In Hazard (14 page)

However, that was looking too far ahead. Roughly, where was he now? He must be two hundred and fifty miles or so to the eastward of Cape Gracias: driving into more shoal water: and the storm was not abating. This was the fourth day they had been in it.

Just as the engineers had been drawn to the engine-room, so now Captain Edwardes and Mr. Buxton met on the Bridge.

Mr. Buxton checked Captain Edwardes's figures in his head: that she had taken a thousand tons of water, and twelve hundred was all she could take: and agreed. He further reflected a rather curious fact. Her list was somewhat less than it had been. That was because the weight of water in the bottom of the holds now tended to balance the weight of the saturated cargo above. But suppose their pumps had been working from the first? It was the free water at the bottom of the ship that would have been first pumped out. And with nothing to counteract the weight above, she might easily have turned right over. What a mistake that would have been, to use the pumps too freely! But what an easy mistake to make.

Captain Edwardes, his fingers thrust between his belt and his belly, was even managing to pace the Bridge after a fashion. His grey chin was stubbled, his cheeks drooped: but his eye was bright and birdlike. Buxton noticed the Captain's trousers: almost the only ones of the whole ship's company not cut off at the knee: and remembering how it was his own example had stampeded that foolish trimming, blushed again to himself.

Wherein lay the man's confidence? That was what puzzled Buxton.

Few men's powers remain equable, in the face of danger. It was one of the rare qualities of Mr. Buxton himself that his did so. An efficient officer in danger, as he was an efficient officer in safety: so disciplined to his calling that neither could tamper with his abilities. But Captain Edwardes was not quite like that.

Most men are weakened by danger: when acting under its stress they are like runners carrying weight: they tire more easily. But there are a few who are strengthened by it; whose minds and bodies can only work at their highest pitch under its stimulus. Most men, if suddenly facing a loaded gun with the knowledge that they must instantly tell a lie, lie far more feebly and haltingly than they lie in a smoking-room. But a few will lie instantly and brilliantly, with an invention they normally do not possess. That was the Captain's kind. He was a good captain, at most times: but under the stimulus of danger he was rather more.

Buxton had always liked Captain Edwardes; but he had no idea before what a giant the man was inside.

It seemed that the warmth of the Mate's feeling was sensible: for at that moment, facing him, the Captain halted: dragged his right hand free from its task of supporting his fatigued abdomen, that sagged uncomfortably against the front of his trousers: grasped Buxton's hand, and shook it.

“Tell them to keep up the oiling for a while yet,” he said: and watched Mr. Buxton go. That was a chief officer of sterling quality: cool, calm, fearless ... (for in his head Edwardes was already rehearsing his Report to the Owners).

Another calculating thought struck Buxton, as he made his way aft. Suppose the funnel had not gone, when it did? Suppose those guys had held, to more than their theoretic strength? A sailing ship has been laid on her beam-ends with nothing aloft but her bare poles, before now. The resistance of that enormous funnel would have been even greater, in proportion. If the funnel had not gone, and eased her, might not the ship have turned over?

He had already seen, with horror, how each attempt they made to save themselves only invented a new danger. Now it appeared, on the other hand, that up till now it was their worst disasters which had saved them.

Happy, happy, happy. Duwch, Captain Edwardes was happy as a sand-boy! Had he known, at the beginning, what was coming, would he have been happy and confident like this all through? Perhaps not. Perhaps no one could have borne that fore-knowledge. But passing instead from each known moment only to the unknown moment ahead, his happiness had carried him along.

He had a million or so pounds' worth of ship and cargo to handle: and eighty men's lives. And very little chance, but that he would lose them. It was the hugeness of the responsibility which made his heart so light.

At noon they were in the heart of the centre again. But there were no birds this time.

The sky too was different. Instead of a stormy black, it was an even and luminous grey, a shining grey. But the heat and the thinness of the air were as melancholy as ever. You could have sat down and wept, if your eyes had not been too dry.

There was no living thing to see. No birds. No sharks. The oil-bound water heaved like Styx. Buxton, looking down into that rolling murk with its thin rainbow skin, would have welcomed even the grin of a shark as evidence that the world had not ended.

They were all gathered on the deck, even the oilers at last taking a spell. They did what they could for the hatches, in a dreamy way: but you had little will in that air, and they were short of timber now.

It was a strange thing, that when so much had smashed away over the side several of the life-boats were still there. Life-boats carry emergency rations, biscuit and water: or they should. So Captain Edwardes now set some of them to searching: and they found what they were looking for: barrels of biscuit, and water-jars.

Water was what they wanted first. But water-jars are stopped with wooden stoppers, which are inclined to shrink and work loose. Then in a big buffeting they work out. This had happened. They found plenty of water-jars, but very little water; and what there was, tainted with brine; some useless to drink, only a very little that was good. They shared it out, and then turned to the biscuit.

Most of the barrels had leaked, or burst. Still, they did get some biscuit.

Mr. MacDonald, singed and glaring, reeled about the deck, a useless biscuit in each hand. Useless? “It is a' vera weel for youse young anes,” he croaked wildly: “but ha'e ye ever tried to eat ship's biscuit wi' fa'se teeth?”—And the emptiness in his belly seemed to be knocking with the rhythmic blows of a hammer.

Down below, in the refrigerator, there were lashings of food. Meat, eggs, butter, salads, everything you could want. All down there in the fridge. “Shall I
try
to open the fridge, Sir?” the Chief Steward asked the Captain. But Captain Edwardes said no. Once open, everything inside would be spoilt. As long as there was flood-water round the door, the fridge must not be opened.

Although, of course, with the electricity cut off it would not be long before everything inside spoilt anyhow.

So for the eleventh time the Chief Steward routed round his pantry, searching in every nook and cranny: and this time he found something. He found an apple and an orange, and he took them to the captain.

Captain Edwardes started to eat half the orange, meaning to keep the other half for the Mate. But once he tasted it his jaws took charge. He could not stop, he ate it all. When he knew what he had done, he sought out the Mate.

He found him, and gave him the apple, and said to him, “Mr. Buxton, I've played you a dirty trick. There was an orange too, and I ate it all.”

Mr. Buxton, sucking his apple on the bridge, suddenly realised for the first time why he had gone to sea (he had been at sea now for twenty-five years). It was because he liked virtue: and was not the Economic Man.

The Economic Man sells his labour, at a rate of money. Work is something he is prepared to do, in fair proportion to the money he gets for it. His working day is the number of hours he is willing to waste, in order to have the wherewithal to live and to enjoy his leisure.

The man with a profession also calls what he does “work”: but his meaning is exactly opposite. It is the hours he is not working which he considers wasted. Pay? Of course he expects to be paid: a man cannot live on air. But whereas the Economic Man looks on work as the means to get money, the professional man looks on money as the means to do work.

—All this is too simple: but it is the gist of the conclusions Mr. Buxton now came to. The gist only, for being so hungry he thought in jerks, flashes of insight which were not connected up as I am putting them here.

That was one reason why he had gone to sea. Sea-going is almost the only profession open to the poor man.

As a profession, though, sea-going seems something of an anomaly: for is not its mainspring Trade? Yes, it is a Colossus with each foot planted in a different set of values. I mean, the
raison d'être
of it is economic, and yet the practice of it is judged by standards which are not economic at all, which can only be called moral: and which are peculiar to it. For the working of a ship calls for certain qualities—virtues, if you like—which do not seem to be appropriate to-day to the relations of employers and employed on shore. The shore-labourer's liability is limited: the seaman's is unlimited. The seaman may be called on to give the utmost that he is able, even to laying down his life. That is not an imposition on him, a piece of chicanery on the part of his employers: it is inherent in the profession he practises. A necessary draw-back?— Oddly enough, it even seems to be the reason why certain men, such as Mr. Buxton, embrace that profession in the first place.

I can only suppose that Virtue (using the word in its Roman rather than its Victorian sense) is a natural instinct with some men: they really cannot be happy unless they can give it an outlet.

Moreover, this professional attitude is not confined to the seaman himself; it is an infection which spreads right through the business of shipping, and crops up in the most unlikely places: even in board-rooms. For you would think the Owners at least would be Economic Men, bent solely on their own enrichment? Enrich-me-quicks are common among them, of course. Yet some Owners are not enrich-me-quicks. They all draw very substantial salaries out of the business, it is true, and live in a handsome and solid way: but often it is not a tenth of what they could squeeze out, if they really regarded the Fleet as their sponge. They draw out what they need, to keep up the state of Lord Mayor or whatever has fallen to them: all the rest they put back into their ships. It appears they would rather have fine ships than fine wives, fine pleasures —fine anything else.

This common professional attitude to sea-going both sides of the pay-desk has one odd result. The seamen come to expect almost as high a standard of conduct from the Owners as from each other. Every act of the Owners will be assessed by the whole fleet, and rigorously judged. Nor will the verdict be hidden, for expediency. If an Owner's virtue (again, the Roman sense) is found lacking, his officers may be so ashamed as to want to hide their heads: but they will not pretend they have not noticed the fault.

—But this is wandering a little from the course of Buxton's meditations, as he stood holding to the bridge-rail, the wind and the incessant noise battering him from without, hunger and weariness battering him from within, yet a comfortable sort of contentment suffusing the thin, hollow shell between the two.

The wind roared, and the gigantic feathered sea curled down out of the sky: but in the shelter of the fo'c'sle a small young cold Chinaman clung to the remnant of a derrick. Suds swirled almost up to his waist, at times: but his pocked face was earnest, busy and detached. He was trying to light fireworks.

They were addressed to the Heavenly Consort, the Lady T'ien Fei. For she alone of the celestial company (except perhaps Kuan-yin herself) has power to control that old, panting, huge yellow-and-white bag, the Dragon of the Winds.

T'ien Fei was once a little girl, precocious and devout, and subject to fits. She was born in the island of Mei-chow, in Fukien, in A.D. 742. At five years old she could recite the prayers of Kuan-yin-pu-sa, and at eleven could perform the dance called Ngan-chieh-lo-shen. In one of her trances, her spirit went to the aid of her four brothers, who were caught by a storm in small boats, far from home. They actually saw their sister walking towards them on the water: but then she vanished. For at that moment her parents, growing anxious, had recalled her spirit to her body, with gongs. They had recalled her too soon, she told them: her brothers were in danger, and only three of them had she had time to save (the fourth, in very fact, never came home).

She was still a child when she died.

But her mission was not finished. No gongs, now, could recall her spirit when it walked on the face of the sea. Again and again, when a storm raged and the poor sailors' hearts grew weak, they would see her walking towards them on the water, and calming the water as she walked. Unofficially, she became the patron saint of sailors, and chapels to her sprang up on many dangerous coasts. Early in the twelfth century she saved the life of an Imperial ambassador: and so her sanctity, long popular, became at last official: the Emperor, being pope of their religion, canonised her (thereafter, any Chinese Grace Darling was liable to become identified with T'ien Fei).

Now, in the year 1929, young P'ing Tiao, himself born on the green shores of her native Fukien, struggled with damp gunpowder to call her aid.

His friend, Ao Ling, who had no such beliefs, watched him from the door of the centre-castle with bitter contempt.

It was altogether too much for Ao Ling. In a fit of uncommon rage he sprang out onto the well-deck, dashed the fizzling rubbish from P'ing Tiao's hand, drove him with blows back before him to the centre-castle.

There was something of a babel going on in there, by lantern-light. The deck-hands were sitting up on their hams: for after the noon lull they had not altogether collapsed again. The engine-room staff were standing over them, doing most of the talking. The pebbly ripple, the cheerful groaning, and the twanging, of Chinese talk.

Ao Ling listened to it, his straight black hair sticking forward over his small broad face, without putting his oar in.