In Hazard

  Presently the pumps began their painful and poisonous vomiting once more.

  It may have killed the fish, but it put wonderful new heart into the crew of the “Archimedes”: and as the level of water in the after holds fell they sang, and worked like blazes. In their zeal they smashed for firewood even objects that were not really seriously damaged. For there were a few of these, after all, saved in a miraculous way. The book-case in the smoking room, for instance: a flimsy affair with a glass front. It had fallen on its face on the floor, and in some unaccountable way not even the glass was broken. Yet a saloon table, I told you, had been snapped off its clamped legs. It was not as if the book-case contained a Bible—you could not even find a superstitious reason for its being saved. It only contained ordinary literature.

  Another pretty miraculous thing, when you come to think of it, was that nobody had been killed. Things had been happening all round them as lethal as an air-raid: yet there were no casualties. Not even a broken bone. Everyone, nearly, was cut and bruised, but that was all. The worst sufferer was Mr. Soutar: at one moment the heaviest midshipman had been flung onto a particularly bad bunion he had; and he had yelled with agony. He limped from it still.

  II

  By sight of a star at dawn, and a solar sight later, Captain Edwardes was at last able to fix his position. Being so far from his estimated position, the calculation took him some time. And when he plotted the result on the chart, he rubbed his eyes. He was away a hundred miles north of Cape Gracias: all banks passed. The storm had carried him nearly four hundred miles from the point at which it had struck him: in five days. Moreover it had probably not taken him direct there: curving, they had probably drifted at least a hundred miles a day. An average speed of four knots—travelled, for the most part, broadside on. Of course, a speed through the water of four knots, broadside on, was hardly possible. The storm must have carried the sea along with it too. And indeed, when he examined the chart, he saw that his earlier surmise must have been true: that the sea was raised up, near the centre of the storm, in a flattish cone, with a circular motion (only slower) like that of the wind: and so they had passed safely over banks they could never have crossed if the sea had been at its normal level!

  The first thing he did, of course, when he found his position was to announce it to the “Patricia”: and when he got her reply, he was thankful. For this steam raised on wood—it was after all only make-believe. It enabled them to do a bit of pumping: or when in tow, perhaps it would work the steering-gear. It could work the fans: but he knew very well the fans alone could never get the main furnaces going, from cold, without a main funnel. It could never really enable them to raise main steam again.

  Nevertheless, it had served two useful purposes. Most of them knew that yesterday, the day the storm had abandoned them, had been the most dangerous day of all. For six hours at least the ship might have sunk any minute. Without hard and hopeful work could these worn men have borne the strain? That was one thing: and there was another. They would presently have to be taken in tow by the salvage vessel: and the salvage the Owners would have to pay would in any case be very heavy. But salvage is proportional to the helplessness of the vessel salved. Captain Edwardes might save them a lot off the award, if the “Archimedes” had at least auxiliary steam on her.

  Meanwhile the engineers continued pumping: and the Deck set about a new task. They borrowed a little steam for a winch, to haul some hawsers up on deck. They were preparing a tow-rope. For by now they were in constant communication with the “Patricia”: already acting largely under her orders. And to all other offers of assistance a general reply was sent: thanks, but it was not needed.

  It was at one that midday that the “Patricia” was sighted. First, her smoke above the horizon. Thereupon (since the “Archimedes’s” little whiff would hardly be visible to her) Edwardes wirelessed his bearing to her: and she was soon close.

  She looked like a small black steamer, rather than a tug.

  She steamed right round the “Archimedes,” taking a good look at her. Well she might! I doubt if she had ever seen a vessel looking like the “Archimedes” floating the sea. You see vessels like the “Archimedes” lying up on a reef somewhere, sometimes: but you do not see them floating on the sea.

  Then she stopped, and lowered a boat. Sixteen men climbed into it, and rowed across. It was a romantic sight, these sixteen men coming to the rescue of the stricken vessel. Captain Edwardes on the bridge counted them—sixteen. And Dick also counted them, as he stood at the rail, waiting to lower a pilot-ladder to them (for both gangways were gone). Sixteen.

  Sixteen men! Captain Edwardes was almost too shaken to speak. “Mr. Buxton,” he said, “stand by that pilot-ladder and allow no man on board but the master only.”

  Buxton picked up a thick piece of wood: gave another to Dick:

  “If anyone but the master tries to board us, club him back into the sea!”

  Other officers joined them.

  Captain Abraham was standing in the boat’s sternsheets: his bow-man laid hold of the ladder.

  “Keep your men in the boat, Captain,” roared Edwardes from the bridge. “I allow no man on board but yourself!”

  “What the hell, Captain,” Captain Abraham began: “I insist ...”

  Then he looked up at the line of faces at the ship’s rail. They were faces as ravaged as the ship itself: maniac faces. Mr. Soutar, a length of iron pipe in his hand, was even foaming at the mouth: a fleck blew from his lips and slanted into the sea, where it floated. Dick felt the rage of his companions fill him; he too was trembling with rage. All these men, to board their ship!

  “... Stay where you are,” Captain Abraham said quietly to his men, and climbed the ladder alone.

  He passed through the silent guard: who took no notice of him, their eyes never leaving for a moment the boat below; only Mr. Buxton followed him, and he climbed to the lower bridge.

  There the two Captains met: and shook hands.

  “I congratulate you, Captain,” said the stranger.

  “Thank you,” said Edwardes. “Come into my cabin.”

  So the three of them entered the captain’s cabin. Captain Edwardes produced a bottle of gin from a cupboard, doing the honours as host. Each took a ceremonial sip.

  After that, they talked business: signed Lloyd’s contract. The destination was to be Belize, in British Honduras.

  Captain Edwardes now looked sane enough: so Abraham ventured to ask him: “Why won’t you allow my men on board?”

  Edwardes turned red as a colonel, his neck swelling over his collar.

  “I allow no man on board without my permission.”

  “Why?” said Abraham bluntly: “Have you got an infectious disease on board?”

  “If I refuse permission, no man on earth has a right to ask my reason!” cried Edwardes, thumping the table.

  “Well, I’m in charge of salvaging this vessel, and I insist on having my men!”

  “Your men can work for you on your own ship, they won’t work on mine!” said Captain Edwardes.

  Abraham rose to his feet: “Then I shall tear up this contract,” he said.

  “You can tear up your own copy if you like,” said Edwardes: “but I don’t tear up my copy, and you have signed it.”

  Captain Abraham was bewildered: simply did not know what to do. After all, he was responsible that the towing line was properly fixed. His own men were experts at the job, it was their business. These lunatic scarecrows! How could he rely on them to do it? And besides, his human heart told him that what these men needed was rest, not more work.

  “Captain Edwardes,” he said: “do you imagine that if I use my own men it’s going to affect the salvage claim?”

  A flicker of Edwardes’s eyes betrayed that one nail at least was hit on the head. But he answered in a strangled voice:

  “I’ll have you know, Captain, that anything needful on this ship my own men can do. We don’t need any help from strangers to work our o
wn ship, thank you—what do you think my men are? Passengers?”

  This was no ordinary situation, to be dealt with by cold logic. Such high-pitched emotion could only be answered in the same key. Captain Abraham rose from his seat, moved into the centre of the cabin, and there fell on both his knees. He lifted his right hand above his head, fixed his worldly, hatchet-face in as other-worldly an expression as he could manage:

  “Captain!” he said, “I swear by Almighty God, that if I have my own men on board to fix the tow it shall not affect the salvage question not by one jot nor one tittle! Nor it don’t derogate any from your crew! I swear by Almighty God that it’s just the usual procedure!”

  “Very well,” said Captain Edwardes, a tear in his eye: “Mr. Buxton, let them come up.”

  It is an uncommon sight nowadays, that: to see one captain, in his uniform, kneeling in another captain’s cabin.

  III

  They took the “Archimedes’s” towing wire, and passing the eye over one of her bits made a great loop, bringing the wire back to the same bit and securing it. Then they carried it across the deck, and made a similar bridle on the other bow. With an enormous iron shackle they fastened a heavy manila cable into these two loops jointly: and towing began. What steam the “Archimedes” still possessed was turned on to her steering gear. For it makes a big difference if the vessel being towed can steer. Otherwise she will sheer about: and it is that, often as not, which snaps the tow-line, or even turns the tow right over.

  The men from the “Patricia” treated the “Archimedes’s” men with courtesy and respect. Partly this was a natural feeling—honouring men who have achieved something stupendous, and to have lived through these five days was itself stupendous. Partly it was like the oriental’s respect for the madman. They had not forgotten their welcome—those scowling faces, those menacing clubs. You had to mind your eye with these chaps—Yes, sir!

  Captain Abraham, guessing that catering on the “Archimedes” might present difficulties, had the supper for his sixteen men cooked on his own ship, and sent across. When it arrived, the “Archimedes’s” men never thought for a moment it was not meant for them: they gathered round and wolfed it in two shakes. The “Patricia’s” took it very well—raised no protest as they saw their supper going. God, how those men ate! They must be short of food.

  So then Captain Abraham enquired, and Captain Edwardes admitted it: yes, they were a bit short of food, and drink. Captain Abraham, secretly ashamed that he had not enquired before, sent across a small supply of provisions and water to the “Archimedes.” But he could not send over much, or he would have run short himself.

  It was in the late afternoon, not long before sunset, that Dick descried an island, almost right ahead. It was Swan Island: one of a lonely little pair a hundred miles from the nearest other land. Edwardes was heartily glad the storm had dropped him when it did, had not driven him on that island. For no tidal wave in the world could have lifted them over the sixty-foot line of cliffs that for half a mile fringe the eastern side.

  Ordinarily, these cliffs are crowned with trees—for it is a guano island, plaguy fertile. But as they drew near, Captain Edwardes noticed the trees were gone. The brow of the cliff was bald as a roughly plucked chicken, and showing the same occasional broken stumps.

  Captain Edwardes scanned it with his binoculars.

  “Seem to have caught it a bit on land, too,” he said to Captain Abraham.

  “I’ll say they have!” said Captain Abraham. “We’re darned lucky to be at sea. The hurricane hit Cuba last night—just the western end. Do you know Santa Lucia?—No, I guess you wouldn’t: it’s a little coasting port in the Canal di Guaniguanicos. Only small craft ever put in there: one of the old buccaneering hide-outs, I’ve been told. I had a radio this morning. A tidal wave hit the town, and drowned two thousand people. That’s about all there was living there, I should reckon. Washed it right out.”

  (That same tidal wave which, by lifting them over the reefs had saved their lives!)

  “And we haven’t lost a man!” said Captain Edwardes: “Captain, the Lord our God is very merciful!”

  Captain Abraham cleared his throat in an embarrassed way.

  By the time they passed the islands, at their slow pace, it was dark—too dark to see how the guano station on the western island had fared. But there were no lights to be seen.

  IV

  The officers ate their share of the supper in the saloon, as usual: but all somehow crowded round two tables, since the third was smashed. Deck and engine-room mixed at last.

  Dick could not get the memory of that Chinaman he had arrested out of his head: so that he ventured to ask the Captain:

  “That Chinaman, Sir, you ordered under arrest: what is going to be done with him?”

  “He’ll be sent back to Hongkong. Then I expect he’ll be extradited to Canton, by the Chinese authorities.”

  “And then, Sir?”

  Captain Edwardes pulled an imaginary trigger in the air.

  “Good God alive!” Dick dropped his fork, suddenly unable to eat.

  Captain Edwardes sighed.

  “I don’t like it either,” he said: “but we have our duty to do. And I don’t think you need waste any pity on him. He’s a bandit—that means he has probably murdered and tortured countless innocent people.”

  Dick sat silent, all the missionary stories of Chinese tortures that he had ever read rising in his mind. Could this decent-looking fireman have really done them? Toasted babies? Cut off old men’s eyelids, and buried them up to the neck in sand? And that one with the ants (he could not remember quite how it is done)?

  Perhaps he had. You can’t tell by an oriental’s face whether he is wicked or not—not like an Englishman.

  But he was so light—he couldn’t weigh more than seven stone.

  “Dinna alloo your min’ tae dwell on it, Mr. Watchett,” Mr. MacDonald broke in. “Shootin’ is naught tae a Chinaman. They dinna min’ daith, whit way a whit’ mon min’s it. It’s a scienteefic fack that a Chinaman has fewer nairves in his body than whit we ha’e; they canna feel pain. Nearer beasts than men, they are!”

  MacDonald rose, and went out onto the deck, walking aft to the shattered poop.

  The pumping of the after hold had raised her stern a little, but on the lower side the sea still seemed very close. Leaning on a bit of rail, Mr. MacDonald gazed at the sea. The sky was thick with a multitude of stars, of all ranges of brilliance. The water broke in phosphorescence, their faint streaming replica. Aft, a white light at last winked out on the island astern of them.

  The luminous water flowed by like a river.

  How he hated the water! Hated it as if it had been another man. But now he was saved from it: it would not drown him this time. Thereupon Mr. MacDonald made a vow to himself, that it should not get another chance. He would retire. True, he had meant to wait another year or two. But these days had aged him more than a year or two. And he had a bit of money laid by, in the bank: enough to live on. True, the bairns had not finished their schooling. Well, if Jean wanted to go to High-school she must work for scholarships, the same as he had. He had earned a rest.

  He turned his back on the hated sea: climbed onto the rail and sat there, like a boy. He began to think of the paradise-life he would lead, when he had retired from the sea. Some trim-clipt bushes, with a neatly swept path between. There in Gloucestershire? True, it was far from the sea. But mebbe he would go back near his old home, in Dumbartonshire.

  Now that he had firmly resolved to leave the sea, that little hard, feverish knot in his mind, whose continual spinning had kept him for five days and nights from even a wink of sleep, seemed to dissolve. There was a pool of sleep in his mind, in which it melted fast. Suddenly—with no warning at all—deep sleep overcame him: and he fell off the rail backwards into the sea.

  The shock of the water, of course, woke him, and he swam for quite a time.

  Chapter XIV

  (Tuesday)

&n
bsp; Dick’s mind was rather deeply affected by the arrest of Ao Ling: and neither the Captain nor Mr. MacDonald had really relieved him. Like most white young men, he had not really looked on the Chinese as human until he had touched one. In consequence, the shock of that touch had been much greater than it would have been in the case of another white man. If he had been grappling with a white man, he would have known what to expect, in the way of feel: whereas the feel of Ao Ling took him quite by surprise.

  Moreover, Ao Ling was the first man he had ever knocked out: he was not prepared for what a satisfying pleasure that can be.

  But it is the curious mood that succeeded this satisfactory instant which puzzles me. Why should he have found the feel of Ao Ling, as he carried him to the hospital, so curiously reminiscent of the feel of Sukie, as he carried her to the sofa? Was it just because they were much the same weight, and both had smooth skins?

  Whatever the reason, he could not get the man’s fate out of his mind, he kept going over it, again and again: was inordinately concerned about it. It fell to his lot to accompany the Captain and the doctor on their inspection, the next morning. His heart beat rather wildly, at the thought of seeing Ao Ling face to face. What would a man who is going to be executed look like? Surely he would not look like other men: certain death must surely set its seal beforehand on a face. And what would Ao Ling feel, when he saw the man who had seized him? Who had set his wheels, as it were, on the track that ran straight down to death?

  Ao Ling was sitting on the bed, when they came in: his elbows on his knees, his manacled hands supporting his chin. His straight black hair stood forward from his forehead. Only the flat nose, the habitually parted lips, really showed. But he looked up: saw Dick’s curiously inquisitive gaze fastened on him. He had in fact no memory at all of whose sudden blow had felled him. He stared back, in surprise.

  Dick stared as if his eyes were gimlets. But he could make nothing of the Chinaman’s expression. Stare, stare.—But how could those two young men see beyond each other’s eyes? They were both the same age; and in some ways, very similar. But their upbringings had been very different.