved and dressed in a leisurely manner. It might be a while before they got the chance to do these things again. For the same reason, they both enjoyed an unaccustomed breakfast of sausages, kidneys, eggs, bacon and fried bread. Lots of toast, all of it piping hot, with marmalade and butter dripping. They watched each other going through the familiar ritual with much the same feelings: they had learned to do these things at sea together and may even have learned them from each other. And, when they had finished, together they went up on to the bridge.

  It was the last half-hour of Niccolo’s watch and he sat in the watchkeeper’s chair with his body relaxed but his eyes busy. John went across to the log at once. At 07.00 local time, half an hour ago, the storm centre had been at 60 degrees east of Greenwich, heading westward at thirty miles an hour and just about to be flipped south off its direct track by the monumental high pressure sitting on the Greenland icecap. Napoli was coming up to 45 degrees east and more than a thousand miles south of the heart of the thing, but she would soon be under the shark’s fin fronts when the whole system came down round Cape Farewell. And, while the storm centre might be moving at a sedate thirty miles per hour, the winds which whirled around it, their direction and intensity varied by the fronts, were moving at least three times as fast.

  ‘What does Cape Race say, Niccolo?’

  ‘Jesus was on to them a couple of minutes ago. Westerly gale force eight, gusting nine. Overcast with thunder and driving rain. They’re expecting it to back north and go to storm ten soon with more squalls and thunder. They’ve got snow as well, but I don’t think that’ll come down here.’

  ‘Don’t be too sure.’

  John went out to join Richard on the starboard bridge wing. Together they looked north-west. There was nothing to see yet in the sky. It was a clear, cold dawn with an unblemished canopy of blue and a peculiar intensity to the light. It was as if they should have been able to see over all those sea miles and up through the crystal air to the towering clouds at the centre of the storm or at least to the great black battlements sweeping south along the lines of the fronts. Silently they stood, looking, feeling the way Napoli rode the choppy sea, knowing that the flukes of wind slapping their cheeks every now and then were parts of a local microclimate which would soon be overcome, like a rock pool by a spring tide.

  By nine, there were wispy mare’s tails of cirrus cloud floating far on the weather side. By ten Marco came out to report that the glass was really beginning to fall; and the clouds had thickened up. The horizon was a hard black line between the greyish sky and the restless, brownish sea. ‘Coming in fast,’ said Richard to John.

  ‘Maybe it’ll go over fast as well,’ John answered, but he did not sound convinced. ‘I’ll just have a word with Jesus. See what’s happening to his friends to the north of us.’

  *

  Asha came in to lunch at twelve fifteen having walked through directly from the infirmary. She had noticed nothing of the gathering clouds outside, nor of the increasingly restless movement of the ship. She did notice, however, that she was almost alone in the dining saloon. ‘Donde esta el capitan?’ she asked a Spanish steward.

  ‘ Encima,’ he answered. Upstairs.

  ‘Il ponte commando,’ supplied Marco Farnese who had arrived just in time to overhear the exchange.

  Asha’s eyebrow rose, then her forehead folded into a slight frown. She got up from her table and went out of the saloon. She always went up to the bridge by the external companionways unless it was raining, so as soon as she got outside she registered the change in the weather. The wind had arrived. It was gusting from the south-west, across the main thrust of the storm waves which were still running down from the north-east. As she arrived on the bridge, skipping in from the bridge wing outside, the first spatter of raindrops dashed themselves against the closing door behind her.

  John was standing beside the helm which, unusually, had a helmsman steering; the helmsman was Salah Malik. ‘Why are you up here, John?’ she asked at once. ‘It’s lunchtime.’

  ‘We’re having sandwiches sent up,’ answered John quietly. His eyes were on the sky which was now darkening more rapidly. There were no discrete clouds, but a general overcast which was closing down rapidly on the sea to the north-east, on their starboard quarter.

  The dark heaving of the waves was abruptly whitened by a gust of wind strong enough to set the foam flying. It buffeted the bridge, and the windows also whitened with foam. ‘Gusting force six,’ said Richard to Cesar, who was writing in the log. ‘It’s just building. There shouldn’t be any squalls this side of the first front,’ he added, addressing John, who nodded.

  ‘Sandwiches?’ said Asha. ‘Why? Are you not hungry after your big breakfast?’

  ‘No, it’s not that. Look, come outside for a moment, would you?’

  Outside, the weather seemed to have deteriorated during the few seconds she had been inside. They had to stand well back under the canopy to keep out of the worst of the rain. ‘I don’t want to leave the bridge,’ he told her. ‘There’s quite a storm coming down that way.’ He gestured away to the north-east, where the sky was darkest. ‘It’s much worse than the one we brushed just after we cleared Fastnet, and this time I’m afraid we’ll have to sail right through it. The only way to avoid it is to run for Bermuda and wait it out, and if we do that, the people in Sept Isles may not take the cargo.
They’re working to a schedule as well. Anyway, it’s just a Western Ocean blow. Nothing really to worry about as long as we stay alert.’

  ‘And stay on the bridge.’

  ‘Of course. That’s the only way to handle them. You have to be ready to react the instant anything unexpected happens. Can’t have the watchkeeper phoning round with a message like “Big sea coming in over the forepeak, permission to wear ship”. The captain’s got to be here.’ The wind buffeted her back, emphasising his words by driving her body hard against his. He slung his arm round her shoulders and guided her back into the bridge. All at once she noticed the concentration on the faces of the others there, the air of quiet tension pervading the place.

  ‘Shall I come round?’ asked Salah. ‘Put her nose into the waves at least.’

  ‘Not yet,’ said John. ‘The wind will shift dead west when the first front comes over and they say it was gusting to ten at Cape Race. I don’t want that catching us with an unexpected broadside. We’re too top-heavy with the deck cargo as it is. Keep an eye on the clinometer, Cesar. If we go beyond fifty degrees, she’ll roll right over.’

  Asha leaned across and pressed her lips to John’s cold cheek. He looked at her as though surprised to find her still beside him.

  ‘Sandwiches,’ she said.

  *

  The chef was busy putting a series of steel struts across the top of the cooker to keep the pots and pans on it steady. The struts had slots cut into them, which slid into each other like carpentry joints. The whole lot clamped down tight to hold everything still. That just left the problem of their contents duplicating the motion of the waves outside. Everything in the galley was tinkling and jingling restlessly. Unused pans hung from hooks along the deck head, sounding like a carillon of little bells. Cutlery lying on the work surfaces rocked and slithered, clashing quietly like distant sword fights. Glasses and cups were shut away but they rang mysteriously from behind closed doors.

  Asha staggered a little coming in through the door and almost collided with a steward. Courteously, he stood back, as though the tray of soup plates he carried was weightless. The deck heaved slowly and he performed a matching movement, keeping the tray steady. The soup stood like six little millponds.

  ‘Madame,’ the chef beamed, treating her visit as a high compliment. Her work on his hands had made them fast friends.

  ‘Sandwiches, Marcel, for the captain.’

  ‘D’accord! You wish to take them en haut yourself?’

  He opened the refrigerator, swinging the door right back until it caught on a hook on the bulkhead. The hook was tight but even so, the door rattled against the restraint and the bottles and jars in the racks within it added their merry music to all the other tunes in the galley. The sandwiches were piled ready-made on a platter wrapped in plastic film. She took them and went back across the room.

  ‘Tell them there is soup to come!’ called Marcel as she left.

  This time she went up the internal companionways to the bridge. If the galley had been noisy, here it was worse. The wind was whistling and buffeting against the walls; the rain was continuous, heavy and noisy. Someone had switched on the bridge lights against the gathering murk and as she entered, John’s hand moved on a switch and the ship’s running lights came on as well. They were almost all that could be seen through the bridge windows until John also switched on the clearview. The huge, old-fashioned windscreen wipers swished from side to side, hurling the water away, and it was possible to see the afternoon again. It was a pitching, dark, roiling afternoon, like the inside of a great cave floored with unsteady stalagmites of sharp black waves. Asha put the tray on the chart table and pulled the plastic film away. John and Richard came across the bridge, licking their lips. ‘The chef says there’s soup to come,’ she told them, and they paused. Hesitated. Their eyes met.

  ‘Soup,’ said John, and Richard smiled.

  ‘Soup,’ he agreed.

  ‘I’d love some soup;’ said John, and took a sandwich.

  *

  ‘What was that all about?’ asked Asha later, standing beside John as he watched over Salah’s steady shoulder.

  ‘Haven’t I told you about the soup?’ he asked, amazed at his oversight. He told her about the first Prometheus and how her crew had been put out of action in a storm such as this by cups of poisoned soup. He related the story as though by rote, as though his mind was not really engaged in it. It wasn’t; he was concentrating on the weather outside and the way in which his ship was reacting to it.

  They were under the first front now, the warm front. The cloud was at its lowest, seemingly almost on the water, and the wind was just on the point of swinging to the west. The seas were sharp and the wind still strengthening: force nine gale promising at any minute to topple over into storm ten. There was a weight to it, as though they were a nut being squeezed between the jaws of sky and sea; as if the very pressure of the air could crush them. Napoli pitched and tossed like a cockle in the frantic swell. Salah’s shoulders rocked independently of the movement of the rest of his body, their movement dictated by the force of the wild water through the rudder and the steering motors to the wheel.

  ‘Come to slow ahead, five knots,’ ordered John as he finished his story.

  Just as he spoke, and Cesar, who was standing at Salah’s left hand, moved to grasp the engine room telegraph, the deck before them seemed to catch fire. Asha gave a gasp of fear, which became in an instant a sigh of pleasure. It was as though the main deck, with its cranes and cargo containers, lines, rails and deck furniture had all been remade out of blue neon. Every item there glowed with that electric brightness. Even the smallest detail was visible in the wavering effulgence. Asha felt that the foredeck should have given off light, that it should have reflected on the waves and brightened the sagging bellies of the clouds. But it did not do so; the glow was of itself and gave out no light.

  ‘I think we should log that, Cesar,’ said John, automatically looking up. ‘Bang on thirteen hundred local time.’

  *

  The wind settled into a westerly gale and they butted into it at five steady knots. Asha stayed with John and Richard on the bridge and Ann joined them when Niccolo came on watch at four. By then the overcast was beginning to thin and there seemed to be the chance that the clouds would clear for the evening. The darkness ahead lightened little by little, a process helped by the gusting out of the last of the rain.

  By the time a steward brought tea at five, Napoli’s bows were outlined against a dazzling band of pearly brightness lying along the horizon dead ahead. As they moved towards it, the waves became visible again, mile upon mile around them of steep-backed water, white-crested and furious looking. Foam exploded up over the old freighter’s flared bows, washing like snow along the deck, foaming up in short-lived drifts, making brief igloos of the McGregor hatches, then thawing instantly into the scuppers and away. The winds whipped the tarpaulins into a frenetic blur of movement so that watching them for any length of time gave a sensation like drunkenness as the eyes tried in vain to focus. The cranes seemed to waver like aspens, their ropes performing the wildest dance of all.

  Then the sun came out and it was as though they had come to the end of a long tunnel. A wind tunnel. They blinked like troglodytes resurrected and the mood on the bridge lightened like the afternoon. Asha had the feeling of having come through something monumental. She felt elated, renewed. And stifled. Impulsively, she pulled open the starboard bridge wing and stepped outside. It was miraculous out here. The gale was still blowing hard enough to make her stagger and it was cold enough to cut. Her cheeks felt almost flayed at once. But it was so bracing. And so beautiful. She staggered to the bridge rail and hung on for dear life while she looked around. Never had the sky seemed so high, so blue. And the surface of each great wave hurling past mirrored the blue of the sky exactly. The sun was lowering towards the horizon but its beams were dazzling still. The spindrift was perfect white, the spray like flying diamonds.

 
; One look was all she could take for now, though; she wasn’t dressed for this. The sunshine was bright but there was no heat in it. The wind was coming from the west now, but it had been born near the polar icecap. The spray would have been solid ice had it not been so salty.

  Within a moment she was back inside. ‘It’s beautiful,’ she gasped. ‘I have to go out again!’

  ‘Be careful if you do,’ said John. ‘And wrap up well.’

  ‘Oh, but you must come!’

  ‘Asha, I can’t just leave the bridge.’

  ‘Of course you can. Niccolo and I can cope.’

  ‘That’s very nice of you, Richard, but there’s still a full gale blowing out there.’

  ‘A gale?’ Richard’s face wore an expression of blank astonishment. ‘Niccolo, did you know there was a gale?’

  Niccolo gave one of his Neapolitan shrugs. English humour was beyond him.

  Napoli’s head ducked under another crest. John looked forward automatically, but it was only white water. Only foam. He didn’t need to worry too much until she started taking solid green water. Then her pumps would really have their work cut out.

  But Richard was right. There was no reason he should not take a few minutes outside in the fresh air with Asha. She so obviously wanted to; she was hopping from foot to foot like an excited child. They had ridden out a nasty blow with no problem so far. Half an hour to watch the sunset. What harm could it do?

  They went down the internal ladders to their cabin and changed as quickly as possible. In Limassol they had bought only summery kit, suitable for a few days’ cruising in the south-east Med, and the last suitcases that Richard had brought contained clothing for a Hawaiian honeymoon, but the lighter from Cork had carried proper winter gear. They donned heavy pullovers and waterproof clothing, then went on down through the bridgehouse, out of the rear doors and on to the afterdeck. Because Salah was keeping Napoli’s head dead into the wind, the bridgehouse gave a wind shadow. It also gave a sun shadow, and so even with no wind chill, the air was bitingly cold.