It may be that one of these explosions damaged the spray-nipples. The hole through these is not straight: there is a screw down the middle, so that the oil is forced to race round and round its thread, faster and faster as it approaches the aperture, acquiring turbulence. Perhaps that broke. Or perhaps some impurity escaped the hot-filter, and clogged the passage. Or perhaps it was just insufficient draught. Anyhow, the jets ceased to work. Instead of coming out vaporised (or more strictly, pulverised) the oil was dribbling through, liquid. Though hot enough, all the same, to burn.
Even then, they were too keen to stop. Hot oil was running out of the furnace doors, onto the donkey-room floor: but still they kept on. At first they hardly noticed, when that spilt oil caught fire. So in a few minutes the whole place was flooded with liquid fire, in which the engineers (luckily too wet themselves to ignite, for the moment) were caught plunging, as if they were playing a kind of beastly snap-dragon.
As she rolled, the fire crept up the iron walls; was sloshed up them, like water, and over the raised door-sill. And more oil was still running out of the nipples. If the fire spread beyond that room—well, the Deck would get their surprise birthday-present all right! Before long, in that confined space, in that growing heat, oil and air would form an explosive mixture. A sort of paralytic lassitude took Gaston for the moment. What was the use? That would end it quickly. What was the use, of continuing to fight when each new attempt at safety only added a new danger?
But the Chief, on the other hand, had men running to fetch fire-extinguishers like lightning: and Gaston’s lassitude went. They joined together to fight the fire quite steadily, trying to smother it in the patent “foam.” But still more oil came to feed it. It was growing on them, it was creeping up the walls: it would be over that door-sill for good, in a minute. But they worked methodically, not just at random: cutting up the fire into small areas: clipping round their edges: finally driving each separate flame into a corner and there smothering it, one after another. In the end, they won.
Gaston, wielding a foam-nozzle, happened to look round and see the Captain there, in the doorway, watching them. Well, now the Deck knew. There was nothing else the Engine-room could do. From now on, it was up to the Deck—if anyone.
“All right,” said Captain Edwardes, “Come out on deck. Repairing hatches again. We’re in the centre now, good and proper.”
The last flame had been extinguished: and as he spoke the engineers woke up to the outside world, that they had wholly forgotten in the blazing donkey-room. They suddenly noticed that the roar of the storm was gone: replaced by a blanketing quiet. Yet something was wrong with the quiet: they still had to shout, to make each other hear, just as they had during the roaring. It was as if the quiet was indeed a blanket: not just an absence of sound, but able to smother sound: a thick, soft thing. Something that smothered their voices in their throats, padded their footfalls.
They did not realise that you cannot live in such a din as they, for a long while, had lived in, without being deafened.
The air was gaspingly thin, as on a mountain: but not enlivening: on the contrary, it was damp and depressing; and almost unbearably hot, even to engineers. Big drops of sweat, unable in that humid air to evaporate, ran warm and salt across their lips.
The tormented black sky was one incessant flicker of lightning.
For the first time, since the storm reached its height, they could see the ship from one end to the other. For the first time they saw the gaping crater left by the funnel’s roots. Smashed derricks, knotted stays. The wheelhouse, like a smashed conservatory. The list, too, of the ship: that had been at first a thing felt: then, as they grew accustomed to it, almost a thing forgotten; but now you could see the horizon tilted sideways, the whole ocean tipped up at a steep slope as if about to pour over the edge of the world: so steep that it seemed to tower over the lee bulwarks. It was full of sharks, too, which looked at you on your own level—or almost, it seemed, from above you. It looked as if any moment they might slide down the steep green water and land on the deck right on top of you. They were plainly waiting for something: and waiting with great impatience.
But the sharks were not the only living things. The whole ruin of the deck and upper-structures was covered with living things. Living, but not moving. Birds, and even butterflies and big flying grasshoppers. The tormented black sky was one incessant flicker of lightning, and from every mast-head and derrick-point streamed a bright discharge, like electric hair; but large black birds sat right amongst it, unmoving. High up, three john-crows sat on the standard compass. A big bird like a crane, looking as if its wings were too big for it when folded up, sat on a life-boat, staring through them moonily. Some herons even tried to settle on the lee bulwarks, that were mostly awash; and were picked liked fruit by the sharks. And birds like swallows: massed as if for migration. They were massed like that on every stay and handrail. But not for migration. As you gripped a handrail to steady yourself they never moved; you had to brush them off; when they just fell.
The decks were covered in a black and sticky oil, that had belched out of the funnel. Birds were stuck in it, like flies on a flypaper. The officers were barefoot, and as they walked they kept stepping on live birds—they could not help it. I don’t want to dwell on this, but I must tell you what things were like, and be done with it. You would feel the delicate skeleton scrunch under your feet: but you could not help it, and the gummed feathers hardly even fluttered.
No bird, even crushed, or half-crushed, cried.
Respite? This calm was a more unnerving thing even than the storm. More birds were coming every minute. Big birds, of the heron type, arrived in such numbers, that Captain Edwardes, in his mind’s eye (now growing half delirious), imagined the additional weight on the superstructure actually increasing the list: them arriving in countless crowds, and settling, and at length with the leverage of their innumerable weights turning the “Archimedes” right over, and everybody sliding down the slippery decks to the impatient sharks. Little birds—some of them humming-birds—kept settling on the Captain’s head and shoulders and outstretched arm, would not be shaken off, their wings buzzing, clinging with their little pinlike toes even to his ears.
Only work could take your mind off the birds; and luckily there was plenty to do, fitting new hatches and covering them with awnings for tarpaulins: but how could even work take your mind off, with birds settling on you and clinging to you even as you worked?
They longed for the wind again: but the work was finished before it came.
When at last the blast came, from an opposite quadrant, sweeping all those birds away to destruction, everyone was heartily thankful. Thank God not one of them was ever seen again.
Part II
Chapter VII
(Friday)
At noon the next day the Captain and Mr. Buxton were on the Bridge together. That was Friday: they had been in the hurricane since Wednesday morning. Early Thursday morning, wasn’t it, they had something to eat—those biscuits? And a little water? As for sleep, they had not had any for two nights; nor even any rest.
The storm was blowing full pelt again: had been, ever since the birds went.
The lack of sleep gave a sort of twinge occasionally in the Captain’s brain: as if someone with fine tweezers was plucking at his consciousness, tweaking out a split second every now and then. If this got worse, he was afraid he might reel and fall: and anyhow, each twinge left him feeling a little sick. Buxton must be feeling just as bad. So he turned to Buxton:
“You’d better get a bit of rest.”
Buxton went into the wheelhouse, wedged his feet against the binnacle and his back against the bulkhead; held onto the nerveless wheel and let his head fall forward on his chest.
Ten minutes later Buxton woke, to see a wave towering right over him like a tree. He was already out of the wheelhouse, and running down to the deck: yelling to them to get their life-belts on, for the ship was going.
Those who in
the everlasting noise could not hear him, could see what he meant.
The boys saw him cutting his trouser-legs off short at the knee, so as to be able to swim better, so they did the same.
The sea was awful: worse than it had ever been. You could see this was not deep water: free-bottomed waves do not rear so wildly (for a wave is not a thing with a top but no bottom, as you would think by looking at it: the shape and forces of a wave are just as much under as above: and if a wave is hampered beneath, on top it must burst).
Captain Edwardes ordered the lead to be cast: and it was cast, but the wind blew it out across the water nearly level. Sixty fathoms, it read. But that was nonsense: this was not sixty-fathom water. They were over a bank. Where? He could only guess. Might be Serrana: might be Serranilla: anyhow, how could you tell what the normal level of the water was here? Near the centre of such a vortex, the ocean would be drawn up in a great pucker, with them on top of it. Why, this might even be normally dry land; a cay or island; and they, sailing over without bumping, complaining because it was broken water!
These waves really had the size and almost the shape of trees—trees galloping about, lashing and thrashing each other to bits, like that game of Kings and Queens which children play with plantains.
A few such waves, falling on deck with the hatches open again would soon fill her up, and down she would sink. Go on! Cut off your trouser-legs; and put on your life-belts! Then let us see you do your fancy swimming-strokes among these waves! Waves that will drop on you from seventy feet above you, weighing five hundred tons a time! And where do you think you will swim to, in the Name of Christ?
One wave already had come down on the deck, like a really vast oak crashing. A few more would sink the ship.
Then came another great wave that landed right on top of the funnel-hole. It must have been still hot down there, for that wave came out again faster than it went in: spouted out again roaring and black with soot. When they saw the steam and soot people started yelling Fire! When he heard them yelling Fire! MacDonald thought some fool had been trying the donkey again, and really done the damage this time. When he heard them yelling Fire! Buxton thought of the drums of alcohol stored in the after-castle; the only badly inflammable cargo they carried, now everything was sodden ... but what nonsense, alcohol would not burn with a lot of smoke and black soot, it would roar sky high with the first spark. What a fool, to think alcohol might burn like that!
I must be losing my head.
So then he began paying attention to that most important thing of all, not losing his head: and in no time was clear cold sober again. He looked at the towering waves, and at his own foolish sawn-off trouser-legs, his silly life-belt: and felt his ears burning red.
That is what comes of going to sleep, he thought.
Oil was the only thing: and quickly.
There were latrines both ends of the ship: forward, latrines for the firemen and the seamen: aft, latrines for the pilgrims—male to port, female to starboard. Ships ought to have special arrangements for hand-pumping oil onto troubled waters: but they have not, and latrines are the next best thing. The only trouble with latrines is the baffle on the outside, which stops the oil from dropping really clear of the ship.
There was a reserve tank of lubricating oil in the top of the engine-room, up by the door. Captain Edwardes had it broached, for it was in a convenient position: the Chinese engine-room staff filled five-gallon drums from it, and trundled them as far as the well-decks, fore and aft. They would not go out into the open: so the deck-officers took over from there.
Watchett was sent to take charge of the forward latrine.
Just then the boy Bennett appeared again, out of the Captain’s cabin, looking fit as a fiddle now: the slight boy, not very strong; so they sent him aft, into the female latrine, to do the pouring there, while Buxton and the other bigger boy Phillips were to keep them both supplied. Bennett had a bundle of tow to use as a stopper, so that he could let the oil drip out slowly and regularly, instead of in one big wasteful splodge. You only want a very little oil to control leaping water: even for so big a ship, one drum ought to last for an hour or two.
Bennett made a dash, and managed to win the big iron slice-shaped room, with its long row of squatting-places: they rolled a drum in after him, and the big iron door clanged to. It was pitch dark, the air charged with the smell of citronella (Essential Oil had been stored there, to avoid tainting the holds). The ship’s list had laid this starboard latrine down almost to water-level: and as she rolled the sea came up through the vent, gurgling like the waste of a gigantic bath, swirling about the boy’s knees. He made a dash for the door, in a panic: but it would not open: the iron latch, outside, was a swing one, and the angle the ship was heeled to kept it swung into the locked position: it could only be opened from without. If the ship rolled just a little more, of course, the room would fill, and drown him. Coal-miners, in an accident, have sometimes been saved from drowning by the air-pressure: fleeing to the end of an ascending gallery, the water has not been able to rise to them because there was nowhere for the present air to escape. But latrines are properly ventilated, in accordance with strict regulations: in fact are designed to drown anyone locked inside them for sure, as neat as a mouse in a mousetrap.
Well, never mind; at present it did not seem to come above his knees, and only that once in a while. So he got busy. Fixed his tow plug, broached his drum, began pouring. He could not tell if it was doing any good: only the chaps outside could tell that.
The chaps outside could see that the effect of the oil was magical. A thin film only a few molecules in thickness (once it had spread out), it bound millions of tons of water. Huge spires of water would dash at the ship, like maddened cathedrals: then the oil spread over them: they rounded, sank, passed away as harmless as a woman’s bosom. Or even if they broke, it was only harmless dead water.
In an hour and a half Bennett’s drum was finished: and no one came with more.
They did not come, because at the time they thought they could not. The wind was in one of its worst paroxysms. A man might manage to cross the well-deck in a wild dash emptyhanded: but not carrying a drum of oil. So the engineers started pouring it over amidships, with buckets. A wasteful way; but better than nothing, they thought.
Wasteful, and not nearly so effective. It was soon plain that somehow they must get a fresh lot forward to Bennett. So the Mate and Phillips accepted the risk: stood waiting their bare chance for a dash, with a drum apiece: though it still seemed impossible.
Phillips was not looking when the Mate made his dash: when he looked back, the Mate was gone.
Gone? Gone overboard, that must mean. Phillips dropped his drum and ran for the saloon. “Mate’s overboard” he yelled through the door. The few engineers inside listened politely but without consternation. Then he ran back: caught up his drum and dashed for the after-castle himself: he took it to be a necessity, since he thought he was the only one left, but he hardly expected to get through.
He did, though, and wrenched open the door. Buxton tumbled out on top of him. Somehow, Phillips had been so sure that Buxton was drowned: the shock of seeing the Mate alive nearly sent the boy himself overboard.
Bennett had two drums now: enough to last him nearly till the evening. He settled down to the job.
It is only human to take a pride in what you are doing: to want to do it well. It is one of the chief springs of effort: pride in perfecting the means, not just the wanting the object. You expect artists and poets to have that pride: you can understand a fine craftsman—carpenter or seaman—having it. But really nearly everyone has it, whatever his job. The dustman is proud of the quality of the refuse he tends. The experienced sewerman knows that of all the careless footfalls passing above his head, not one man, not Duke nor taxi-driver, could clear a choked main drain with so deft a hand as he. You might have thought Bennett’s job monotonous, dribbling oil slowly down a half-flooded latrine in the half-dark? Not a bit of it. As th
e hours passed his technique improved! And the improvement was itself fascinating. Just how much oil to slop in at a time. Just how far, and how often, to withdraw the tow plug, in order to let it trickle through. Just what to cling on to, when the water came up. You would have thought he would get bored? No: the fact is that the boy stuck to his post, pouring oil, without food or rest, for twenty hours on end—till mid-day Saturday: and though at the end he was so dog-tired as to be dreaming on his feet, he never felt bored.
Nor had it been long before dreams and technique had woven themselves together.
Most frequently he imagined himself in a lecture-room, where a dreary lecturer droned out a discourse on pouring oil. Sometimes he was himself the lecturer, explaining in balanced periods the Whole Art of Oil-pouring, its every thrust and parry and riposte; while an entranced audience of students scribbled down his sections, and sub-sections a and b, his riders and exceptions, in their notebooks.
A jerk of the mind, and he would find that he was in fact doing what he thought he was saying. Then a slow glissade down the slope of consciousness, till once more he believed himself to be saying what he was in fact doing.
Never, during the whole twenty hours, did it enter his head to want to give up. It is at times very difficult to draw the line between a hero and an artist. Without doubt it was the pouring of the oil which saved the ship at that time. Without doubt it was the way Bennett stuck to his post in the after latrine, and Watchett to his post in the forward one, that made the pouring of oil so successful.
When the tank of oil in the engine-room was exhausted, the engineers broke off one of those hooked ventilators I told you about, in the side decks, which release the gases from the fuel-tanks below, and thence dipped it up with buckets.
II
Perhaps it was a pity ever to have brought the engine-room Chinese up on deck at all. They had been all right below: but now they could see how bad things were. It did not do them any good. For after a while they refused even to carry the oil in the shelter of the centre-castle. They did not go comatose like the deck-hands, they went a bit ugly. This was not what they had signed on for. If this was what they were expected to go through, they ought to have been told. The English, in taking them into a storm like this without telling them when they signed on, had broken the bargain: it was as bad as lying to them. This, on top of the food ramp (they were now feeling very hungry) was more than they could be expected to stand. They gave very little sign; but one and all were ready to make serious trouble if a match was put to the powder.