“By God!” Veevers shouted in sudden alarm. “They’re going to run us down.”
Loder saw the danger at the same instant. It seemed incredible that the tugmaster should take such drastic action, but he could see a valuable prize slipping through his fingers, and that was enough to make any man desperate.
“Back together!”
They backed water, pushing on the looms of the oars, and the tug swept past within a few feet of the boat’s bows. Loder could see faces peering down from the bridge of the little ship; hard, grim faces under peaked caps. He felt like shouting at them, cursing their inhumanity; but it would have been pointless. And then the bow wave hit the boat, and it was tossing about and twisting round, with water spilling over the gunwale; and for a few moments there was utter confusion as the men strove to hold on to their oars and regain control.
It was possible that the tugmaster had intended doing no more than this, hoping that the subsequent confusion in the lifeboat might give him time to get his own boarding party on to the deck of the India Star. But the very speed of his approach militated against the success of the manoeuvre, for he could neither draw alongside the derelict nor launch his own boat until way had been taken off the tug. And by then Loder and his crew had regained control of the lifeboat and were well on the way to closing the last few yards of water between them and the Jacob’s-ladder still hanging down from the bulwarks of the India Star.
They took in their oars and the boat nudged the side of the ship. Lawson grabbed the Jacob’s-ladder, and Loder swarmed nimbly up and jumped down on to the deck. He turned and saw the tug some distance away, hove to, a boat being launched. He grinned sardonically. They were too late. He was in possession now and, do what they would, they could not shift him.
Orwell came up over the bulwark and made fast the painter. The other men followed. They could hear the muffled beat of the engine in the boat that was now drawing away from the Atlantic Scavenger.
“We’re going to have visitors,” Veevers remarked.
“No one,” Loder said, “is to be allowed to set foot on this deck. Is that understood?”
Lawson nodded. “Understood, sir.” He began to climb back over the bulwark.
“Where are you going?” Loder demanded.
“Won’t be a moment, sir.”
Watched by the others, Lawson went quickly down the Jacob’s-ladder, picked up a boat-hook from the lifeboat and returned with it in his hand.
“Prepared to repel boarders, sir.”
Veevers gave him a pat on the back. “Good for you Aussie.”
“I think we could have persuaded them without that,’ Loder said.
Lawson grinned. “It’ll strengthen the argument. If they try any tricks I don’t mind giving ’em a jab with the sharp end of this. They gave us a nasty minute or two out there and I haven’t forgotten it. Things like that stick in my gullet.”
They stood by the bulwark and watched the other boat. They waited in silence as it eased alongside the lifeboat. There were four men in it. One of them stepped over the gunwale and across a thwart of the lifeboat and began to climb the Jacob’s-ladder. He was a chunky man and the life-jacket he was wearing made him look even chunkier. His face looked like a slab of raw beef with a couple of indentations in it to accommodate his eyes, a blob for a nose and a slit for a mouth. The whole thing might have been dashed off by an amateur sculptor on a bad day.
Loder allowed him to get half-way up the ladder and then said: “You can stop there.”
The man stopped. He said: “I’m the mate of the Atlantic Scavenger. Name’s Creegan.”
“My name’s Loder, and I’m mate of the Hopeful Enterprise. What do you want?”
“I’d like to come on board, Mr. Loder.”
“Sorry, Mr. Creegan; that won’t be possible.”
“To hell with that,” Creegan said, and he started climbing again.
Lawson leaned over the bulwark and prodded him with the boat-hook. Creegan stopped.
“So that’s the way it is.”
“That’s the way it is,” Loder said.
“You know we’ve come out to bring this ship in?”
“That won’t be necessary. We’re bringing her in.”
Creegan glanced back at the Hopeful Enterprise and then up again at Loder. There was an expression of disbelief on his beefy face. “You’d never make it.”
“Think not?”
“I’m bloody sure not.”
“If you stick around,” Loder said, “you can watch us try.”
Creegan hung on to the Jacob’s-ladder and appeared uncertain what to do next. It was obvious that he was reluctant to go back to the tug and report failure; yet, with Lawson holding the boat-hook ready, there was no hope of forcing his way on board the India Star.
“You can’t be serious about this.”
“I’m not joking.”
“But you’d never be able to tow her in.”
“What makes you think not?” Loder asked. “We towed her for nearly two days before the hawser parted in the storm.”
Creegan’s eyes narrowed. “So that’s how she got here. That explains it.”
“You’ve been wondering about that?”
“You bet we’ve been wondering about it.” Creegan sounded exasperated. “You’ve given us some trouble finding this baby.”
“Well, now you’ve found her you can shove off,” Loder said. “We’ve got work to do.”
“You really mean to go ahead with this, don’t you?”
“We do. You can go back and tell your skipper that.”
Creegan hesitated. As if to help him make up his mind, Lawson reached over the bulwark and prodded him again with the boat-hook, none too gently. Creegan took the hint and went back to his boat. They heard him snarl an order, and the boat moved away and headed for the Atlantic Scavenger. The four seamen on the deck of the India Star gave a mocking cheer to speed it on its way and added a few rude gestures for good measure.
“That’s enough,” Loder said sharply. “We’ve no time to waste on courtesies. Get moving.”
The broken hawser was still hanging from the fairlead in the bows, more than a hundred fathoms of it stretching down into the water beneath the ship. They had to jettison it before starting to haul the new one across, and throughout the whole operation the tug stood by, keeping an eye on things but making no move to interfere.
“Why don’t they piss off?” Veevers said. “There ain’t nothing for them here. Not now.”
“There could be,” Orwell said.
“How d’you mean?”
Orwell pulled thoughtfully at his beard. “Suppose the tow was to part again. If they was still hanging around they could nip in and snap up the jackpot. My bet is they’ll tail us.”
Loder had already come to the same conclusion and he was not altogether happy about it. “What we really need is a salvage crew to stay on board. Nobody could take her then. Just a couple of men would be enough.”
Veevers looked doubtfully towards the bridge. There was admittedly no smoke rising now, but that was not to say that the fire would not break out again or that there would not be another explosion. And there was that list too; a little worse than it had been before.
“You ain’t asking any of us to stay on board, are you, sir?”
“No,” Loder said. “It was just a thought. But of course it would not be reasonable to ask anyone to do that. Too risky.”
And then Wilson said quietly: “I don’t mind staying.”
Four pairs of eyes turned in his direction, and under that combined stare he looked slightly embarrassed.
“You?” Loder said.
And Veevers said: “You’re barmy. You won’t get me to keep you company.”
“I don’t want anyone to keep me company.” Wilson looked at Loder. “I suppose one man would be enough, sir? It’s just a legal point, isn’t it?”
Loder rasped his chin. “I suppose so. But it’s out of the question. I couldn’t lea
ve you behind.”
“But I want to stay.” There was a strange eagerness in Wilson’s voice that puzzled Loder. The young seaman actually seemed to be afraid that he would not be allowed to remain on board the India Star.
“You want to?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. It’s just something. This whole ship to myself. I’d like it.”
“Barmy,” Veevers muttered. “Proper barmy.”
Loder was silent, thinking it over. It was a risk; but, after all, the India Star had proved herself seaworthy by coming through one storm, so there was no reason why she should sink now. And there was that tug standing by like a damned vulture. Loder hated the thought of losing the prize now, and if Wilson was prepared, even eager, to provide a little extra insurance, why stop him?
“Very well,” he said, “if that’s what you really want to do. You won’t be short of food; there’s bound to be plenty of that on board.”
“And you can sleep in the captain’s cabin,” Lawson said. “You’ll be moving up in the world.”
“All right,” Loder said. “That’s enough. Back to the boat.”
Orwell, Lawson and Veevers climbed over the bulwark and went down the Jacob’s-ladder. Wilson could hear the wooden rungs tapping against the side of the ship as they descended. Loder turned for a final word.
“If you’re in trouble you can always signal us.”
“I’m not a signaller, sir.”
“Well, just stand on the fo’c’sle and wave some flags, any flags. If it’s dark you can flash a light.” He did not add that if Wilson was in trouble it would probably be impossible for anyone on board the Hopeful Enterprise to do anything about it. There was no point in discouraging the volunteer.
He walked to the bulwark and climbed over. He gave a last nod to Wilson. “Good luck, then.”
“Thank you, sir,” Wilson said.
He watched them rowing back to the Hopeful Enterprise, and he had an impulse to call them back, to say he had changed his mind; but he did not do so. The deck moved under his feet and a pulley-block rattled. There was no other sound. He turned away from the bulwark and looked towards the bridge. No one there; deserted; dead. He shivered, sensing for the first time the eeriness of this silent ship. He remembered that men had died in her; their bodies would still be there unless the fire had burnt them. Perhaps their ghosts would haunt the India Star, lurking in the cabins and gliding along the alleyways where in life the men had moved.
But that was nonsense. He had better keep that kind of stuff out of his head. There were no such things as ghosts, and if there were, it would not be dead seamen who would come to haunt him; it would be the woman he had left dead in Montreal. And she did haunt him—in the mind. Waking or sleeping, she was there, never to be shaken off.
He took a grip on himself. There was no point in just standing there; he had to be doing something. And the first thing to do was to make a survey of what was to be his home for several days at least.
It was the wreckage amidships that drew him first, as it had drawn Loder on a previous occasion. He saw the toppled funnel, and, like Loder, he crawled to the edge of the wide, jagged hole in the decks and peered down. There was no smoke now to obscure the view, and he could see right down to the engine-room which the explosion had wrecked and the fire had gutted. He caught a glint of something down there, of something moving, and he heard the sound of water swilling back and forth as the ship rolled. There was the reason why the fire had gone out; the engine-room was flooded. He wondered whether this water had all got in from above or whether some of it was leaking in from the bottom; but either way there was nothing he could do about it unless he got a bucket and line and started baling.
Then he saw the impaled head, and it was as much a shock as if he had in fact seen a ghost. It was the unexpectedness of it that touched his nerves; for Loder had said nothing to anyone about what he had seen. It was completely black now, and but for the lank, straight hair, might have been the head of a Negro. Wilson stared at it for a while in fascination, then drew back with a shudder.
As he did so he felt what seemed like an answering shudder pass through the ship. He got to his feet, ran to the bridge and looked towards the bows. The hawser stretched away from the forecastle in a gentle curve before dipping beneath the surface of the water, and two or three hundred yards ahead was the stern of the Hopeful Enterprise. Smoke was pouring from her funnel, and a breeze that had sprung up and had already dispersed the last of the fog was blowing this smoke away in a widening, thinning streamer.
They were on their way.
Wilson looked for the Atlantic Scavenger and found her some distance away on the port beam. He lifted two fingers to the tug and went below.
Everywhere he went he saw the unmistakable signs of a hasty evacuation. There were bunks that had been slept in and left as they were, the sheets and blankets all in disarray; in the crew’s messroom aft there were plates and cups left unwashed, and dishes that had had food on them were spilled over on to the deck. It looked as though the decision to abandon the ship, when it had finally been taken, had been taken suddenly. Possibly there had been some urging from the master of the Sargasso Queen, and with a fire burning amidships and the weather breaking up, Captain van Donck of the India Star had no doubt decided that he had no alternative. And so the prize had been left for anyone who could take it.
Again, as he explored the ship, Wilson had that sense of eeriness. To him, a seaman, everything was familiar; he could find his way with ease; but it was the absence of any other human being that was so unnerving. He found himself continually glancing over his shoulder, expecting to discover eyes watching his every movement; or, opening a door, he would imagine that someone had just slipped away, avoiding him. And there was the silence: no thump of engines, no sound of voices; only the whisper of the sea moving along the sides and the occasional clatter of something loose moving as the ship rolled and setting the pulse racing.
As Lawson had suggested, he moved into the captain’s quarters; there was no reason why he should not take the best. There was plenty of room, very different from the cramped accommodation he shared in the Hopeful Enterprise. There was a day cabin comfortably furnished with armchairs and a settee, a desk, bookshelves, even a carpet; all this abandoned to the sea. The inner cabin was smaller. Wilson looked into the wardrobe. Captain van Donck had left his tropical kit and a spare blue serge jacket with brass buttons and four gold braid rings on each sleeve. Wilson took the jacket out and tried it on; it was loose round the waist, obviously made for a much stouter man. He took the jacket off and put it back in the wardrobe.
Another door opened into a small bathroom, gleaming with chromium plate, glass and white porcelain. Wilson caught sight of his reflection in a mirror; the face looked older, the eyes troubled; it had the traces too of the beating he had received from Trubshaw, but he was not worried about that; if that had been all there was on his mind he would have been happy. If only it were possible to turn back the calendar, to start again from that fatal moment when he had gone ashore with Trubshaw and Lawson and Moir. If only he had been able then to foresee what would happen. But it was too late to think of that now. He was caught; he was in a net from which there was no escape. The haunted eyes stared back at him from the mirror and could see no way out. Except one.
He left the bathroom and went back into the day cabin. He walked to the desk and started opening drawers. There was nothing of much interest to him; it was hardly likely that there would be. Captain van Donck would have seen to it that all papers of any importance were taken with him when he left the ship.
One drawer was locked. Wilson searched for a key but without success. He shrugged; it did not matter. He moved away from the desk, but illogically the locked drawer drew him back. Why had it been left locked when none of the others were? Had it simply been overlooked or had it purposely been left like that? Yet why would anyone bother to lock a drawer in a s
hip that was going to sink anyway? But of course there had been no certainty that the ship would sink. And it had not done so.
The question nagged at Wilson; key or no key, he had to open the drawer and see for himself what was inside.
It was was surprisingly easy to force the drawer; he had only to insert the blade of his knife and exert a little pressure. Inside were a .38 calibre revolver and several boxes of ammunition.
TWELVE
GUN PLAY
Barling was not altogether happy when Loder returned from the India Star without Wilson. It seemed to him a grave risk to leave the young seaman on board the other ship.
“He wanted to stay,” Loder explained.
To Barling that appeared hardly sufficient reason. Perhaps Wilson did not fully realise the danger, but Loder should have done so, and should not have allowed him to stay.
“I don’t like it.”
“You want that ship, don’t you?”
“Of course I want the ship, but that’s not the point.”
“I think it’s very much the point,” Loder said. “The tug is going to shadow us; you can count on that. And if the India Star goes adrift again they’ll maybe get in quicker than we can. Wilson is our insurance against a take-over.”
Barling could see that without its being spelt out to him. Indeed, with a part of his mind he was glad that Wilson had been left behind to guard the prize, though he would not admit as much to Loder.
“It’s risking a man’s life.”
Loder’s mouth had its sardonic twist as he asked: “Do you want us to go back and take him off?”
Presented with a straight question like that, Barling was forced to make his own decision; obviously Loder was not going to let him shift the responsibility. He hesitated a moment before answering: “No. Since he’s there, we’ll leave it like that for the present. But get one of the engineers to look at the engine in that boat.”
“I was going to do that.”
Ocean Prize (1972) Page 13
