In Hazard (6 page)

Dick's door remained jammed. He was shut in a little iron cube, tilted up on one of its edges, and jerking about like a rook's nest in a gale. Even without the motion, the thunderous yelling of the wind would alone have been intolerable.

He tried to get into bed, but could not stay there: the bed flung him out. He tried to lie on the tilted floor, wedged against the wall: but even the floor flung him away; and small loose things fell on him: it was like being inside some joke-machine in an Amusement Park, worked by the Devil. The only way not to be flung about was to stand up, wedge his feet in two places and cling to something with both hands.

But Dick Watchett was not the only one who had been imprisoned in his cabin. The door of the midshipmen's room had also jammed. However, the same unsteadying of the wind which had revealed the floating hatches released them, though it did not release Dick: and the three boys burst out. Immediately they climbed to the bridge; though it was mad, going up stairs tilted on their sides, so that half your weight was on your elbow against the wall.

The sight of the three boys bursting suddenly on to the bridge gave a feeling of warm pleasure to Captain Edwardes; for he felt as if he had been there for ever, alone with Mr. Buxton; as if there was no one else in the ship. Now they came crowding up—the tall one, the fat one, and the thin, dark-eyed one—looking at him with implicit confidence: and that filled him full with vigour and pride.

Captain and Mate do not generally think apart, in urgent matters. The soaked tobacco and newspapers were as present in Edwardes's mind as Buxton's.

“Try and secure No. 2 hatch,” he said. “Take everyone you can get.—Here, you Bennett” (to the dark thin boy), “stir out the seamen in the fo'c'sle, and take them along.”

Buxton called the other boys to follow him, and struggled down the ladder: blind and deaf the moment he left the bridge, moving with as much difficulty as a weak baby.

But the boys were newly out of shelter. The blast blinded them and deafened them, even on the bridge. Bennett just heard the captain's order, and went about it: but the others neither heard the mate call them to follow him, nor even saw him go. They were filling up with air, as if their lungs were balloons being pumped; it made them feel giddy, and feckless—almost ready to giggle.

Buxton did not know that: he thought they were with him. It was all he could do to make his own way to the fore well-deck: those behind must look after themselves. Thus he was down there before he discovered he was alone. Never mind: Bennett and the Chinamen would be along soon.

Clinging in a doorway, he looked out. Mostly all he saw was shifting shafts and bars of spray—the course of the air grown solid and visible. Behind each obstacle showed something dark which looked like its shadow and was really its shelter, forming a hollow conical gap in the spray that outlined it in stream-line shapes: and where the wind rebounded against the plain opposition of something immovable, atomised spray fringed the edges like short fine hair. Yes, it was actually possible, by looking, to
see
the gaps in the air through which a man might insinuate his body, working his way towards the open hatch! Buxton, without waiting for help, put it to the test: climbing from shelter to shelter as a man on rock climbs from ledge to ledge. And, like a climber, he never thought of going back. In a minute or two he was there, crouched under the lee of the coaming; and as each volume of spray went below, he winced as if it fell on his own nerves.

A man on a good ledge or rock can belay and stay there: but Buxton's shelter under the coaming was not safety like that. He was protected from the wind; but the next sea which broke over the rail, as it might do any minute, would carry him away with it; for it would pour down this sloping deck like Niagara, there could be no hope of holding on. Even if he tied himself with a rope, the sea would batter him against iron things like an egg. And it might come any minute.

Nor was there anything to be done, even if he had not been alone. The hatches were gone clean overboard. To carry large planks, by however many willing hands, for repairing them, through the narrow spaces between the wind, was impossible. They would have to wait for the central lull—and meanwhile the stability of the ship must take its chance. He had better get back, before a wave caught him.

The hatches had gone overboard: but the tarpaulin, curiously, had not: it was pressed on the deck in a heap. Just as Buxton turned to creep away it leapt up, like a black wall. It hit him and knocked him down and covered him, flattening him to the deck under its stiff weight.

Then the sea came. It burst over the rail—God knows how many tons. It roared down the deck, a fathom deep: its weight nearly crushed Buxton, under the tarpaulin—the stiff tarred canvas suddenly fitting his body like a mould. Then away to leeward, over the other rail; and the ship staggered and rose. Buxton, under the tarpaulin, was not only saved alive; he was almost dry.

He crawled out, crushed and stupid, carelessly, so that the wind caught him. It was as if the climber on the cliff had slipped and fallen. The wind took him like gravity, and flung him to the centre-castle, where he crashed into the door from which he had started.

If nothing could be done on the fore-deck, still there were the after-hatches to consider. Some of them might have gone too. The after well-deck offered more shelter; so, if they had, it might be just possible to work there—if he got enough men for the job.

Mr. Buxton went first to the saloon; where he found Mr. Rabb, his clear blue eyes staring straight in front of him, as if the worst storm could not affect his serenity. He was a comforting sight, to one direly in need of help. Mr. Buxton called him.

In the corridor he met the boy Bennett, with the Chinese bosun only, for none of the other Chinamen would come. They sat in a huddle on the fo'c'sle floor, he said: not attempting to hold on to anything, but sliding about as she rolled, bleating faintly as they bumped.

Then the tall boy, Phillips, appeared.

That made five. Five might do something. They made their way aft: and from the shelter of the centre-castle they saw what needed to be done.

No. 6 hatch was stripped also. But the planks had not gone overboard. If even some of them could be replaced, they could be lashed down, and the water going below could be checked. Nor was the position so exposed. It ought to be possible.

Indeed, Mr. Foster was out there already—busy with the stretching-screw of one of the mast-stays, which in spite of its locking-device was threatening to work loose. However, he was plainly too busy on his own job to be able to come and help them.

They had better make a dash for it.

They had better make a dash for it, at once. But Mr. Buxton felt a curious unwillingness in his feet. All the top of him leant forward, but his feet seemed to creep backwards under him, like small rabbits looking for their holes.

This is not so bad as the foredeck, he said to himself; not half so bad. Safe as houses. “Come on!” he yelled, and flung himself forward.

Bennett and Phillips were after him like dogs off the leash. It never occured to
them
to be afraid, being new to it. They saw Mr. Buxton go, and they went: and landed on top of him, in a heap.

Buxton was out from under them in no time: beginning work before they knew which way up they were. One by one they got the hatches, dragging them up from the lee-scuppers. Then the mate and Phillips straddled the hatch-beams, the gaping hold under them, while Bennett worked from the deck. That was the hard part—
lifting
the hatches, without the wind getting under them. There was no sign of Mr. Rabb, nor the bosun. This was a big job for a man and two boys.

They got three in place, and lashed them. They were struggling with a fourth when a redoubled gust caught them. Mr. Buxton and Phillips clung under the beams they were straddling, like sloths. The hatch blew out of their hands, knocking poor young Bennett into the lee-scuppers, where he lay inert, washing about in the suds.

Mr. Buxton hoisted himself up, and was about to go after him, when Bennett, revived by the slapping water, sat up. The first thing he saw was his leg: it was bent sideways at a right angle, just above the ankle. My God, he thought: I've bust my leg: it will begin to hurt, soon, a lot. Best get out of this before it begins. He moved gingerly—and it came right off.

Sitting there in the water, he blushed right round to his neck for being such an ass. Fancy thinking he had bust his leg! For it was only his sea-boot, of course, which had worked half-off as he skiddered, and then, being empty, had doubled up.

He made a grab at it, and then waited his chance to scramble back to the hatch-coaming.

Meanwhile, Mr. Buxton debated. His feet were bold enough now; but his heart was uncomfortable. By rights of course they ought to stick there till the last hatch was secured. But he did not want to kill the boys. They were regular little lions. It would be a shame if these boys were killed and all those bloody bleating Chinamen were not. It was the merest chance Bennett had not gone, that time. Anyway, they had stopped most of the water going down No. 6. “Come on,” he yelled again: and all three made a dash for the poop. They crowded into the place where the steering-engine is housed.

It was lucky they did; for immediately the wind again began to blow with its greatest violence, and the open well-deck was impassable.

It is all very well while obeying orders with your whole strength; but sitting idle is different. Both boys, now they had leisure to notice, grew afraid, and thought the end was coming soon. The cold water in their clothes began slowly to explore their warm skins. No ship
could
stand it. Both inwardly began to say their prayers—each hoping the other would not guess. “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want,” said Bennett in the recesses of his head: “He shall feed me in green pastures, and lead me forth by the waters of comfort. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the Shadow of Death, I shall fear no evil: Thy rod and Thy staff shall comfort me.” He did not know any more; so he began again, “The Lord is my Shepherd....” It was childhood magic, used to fortify himself against the wild beasts of the dark, if he was sent upstairs alone. He had not used it since then.

But it was hard to keep his mind always on it now: and in between he would feel an agonising cold griping, in his stomach; a physical pang of regret. What a fool he had been to come to sea, when after all there was so much for him to do, in a long life, on the warm safe shore! All the infinite long years of childhood at last behind him; all to be wasted, no manhood to come after all.

Phillips, in a curious way, did not mind so much. He said the Lord's Prayer once, and left it at that. His mind divided into two halves. One half was actually glad. For young Phillips, for the first time, loved a girl with his whole soul; and she over-looked him. If he were drowned at sea, she would be told: his death would sadden her a little, even if his life was indifferent to her. There was no true living for him, he felt, except in her thoughts: then his death alone could secure him life, even life for the few minutes she would give to thinking of him. Like many young lovers, he confused a girl with God: and he could almost imagine her now, watching him, out of the sky; watching him die, and pitying him.

And yet there was another half of his mind, which was unshakenly confident. It was a part of his mind that did not argue, did not even put things in words; it knew things to be true; but it knew itself also to be under a taboo, that if it spoke those things, they would cease to be true. That part of his mind knew, now, that he was not going to die. It knew he was unique: mankind was divided into him on the one hand, and everyone else on the other. Death was for other people:
he
would not die, he would not ever die. God had made him different in this point—that he was not mortal, and was meant for a superhuman purpose.

Yet this confidence, because of the taboo, must never be put into words, even in his own head. He must let that other part of his mind run on, with its pathetic pictures of his tragic end, unchecked—as indeed it continued to do.

To this extent he was right, that he did not die that afternoon. None of them did. Instead they crouched there, unable to get out, in the faint stink of oil, for over two hours: till half past six.

When Mr. Buxton and the boys made their dash for number 6 hatch, Mr. Rabb had wisely hung back: because he knew, even if he accompanied them, he would not have been much help, because he was too much afraid.

Fear often has the effect of making one over-exert oneself. If you are sent up aloft for the first time, and it frightens you, you will find yourself clinging on with every once of strength in your body, enough strength to hold up three men instead of one: this soon tires you, and leaves you no strength whatever to do what you were sent to do. If Mr. Rabb, afraid like that, had joined them at the hatches, he would have so grappled himself to the hatch-coaming as to be in a few minutes as weak as a new lamb with fatigue; and the first jolt would have shaken him off. There was no use in that. Only a wise man knows when he is too much afraid to take a risk successfully; just as only a wise man knows when he is too drunk to drive a car. But Mr. Rabb had had enough experience of fear, one time and another, to be able to look at himself when afraid clear-headedly from outside. Obviously, now, the thing to do was to take no grave risks until he had got used to the situation, and his fear had melted away of itself—as it surely would do, in a short while.

He therefore decided to make his way to the bridge. That was a proper place, after all, for an officer to be in an emergency.

But perhaps he might stop for a rest somewhere, on the way.

It was shortly before seven when Mr. Buxton got back to the bridge, the boys being still unable to leave the poop. Perhaps it was the best place for them, at present.