In Hazard (10 page)

Heating the oil took several hours. Then at last the Chief gave the order to fire one of the furnaces. It blew back, as everyone knew it would —exploded. He sent up a message for the Captain to come: and the Captain came. No one spoke. They left it to that furnace to tell him, lighting and re-lighting it again and again for his benefit, until hot oil ran out onto the engine-room floor.

Mr. MacDonald had changed his clothes, now, for good: he was fully on duty again. The old adapt themselves more slowly to things than younger men: but all the same, they do adapt. Mr. MacDonald's great experience, his obstinacy, and above all the almost physical way in which he was wedded to his engines, now propelled him into the fight against the storm with an increasing momentum. A psychological momentum so great that hence-forth, if he did get a chance to relax, to rest, he would not be able.

The Captain left them, and MacDonald turned to Soutar. “Donkey-boiler,” he said.

The donkey-boiler is a small auxiliary, used for raising steam for small jobs (winches and the like) in harbour, that do not make it worth while to fire the main boilers. The donkey is housed in a little room by itself, above the engine-room, near the fiddley. It has its own funnel—a mere stove-pipe when compared with the main funnel, to which it is bracketed for strength. Being so bracketed, it had of course been carried away with the main stack. But nevertheless a few feet had been left standing. Moreover the donkey-furnace is a natural-draught furnace, it does not depend on fans: and that single section of its funnel left standing
might
be enough for it to burn.

So when Soutar called the other engineers off the main furnaces and told them to fire the donkey-boiler, they jumped to it. That was something conceivably possible. If it could be done—why, there was steam for the pumps at any rate. Perhaps even steam for the fans: and with the fans going the main furnaces might burn, funnel or no funnel. The ship would be alive again. Gaston was tired as a dog, but he set to work hand-pumping fuel (to get sufficient pressure for it to vaporise as it passed through the spray-nozzle) as if it had been a light sport. He pumped like someone rowing for Oxford or Cambridge—and yet as though he would gladly keep it up all day, if need be. The Chief had not told the Captain what he was about: the Engine-room was working on its own, now, preparing a birthday-present for the Deck.

It was four o'clock in the afternoon when the boiler was ready for firing. The blow-lamps had done their work. Gaston had his pressure. The Chief gave the word: the fuel-cock was opened: a torch thrust into the corrugated antrum of the furnace.

Well, at first it blew back like the main furnaces had done. But they did not give up. Just a bad fluke of the wind perhaps: give it a chance. A few explosions might be to the good, if they warmed things up: might help to start the draught.

It may be that one of these explosions damaged the spray-nipples. The hole through these is not straight: there is a screw down the middle, so that the oil is forced to race round and round its thread, faster and faster as it approaches the aperture, acquiring turbulence. Perhaps that broke. Or perhaps some impurity escaped the hot-filter, and clogged the passage. Or perhaps it was just insufficient draught. Anyhow, the jets ceased to work. Instead of coming out vaporised (or more strictly, pulverised) the oil was dribbling through, liquid. Though hot enough, all the same, to burn.

Even then, they were too keen to stop. Hot oil was running out of the furnace doors, onto the donkey-room floor: but still they kept on. At first they hardly noticed, when that spilt oil caught fire. So in a few minutes the whole place was flooded with liquid fire, in which the engineers (luckily too wet themselves to ignite, for the moment) were caught plunging, as if they were playing a kind of beastly snap-dragon.

As she rolled, the fire crept up the iron walls; was sloshed up them, like water, and over the raised door-sill. And more oil was still running out of the nipples. If the fire spread beyond that room—well, the Deck would get their surprise birthday-present all right! Before long, in that confined space, in that growing heat, oil and air would form an explosive mixture. A sort of paralytic lassitude took Gaston for the moment. What was the use? That would end it quickly. What was the use, of continuing to fight when each new attempt at safety only added a new danger?

But the Chief, on the other hand, had men running to fetch fire-extinguishers like lightning: and Gaston's lassitude went. They joined together to fight the fire quite steadily, trying to smother it in the patent “foam.” But still more oil came to feed it. It was growing on them, it was creeping up the walls: it would be over that door-sill for good, in a minute. But they worked methodically, not just at random: cutting up the fire into small areas: clipping round their edges: finally driving each separate flame into a corner and there smothering it, one after another. In the end, they won.

Gaston, wielding a foam-nozzle, happened to look round and see the Captain there, in the doorway, watching them. Well, now the Deck knew. There was
nothing
else the Engine-room could do. From now on, it was up to the Deck—if anyone.

“All right,” said Captain Edwardes, “Come out on deck. Repairing hatches again. We're in the centre now, good and proper.”

The last flame had been extinguished: and as he spoke the engineers woke up to the outside world, that they had wholly forgotten in the blazing donkey-room. They suddenly noticed that the roar of the storm was gone: replaced by a blanketing quiet. Yet something was wrong with the quiet: they still had to shout, to make each other hear, just as they had during the roaring. It was as if the quiet was indeed a blanket: not just an absence of sound, but able to smother sound: a thick, soft thing. Something that smothered their voices in their throats, padded their footfalls.

They did not realise that you cannot live in such a din as they, for a long while, had lived in, without being deafened.

The air was gaspingly thin, as on a mountain: but not enlivening: on the contrary, it was damp and depressing; and almost unbearably hot, even to engineers. Big drops of sweat, unable in that humid air to evaporate, ran warm and salt across their lips.

The tormented black sky was one incessant flicker of lightning.

For the first time, since the storm reached its height, they could see the ship from one end to the other. For the first time they saw the gaping crater left by the funnel's roots. Smashed derricks, knotted stays. The wheelhouse, like a smashed conservatory. The list, too, of the ship: that had been at first a thing felt: then, as they grew accustomed to it, almost a thing forgotten; but now you could see the horizon tilted sideways, the whole ocean tipped up at a steep slope as if about to pour over the edge of the world: so steep that it seemed to tower over the lee bulwarks. It was full of sharks, too, which looked at you on your own level—or almost, it seemed, from above you. It looked as if any moment they might slide down the steep green water and land on the deck right on top of you. They were plainly waiting for something: and waiting with great impatience.

But the sharks were not the only living things. The whole ruin of the deck and upper-structures was covered with living things. Living, but not moving. Birds, and even butterflies and big flying grasshoppers. The tormented black sky was one incessant flicker of lightning, and from every mast-head and derrick-point streamed a bright discharge, like electric hair; but large black birds sat right amongst it, unmoving. High up, three john-crows sat on the standard compass. A big bird like a crane, looking as if its wings were too big for it when folded up, sat on a life-boat, staring through them moonily. Some herons even tried to settle on the lee bulwarks, that were mostly awash; and were picked liked fruit by the sharks. And birds like swallows: massed as if for migration. They were massed like that on every stay and handrail. But not for migration. As you gripped a handrail to steady yourself they never moved; you had to brush them off; when they just fell.

The decks were covered in a black and sticky oil, that had belched out of the funnel. Birds were stuck in it, like flies on a flypaper. The officers were barefoot, and as they walked they kept stepping on live birds—they could not help it. I don't want to dwell on this, but I must tell you what things were like, and be done with it. You would feel the delicate skeleton scrunch under your feet: but you could not help it, and the gummed feathers hardly even fluttered.

No bird, even crushed, or half-crushed, cried.

Respite? This calm was a more unnerving thing even than the storm. More birds were coming every minute. Big birds, of the heron type, arrived in such numbers, that Captain Edwardes, in his mind's eye (now growing half delirious), imagined the additional weight on the superstructure actually increasing the list: them arriving in countless crowds, and settling, and at length with the leverage of their innumerable weights turning the “Archimedes” right over, and everybody sliding down the slippery decks to the impatient sharks. Little birds—some of them humming-birds—kept settling on the Captain's head and shoulders and outstretched arm, would not be shaken off, their wings buzzing, clinging with their little pinlike toes even to his ears.

Only work could take your mind off the birds; and luckily there was plenty to do, fitting new hatches and covering them with awnings for tarpaulins: but how could even work take your mind off, with birds settling on you and clinging to you even as you worked?

They longed for the wind again: but the work was finished before it came.

When at last the blast came, from an opposite quadrant, sweeping all those birds away to destruction, everyone was heartily thankful. Thank God not one of them was ever seen again.

At noon the next day the Captain and Mr. Buxton were on the Bridge together. That was Friday: they had been in the hurricane since Wednesday morning. Early Thursday morning, wasn't it, they had something to eat—those biscuits? And a little water? As for sleep, they had not had any for two nights; nor even any rest.

The storm was blowing full pelt again: had been, ever since the birds went.

The lack of sleep gave a sort of twinge occasionally in the Captain's brain: as if someone with fine tweezers was plucking at his consciousness, tweaking out a split second every now and then. If this got worse, he was afraid he might reel and fall: and anyhow, each twinge left him feeling a little sick. Buxton must be feeling just as bad. So he turned to Buxton:

“You'd better get a bit of rest.”

Buxton went into the wheelhouse, wedged his feet against the binnacle and his back against the bulkhead; held onto the nerveless wheel and let his head fall forward on his chest.

Ten minutes later Buxton woke, to see a wave towering right over him like a tree. He was already out of the wheelhouse, and running down to the deck: yelling to them to get their life-belts on, for the ship was going.

Those who in the everlasting noise could not hear him, could see what he meant.

The boys saw him cutting his trouser-legs off short at the knee, so as to be able to swim better, so they did the same.

The sea was awful: worse than it had ever been. You could see this was not deep water: free-bottomed waves do not rear so wildly (for a wave is not a thing with a top but no bottom, as you would think by looking at it: the shape and forces of a wave are just as much under as above: and if a wave is hampered beneath, on top it must burst).

Captain Edwardes ordered the lead to be cast: and it was cast, but the wind blew it out across the water nearly level. Sixty fathoms, it read. But that was nonsense: this was not sixty-fathom water. They were over a bank. Where? He could only guess. Might be Serrana: might be Serranilla: anyhow, how could you tell what the normal level of the water was here? Near the centre of such a vortex, the ocean would be drawn up in a great pucker, with them on top of it. Why, this might even be normally dry land; a cay or island; and they, sailing over without bumping, complaining because it was broken water!

These waves really had the size and almost the shape of trees—trees galloping about, lashing and thrashing each other to bits, like that game of Kings and Queens which children play with plantains.

A few such waves, falling on deck with the hatches open again would soon fill her up, and down she would sink. Go on! Cut off your trouser-legs; and put on your life-belts! Then let us see you do your fancy swimming-strokes among these waves! Waves that will drop on you from seventy feet above you, weighing five hundred tons a time! And where do you think you will swim to, in the Name of Christ?

One wave already had come down on the deck, like a really vast oak crashing. A
few
more would sink the ship.

Then came another great wave that landed right on top of the funnel-hole. It must have been still hot down there, for that wave came out again faster than it went in: spouted out again roaring and black with soot. When they saw the steam and soot people started yelling
Fire!
When he heard them yelling
Fire!
MacDonald thought some fool had been trying the donkey again, and really done the damage this time. When he heard them yelling
Fire!
Buxton thought of the drums of alcohol stored in the after-castle; the only badly inflammable cargo they carried, now everything was sodden ... but what nonsense, alcohol would not burn with a lot of smoke and black soot, it would roar sky high with the first spark. What a fool, to think alcohol might burn like that!

I must be losing my head.

So then he began paying attention to that most important thing of all, not losing his head: and in no time was clear cold sober again. He looked at the towering waves, and at his own foolish sawn-off trouser-legs, his silly life-belt: and felt his ears burning red.

That is what comes of going to sleep, he thought.

Oil was the only thing: and quickly.