Haggopian and Other Stories (15 page)

But of course, before Davies’ accident, there was that further trouble with Borszowski. It was in the sixth week, when we were expecting to break through at any time, that Joe failed to come back off shore-leave. Instead he sent me a long, rambling letter—a supposedly “explanatory” letter—and to be truthful, when I read it I figured we were better off without him.

The man had quite obviously been cracking up for a long time. He went on about monsters (yes,
monsters
!)
,
sleeping in great caverns underground and especially under the seas, waiting for a chance to take over the surface world. He said that those stone, star-shaped things were seals or barriers that kept these beings (“gods”, he called them) imprisoned; that these gods could control the weather to a degree; that they were even capable of influencing the actions of lesser creatures—such as fish, or, occasionally, men—and that he believed one of them must he lying there, locked in the ground beneath the sea, pretty close to where we were drilling. He was afraid we were “going to set it loose”! The only thing that had stopped him pressing the matter earlier (when he’d carried on so about that first star-thing), was that then, as now, he believed we’d all think he was mad! Finally, though, and particularly since the trouble with the fish, he had
had
to warn me. As he put it: “If anything
should
happen, I would never be able to forgive myself if I had not at least tried.”

Well, as I’ve said, Borszowski’s letter was rambling and disjointed—but he’d written it in a rather convincing manner, hardly what you’d expect from a real madman. He quoted references from the Holy Bible (particularly Exodus 20:4) and emphasized again his belief that the star-shaped things were nothing more or less than prehistoric pentacles (pentagrams?), laid down by some great race of alien scientists many millions of years ago. He reminded me of the heavy, unusual mists we’d had and of the queer way the cod had gone for Nick Adams. He even brought up again the question of the dicky sea-phones and computer—making, in toto, an altogether disturbing assessment of
Sea-Maid
’s late history as applicable to his own odd fancies.

I did some checking on Joe’s background that same afternoon, discovering that he’d travelled far in his earlier years and had also been a bit of a scholar in his time. Too, it had been noticed on occasion—whenever the mists were heavier than usual—that he crossed himself with a certain sign over his left breast. A number of the lads had seen him do it and they all told the same tale of that sign; it was pointed with one point straight up, two down and wide, two more still lower and closer together; yes, his sign was a five-pointed star!

In fact, Borszowski’s letter so disturbed me I was still thinking about it that evening after we’d shut down for the day. That was why I was out on the main platform having a quiet pipeful—I can concentrate, you know, with a bit of ’baccy. Dusk was only a few minutes away when the
accident
happened.

Davies, the steel-rigger, was up tightening a few loosened nuts near the top of the rig. Don’t ask me where the mist came from, I wouldn’t know, but suddenly it was there; swimming up from the sea, a thick, grey blanket that cut visibility down to no more than a few feet. I’d just shouted up to Davies that he better pack it in for the night when I heard his yell and saw his lantern come blazing down out of the greyness. The light disappeared through an open hatch and a second later Davies followed it. He went straight through the hatchway, missing the sides by inches, and then there came the splashes as first the lantern, then the man, hit the sea. In two shakes of a dog’s tail Davies was splashing about down there in the mist and yelling fit to ruin his lungs—proving to me and the others who’d rushed from the mess at my call that his fall had done him little harm. We lowered a raft immediately, getting two of the men down to the water in less than a minute, and no one gave it a second thought that Davies wouldn’t be picked up. He was, after all, an excellent swimmer. In fact the lads on the raft thought the whole episode was a big laugh—that is, until Davies started to scream.

I mean, there are screams and there are screams, Johnny! Davies wasn’t drowning—he wasn’t making noises like a drowning man! He wasn’t picked up, either.

No less quickly than it had settled, the mist lifted, so that by the time the raft touched water visibility was normal for a November evening—but there was no sign of the rigger. There was something, though, for the whole surface of the sea was silver with fish; big and little, of almost every indigenous species you could imagine; and the way they were acting, apparently trying to throw themselves aboard the raft, I had the lads haul themselves and the raft back up to the platform as soon as it became evident that Davies was gone for good. Johnny!—I swear I’ll never eat fish again.

That night I didn’t sleep very well at all. Now you know I’m not being callous. I mean, aboard an ocean-going rig after a hard day’s work, no matter what has happened during the day, a man usually manages to sleep. Yet that night I just couldn’t drop off. I kept going over in my mind all the…well, the
things.
The occurrences, the happenings on the old
Sea-Maid
; the trouble with the instruments; Borszowski’s letter; and finally, of course, the queer way we lost Davies—until I thought my head must burst with the burden of wild notions and imaginings going around and around inside it.

Next afternoon the chopper came in (with Wes Atlee complaining about having had to make two runs in two days), and delivered all the booze and goodies for the party the next day or whenever. As you know, we always have a blast when we strike it rich—and this time we figured we were going to. We’d been out of booze a few days by that time (bad weather had stopped Wes from bringing in anything heavier than mail) and so I was running pretty high and dry. Well, you know me, Johnny. I got in the back of the mess with all those bottles and cracked a few. I could see the gear turning from the window, and, over the edge of the platform, the sea all grey and eerie looking, and somehow the idea of getting a load of drink inside me seemed a good one.

I’d been in there topping-up for over an hour when Jeffries, my 21C, got through to me on the ’phone. He was in the instrument-cabin and said he reckoned the drill would go through to pay-dirt within a few minutes. He sounded worried, though, sort of shaky, and when I asked him why this was he didn’t rightly seem able to answer—mumbled something about the seismograph mapping those strange blips again; as regular as ever but somehow stronger, closer…

About that time I first noticed the mist swirling up from the sea, a real pea-souper, billowing in to smother the rig and turn the men on the platform to grey ghosts. It muffled the sound of the gear, too, altering the metallic clank and rattle of pulleys and chains to distant, dull
noises
such as I might have expected to hear from the rig if I’d been in a suit deep down under the sea.

It was warm enough in the back room of the mess there, yet unaccountably I found myself shivering as I looked out over the rig and listened to the ghostly sounds of the shrouded men and machinery.

That was when the wind came up. First the mist, then the wind—but I’d never before seen a mist that a good strong wind couldn’t blow away! Oh, I’ve seen freak storms before, Johnny, but believe me this was
the
freak storm! She came up out of nowhere—not breaking the blanket of grey but driving it round and round like a great mad ghost—blasting the already choppy sea against the old
Sea-Maid
’s supporting legs, flinging up spray to the platform’s guard-rails and generally (from what I could see from the window) creating havoc. I’d no sooner recovered from my initial amazement when the ’phone rang again. I picked up the receiver to hear Jimmy Jeffries’ somewhat distorted yell of triumph coming over the wires:

“We’re
through,
Pongo!” he yelled. “We’re through and there’s juice on the way up the bore right now!” Then his voice took the shakes again, turning in tone from wild excitement to terror in a second, as the whole rig wobbled on her four great legs. “Holy Heaven!—what…?” the words crackled into my ear. “
What was that,
Pongo? The rig…wait…” I heard the clatter as the ‘phone at the other end banged down, but a moment later Jimmy was back. “It’s not the rig—the legs are steady as rocks—
it’s the whole sea-bed
! Pongo, what’s going on. Holy Heaven—!”

This time the ’phone went completely dead as the rig moved again, jerking up and down three or four times and shaking everything loose inside the mess store-room. I still held on to the instrument, though, and just for a second or two it came back to life. Jimmy was screaming incoherently into the other end. I remember then that I yelled for him to get into a life-jacket, that there was something terribly wrong and we were in for big trouble, but I’ll never know if he heard me. The rig rocked again, throwing me down on the floor-boards among the debris of bottles, crates, cans and packets; and there, skidding wildly about the tilting floor, I collided with a life-jacket. God only knows what the thing was doing there in the store-room; they were normally kept in the equipment shed and only taken out following storm-warnings (which, it goes without saying, we hadn’t had) but somehow I managed to struggle into it and make my way into the mess proper before the next upheaval.

By that time, over the roar of the wind and waves outside (the broken crests of the waves were actually slapping against the outer walls of the mess by then) I could hear a whipping of free-running pulleys and a high-pitched screaming of revving, uncontrolled gears—and there was another sort of screaming….

In a blind panic I was crashing my way through the tumble of tables and chairs in the mess towards the door leading out onto the platform when the greatest shock so far tilted the floor to what must have been thirty degrees and saved me my efforts. In a moment—as I flew against the door, bursting it open and floundering out into the storm—I knew for sure that
Sea-Maid
was going down. Before, it had only been a possibility; a mad, improbable possibility; but now—now I knew for sure. Half stunned from my collision with the door I was thrown roughly against the platform rails, to cling there for dear life in the howling, tearing wind and chill, rushing mist and spray.

And that was when I saw it.

I saw it—and in my utter disbelief—in one crazy moment of understanding—I relaxed my hold on the rails and slid under them into the throat of that banshee, demon storm that howled and tore at the trembling girders of the old
Sea-Maid.

Even as I fell, a colossal wave smashed into the rig, breaking two of the legs as though they were nothing stronger than match-sticks, and the next instant I was in the sea, picked up and swept away on the great crest of that same wave. Even in the dizzy, sickening rush as the great wave hurled me aloft, I tried to spot
Sea-Maid
in the maelstrom of wind, mist and ocean. It was futile, and I gave it up in order to put all effort to my own battle for survival.

I don’t remember much after that—at least, not until I was picked up, and even that’s not too clear. I do remember, though, while fighting the icy water, a dreadful fear of being eaten alive by fish; but so far as I know there were none about. I remember, too, being hauled aboard the life-boat from the mainland in a sea that was flat as a pancake and calm as a mill-pond.

The next really lucid moment came when I woke up to find myself between clean sheets in a Bridlington hospital.

But there, I’ve held off from telling the important part—and for the same reason Joe Borszowski held off: I don’t want to be thought a madman. Well, I’m not mad, Johnny, but I don’t suppose for a single moment that you’ll take my story seriously—nor, for that matter, will
Seagasso
suspend any of its North-Sea commitments—but at least I’ll have the satisfaction of knowing I tried to warn you.

Now I ask you to remember what Borszowski said about great, alien beings lying asleep and imprisoned beneath the bed of the sea; “gods” capable of controlling the actions of lesser creatures, capable of bending the very weather to their wills—and then explain the sight I saw before I found myself floundering in that mad ocean as the old
Sea-Maid
went down.

It was simply a gusher, Johnny, a gusher—but one such as I’d never seen before in my whole life and hope never to have to see again. For instead of reaching to the heavens in one solid black column—it
pulsed
upwards, pumping up in short, strong jets at a rate of about one spurt in every five seconds—and it wasn’t oil, Johnny—oh God!—it wasn’t oil! Booze or none I swear I wasn’t drunk; not so drunk as to make me
colour-blind
, at any rate!

Like I said, old Borszowski was right, he
must
have been right. There
was
one of those great god-creatures down there,
and our drill had chopped right into the thing
!

Whatever it was it had blood pretty much like ours—good and thick and red—and a great heart strong enough to pump that blood up the bore-hole right to the surface!

Think of it, that monstrous heart beating down there in the rocks beneath the sea!
How could we have guessed that right from the beginning our instruments had been working at maximum efficiency—that those odd, regular blips recorded on the seismograph had been nothing more than the beating of a great submarine heart?

All of which explains, I hope, my resignation.

Bernard “Pongo” Jordan,

Bridlington,

Yorks.