In Hazard (3 page)

It is curious how little interest deck-officers and engineers (of the old school) take in each other's provinces. It is not so much a tactful avoidance of trespass as a complete ignoring. The engineer has to make certain machines work, but he has no interest whatever in what they are used for. He is as careless where they take him as a man's stomach is careless on what errand his legs are bound. The deck officer, for his part, hardly seems to know whether he is on a motor-ship or a steamer (except by the amount of dirt on the decks). He cannot explain the working of any simple mechanism that he employs every day. In their lives, too, they are segregated, as completely as boys and girls are in British education.

Even in the “Archimedes,” where the policy was to throw them together, it did not really work. In the shipshape, decent mahogany of the Officers' Saloon they dined at separate tables, the apprentices' table as a barrier between them. Their quarters were separate. Even the Chinese firemen slept at one end of the ship, and the Chinese deckhands at the other!

There are, of course, certain parts of the ship where the frontier is rather hard to draw—but drawn it is, everywhere. The inside of the funnel, for instance, belonged to Mr. MacDonald, the outside to Mr. Buxton. The steam-whistle belonged to Mr. MacDonald, but the foghorn unquestionably lay in the province of Mr. Buxton. This last point was not, in the “Archimedes,” so unimportant as it sounds. For it happened that Mr. Buxton had a slow-moving lemur, a “Madagascar Cat,” called Thomas; and it was in the foghorn that he habitually slept through the hours of daylight. He had the right to, seeing it was under his master's rule. It was his sanctuary.

This little Thomas slept all day, and he was not very energetic even at night. But he had one prejudice. He liked the human eye, and he did not approve of it being shut, ever. If he came into Mr. Buxton's cabin while his master was asleep he would jump carefully on to the edge of the bunk, and then with anxious and delicate movements of his long fingers he would lift the sleeping man's eyelids till the ball was fully exposed. This he would do to other deck-officers too, if he found them (to his distress) with their eyes shut at night upon any excuse whatever. They had, of course, to put up with Thomas (if the night was too hot to shut their doors): it was a matter of discipline. A woman in English society takes the rank of her husband: and at sea a pet takes the rank of its owner. An insult to the Chief Officer's lemur would be an insult to the Chief Officer.

As for the Engineers, Thomas knew well enough that he must never so much as approach their quarters: and in his master's foghorn no-one dared to touch him.

In the late summer of 1929 (five years after my first meeting with Mr. MacDonald) the “Archimedes” took in a mixed cargo at various ports on the Atlantic seaboard, for the Far East. The elaborate matter of its stowage Mr. Buxton was responsible for, of course (a deck officer has actually to know more about cargo than about waves). At New York he stowed some bags of wax at the bottom. Then came many kinds of mixed whatnots. One item was a number of tons of old newspapers, which the Chinese like to build their houses of. These were mostly stowed in the 'tween-decks—high up, that is to say, since they were comparatively light. At Norfolk (Virginia) they took in some low-grade tobacco, also bound for China, where it would be made into cheap cigarettes. This too was stowed in the 'tween-decks.

Norfolk was the last loading port, and they were delayed there a bit. This was not irksome, however. Philadelphia, in spite of the stink in the docks, had been all right in its way since most of the officers had friends there; but Norfolk far outdid even Philadelphia in hospitality. The Master and the Chief Officer (it is a rule) must never both go ashore at the same time. Yet at Norfolk there were so many parties that both could have their fill of pleasure. Even Mr. MacDonald, when he could be persuaded to go to one of these affairs, grew gay—or at least, gayish.

The junior officers mostly attended other and more casual parties, at which they had many eye-opening experiences. Mr. Watchett, for instance, of the sober East Anglian market-town of Fakenham, a very young officer, was caught up suddenly one night by a troop of Southern boys and girls. He told them he came from Norfolk, England—it was enough introduction. He had never seen them before that minute, but they treated him at once with the kindly indifference of old friends. They danced his legs off, somewhere; and then suddenly crowded into cars, and drove out into the night. The hot smell of oiled, sandy roads: the very high trees almost meeting overhead: the din of frogs and insects. They arrived at a fine Colonial house and gave Dick Watchett corn-whisky in a room full of elaborate Victorian-looking furniture that smelt musty.

They were all highly civilised. Amongst them was one older man, an ex-soldier. He wore a gilt and ormolu leg with his evening clothes, for he held that the merely serviceable artificial limb which he wore with his day-clothes was wrong with a tuxedo. There was also in the party one very lovely fair girl, with wide innocent eyes. She was in the first bud of youth—still at High School. She told Dick that she came of a peculiarly aristocratic family, the property of whose blood, for countless generations, had been to send any flea which bit them raving mad. This property, indeed, had been their ruin. For her father, in order to win a footling bet, had wantonly deranged the wits of some of the most valuable performers in a flea-circus: and the family plantation had to be mortgaged to pay the enormous damages which the Court awarded against him. At least, so she told Dick.

This was the first inkling which Dick Watchett had that America, as well as Europe, held her ancient aristocratic families, jealous of their blood.

The man with the gilt and ormolu leg kept trying to make love to this girl (whose name was Sukie). She resented it, being actually as innocent even as she looked: so she adopted Dick as her protector, nestling against him like a bird. He did not notice that she was drinking far more neat corn-whisky even than he drank himself. Actually it was more than she was used to, being so young, and this her first party of the kind also: but having begun it did not occur to her to stop. It arrived in glass jars, each holding a gallon: so there was plenty.

Presently she told Dick she had a cat so smart that it first ate cheese and then breathed down the mouseholes—with baited breath—to entice the creatures out. Her eyes were getting very wild: and sometimes, as she lay in Dick's arm, she shivered. Dick did not try to talk to her much: but he enjoyed her being there. His own head was a little giddy, and the party seemed to advance and recede, and was difficult to listen to. But Sukie, by then, must have drunk quite a pint of the bootleg liquor neat, which is a lot for a girl of sixteen: and in time it took hold of her altogether. She suddenly struggled out of his arms, and sprang to her feet. Her eyes, wider than ever, did not seem to see anybody, even him. She wrenched at her shoulder-straps and a string or two, and in a moment every stitch of clothing she had was gone off her. For a few seconds she stood there, her body stark naked. Dick had never seen anything like it before. Then she fell unconscious on the floor.

Dick set down his own drink suddenly, a wilder intoxication thumping in his ribs. She had been lovely in her clothes, but she was far more lovely like this, fallen in a posture as supple as a pool; all that white skin; her forlorn little face, with its closed eyes, puckered already in the incipient distress of nausea. Suddenly Dick realised that everyone else had left the room: and as suddenly he realised that he loved this girl more than heaven and earth. With shaking hands he rolled her in the hearth-rug, for fear she should catch cold: made her as comfortable as he could on a sofa; and returned, shaking, to his ship.

For hours he lay awake, quite unable even to dim the vivid picture in his inward eye of Sukie's drunken innocence. But at last he fell asleep, her lovely face and her naked body flickering in his dreams. And then presently he was awakened by feeling his heavy lids lifted by thin little fingers, and found himself staring, through the texture of his dream, into large, anxious, luminous eyes, only an inch from his own; eyes that were not Sukie's. He bashed at the electric light switch in a panic.

It was Thomas, with his soft fur and his big tail, hopping away on his unnaturally elongated feet, nervously folding and unfolding his ears.

The next night, the night before their departure for Colon and the Panama Canal, Captain Edwardes gave a party on board, with dancing to a gramophone. The gramophone belonged to Mr. Foster, the Second Mate. The ladies were friends of the Captain's: relatives of the company's agent chiefly, or of the shippers. They were picked by the dictates of duty. None of them were young, and none beautiful: and not being aristocratic like Dick's friends, they behaved with a strict but slightly coarse decorum. Captain Edwardes himself, Mr. Buxton, and Mr. MacDonald, were as happy and as flirtatious as children, and the dance went on till very late—till nearly half past eleven.

The only officer who did not take part was Mr. Rabb. Mr. Rabb did not belong in the “Archimedes”: he was down as a Supernumerary Officer, not as a numbered mate. He really belonged to the “Descartes”—another of the Sage Line's fleet of philosophers: and was to be landed at Colon to join her.

Mr. Rabb was a strict Christian, and did not really approve of dancing under any conditions. But especially he thought it wrong on the part of senior officers with impressionable young juniors in their charge. Apart from the four apprentices, who were still boys, there was Dick Watchett, for instance. To dance with these ladies might well arouse in him those very passions from which a life at sea was intended by God as a refuge. Watchett showed very little outward sign of being inflamed by holding any of these partners in his arms; yet it was against nature that he should in fact not be—who knew that better than Mr. Rabb? And the young are so deceitful.

However, it was not his business: this was not even his ship. But he hoped Captain Theobald, of the “Descartes,” would prove more serious-minded.

Dick Watchett liked Mr. Rabb, as did all juniors who came in contact with him. The midshipmen adored him. And indeed he was a likeable person, with his crisp hearty voice, his clean mind, and his courteous manner with the young or the poor—the best type of Englishman.

“Archimedes” left Norfolk at four the next afternoon, passing down the Elizabeth river into Hampton Roads. Craney Island Lighthouse—thought Dick Watchett—looked like a Swiss Châlet on stilts. The yellow shore was low and flat, with sandy beaches: the Roads full of traffic—Bay steamers, chiefly, and long strings of lighters.

By half past six they were off Cape Henry, and there dropped the pilot.

Vessels bound south keep close to Cape Henry, inside the banks. It is a strange coast, from there down to Cape Hatteras; most of it just a low stretch of beach dividing the inland waters from the ocean: a rather vague limit for so great a continent. That far, Captain Edwardes's course lay inshore. But south of Cape Hatteras the coast falls away to the westward: at Cape Hatteras, therefore, at three in the morning, “Archimedes” said goodbye to North America, shaping a course for the West Indian island of San Salvador.

That day was fine and clear. The sea and sky were a dark blue, the few clouds white and fleecy. Although it was now late autumn, summer seemed to have returned. For, once they were through the Gulf Stream, the sun, undeterred by cloud or mist, made up for the lateness of the season by the strength a southern latitude lent it. “Archimedes” was alone in the sea, and land newly forgotten—that time when everyone in a ship is at his happiest.

Alone, that is to say, except for the dolphins. For the stem of the ship, cutting through the violet glass, tossed glittering piles of the whitest foam outwards: and deep in the heart of that glass the dancing dolphins were the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. A dozen, huge ones, much longer than men; the colour of their backs an olive brown, their sides and bellies a pale and shining green: their shapes the very shape of Speed itself. The pointed nose, in front of the swelling forehead, opened the water perfectly; and it slid together again behind the throbbing tail as if they had been nothing.

Mostly they danced in twos, swinging from side to side of the stem like two people skating together: then crossing, one over, the other under: then rolling over and over sideways, a flash of greenish silver deep under the water: rising to the surface, so that the back fin cut the air with a white plume: leaping into the air like powerful mermaids too happy to lie still: leaping, twisting on to their backs as they leapt, sometimes two, sometimes three, or four or five together. Two would suddenly swing away, and altogether leave the ship: two more from nowhere cross the bows and join in the heavenly water-play.

At first Sukie had blazed in Dick's mind, lighting every part of it: but now already, after two days, she had contracted and receded like the opening by which you have entered a tunnel: turned more unearthly bright than the broad day, but very distant and small and clear. Yet now, as he watched the dolphins, for a moment light seemed to come back over his whole mind, gently flooding all its dark places, and then fading in a mood of pleasurable sadness.

Again that night he saw something very beautiful: something seldom seen (except in the China Seas): a patch of ocean so phosphorescent that it cast a glow into the sky before they reached it. As they came to it, the whole water sparkled like stars, and everything that moved in it was sheathed in cold flame. Deep beneath it some fish sent out a rotating light, like a lighthouse.

It was a rare and magnificent thing. But it did not move him as the naked dolphins had done.

It took them four days to reach San Salvador.

They seemed now to have passed through the little oasis of summer: it was succeeded by a grey, south-easterly swell, and a fresh breeze; and the weather was cloudy, with occasional showers. But there was no reason to expect really bad weather: the hurricane season had finished at least a fortnight ago, nor was the swell of the long, oily type that presages a tropical storm, nor were the clouds of an ominous appearance. It was invigorating weather, that is all.