Hollow Sea (12 page)

No voice spoke. In silence they rushed out, flying bodies, eyes towards the boats. Beyond the alleyway, bedlam, and in bedlam, destruction. They rushed on. And from the bridge Dunford saw them – sailors, soldiers, firemen, stewards, officers, saw them all. Men, boys, children, cowards, heroes, innocents, lunatics. The ageless aria of the sea was now hushed, gave way to the fugue and chorale, and the fugue was the secret rage tracing its message upon the waters, and the chorale was flesh. With Dunford was Bradshaw, tall, thin, expressionless features. Calm, unmoved, a steady hand holding the binoculars. Ericson, hand to the telegraph, Mr. Deveney, isolated, immune, overwhelmed by nothing more than his great-coat, huddled in the port wing, eyes staring through the window, huddled and shivering. Dunford saw. God damn! That man. Why didn't he stay in his room? Full of fever. Everything was all right. Let him be, isolated, separated from his fellows, and from the frenzy and from the desperate life, he was forgotten, there was the hidden fugue and the eye to search for it. The fugue was the steel finger, pointing. Now lost, now seen, drifting, the steel point caught in shining cascades of foam, the world above ploughed, circled, swung. The fugue played on. Its message was written in bright foam, the chorale patterned and weaved in flesh and in steel. In the tense face and the half-open mouth, and in the shut one, in the held breath, and in the throb of thought. And in the terrible rests between bedlam and destruction. 'All hands out! All hands out!' Sharp, clear, urging, the voice had rung out, swelled, was delayed by louder cries. Men had poured out from fo'c'sle and alleyway, from room and house and hold, one living stream flooding decks, swarming companion-ladders. Surged on towards the boat-deck. And from the bridge he saw them. He saw them whilst he snapped an order, whilst Ericson's hand trembled upon the telegraph handle. He saw them not steadily, not whole, but in ever-changing patterns. In flashes and glimpses, bodies, faces, sweeping forward, falling and struggling and climbing, and threading the phalanx a sort of frenzy, the tattered edges of the screen of fear. He spoke through a megaphone. 'Quiet, please! Order, please! Order, damn your souls.' The herd stampeding, like stricken cattle. He glimpsed at the anxious face, the greedy one, the child and the man, heard the cursing, the shouts and cries. Heirs to ignorance, foil of the secret rage. Saw a face and then a body that fell, was trampled upon, the rush, the headlong rush and saw the terror behind unkindness.

'Two points starboard.' And for them, the thing was there, the legacy for innocence and the simple heart. From the calm, from the long cool swell of the sea it pushed its ugly snout. Suddenly a silence as though for a moment frenzy itself had taken breath. No cries, no cursings, only the flying bodies, the deep breathings, the open mouth and the stopped one, the wild eye and the calm one, on towards the boat-decks. Belted bodies clinging to the boats, fighting to the boats, scratching a way to the boats, and to safety. The boats swung dangerously in their davits. The men stampeded again. Order in disorder. Number. One. Two
!
One – two! The bell, the whistle, the dread signal, touching the quick of each life, life held in bond. It broke over their world, the world disintegrated. For'ard, a wilderness, all life verged amid-ship. Aft men winced no more, the signal, the calling voice, 'To the boats! Stand by!
DANGER
!' And then the pause, for wonderment, the stopped needle in the flesh, the running men, uncoated, blood smears upon the arms, inoculation-caused. The gun laid, the crew ready. A.10 zigzagging her way and Dunford quietly thinking, 'She'll get a damned good run for her money.' They had seen the periscope and lost it again. It confounded, goaded, rose, submerged, ever following. The engines roared defiance, her nose ploughed through the living water. Two officers talking. 'Well, if the worst came to the worst' – and the rest of the conversation lost in the upwelling surges of voices. 'Ten rafts aft.'
 
'Fifty to a raft.' Perhaps. The clue was hidden in deep water upon which the rays of a hot sun poured. A sea of fire. And far beneath the water the same tenseness, the held breath. Armed with poise, the hand over the lever, the hand held, paused between nothingness and action, shining wheels, burning light. Eyes looking up and outward at the huge ship staggering this way and that, the still island holding life, all life in bond. The eye trained upon a place, a certain place in the steel wall, hovering. The clock's hand racing. A game of waiting, juggling. And hidden behind the steel wall, life again, where power lay in hands. And the hands had a living voice. Men in the half-savage light of furnaces spilled their power, poured it upon the hour and the minute, upon the gleaming piston and the hot slice, the shining rake, the heavy shovel. Feeding! Filling the hungry maw. Oil to the engines, coal to the furnaces. The moving figures, cockroaches in the spun net, the smoke, the steam, the ammoniac smell, the emptied bladder, the slobbery gulp of oatmeal water freshening the dry mouth. More oil! More coal! More movement, more action,
MORE
POWER
. Without, the
thing
, the shining steel body, waiting. Fantastic movement, silhouettes of faces, the shining sweatdrop, the bared breast, the rippling muscle. One shot, one hole. One shot, one hole. The thought in the mind, livid, tormenting. And then the trap, the black darkness, the rushing figures, the spun net, the flare from the furnace upon steel, the ladder to freedom, the screeching engines enveloped in steam, the flying coals. More action! More power! Oil to the engines, coal to the furnaces. More power! More power! A.10 zigzagging to destruction or triumph. The hand of courage closing down the door against the hidden rage, the steel point, the ceaseless fugue. Unheard in hell. Voices speaking down the tube. A.10's course changed. More action! More power! More speed! The engines raced against the hidden enemy, each plied for power. Against the hot sun and the sea's long unbroken swell. Dunford lived between bridge and wheel-house.

Glancing along the boat-deck Dunford could see a forest of craned necks. And above the sea of murmurous sound he heard Bradshaw's voice. The gun fired. The exultant shout, the smell that seemed to stain the ship, the fountain of angry water shining in the sun. The spent shot. The exclamations. More orders. A momentary silence and then the rating's voice – 'Give him one right in the bloody behind.' A.10 heard their private opinions, their blasphemies, their oaths. Dunford glanced into the wheel-house again. Bearing south-south-east. He saw A.10's wake, a long threshing ribbon of white foam that seemed like the writhings of some tormented snake. She had made a circle a mile wide. Dunford was quite calm as he leaned over the bridge. He knew now that he would beat her. And his thoughts fed themselves from the tenseness of the moment. He thought of the escort. Strange she had not been sighted yet. Here the damned submarines were nested, he knew this. It was the look forward that disturbed. One could get holed, sink, vanish, and one could get through and land the men and if the gods were so disposed they would be lucky, and if they were not, the difference was not important, it was merely a question of task. Slaughter was inevitable, anyhow. It was a question of hoping for the best. He chose being holed. It seemed much cleaner. Suddenly he seized the telegraph handle and pulled – 'Go astern'. He rushed into the wheel-house. 'Over with the helm, man.'

'Aye, aye, sir – over she goes.' The quartermaster closed his eyes for a moment. The compass dizzied him – sometimes he saw it spinning as though she were swinging free, as though the spirit of A.10 broke clear, stood outside the control of men, and bore her head where she willed. The compass-point pained the eye, it was the edge of a dizzy whirling world. Dunford remained watching the compass. They were going astern. The ship seemed to shudder.

There was one man aboard who was indifferent. His name was Walters. When the emergency whistle blew he was sitting on a tea-chest in a store-room. Mr. Walters was short and fat. He was in the middle fifties. His face which was round and very red should have worn a smile, it should have mirrored a joviality suited to his rotundity. But Mr. Walters was quite indifferent. If fat people were supposed to be jolly, then he was an exception. Nature had made a mistake. His face wore a kind of mock seriousness, the expression was ingrained upon it, it was final, definite. Wars, plagues, no turn of fortune's wheel would alter Mr. Walters's curious expression. And as he sat there, hands in pocket, swinging his legs, the whistle blew. The signal for him to rise at once and go this boat. And whilst it blew a steward was running down the dark alleyway in answer to Mr. Walters's call.

'Go and tell Mr. Hump that I want to see him at once,' Walters said. The steward was staggered.

'But the whistle! The bell, sir. Everybody's above deck, sir. We're being chased, sir. I – I—'

The steward was agitated, eager to be off. He didn't want to be caught like a rat in a trap. Above decks – well, there was there a chance if anything did happen. And blast it all, the crazy damn ship seemed to be caught in a whirlpool – whizzing round in mad circles. He gripped the iron rail.

Mr. Walters sat on the tea-chest. He now folded his arms, hunched his shoulders. He seemed ready to spring at the steward at any moment.

'Did you hear what I said, Harrison? It's more than your job is worth to act like a fool. Go and bring Mr. Hump here at once.'

'But everybody's on deck, sir – Mr. Hump'll have gone, sir. And I'm going, too. Can't you hear? They're lowering the boats.'

'Mr. Hump, if I'm not mistaken, will be found sunk in his bloody old Sherlock Holmes. You bring him here!'

'The submarine, sir! There! They've fired. We're being chased. I won't stand here, sir. You're mad. God damn, I can get a job anywhere! Find Hump yourself. You're crazy sitting there.' He made a dash for the store-room door. Mr. Walters jumped from the tea-chest and gripped the man's arm. He shook the frightened steward.

'Damn you and your submarine. And damn the whole war to hell.' He thought: 'Fourteen hundred men, five sittings, not enough to eat. Confound it, I can't get grub like manna from heaven.' A.10 gave a violent pitch and catapulted both men through the open door, into the dark stuffy alleyway. And the steward vanished. Mr. Walters was alone. 'Damn the bloody submarine.' Mr. Walters was angry. Not the submarine – nor indeed the war itself. It was something far more personal than that. It was a cog in the wheel of his plans. Again he had caught one of that crowd from the fo'c'sle selling their filthy food to the troops. Their damned slops for sandwiches. Sixpence each! Well, it was going to be stopped.
Yes
–
sir
. Submarine or no submarine. 'I will stop it, too,' he cried aloud, and heard the echo of his anger come back to him in the deserted 'tween-decks. Then he rushed to the deck, pushed his burly form through groups of soldiers, soldiers, soldiers, everywhere— Mr. Walters's eye saw a khaki forest rising on all sides. And here was the boat! Thank the Lord for that. Ah! There was Mr. Hump, the second steward, actually standing beside him, tall, bony, stoop-shouldered, thin anxious face, protruding grey eyes, standing in a line with the others. The boat's crew coxswained by Rochdale. Mr. Walters's anger, like a curtain, covered everything. He saw no troops, no tobacco-chewing Rochdale, no anxious faces; heard no orders, no sound of bells; saw no zigzagging ship. The orbit of his vision was clouded by a man. A sailor – a sailor with pimples on his face. War! Submarines. Hang the bloody war. It was only he, Walters, who had the right to sell food to the troops, and though he charged ninepence a packet for five Woodbines, and a shilling for 'two doorsteps' and a slab of bully-beef in between, at least they knew, everybody did, that there were no shops nearer than Salonika, and no fresh food nearer than Base supplies. And the sly devils they were, robbing the troops, poor beggars, robbing them of their few bob playing banker – and that damned Crown and Anchor board. Well, they were not going to continue it. It wasn't allowed on other ships and A.10 was no exception. Mr. Walters saw the shillings, the bright shillings, as clearly as he saw the pub he hoped to buy at the end of the war. He was cut out for running a pub. What right had he to complain about a farting little war? He knew it – and nobody was going to interfere with him. No, sir! He leaned towards Hump now, to whom as yet he had not spoken a single word.

'Hump, you're thinking that at any moment we'll be holed. Well, I'm not! And even if we are, Hump, I'm going to tell you that I caught a man again today! This time on B deck, walked right into him. They're deliberately doing us down. Under-cutting, Hump! They're making bloody fools of us, Mr. Hump, laughing at us. Don't you see that when they get their grub from the galley they only eat half of it? Even what they leave on their plates is taken out and washed under the tap and sold to these fellers. It isn't fair! You're in on this, and you're doing nothing. I told you to watch them, didn't I? At your rate of going on I can't see that you'll ever manage a pub for me.' All this was poured into Mr. Hump's ear, in whispers, but it passed directly out of the other one. Mr. Hump felt the chief steward's breath, the hair in his ear tickled him, but it was all a buzz to him, sound only, the buzz of a busy bee. Mr. Hump was afraid. He was helpless. He saw nothing now but disaster, open boats, a watery grave. How could the man talk of his bloody sandwiches now, now of all times? He stood erect now, resolute, looking out on the waters, feeling the deck firm beneath his feet, and he was very conscious of the breathings of men about him. Of a sudden Walters's flow of words ceased. A silence. The uproar in the wind, temporarily shut off by the flow of the chief steward's words, broke into flood again. Mr. Hump was no longer alone. He was one with the mass.

'Hard aport there.'

The voice pierced through the tangled web of confusion. The six-inch monster on the poop spoke with a quick staccato. Mr. Hump fastened his eyes on Rochdale and kept them there. The man stood motionless, chewing tobacco. He was calm, unruffled, he was merely waiting for new orders. The ship wasn't holed yet, in fact A.10 was moving very well indeed, they were going somewhere, anyhow. 'Keep your shirts on, lads! There's nowt to worry abaht, and keep quiet. That's the stuff to give 'em.' He gripped the boat's rudder, leaned out over the water and squirted a quid into the depths. He stood back, looked at the lines of men, at Mr. Walters and Mr. Hump.