Sea Fury (1971) (14 page)

He glanced momentarily at Holt, then looked down at Johansen. “This is how you found him, Mr. Finch?”

“Yes, sir.”

“One of you had better fetch Dr. Menstein. Not that he can do much. Too late for that.”

“I’ll go,” said Holt.

Menstein was not asleep and he came at once. He con-
firmed what was only too apparent: Mr. Johansen was
undoubtedly
dead, having died most probably from the blow that had inflicted the gash in his head. Menstein did something that no one else had seen fit to do: he closed Johansen’s eyes.

“Do you know who did this thing?”

“We do not,” Leach said.

Holt became aware suddenly that Perkins had appeared on the scene. He was standing in the cabin doorway, looking in.

“I could make a guess at that,” Perkins said.

They all turned and stared at him, and he gave a smirk, as if he enjoyed being the centre of attention.

“Do you know something?” Leach asked.

“I know Mr. Johansen and Major Lycett had a fight earlier this evening. I know Mr. Johansen knocked the major down and the major threatened to get even with him.” Perkins cast a meaning glance on the body on the floor. “Looks like he did too.”

“You actually heard Lycett threaten Johansen?”

“You can say that again. Mr. Holt heard him too. He was there.”

Leach glanced at Holt. “Is that so?”

Holt admitted that it was.

“What was the quarrel about?”

Holt did not answer, but Perkins gave a grin. “About Mrs. Lycett. What else? She was in this cabin till near midnight yesterday evening.”

“How do you know that?” Leach asked sharply.

“I don’t go about with my eyes shut.”

“You mean you spied on Mrs. Lycett?”

“I wouldn’t call it that.” Perkins sounded sulky.

“God knows what you would call it then. And no doubt you felt it your duty to inform Major Lycett?”

“Yes, I did. It wasn’t right, what the mate was doing.”

Captain Leach looked at the engineer as one might look at something loathsome discovered under a stone. “Mr. Perkins,” he said flintily, “I should be obliged if you would take yourself as far away from me as possible. It is too much to expect that I shall never see you again but one can but hope, one can but hope.”

Perkins went red in the face. “All right, I’ll go. But I’m telling you, if you want to find the man who killed the mate, you look for Major Lycett. He can’t be far away.” And with that he turned from the doorway and disappeared.

“That man,” Leach said, “ought to have been drowned at birth.”

Menstein was pulling nervously at his left ear. “All the same, there may be something in what he said. Indeed I very much fear so. Major Lycett was checking up this morning—that is yesterday morning—on Mrs. Lycett’s movements. He seemed to be under the impression that she spent the previous evening with my wife and me. We had to tell him it was not so. He seemed rather upset.”

“I think Major Lycett had better be found.” Leach said.

But that was to prove more easily said than done. A visit to his cabin by Mr. Finch revealed that he was not there. Moira Lycett, lying awake in her bunk, demanded, not without reason, why her husband was being sought at that time of night. It was an embarrassing question. Finch stammered and said that he had better start getting back to his duties. Nothing could have been better calculated to rouse her suspicions that something was afoot. Already she had been more than a little worried by Morton’s absence; usually he was in his bunk and asleep long before that.

“Something has happened, hasn’t it, Mr. Finch?”

“Well—” Finch said.

She sat up, her head aching, and the cabin seemed to revolve. Some of the movement was real; Finch put out a hand to steady himself.

“You had better tell me,” she said. “I’m bound to hear eventually.”

Finch had to admit to himself that she had a point. The facts could not be kept secret. She would have to know.

“Mr. Johansen has been found dead in his cabin. It looks as if he was murdered.”

Her eyes widened with horror. “Oh, no, no.”

“I’m afraid so.”

“And you think Morton did it?”

Mr. Finch felt extremely uncomfortable. It was, of course, precisely what he did think, but one could hardly admit such a suspicion to Mrs. Lycett. One could hardly give one’s reasons for thinking her husband a murderer. Not to her.

“We should just like to know where he is.”

“He’s not in here. You can see that.” She was wondering whether Morton could really have been such a fool. And she feared that it was only too probable, remembering the temper he had been in. With sudden clarity she saw what this was going to mean; the publicity, the sordid facts of her
relations
with the dead man coming out at the trial;
everything
. Oh, why had she ever gone to Johansen? Why, why, why? But for that one visit to his cabin, none of this would have happened. Now she was going to be punished, and the punishment would be out of all proportion to the crime —if crime it was. In taking his revenge on Johansen Morton could not have succeeded in taking a more complete revenge on her also. It was all so unfair, so horribly unfair.

“When did you see him last?” Finch asked.

“When?” She put a hand to her throbbing head. “Oh,
after dinner. He came back here. He’d been—” She stopped. She had been about to add that he had been fighting with Johansen, but decided not to. They probably knew anyway; someone was bound to have seen the fight.

“When did he go out again, Mrs. Lycett?”

She frowned, trying to remember. “Oh, an hour later perhaps. About a quarter to ten. I’m not sure.”

“And he hasn’t been back since?”

“No.”

Mr. Finch moved to the door. “We shall have to find him.”

He had not reached the door when the sound halted him. It was the wind certainly, but such a wind as he had never heard, had never thought or hoped to hear. It was a sound to freeze the blood, to make even the boldest heart miss a beat. Mr. Finch’s heart was not one of the boldest; it missed more than a beat and his lips trembled.

“My God! Listen to that!”

And then it seemed that a monstrous fist had slammed the side of the ship, making it shiver and heel over to starboard. Finch could not save himself; he was thrown forward and fell across the bunk on which Moira Lycett was lying. With his face buried in the soft, warm folds of her bosom, he heard the sound of rushing water.

M
R
. P
RIOR
, peering though the wheelhouse window on the port side into the howling darkness, caught a glimpse of the great wave coming. It was like a moving ridge of granite, snow-capped where the crest was broken into foam. The wind came in with the wave, and wave and wind struck the
Chetwynd
together, struck her hard, so that she staggered and groaned under the blow, so that she heeled over and took the seas over her bulwarks, took them on her foredeck and her afterdeck in a mass of swirling, turbulent water.

The wind persisted, and Mr. Prior, staggering like the ship, holding on, bracing his arms and legs against the strain, knew it for what it was, the hurricane wind whirling round the edges of the storm. It was this that he and Mr. Finch had heard in the distance at the start of the watch; but now it was magnified beyond all imagining; shrieking, buffeting, tearing at every rope and cable and canvas with maniac fury, and driving the waves like sheep before it.

And now the rain came too; came not apparently in separate drops but in a single blinding sheet of water, cascading like some torrent spouting from a fissure in the sky. The wind caught it and flung it almost horizontally
against the wheelhouse windows, mingling it with the salt spray and the foam whipped from the waves. And with this rain came an ever-increasing weight of darkness, split momentarily time and time again by jagged flashes of lightning. There was thunder too, but the thunder simply mingled with the general din, even its growlings and rumblings somehow rendered insignificant in comparison with the mighty anger of the wind and the sea.

“My word!” Prior muttered. “This is something. This is really something indeed.” And it occurred to him to wonder whether the poor old
Chetwynd
was a good enough ship to get through such a storm, whether she had not perhaps come at last to the end of her sea-going days.

But he did not allow his thoughts to dwell for long on that bleak possibility. He clawed his way across the wheelhouse to the engine-room telegraph and rang for half ahead. The ship was pitching and tossing as well as rolling heavily, and possibly the propellor would be coming clear of the water as the stern rose. Prior sighed. It was all a great nuisance, upsetting the normal uneventful course of things. Some people might say it made a nice change, but Prior was far too old to desire any such change; all he wanted was to finish his time at sea as peacefully as possible and retire to a little pig farm with what savings he had been able to put away and any pension that he might be fortunate enough to get. But one could not order the weather.

He caught a glance from the helmsman. The man was standing with his feet wide apart, thin hands gripping the wheel, lips compressed. Prior thought he detected a question in the glance; doubt; perhaps fear also. This small dark man of a different race, a different background, was looking to him for reassurance. Perhaps somewhere he had a wife, children, waiting for his return.

“It’s all right,” Prior said gruffly. “All right.” And hoped it might be.

Mr. Finch lifted his face from Moira Lycett’s breasts and stood up, holding on to the upper bunk for support.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do that. I was taken off balance.”

She gave no indication that she had even noticed what he was saying. She was listening to the other sounds, the much more fearsome sounds that came from outside, like an enraged monster furiously striving to break in.

“It’s getting worse, isn’t it? Much worse.” She seemed for the moment to have forgotten the errand that had brought the young third mate to her cabin. “The ship might—” She hesitated, as though fearful of putting the awful possibility into words.

Finch saw that she was afraid. “The ship is not in any danger,” he said, striving to put into his voice that confidence which he did not altogether feel. “No danger at all.”

Moira Lycett gripped his free hand. “Are you sure? Quite sure?”

“Yes,” Finch said, “I am sure.” But he knew that it was a lie. He was not sure at all. How could he be sure? Ships could sink even in these days in certain conditions. The conditions were right for sinking the
Chetwynd.

He said, “I must go.”

She gripped his hand more tightly. “Don’t leave me. I’m afraid. Stay with me.”

“I can’t.” It occurred to him that it was perhaps not quite decorous to be there at all. Moira Lycett was lightly clad to say the least. His nervous glance rested for a moment on certain aspects of her body and shied away. “Yes, I must go.”

He drew his hand away from hers, went out of the cabin and closed the door. He felt sorry for the woman; she was sick, she was afraid, and now there was this other ordeal that she would have to face. But there was nothing he could do for her. Nothing.

He supposed he ought still to be looking for Major Lycett, but where to look? He was still turning this question over in his mind when he saw the serang. The serang was wearing an oilskin coat which glistened with water; water dripped from him on to the alleyway floor. He stood in front of Finch, gripping the handrail, and began to speak rapidly.

“Sir, there is a man injured. He fall from bunk, hit head on iron, cut open. Much blood, sir, very much blood. This man is bad. Unconscious, sir. Must have doctor very quick.”

“We don’t carry a doctor.”

“No ship’s doctor, no. But there is a little passenger, sir; he is doctor. He will come.”

“Dr. Menstein!” Finch could hardly imagine him crossing that afterdeck in such a storm; he would be swept away. He shook his head. “How do you expect him to get to the poop?”

The serang answered earnestly, “You help him, sir.”

“I?” The prospect of crossing that deck filled Mr. Finch himself with terror. Even inside the accommodation he could hear the seas that were sweeping over the bulwarks. “I?”

“Yes, you, sir. Matter of life and death, sir. Hurry, sir. Fetch little doctor. Hurry.” He turned away. “I go back now, sir. You come quickly.” In a moment he was gone.

Finch groaned. Here was another responsibility. For a moment he thought of doing nothing, simply ignoring the serang’s request. But he knew that he could not do that; it would all come out later and then he would be in trouble.
He decided to go for Menstein; perhaps the little doctor would refuse to go and that would let him out. Yes, almost certainly Menstein would refuse.

He found Menstein and Holt about to leave the mate’s cabin. They had lifted Mr. Johansen’s body on to the bunk and covered it with a sheet. For the present there was little else they could do. Captain Leach had gone away; he had other duties pressing upon him now.

“Have you found the major?” Holt asked.

Finch told him that he had not. “He’s not in his cabin. Hasn’t been in since before ten.”

“Well, he can’t get away.”

“Something else has cropped up,” Finch said. He told them about the injured seaman. “Of course you don’t have to go to him, Dr. Menstein. Frankly, I don’t know whether you could get across the afterdeck in this sea.” He was giving Menstein every opportunity to refuse.

Menstein looked as though he wanted to do just that. “It is a terrible night,” he said, and he tilted his head a little on one side, listening to the fearful sounds of the storm. “Is it possible to cross the deck?”

“The serang must have managed,” Holt said.

“The serang is an experienced seaman,” Finch pointed out.

“You could help Dr. Menstein.”

Finch stammered slightly. “I couldn’t guarantee his safety.”

“A man is badly injured. His life could be in danger.”

“Dr. Menstein’s life could be in danger.”

“It is for him to decide.”

“I will go,” Menstein said, and he squared his narrow shoulders and drew himself up like a man facing his inescapable duty.

Finch gave a sigh of resignation. “Very well. I’ll get you an oilskin coat.”

“I’ll come too,” Holt said. “You may need an extra hand.”

Finch stared at him in disbelief. “You? Do you mean you’re volunteering to go out there?”

Holt grinned. “I always did want to see a real storm.”

The wheelhouse door opened. A man came in. The door slammed shut, driven by a great gust of wind and rain. Mr. Prior recognised the new arrival as Captain Leach and he was glad to see him. Things were becoming altogether too unpleasant for the second mate’s taste.

Leach stood for a few seconds just inside the wheelhouse, hanging on and breathing heavily, water dripping from his sou’wester and oilskins. When he had got his breath back he said, “What course are we on, Mr. Prior?”

Prior told him, shouting to make himself heard above the racket. Leach directed him to alter it by thirty degrees to starboard, bringing the ship on to a more westerly course.

“We shall have the wind more on our beam then.” Prior objected.

“It’ll take us away from the centre of the storm. Give the order.”

Prior gave the order with some misgivings and heard it repeated by the helmsman. He did not follow Leach’s reasoning, but Leach had given all the explanation he was likely to give and his was the final word.

Leach himself was not absolutely certain that his judgement was correct, but he had a picture of the storm in his mind, of winds revolving clockwise round a still centre, the eye; but in the eye a mass of turbulent water, no place for a ship. Judging by the direction of the wind he believed they
were on the western fringes of the storm, which would undoubtedly be travelling southward. Therefore, the farther west he could bring his ship the better it would be.

He wondered why there had been no warning. Cyclones, willy-willies, call them what you would, did not spring up in a moment; their course was known by the weather men; ships were informed over the radio.

“Was there no broadcast report of this, Mr. Prior?”

“None. The radio is out of action.”

Leach, his head aching with the hangover, his tongue dry, thought of Maggs. The radio could not have been out of action for more than twenty-four hours; not as long as that. Maggs had brought weather reports earlier; no hint in them of cyclonic storms. And there should have been. Had Maggs suppressed the information, given false reports? On the face of it, it seemed unlikely. What reason could there be for him to do so? What did he stand to gain?

He dismissed the question from his mind; there were other matters calling for his attention. Whether Maggs had or had not falsified the reports made no difference now; the storm was there; it had to be fought.

He started to move towards the binnacle, and as he did so a white monster reared up in front of the wheelhouse and crashed down upon it with terrible force. The windows shattered under the weight of water and the helmsman staggered back screaming, his face slashed by splinters of flying glass.

It was the monstrous shrieking of the wind that impressed Holt most when they stepped out from the midships accommodation and began the perilous crossing to the poop. He had said that he wanted to see what a real storm was like, and there could be no doubt that this was indeed a real one. There
was lightning, there was thunder, there was rain, there were great waves like snow-capped mountains in the night; but it was the wind that filled him with awe. He would not have believed that there could be such a wind; it was like an invisible battering-ram, bludgeoning body and mind; it drove the rain and the spray before it, lashing the men as if with a whip.

They clung to the rails at the head of the ladder leading down to the afterdeck, and Menstein seemed to become even smaller, shrinking into himself.

“We cannot do it.”

Holt could scarcely catch the words for the din, but he guessed what the little doctor was saying. He tried to encourage him. “They’ve fixed a rope down there. Just hold on to the rope. Mr. Finch will lead the way.”

Finch seemed not at all keen to do that, but Holt urged him on, and he went down the ladder backwards, clinging on tightly with both hands.

“Now you, doctor,” Holt shouted.

In the sudden glare of lightning he caught a glimpse of Menstein’s face turned to him and saw the fear that Menstein could not disguise. He put a hand on the other man’s shoulder. “It’s all right. Just hold on. I’ll be right behind you.”

Menstein, like a man walking into his own private hell, began to descend the ladder and Holt followed. Holt was carrying the medical kit tied up in a waterproof bag and slung by a cord over his shoulder, and he could feel the wind tugging at it as though intent on tearing it from him. Ten seconds later all three of them were clinging to the lifeline.

The ship seemed to be moving in half a dozen different planes at the same time. She was rocked by the wind, tossed
this way and that by the mountainous seas, lifted, dropped, turned on her axis like the board of a seesaw, and never for a single moment allowed to have any rest, any respite from the ferocious battering. A cork could not have been treated more contemptuously, could not with greater ease have been flung from one wave to the next.

“Come on,” Finch shouted, his voice almost drowned by the tumult. “Come on now.”

They began to move along the rope, and seas came over the bulwarks, thundering down on the deck, washing over the hatches, swirling round the winches, and engulfing the men to the waist, even to the armpits. Holt heard Menstein utter a cry of despair; one of Menstein’s hands had been torn from its grip on the rope; he could not hold on against such a pressure of water; he had not enough strength.

Holt saw what was happening. He stretched out an arm and got it round Menstein’s chest, supporting him, feeling wildly exhilarated by this battle with the elements, so that fear had no part of him. He would beat the sea and the wind; he would get Menstein to his goal if it was the last thing he did.

And he did get him there. They came to the shelter of the poop and went in, dripping sea water like men rescued from drowning. Finch slammed the door behind them and the sound of the storm was muffled; now it mingled with the creaking and rattling of the after-castle, with all those innumerable internal noises that told of the life and death struggle of the hard-pressed ship. The atmosphere was oppressive, full of thick odours—oil and paint, spices and sweat.