The cook tilted his chair back and fetched down a bottle of whisky from a shelf. “There’s a couple of tooth glasses over there, Corporal,” he said. He poured out two stiff tots and began to talk. He had a deep, rich voice, and its mellow tones took me on a cook’s tour of the world. He’d been twenty-two years at sea, always cooking, shifting from ship to ship as the fancy took him. He’d a wife in Sydney and another in Hull and claimed a nodding acquaintance with the population of practically every port in the Seven Seas. Half an hour of listening to him left me with the impression of a dirty-minded old rapscallion who’d gone his own way through life and had got a lot of fun out of it. When he paused for a time staring into the fire, his thick fleshy fingers automatically stroking the back of the purring cat, I said, “Have you done many trips with Captain Halsey? What’s he like?” I was still thinking of Rankin’s decision to report the opening of that case to the Captain.
“Five trips I’ve done with him,” he replied, still staring into the fire. “But I wouldn’t say I know much about him. I never seen him before I shipped on the Trikkala in ’42. The only men on this ship who really know ’im are Hendrik, the first mate, a seaman called Jukes and a little Welsh stoker by the name of Evans. They were all with him when he skippered the old Penang in the China Sea. But they don’t talk much. An’ I don’t blame ’em.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Well, it’s only hearsay, so don’t you go opening yer trap saying I bin telling you things.” He turned his sharp little brown eyes on me. “But I heard things. So’ve others who bin out in China ports. Mind you, I ain’t sayin’ they’re true. But I never known port gossip that hadn’t some truth in it.”
“Well, what was the gossip?” I asked as he fell to staring at the fire again.”
“Oh, it’s a long story,” he said. “But to put it briefly—it was piracy.” And then he swung quickly round on me again. “Look here, me lad,” he said, “you keep your mouth shut, see. I’m a garrulous old fool to be telling you anything at all. But I don’t talk to me shipmates about it. I ain’t aimin’ to start any trouble. But you’re different. You’re only a visitor so to speak.” He turned to the fire again then and, after a moment, he said, “It was in Shangai I first heard of Captain Halsey, and I never thought then to be serving on a ship of which he was Captain. Piracy, did I say? Piracy and murder, that’s what I heard of him in Shanghai. Have you ever heard him rantin’ and ravin’? No, I don’t reckon you bin on board long enough. But you will—you will.”
“I’ve heard he declaims long speeches from Shakespeare,” I said. “Is that what you mean?”
“That’s it—Shakespeare. It’s ’is Bible. He’s at it all day long, rantin’ and ravin’—up on the bridge, down in his cabin. Flings quotations at his crew all mixed up with the orders so that a newcomer to the ship don’t know whether he’s coming or going. But you listen to the passages he picks. I’ve read Shakespeare. I take one around with me ’cos it’s a good, fat, meaty book to read when the company’s dull an’ the voyage a long one. Well, you just listen and you’ll find it’s always the bits about murders and wrong ’uns that he quotes. And another thing, he picks his passages to suit ’is moods. Now this morning he was Hamlet. You know what Hamlet was—a ditherer. Well, when he’s Hamlet you don’t need to worry. And when he’s in a merry mood, he’ll quote Falstaff at you. But you watch your step when he’s Macbeth or Falconbridge or one of those men of action. Like as not he’ll heave anything that comes handy at you. A maniac, that’s wot he is—a rantin’, ravin’ lunatic. But a fine sailor and a man that knows how to run a ship. Never had any complaints about the grub since I joined this ship. The men takes wot they’re given an’ no Bolshie nonsense.”
He leaned forward and raked at the fire. “They say he was an actor once and grew his beard to hide his identity. I don’t know about that. But what I heard in Shanghai was that he picked up the old Penang in a typhoon off the Marianas, which were Jap islands in the Pacific. He had a trading schooner in those days and finding the Penang deserted went aboard and got the pumps working and sailed her back to Shanghai. She wasn’t insured and the owners couldn’t pay salvage and by some wangle he got her for nothing. That was how he started and accordin’ to the gossip it were about 1925. It was all in the papers, I’m told. But wot followed ain’t in the papers. He patched her up and began sailing her for a firm of Chinese merchants with as pretty a bunch of scallywags for crew as you could meet in them parts. It was legitimate trade all right, though I won’t say there wasn’t some smuggling on the side. There’s few doing coastal trade in the South China Sea that don’t indulge in a little smuggling. But it weren’t smuggling wot got the old Penang her reputation. No, it were the fact that she was too often in the neighbourhood of ships wot went down with all hands in a storm. It were piracy that they began to talk about in the ports. That strikes you as pretty incredible, don’t it? But out there, it ain’t the same as England. To begin with the ships concerned hadn’t got no wireless. And then again there’s lot’s of queer things happen out there. And when the Japs invaded China—well, there was plenty of scope for a man without scruples who was in with the right people. At all events, old Blackbeard—that’s wot they called him—sold the Penang to the Japs for a tidy sum around ’36 and retired to the Philippines where he’d bought himself a nice little property. But there, it’s all gossip. Ain’t a shadow of evidence. An’ don’t you tell nobody wot I been saying.”
“I certainly won’t,” I said. “But why did you tell me?”
He laughed and poured more whisky. “When you been at sea as long as I have, me lad, you come to be a bit of a gossip. When a new shipmate comes aboard, first thing I does if I likes the look of ’im is to ask ’im into the galley for a yarn. Not many ports left that I ain’t visited an’ it’s nice to hear news of them. There’s plenty of wot you might call characters knocking around up an’ down the ports and it sort of gives you an interest in life to hear about ’em, the skippers partic’larly. They most of ’em get a bit queer one way and another. It’s a lonely life a skipper’s and it takes ’em different ways. With some it’s drink, with others it’s religion—and with Cap’n Halsey it’s Shakespeare. I bin on the Trikkala now five voyages—a total of twenty-six months; one of ’em was to Tewfik by way of the Cape, see. An’ all the time I bin bottlin’ this bit o’ gossip up inside o’ me till I were fair bustin’ to tell someone. It was you mentioning Kalinsky wot started me off. Now Kalinsky’s the only man so far as I know that the Penang ever rescued out of a dozen or more ships that went down in her vicinity. And he set up business in Canton and they say he was pretty thick with the crew of the Penang. But there, as I say, it’s all gossip. But the way I look at it, there ain’t no smoke haze round a man’s name without there’s a fire burning somewhere. This cat now—you wouldn’t reckon there to be gossip about a cat, would you? But she’s thought to be a lucky cat and the story goes that she saved a ship. Well, I’ll tell you how that story got around.…”
I don’t know to this day what the cook’s name was. He was drowned with the rest of them. But talk—he could talk for hours so long as he’d got a drink and someone to listen. But I’m afraid I was a disappointing audience for the story about the cat. My mind was puzzling over the conversation I had heard between the Captain and his first mate and what the reference to Kalinsky and Rankin had meant.
I was still thinking about this when I went up on deck again. I strolled for’ard, filling my pipe as I went. I passed the bridge, skirted the donkey-engines and the hatch covers of Number One hold, and then, stepping over the anchor chains, went right up past the three-inch gun to the bows. The wind had shifted to the nor’-west and was beginning to blow. The clouds had thickened so that they were no longer luminous with the cold glare of the Northern Lights. The night was thick with a snow-haze so that, though we were close in the wake of the ship ahead—the American Merchant—I could barely make her out. The sea was getting up. I could feel the pitch of the
bows under my feet and each time they bit into a wave a cascade of spray whipped away on either side of her like a ghostly veil blown through the darkness of the night.
I bent down in the lea of the bulwarks to light my pipe. As I struck the match a girl’s voice said, “Oh, you frightened me.”
I shaded the match and saw the white oval of a girl’s face above a khaki greatcoat. She was seated on a coil of rope, her back to the iron plates of the bows. The match flickered and died. “Sorry,” I said, “I didn’t know anyone was here. I just dived down to light my pipe. Are you Miss Sorrel?”
“Yes,” she said.
She had a soft, pleasant voice with just the trace of an accent which was difficult to place.
“It’s so dark,” I said, “I can’t see you at all.”
“I shouldn’t have seen you if you hadn’t struck that match. Now you’re just the glow of a pipe. How did you know my name?”
“I’m the Corporal of the guard they put on board,” I said. “One of my men helped you with your kit when you came on board.”
“Oh, that nice little Cockney.” She laughed. “You’ve no idea how homely it was to hear his voice. What are you guarding?”
The suddenness of her question took me by surprise. I hesitated. Then I said, “Oh, just some stores.”
“Sorry,” she said, “I shouldn’t have asked that, should I?”
We were silent then. Crouched there I could feel the dip and swoop of the bows, the shudder of the plates as they took the shock of the next wave and the live throb of the engines. It was bitterly cold even under the lea of the bulwarks. “You ought to be in your cabin on a night like this.” I said.
But she said, “No—it’s so small. I don’t like being shut in.”
“But aren’t you cold?” I asked.
“Yes, I suppose I am,” she answered. “But I’m used to the cold. Besides, I like to hear the sea. I’ve sailed all my life. I’ve got my own boat at home. My brother and I were always sailing——” Her voice trailed off then. “He was killed at St. Nazaire,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” I said, “I love sailing, too.” Again a short silence fell between us. But I sensed that she wanted to talk, so I asked her where her home was.
“Scotland,” she replied. “The Western Highlands—near Oban.”
“There’s good sailing there,” I murmured. And then as she had fallen silent again I said, “You mentioned that you were used to the cold. Does that mean you’ve been in Russia a long time?”
“No,” she said. “In Germany—or rather Poland.”
I was staggered at her answer. “Poland!” I exclaimed. “You mean you were a prisoner?”
“Yes. Nearly three years.”
It seemed incredible that this frail slip of a girl should have come alive out of Poland to finish up at Murmansk. “But how?” I asked. “I mean—three years—you couldn’t have been there when war broke out.”
“No.” Her voice was toneless, flat. “They caught me in France. I used to go over to contact people. My mother was French, you see. I knew a lot of useful people. It was my third trip that they caught me. I was in Rouen. After a time they sent me to a concentration camp near Warsaw.” She gave a little dry, mirthless laugh. “That is why I don’t feel the cold.” Her voice changed to a lighter tone. “But don’t let’s talk about me. I am so tired of myself.” She was speaking English very correctly as though she were not sure of the language. “Tell me what you have been doing with yourself during the war and what you’re going to do and all about yourself.”
I felt embarrassed. “I’ve done nothing much,” I said. “I understand the mechanism of predictors. That’s about all. They sent us over to Russia to get some gunnery equipment of ours ready for action. Now I’m on my way back to England.”
“And when you reach England, what will you do?” She sighed almost luxuriously. “Oh, isn’t it lovely to be saying ‘England’ and feel that with every beat of the ship’s engines, we’re getting nearer. England! England! Isn’t it a lovely sounding word?” There was a fierce longing in her voice that gave it a strange quality. “They used to talk about England in that camp,” she went on quietly. “All those people whose countries had been over-run—they spoke of it the way an Arab might speak of Mecca.” Her voice changed again as she leaned towards me and said, “And when you get to England you’ll have leave, I suppose—you’ll go off to your home and your wife will be waiting for you. You’ve no idea what a wonderful thing it is to think of families still in existence, not broken up, but whole and real—it’s something solid that I thought was lost for ever.”
“Yes—but I’m not married, you know,” I said with a laugh.
“Well, your family. The things that make up a home. People clustered about the fire at Christmas.” She hesitated, a faraway look in her eyes as she remembered the things she had missed for so long. “To go home! It’s so wonderful just to be able to say to myself—I’m going home.”
As she turned away to hide her tears I heard Sill’s voice calling my name. “What is it?” I called back.
He came forward then. “Mr. Rankin wants you, Corporal. You’re to see the Captain right away.”
I felt suddenly like I did as a small boy when called to the headmaster’s study. It sounded like trouble. “I’m afraid I’ll have to go,” I said to my invisible companion. “Will you be here when I come back?”
“No,” she said. “I think it’s getting too cold.”
And then, without thinking, I found myself saying, “Meet me on the deck sometime to-morrow, will you?”
“All right,” she said. “Goodnight.”
“Goodnight,” I said and went aft with Sills, my mind strangely disturbed at the thought of meeting the man the old cook had gossiped about.
Rankin was waiting for me in the guardroom. He was seated on one of the cases of bullion, his white fingers methodically breaking a match into a geometric pattern. He started up as I entered. His face looked puffy in the hard electric light. He was undoubtedly nervous, but I got the impression that he was frightened too.
We went for’ard to the officers’ quarters. Rankin left me in the passage and went into the mess-room. I heard him say, “I’ve got the Corporal with me.” And then Hendrik’s voice replied, “Gude. Capt’n Halsey’s waitin’ for ye.” There was the sound of a chair being pushed back and then Rankin came out followed by the mate. We cut across by the wash place to the starboard side and stopped outside the Captain’s door. A voice was speaking inside the cabin. Faintly through the door I caught Hamlet’s words, “…. and my two schoolfellows, whom I will trust as I will adders fang’d, they bear the mandate; they must sweep my way, and marshal me to knavery.”
“Och, it’s Hamlet he is again the nicht,” said Hendrik and knocked on the door.
The drone of the voice ceased. “Come in.” This sharp and decisive. When I went in, I found myself looking at a pair of black, sharp, little eyes set in sockets that were yellowed and lined with the sun of the tropics. The features were difficult to determine beneath the thick beard which had been black, but was now showing streaks of grey. Wiry hair, thick and inclined to curl, was brushed straight back from the broad, deeply-lined forehead. It matched the beard and so did the thick, beetling eyebrows. Captain Halsey was quite short in stature and very neat in appearance. But I scarcely noticed anything of this at that first meeting. My impression was of a man of violent personality and restless energy and all I noticed about him were his eyes—they were almost unnaturally bright and hard like onyx.
“Shut the door, Mr. Hendrik.” His voice was soft, almost gentle. He was standing by a desk and his dark, lean fingers drummed on the leather top of it. “Are you the corporal of the guard?” he asked me.
“Yes, sir,” I replied.
“I understand your men have opened one of the cases and now know the nature of the cargo they are guarding?” His voice was still soft and gentle, but his little black eyes watched me without blinking.
/> “Yes, sir,” I replied. “You see they’d no idea——”
“I don’t require your views on their action, Corporal.” Still the soft voice, but there was a strange quality about it that made it almost menacing. It had the patient softness of a cat purring after its prey. “I find it most disturbing that you should have allowed this to happen. Those cases contain just over half a million in silver bullion. It represents some payment by the Russian Government for arms we have sent them. The cargo has to be delivered to Treasury officials when we dock at Leith and they will not be pleased to find some of the seals broken. The nature of my report on the matter will depend on the behaviour of you and your guard during the remainder of the voyage. The only people who know the nature of that cargo are the four of us here in this cabin and your two soldiers.” He leaned suddenly and swiftly forward across the desk. “It is imperative, Corporal, that they do not talk.” His voice was no longer soft. It was hard and crisp. “Is there any likelihood of their having mentioned it to any of the crew?”
“I’m sure they haven’t,” I said.
“Good. In wartime you can’t pick and choose your crews. I’ve nearly a dozen men on board who’ve never sailed with me before this trip. I don’t want them to know that we carry bullion. Understand? I’m holding you responsible, Corporal, that it doesn’t get around the after-deck. Upon that one thing will depend what sort of a report I make to the authorities on the matter. Is that clearly understood?”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
He grunted and his eyes shifted to Rankin. The interview was over. The others at his invitation stayed. I went aft and communicated the result to Bert and Sills. They both gave me their solemn word that they would not mention it to a soul. But I wondered about Rankin. Ever since he came on board he had been drinking and playing cards with the Chief Engineer.
It was just after eleven then and I turned in to get some sleep before relieving Bert at one. It is difficult now, after all this time, to remember exactly what I felt about things at that moment. I remember I could not sleep. My mind was a kaleidoscope of impressions—impressions of personalities, I think, more than of events. There was the Captain, with his quiet voice and magnetic eyes, his dour mate with the livid white of that scar running down his weather-beaten cheek, that rascally old gossip of a cook—and Jennifer Sorrel with her pleasant, rather sad voice and strange history. And as background to my thoughts the steady throb of the ship’s engines as she rolled slowly along the southern edge of the Barents Sea towards Leith.
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