In Hazard (9 page)

“Mr. Rabb,” he roared quietly: “Go aft and secure No. 6 hatch. Mr. Watchett, go forward and secure No. 2 with Mr. Buxton.”

Mr. Rabb neither spoke nor moved; he did not seem to hear. But Mr. Watchett spoke.

“I can't, Sir,” he said miserably.

“I don't give orders that can't be carried out, boy!” the Captain roared again, just as quietly. “You've got the wind-up, just for a moment. It'll pass. It'll pass, boy. Look, I'm going to count ten. When I say ten, you'll be all right. When I say ten, you stand up on your two legs. Diawl! I know you're all right, or I wouldn't waste time on you. One, two, three ...”

As he counted, he kept his torch on the faces of the two of them. Watchett looked at Rabb: and saw for the first time what Fear looks like: its bare aspect. Watchett was deadly afraid of the wind: but fear like Rabb's, he saw, was something to be more afraid of than any wind. The clutches of the wind were the more tender.

“—Eight, nine ...”

“Secure No. 2 with Mr. Buxton,” he repeated mechanically, and began to crawl on his belly, feet first, down the companion, gaining heart as he went.

But Rabb did not move: did not seem conscious. Must be woken.

“You bloody skunk!” Captain Edwardes began; and did not stop at that. He kicked the man, and cursed on: ashamed of his language, for he was not a man used to cursing: but clinging desperately to his belief in its tonic qualities. He called back to mind words he had not used since he was a schoolboy. But the green, almost luminous wet stare of Rabb's face was his only answer. For all their effect, the words he used might have been mother's milk.

But he could not leave him like that. Fear like that is worse than plague on board: it spreads quicker. You cannot allow it.

Down in his cabin was his revolver. He turned to fetch it; for shooting seemed the only thing left.

Then he had another, a more intelligent, idea, as a thud huger than most shook the bridge. He let out a great simulated screech, and fell on the deck beside Rabb, clutching at him. “My God!” he cried: “Did you feel that? The bridge is going! The next bloody great sea'll carry away the whole bloody bridge, and every bloody man on it! For Christ's sake, man, let's get below while there's still time!”

A tremor ran through Rabb's body. Without a sound, without a flicker of expression on his dead face, he wormed his way to the top of the companion and disappeared. But Edwardes was with him. And when Rabb next came anywhere near to normal consciousness, he found himself sitting in a doorway of the centre-castle, superintending (after a fashion) old Dr. Frangcon and three Chinamen fixing new hatches over Number 6 hatchway.

When Dick Watchett got to the foredeck, he ran into Mr. Buxton in the dark. Buxton felt him shaking.

“What's the matter, Dick?” asked the Mate.

“I'm frightened,” said Dick: astonished at his own shamelessness in confessing.

But Mr. Buxton did not seem shocked. “Of course you are. So am I. But you're
here
, that's all that matters.”

On his way back to the bridge, Captain Edwardes stumbled over another figure, slumped in a corner. It was the boy Bennett: who had nearly been killed trying to fix the hatches the afternoon before. Now fear had got him too.

Edwardes did not try to encourage him. He picked him up and carried him into his own cabin: tucked him up in the bunk.

That chaotic gustiness, with no sign of abatement, continued for half an hour. You could hear each gust coming by its distant howling, which rose crescendo till it hit you: sometimes, from different directions, two or three at once. They soon guessed it was all the “calm” they were to have.

It was utter black dark.

Yet the work was done—
hard
. Buxton and Dick, torches strapped to their waists, worked alone on the forward hatches, with Foster the second mate superintending supplies. Aft, Dr. Frangcon: who, by a miracle, had three Chinamen more or less composed and working with him. But they did not make much progress; for Dr. Frangcon was an old man, he had not the strength nor the practice for this job, though he had the heart. Captain Edwardes, shadowing Mr. Rabb, came down to take a hand himself; but that did not turn out well, because of the Chinese. They found it too much of an honour to work side by side with their captain, it turned them at once from seamen into flunkeys: so that the moment Captain laid hold of anything to pull or push, six yellow hands dropped whatever useful thing they were doing to pull or push for him. When he tried to work they took his work from him: and chaos was even worse.

So he gave it up. He went forward to take Buxton's place on the fore-hatches, and sent Buxton (being a shade less august) aft.

Buxton fell over Rabb, sitting in the doorway.

“You go forward now, Mr. Rabb,” he said, “and help the Captain on No. 2.”

Rabb blazed up in anger:

“Why pick on me?” he said. “This isn't my ship! You've got a down on me, you give me all the work to do. Can't I have a moment's peace?”

Rabb was truly furious. Here! He had been working all the day, and night, superhumanly, and always chivvied by the Mate! However, he turned to go: and really meant to go forward, only on the way those stinking black clouds began coming up again over his brain—fear had got him again. So he thought he would take a short rest first, and climbed down a companion; and found himself among the Chinese. Like blind puppies huddling together from the cold. Rabb paused for a moment near them: his fear was re-inforced by their communion of fear, and he began burrowing under them as if to disappear altogether from view.

Once the hatches were secured, Captain Edwardes sought out the steward to see if he could serve a meal. It was only then the Captain learnt there was next to no food to be had, and no water at all. So he and the steward divided out what there was among every man on the ship and served it by the light of the saloon lamp. It was a small breakfast, to follow seventeen hours' fast: just a biscuit or two each, and a tiny portion of Dutch cheese. The English put a good face on it at once: but the Chinese looked morose, and then went away and got money and offered it secretly to the Mate for extra rations. He could not convince them that there really was no more food to be had, for anyone; that everyone had shared alike. They were so sure that he and the Captain must have kept back a store for themselves, a little of which they might be prepared to part with for a dollar or two.

But the shortage of drinking-water was even more serious than the shortage of food. The tanks, I told you, were accessible through man-holes in the engine-room floor. But the engine-room floor was sloshing about with sea-water: to open a tank would simply be to spoil whatever was in it.

Only one of the freshwater tanks had its man-lid in a position where it could be protected from flooding: and that one, as luck would have it, was empty. Or rather, it was technically empty: as empty as the pumps had been able to make it. But the pumps are bound to leave a few inches at the bottom. So Gaston and the steward unscrewed the man-lid, and Gaston was lowered inside with jugs and dippers, and scooped up what he could. It was not much, but it gave them a small wet each; and that would have to last them till they were out of the storm, there was no more to be had. Then, before they replaced the man-lid, they let the flood-water run in, for ballast.

It was while this was going on that the ship passed out of the centre—if centre it could be called. The second round of the contest had been begun. Or so everyone thought.

When you pass towards the centre of a hurricane, the wind is (in the main) blowing one way. You cross it, and come out the other side: and there, of course, the wind is blowing the opposite way. As the “Archimedes” came out of the centre, the wind became once more fairly steady in one quarter. But it seemed to be still blowing in the same direction as before.

Had the ship turned round? Edwardes looked at the compass: no, she was heading much as she had been.

The “Archimedes,” then, had
not
crossed the centre: she could not have. She had approached the centre, and then slipped back. She was back again in the same quadrant of the storm as before.

So the storm was not passing over them: it was sucking the “Archimedes” along with it!

Seventeen hours had once seemed a long time to have to wait for escape. Now it suddenly dwindled to a short, to a most desirable time. For Captain Edwardes now realised that it was impossible to count on escape even in seventeen hours: to count on escape at all, so long as the sucking strength of the storm continued. It was impossible any longer to count on anything at all.

With dawn it grew light; but things did not become visible. Spray—atomised ocean—hid everything. It was a white night, now, instead of a black one: that was all.

No one had slept; but only one man, through the early hours, had continued at work. That was Sparks.

Not only was his aerial carried away: he had plenty of other troubles. His main electricity, like everyone else's, was cut off. But there is an emergency paraffin-actuated generating engine provided, on top of the House, for just such a contingency. Yes: but at that moment a loose derrick, on top of the House, was busy pounding the emergency paraffin-actuated generating engine to pieces. Well then: there are emergency batteries, worth fifty hours continuous use, inside the House itself. Yes: but the scuppers of the House were choked, and the House was full of salt water: and when he had retrieved them, and examined them, he found that the emergency batteries, worth fifty hours continuous use, were full of salt water also. So to begin with he spent six hours drying out the batteries, with a blow-lamp. Then he had to set about drying out all essential parts of the wireless-room, by the same means, before he could hope to get the Emergency Transmitting Set to work, with an Emergency Aerial.

Nevertheless, by nine in the morning he succeeded. The beautiful big valve lit up, the motor whirred.

From fifteen to eighteen minutes past each hour there is a gap reserved, in ships' wireless transmission: a gap during which only signals of distress may be sent out. By nine-sixteen, Sparks had succeeded in ringing the auto-alarm in another vessel fifty or sixty miles away: was in touch with her: was hearing about
her
weather. She was experiencing strong winds: almost strong enough to make her believe (if this had not been November) that there might be a hurricane about somewhere—up to the north-east. So then the “Archimedes” told her there really was a hurricane about: but not up to the north-east of her, down to the south-west.

“Cannot understand your weather” she wirelessed back, a trifle huffily: and before the “Archimedes” could reply again the emergency set gave out. For the wireless room was once again drenched with salt water, and everything shorting.

That was at nine-thirty. Well, at least the outside world now knew that they were in trouble: the world outside the hurricane knew that there was a hurricane. The Owners, away in Bristol, would hear about it very soon. And would be very worried. It was a pity Edwardes could not get a message through to re-assure them, to tell them how nicely the “Archimedes” was doing, really. But there was no hope of getting the wireless going again, not while all this drenching spray lasted. They were cut off, and must fend entirely for themselves (and leave the Owners uncomforted).

But the mere fact of having communicated with another ship lent them heart. The hatches they had so painfully secured had by now blown out again. What of it? Their work had stood for at least a couple of hours. Two hours less of spray had gone below. Capsizing was two hours further removed—and that might make a difference. After all, if they came near the centre again they could mend them again; and so save another two hours, perhaps.

No one had thought about the engines much, once the fires were out: but now they began to think of them. Steam. The leak was stopped now: if they had steam again to work the pumps they could snap their fingers at spray going down the hatches. They must get steam up again somehow: So the Deck thought.

Captain Edwardes told Mr. MacDonald to relight the furnaces.

It is not too easy a job, lighting the furnaces from cold: even in dock, with your funnel standing. The oil has to be pre-heated with blow-lamps —and that takes some time. Secondly, it has to be hand-pumped through the sprays, under pressure. Then, until you have steam enough to work the fans, you have to rely on funnel-draught alone. Now, with no funnel at all, the engine-room knew it could not be done. But the Captain was adamant: they must re-light the furnaces: and Mr. MacDonald passed on the order as if it was the easiest thing in the world to do: and the engineers set about doing it, just as if it was possible. It was not for them to tell the Chief it could not be done: he knew as well as they did. It was not for him to tell the Captain it could not be done: that was for the furnaces themselves.
They
would soon tell him, plainly enough.

As for the engine-room Chinese, for some reason they had not gone into a panic like the Chinese seamen. They felt it a grievance, that the Mate was apparently standing out for a higher price than they could afford, before disgorging any of his private food-supply: but that only confirmed them in allegiance to their own officers. Mr. MacDonald, they felt sure, would have been content with a reasonable profit, proportioned to their means. If the need came, in the future (if the Mate remained too avaricious) they would mutiny for food: but it had not come to that yet: and in the meanwhile they obeyed orders just as if everything was normal. Gaston told them to light the blow-lamps that pre-heated the oil, preparatory to firing the furnaces. Did
they
know the task would be impossible? Heaven knows. They showed no opinion either way, they just set about lighting the blow-lamps. Working in the dark, heeled over and rolling, the engine-room floor under them flooded with a little stinking tide that rose and fell with every roll.