“What did you do then?”
“I was groggy, and scared in case I was found like that. I saw from the clock that I had been asleep for over an hour. I stumbled into the wheelhouse and checked the course, but the radar wasn’t working. I called the captain. He told me to check it again and to check the main switch. I checked. The switch was on, but still the radar wasn’t working. Then I saw that the autopilot wasn’t working either, so I called the captain again. He swore at me and said that he would be there in five minutes. I waited, but he didn’t come. I was very frightened. We grounded about ten minutes later; and then the captain came running in, yelling at me.”
So that’s what had been bothering Flint, why he had been so anxious to placate me. If he had come when he had been called that first time, we might have been saved.
“I am so ashamed of myself. What do you think they will do to me?”
I felt sorry for him. None of this was his fault. He had been picked simply because his bridge watch fitted in with the proximity of the reef. But he didn’t realise that, of course, and I had to see that he stayed ignorant – at least until it was too late for him to do anything about it.
I wanted it to continue to look like an accident. If they thought for a moment that it was anything else they would look for the person behind the sabotage, and he might lead them to the grass. Could I bribe the whole ship if they discovered what the cargo really was?
I was certain that Flint didn’t believe it was an accident, but he wasn’t saying. He needed it to be an accident. It would look bad for him otherwise. He had taken too long to get to the bridge. Malfunction of machinery was one thing; but sabotage and dereliction of duty were something else.
“Well, Third,” I said, putting a comforting hand on his arm. “I think it would be best if you didn’t tell a soul about your dropping off to sleep; not even your wife. She might mention it to one of the other wives. It would be all round the ship in no time.”
He thought for a minute and then said: “Yes, you are right. She is very friendly with the other women.”
The cargo would remain my secret as long as he stayed silent, and I was going to make certain that he did just that.
“If they believe you were awake the whole time,” I said quietly and clearly. “They’ll think the malfunction happened only minutes before you discovered it. They’ll believe you did everything you should have done. They won’t know that it might have happened an hour or so before you woke up. But if you tell them what really happened, you’ll never go to sea again. You’ll be lucky if you don’t go to jail. What would your pretty wife do then?”
He started to cry, tears rolling down his cheeks, and I thought for a moment that he was going to pass out as the whiteness spread over his face once more. I hoped that he would, for as far as I was concerned the best thing would be for him to sleep it off and let the drug seep out of his system. Six or seven hours sleep and the effects of the drug would have worn off, and I doubted whether anybody would believe his story then. With no proof of being drugged, he would keep quiet or go to the wall.
There was a voice from the doorway behind me. “Why are you here?” I turned to find his wife, protective, fiery, anger mixed with fear, the beauty of youth gone in an instant as she flicked her long dark hair over one shoulder.
“Don’t worry,” I replied easily. “I only came down to see if there was anything I could do for your husband. I don’t think he should be left on his own.”
“I am here now! I will look after him!”
She sat on the bunk and held his hand. It was the first show of affection I had seen any of the women give to their men.
“Yes,” I agreed. “But if you would forgive one further intrusion; one suggestion. He could do with a hot drink, a shower, and plenty of sleep. He’s had quite a shock.”
Maybe she might believe that was what had caused his present groggy condition.
“You are right,” she said, opening the cabin door. “Thank you. Please go now.”
She would do exactly as I had suggested. She would probably do even a little more, for I had no doubt that she would have her own ways of cheering him up; and if that didn’t put him into a sound sleep, nothing would.
I was fairly certain that the story of the drugged coffee would never come to light. How could he prove it in any case? Where was the cup? At the bottom of the sea; where else? Whoever had put the drug into the coffee would have removed the cup at the same time as he returned the fuses to the electrical circuit – when the captain had been checking out the engine-room and the bridge had been left deserted.
Dawn had broken by the time I returned to the main deck and saw that we weren’t in the middle of the ocean.
We were up on the fringing reef of a lagoon. Inside the lagoon, and some three or four kilometres distant, was a large island; but not the tropical island of fiction: palm trees and white beaches; but instead, a steep mountainous mass of land rising sharply out from the sea, covered in greenness down to the shore, mist hovering about its several peaks.
It meant that our lives were no longer in danger. We could make a landfall and wait for help. Tek would have my head for letting this happen, even though I had no control over the course of events.
If the ship didn’t break up we could possibly save the grass by floating the bales ashore. The marijuana was in airtight bags and wouldn’t spoil; but it would be a risky business, both from the mechanics of such an operation and the threat of discovery by the authorities.
Some of the crew were pointing towards the island. I walked across to the rail to see what they were talking about and saw a dozen or more canoes making their way over to the ship – native outriggers. I moved up to the point of the bow and looked down at the sea lapping on the coral in the shallow water, twenty-five metres below.
I stepped hastily back from the rail. There were a number of the crew milling about, any one of whom could have been the crazy bastard who enjoyed wrecking ships and bashing people over the head. I didn’t think he would try anything in broad daylight, but I wasn’t going to give him an opportunity too good to miss.
The reef stretched out on both sides of us, its edge passing under our midships, then curving out and around the island. Half a kilometre or so to our left there was calm water, a break in the reef. We would be able to reach the island in the lifeboats without having to haul them across the coral.
The outriggers came slowly on. We stood watching as they reached the inside of the reef and moored their craft with simple anchors of large rocks thrown into the thigh-deep water. The dark near-naked figures waded across the coral to within a hundred metres of the ship, but would come no further. We yelled and beckoned, but they had come as far as they intended.
They had never seen a ship looming so large. They were in awe of us; and probably afraid as well, and for good reason, for not so many years ago they had been a stone-age people in a stone-age land.
There was a whirring sound behind me. I turned and walked back along the deck to find the crew removing the hatch covers from the forward holds. I hoped to hell that nothing had happened to the cargo, my cargo. If the water got into our bales the sacking would rot and in no time the bales would start to break open, revealing the plastic inner bags; just like in the nightmare I’d had the night before we left Adelaide. If that happened I might as well dive on to the reef, head first.
The hatch-boards were soon removed and resting on their cradles. I wandered over and gazed down into the main hold. There was nothing to see but hundreds of bales of wool, packed so tightly that I could only see the top layer.
The bosun was standing a few feet away and I turned to him, hoping to find out what they were up to. I wanted the wool handled as little as possible. There was less chance of a bale bursting.
“What are they going to do?” I asked.
He looked at me, still with the surliness he had worn since the day I had first come on board, and muttered: “Checking the holds for damage.”
It was the same with all of them. Ask a question and you got a one line answer, nothing more.
“Well,” I asked again, putting more friendliness into my voice. “Are they going to empty the wool over the side, or what?”
I had a sudden vision of Flint ordering the cargo thrown over the side to lighten the ship. The bosun flicked the butt of his cigarette overboard, spat on the deck and replied: “No, just letting some light in.”
“How are they going to get down into the bottom of the hold?” I asked.
He pointed to the ladder-well leading down into the ship, just forward of the hatch-coaming. I had forgotten it. The series of ladders went down through the intermediate decks to the bottom of the hold. It would be pitch black. I have always had a fear of the dark, even before my foray into the paint locker. I wondered if my mysterious friend had already been down into the hold to check on the bales.
The captain and the chief engineer came around the side of the winch-house, both carrying large torches; Flint dressed in a boiler suit. I had never seen the chief in anything else.
Flint beckoned the bosun across. “Bosun, you can come down with us, but stay at the second level. If we’re not back within five minutes, or if we haven’t called to say we’re okay, then get somebody down to us in a hurry.”
We crowded around the well as they slowly descended, their voices echoing up the tunnel. After the first level, we lost sight of the torches and then the voices faded into the distance until finally were heard no more, the wool absorbing all sound.
We stood and waited, the crew lounging against the hatch-coaming, the officers walking about the deck, hands locked behind their backs.
Twenty minutes later the three of them appeared back on deck, the captain and the chief engineer both awash with perspiration – the stale smell of last night’s whisky overpowering, but nobody seemed to notice. Flint was as dirty as the chief.
“What’s the situation?” I asked. “Is there any sign of water?” I held my breath, my knees shaking, waiting for the answer that could spell my doom. I was certain they could hear the tremor in my voice.
“No,” Flint replied. “So far it’s all clear. We couldn’t get into all four corners, but the two we could get into were dry. The main thing is, though, that it smells dry. It smells of bloody wool and not seawater or oil.”
I breathed a sigh of relief, and then asked: “Why oil?”
“We’ve holed at least one of the fuel tanks,” he replied. “Take a look over the side.”
I walked across to the bulwark and looked down at the black oily calmness stretching away across the reef.
Flint called to the first officer. “First, get some of the crew on to sounding all the tanks. Take a reading on each one and then do it again in an hour.”
He noticed my puzzled expression.
“Mr. Rider, the level in a holed tank will either rise with the incoming tide, or fall as the oil leaks out. If there’s no leak, the level will remain constant, and we’ll know which tanks are holed. Simple.”
He had made me look a fool and the crew didn’t bother to conceal their grins. His point made, Flint strode off after the chief towards the next hold, the one containing some of the general cargo. They took just as long as they had with the wool; returning with another look of relief.
“So far, so good,” the chief grinned. “Two more to go.”
The steward brought them both a drink of water. The captain held his glass out for a refill, gulped it down even faster than the first and then said: “Okay, let’s see what the sugar’s like.”
And with that the crowd moved towards the bow, to the hold just aft of the forecastle where the bagged sugar had been loaded. It was only minutes later that Flint emerged; face grim, jaw locked tight.
“Who supervised the loading of that damned cargo?” he yelled. “It’s bloody soaked two-thirds of the way up the stack!” He was madder than I had ever seen him, practically frothing at the mouth. “Who the hell was it?” he screamed.
Nobody wanted to answer him. Finally, the second officer spoke up.
“Owner’s superintendent, sir,” he said in a small, quiet, frightened voice.
“Jesus bloody Christ!”
Before I could ask what a hole in the ship had to do with supervising the loading of cargo, Flint turned to me.
“Mr. Rider,” he said in a silence in which you could have heard a pin drop. “You aren’t the only poor bugger who doesn’t know much about ships. The moron who supervised the loading of that sugar was too bloody stupid to have the deck boards put back in. Do you know what they are?” I shook my head. “Well, I’ll tell you. Each hold isn’t just a bloody big opening going down to the bottom of the ship. Those holds are divided up into decks like the rest of the ship. This bow hold has three decks, three separate levels; or they would be separate if the stupid bastard had ordered the deck boards put back in after each level was filled up. But no, this bastard wasn’t used to separate levels. He’s only used to pulling a lever and loading thousands of tonnes of bulk sugar into the one great bloody hold!”
I shrugged my shoulders. It had nothing to do with me.
“You still haven’t got it, have you?” he asked.
I shook my head. “Not exactly.”
“If the boards had been put back in as they’re supposed to, there would’ve been a separate space between each level. The salt water would have contaminated only the lowest level. But the bloody seawater has soaked up through the layers of bags into the second level. It will be up into the top level before we can do anything about it. The whole consignment is ruined. Stuffed! And it’s my bloody ship! I’m the bastard that’s responsible!”
He stormed off and I chased after him.
“What about the other holds?” I called out. “Are the boards in place in those?”
“Yes, yes. I supervised all of those, but I was on shore when the bloody sugar was being loaded.”
I followed him down to the aft hold. The process was repeated, but this time with good results. Out of the four holds, only one had been damaged – the one with the sugar.
The reports from the officers checking the tanks started to come in. The forepeak and two of the double-bottom tanks were common to the sea, flooded. It wasn’t good; but it could have been worse.
“Well, Captain,” I asked. “Do you think we’ll get off?”
“We’ll give it a try,” he replied. He turned to the chief engineer. “Chief, get the bilge pumps working on that forward hold. See if you can make an impression on it, then you might have a go at those two double-bottoms and the forepeak as well.”
With that, he walked away – a dejected man.
There was nothing to do but wait until the tide rose, which by then wasn’t all that far off. It was expected to peak at a few minutes before one o’clock in the afternoon.
I strolled up to the bow and looked down. The natives were still there, but they hadn’t come any closer, and there seemed to be a lot more of them: a few women and children, but mainly men. They weren’t fishing or walking about on the reef, just sitting in their canoes and staring up at us.
Right on midday the ship started to vibrate once more as the main engines started up. The bridge would be the scene of all the action, so I raced up the stairs, hoping that Flint wouldn’t kick me out. The door was open, so I sidled in and stood quietly to one side.
Twelve
“Quarter astern and hold it there!” I heard Flint order.
The second officer was at the telegraph. I watched as he moved to the captain’s order, swinging the brass lever backwards and forwards across the face of the telegraph, and bringing it to a halt at the black arrow. A minute later I felt the slow build-up in the vibration of the hull.
The first officer stood far out on the bridge wing, a walkie-talkie in one hand. I looked down at the deck and saw the third officer up on the bow, also with a radio. There was a helmsman on the wheel: one of the crew.
Nobody moved.
The vibration continued: a low soft tremor. Down below in the engine room the chief would be checking his cooling-water pumps, his pressure gauges, issuing orders, watching, listening to the sounds of his engines, waiting.
Then, twenty minutes later: “Half astern!”
The telegraph was moved and the signal received below. The vibration increased; the ship starting to hum.
“Any movement, First?” Flint called out to the bridge wing.
There were a few words spoken into the radio and then a shake of the head. “Nothing, sir.”
“How much sand and coral are we kicking up?” And again the officer addressed the radio. The fourth officer was down at the stern, watching the propellor.
“Hardly any at all, sir.”
The vibration continued at a constant rumble for the next ten minutes. The captain looked across at the first officer again, his ear still tight to the radio as he shook his head to the unspoken question.
“Three-quarters astern!”
Nobody spoke; just nods and shakes of the head as the entire ship pulsated.
Another ten minutes went by.
“Full astern!”
Perspiration beaded on Flint’s upper lip, strain showing clearly on his face as the vibration built into a shudder. There was nothing from the first officer, not even a shake of the head. Then a shout.
“There’s a great cloud of coral and sand being blasted on to the reef, sir, but no movement!”
“Full port rudder!”
The wheel was swung and held. Again the glance towards the first officer. Again the shake of his head.
We waited.
“Full starboard rudder!”
The helmsman was quick to reply, anticipating the order.
The ship pulsated and throbbed. The bridge was silent, nobody spoke.
“Rudder midships!”
And finally: “Emergency astern!”
And then, two minutes later: “Stand by telegraph!”
THURSDAY'S ORCHID Page 18
