The Golden Reef (1969) (5 page)

They had enlarged the opening to about seven or eight inches. Through it they could see some twisted iron, a smashed ventilator, and beyond an arc of sea and sky. Freedom was tantalizingly near and yet beyond their reach; for at this point the door had stopped again, resisting all their efforts to lever it further.

Keeton dropped the rifle. ‘Call it a day. No use wrenching our guts out any more. As far as that door is concerned, we’ve had it.’

Bristow slumped down on a box and put his head in his hands. His body was shaking, possibly from exertion, possibly from the bitterness of his disappointment after such high hopes of escape.

‘We’re here for good now. We’ll never get out.’

Keeton said nothing. He leaned against the wall of the magazine and his head ached. His whole body ached, as though it had been through a concrete mixer.

‘We might as well have saved our energy‚’ Bristow said. He leaped up in a sudden frenzy, grabbed the rifle and swung it against the door. The door clanged sullenly and did not move.

‘That won’t do any good‚’ Keeton said.

Bristow dropped the rifle and began to weep.

Keeton looked at the gap. Through it a wedge of sunlight made its way, laying a golden finger on the boxes of ammunition. Keeton looked at the gap and then down at his own lean body. It might be possible. It would be a tight squeeze, but it might just be possible.

He began to strip off his shirt and trousers.

Bristow stared at him. ‘What are you up to now? Have you gone crazy?’

‘I’m going to try to get out.’

Bristow gripped Keeton’s arm. ‘You aren’t going to slip out and leave me here. You know I couldn’t get through that hole. I don’t want to be left alone in here. You got to stay with me.’

Keeton shook off Bristow’s hand. ‘Don’t be a fool, man. If I get out I can do something about getting you out, too.’

‘That’s a promise, Charlie? You won’t go off and leave me?’

‘Where in hell d’you think I’d go? The buses don’t run on this route.’

Bristow still seemed reluctant to let Keeton out of his sight, but he saw the force of the argument.

‘You’ll help me out then? You’ll do that before anything else?’

‘Don’t fret yourself‚’ Keeton said. ‘I’ll do it. But first I’ve got to get myself out.’

He eased himself into the gap sideways and the harsh metal tore at his naked skin. He managed to get nearly halfway through and there he became stuck fast with the iron pressing hard against his ribs so that he could hardly breathe.

‘Push me, Johnnie‚’ he gasped. ‘Push me.’

He felt Bristow’s soft hands on his left shoulder, pressing him into the gap. The metal ground into his flesh and blood began to flow. He was in agony.

‘Push, damn you, Johnnie! Push!’

The pressure of Bristow’s hands increased. They were like big rubber pads thrusting him into the jaws of a vice, and the constriction of his chest was almost unbearable. His right arm and his right leg were free and he could feel the hot sun on them; but struggle as he might, the rest of his body would not follow.

‘Harder, Johnnie, harder. Put your weight into it.’

‘I don’t want to hurt you‚’ Bristow said.

‘Hurt me and be damned to it.’ Nothing that Bristow did now could increase the agony; already it seemed as though he were being flayed. ‘Damn your eyes, Johnnie, why don’t you push?’

‘All right then‚’ Bristow said. ‘If that’s the way you want it.’

He leaned his full weight on Keeton. Keeton gave a yell of pain, and then the pressure was off and he was free; he could breathe again and above him was the wide arch of the sky. It looked good.

He had fallen on the deck and for a while he lay there, letting the pain subside, breathing deeply. Then he became aware of Bristow’s voice, a little anxious.

‘Are you all right, Charlie?’

Keeton sat up. And then he saw the man lying face downward on the deck. He saw the man and knew that it was Hagan, not only because there were crossed anchors on his sleeve but also because the man had no right ear, and that was how he had last seen Hagan, so many ages ago, with the right ear severed from his head and a wild look in his eyes.

He got to his feet and walked along the tilting deck until he could look down at Hagan. He could see now why the petty officer did not move, why he would never move again. There was a hole in the back of Hagan’s head, a hole with matted hair and congealed blood at the edges. Yet, apart from this, the body appeared to be undamaged. And this, in itself, was a small miracle, for when Keeton gazed about him he could see the havoc that the shell had wrought.

The other bodies littered the deck like so much garbage. They
lay in grotesque, unnatural attitudes, some without arms or legs, some headless, some with their stomachs torn open, reeking in the sun. They were all there, all the gunners. Keeton counted them slowly and felt himself growing older as he counted, as though the ages of all these dead men were being piled one upon another and added to his own age. He would never be a boy again. He knew now that there was no dignity in death. Death was the last, bad, tasteless joke. The bodies reeked of death.

He dragged his attention away from them at last and for the first time saw what it was that was holding the door of the magazine. The shell had destroyed the gun-deck; it had ripped up the metal, torn the gun from its mounting and thrown it on its side. The blast of the explosion must have swung the barrel in a semicircle until it came to rest with the muzzle jammed against the magazine. Keeton was not surprised that he and Bristow had been unable to force the door open wider; the wonder was that they had been able to move it as far as they had.

He heard Bristow’s voice again. He had in fact been vaguely aware of the sound for some time, but it had been a meaningless intrusion upon his thoughts and he had paid it no attention. Now, suddenly, it seemed to break through the barrier of his preoccupation and impinge upon his consciousness.

‘What are you doing, Charlie? Where you got to? When are you going to get me out of here?’

At the same time Keeton became aware of his own nakedness, of the blood running down his chest and stomach. An uncontrollable trembling seized him and his legs were drained of strength. He wanted to be sick.

‘Charlie, where are you?’

‘Here, Johnnie, here.’

He walked on his rubber legs to the door of the magazine and pressed his forehead against the iron. He saw Bristow’s sweating face and the fear in Bristow’s eyes.

‘What you been doing?’

‘Numbering the gun crew‚’ Keeton said, and he could taste the bitterness in his mouth. ‘All present and correct. Cancel that. All present but not correct. Oh, God, never correct again. Never.’

‘Have you gone mad?’

Maybe he had. It was enough to send any man round the bend.

‘Hagan’s there, but they made a hole in his head and his brains leaked out.’

‘Dead?’

‘They’re all dead. Gimme my clothes.’

He was sick then, and his vomit splashed on the deck. He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and the bitter taste was still on his tongue.

Bristow pushed his clothes through the gap and he put them on.

‘What’s holding the door?’ Bristow asked.

‘It’s the gun. The barrel’s been thrown round this way. That must have been one hell of an explosion.’

‘Can you shift it?’

‘My name’s Charles Keeton, not Hercules.’

Bristow began to whine. ‘You can’t just leave me in here. You’ve got to do something.’

‘All right‚’ Keeton said. ‘Just hold your yap.’

He examined the gun barrel resting against the door. There was certainly some weight there, but perhaps he could find a way of shifting it.

‘I’ll have to find some tackle‚’ he told Bristow. ‘You sit tight for a while.’

‘What else can I do?’

‘You have a point there‚’ Keeton admitted.

He walked to the head of the ladder leading down to the afterdeck on the starboard side. Except for the list the deck looked normal; but the port bulwarks were dipping low, and now and then a wave would slop over and gurgle away down the scuppers. There was not a man to be seen.

Between the two hatches was a small deck-house which had been used to store gear, and Keeton hoped that in this he would find what he needed. He went down the ladder with one hand on the rail to steady himself, and the unnatural silence of the ship was awe-inspiring. Only the occasional slap and gurgle of water broke the silence; that and the subdued whining of wind in the rigging that was like a faint echo of the storm that had passed.

Keeton reached the deck-house and turned the catches of the door. He pulled the door open and hooked it back and stepped into the deck-house. Here, amongst a jumble of equipment, he found what he wanted, a small tackle consisting of a rope and two blocks with hooks attached. With this and another length of rope slung over his shoulder he made his way back along the sloping deck to the poop.

Bristow heard him coming and began to shout at once. ‘Where you been? I thought you was never coming back. You don’t hurry yourself on my account, do you?’

‘If you don’t hold your yap‚’ Keeton said, ‘I’ll let you stay in there and you can eat the ammunition.’

Bristow subsided at once. ‘I didn’t mean no offence, Charlie. I know you’re doing your best.’

With the help of the rope he had brought Keeton fastened one of the blocks to the muzzle of the gun, then ran the other block out until he could fix it to a stanchion. When he tightened the pulley rope he was able to put pressure on the barrel and he knew that if he could pull hard enough the barrel must slide away from the door. The question was, had he the strength to do it?

He set his feet firmly on the deck and hauled. The rope slid through the sheaves and became taut. He pulled harder and the barrel made a small grinding noise. It moved perhaps an inch and then stopped. Keeton rested for a few seconds and tried again. The barrel did not move.

Bristow’s anxious voice came from the magazine. ‘How’s it going?’

‘It isn’t‚’ Keeton said. He dropped the rope and examined the gun. At once it became apparent that the barrel would not move because the traversing wheel was jammed in a tangle of twisted metal. To pull the barrel away from the door it would have been necessary to rotate the entire gun mounting, and this, although tilted to one side, was still firmly joined to the pedestal. It was a task that no one man, even with the aid of tackle, could hope to perform.

He shouted to Bristow: ‘I’m going to fetch a hammer.’

He went again to the deck-house on the after-deck and found
a 14-pound sledge and brought it back to the poop. Half a dozen accurate blows were enough to smash the traversing wheel of the gun and release the gear. With that accomplished he dropped the sledge-hammer and returned to the tackle.

‘Now‚’ he muttered. ‘Now, you swine.’

The barrel moved so easily that he almost lost his balance.

‘Come out, Johnnie‚’ he shouted. ‘Come out while you’ve got the chance.’

Bristow came out. Keeton let the rope go and the barrel swung back to its former position, slamming the door shut with a hollow clang.

Keeton said: ‘Well, you’re out, and you had an easier job than I did. Now you won’t have to feed on cordite. But that’s only the first of our worries settled.’ He looked at the sea around them. It stretched away to the distant circle of the horizon, an undulating desert of water with no sign of a ship or a boat or a raft anywhere upon its shifting surface. ‘We’ve got other problems now.’

Bristow was staring at the corpses and his face looked yellow. ‘Oh, God! Oh, my God!’

‘We’ll have to get them overboard‚’ Keeton said. ‘They’re beginning to stink.’

Bristow drew away fearfully, his eyes wide with horror and his lips trembling. ‘I’m not touching them. I couldn’t do it.’

Keeton took three paces and gripped Bristow’s shirt. ‘The job’s got to be done and you’ll help me do it.’ He released Bristow and turned away. ‘But we’ll get something into our bellies first. Maybe we’ll feel better then.’

‘I couldn’t eat nothing‚’ Bristow said. He kept glancing at the dead men and then away again. ‘I feel sick.’

‘Be sick then and get rid of it. I’ve been sick.’

‘You have?’ Bristow looked surprised at this admission. ‘I thought you—’

‘Thought I had a cast-iron stomach? Well, I haven’t. Who has? All right then, get on with it. Spew your guts up and let’s be moving.’

Bristow moved to the rail and leaned over. Keeton did not wait for him; he walked to the starboard ladder and descended to the after-deck.

Now he had leisure to take a really good look at the mid-castle and he saw the wreckage there. The funnel had disintegrated; there were a few pieces of twisted metal that might once have been part of it, but the tall stack that had so often belched black smoke was there no more; it had been brushed aside as though by a contemptuous sweep of a Titan’s hand. Without it the boat-deck looked strangely flat, its most distinctive feature having disappeared, and there was an unobstructed view of the bridge.

Two boats had gone – both from the port side. One of the starboard boats had been sliced in halves, and these two halves were hanging from the davits, useless lumps of timber. The one other boat was still in its launching position, and from a distance it appeared to be in good order; but Keeton realized that there might be damage which would only be seen on closer examination. He did not place much hope in that craft.

It was obvious that the
Valparaiso
had truly been abandoned; the blocks dangling from the port davits told only too eloquently of a hurried departure, of the panic of men who feared that their ship was sinking. It was not the first time that a vessel had been abandoned in the mistaken belief that it was doomed. And yet the ship was still afloat; it had a stouter heart than the men who had sailed in it.

‘It was Rains‚’ Keeton muttered. ‘It must have been. That scared bastard.’

There could be no other explanation than that Rains had taken fright and had left the ship too hastily, concerned only with saving his own skin. Things would have been different if Captain Peterson had still been giving the orders; he surely would never have run from his ship while there remained the slightest hope of saving her. But Rains was of another calibre; Jones and Wall too. No doubt they had bundled the paralysed master into a boat and carried him away without consulting his wishes. Perhaps he had been in no condition to express any wish.

Bristow, rid of his vomit, caught up with Keeton and together they crossed the after-deck.

‘So they’re all gone‚’ Bristow said. ‘May they rot in hell.’

‘More likely to rot in the Pacific. It was a bad sea for open boats.’

‘Serve them right if they have gone down. I knew something like this would happen with that useless swine Rains in charge. I said so. You heard me say so, didn’t you?’

‘What if I did?’ Keeton said wearily. He had no patience with Bristow. ‘Whether you said so or whether you didn’t makes no difference to us now. We’re on our own, Johnnie, and we’ve got to work out our own salvation.’

A door on the port side of the mid-castle opened into an alleyway which gave access to the galley, and it was this that drew the two men, thirsty and hungry as they were.