Maddon's Rock (9 page)

“The boat was all right,” Halsey said. “Mr. Hendrik went over all the boats whilst we were in Murmansk.”

“There were five planks loose,” I said.

“That’s a lie,” Hendrik shouted. But his eyes were shifty and his face was as white in the deck lights as the scar that ran from his ear to his chin.

Evans had come up and was standing beside Hendrik. Jukes I could see over by the starboard rail. Suddenly it was clear to me, the whole monstrous plot. I was staggered by the horror of it.

“Come on, put your gun up,” Halsey said. “You have committed an act of mutiny, Corporal. Try to understand what that means.”

“And what have you done?” I answered. I don’t think until that moment that I had quite appreciated the significance of my action. But now I didn’t care. I saw poor little Sills’ frightened face and the cook with his cat clawing desperately free of him. The cat had known. “Those men in the boats,” I cried. My voice was hoarse, I hardly recognised it. “You meant those planks to be loose. That’s what Hendrik was doing to them in Murmansk.”

The mate started to come at me then, the iron bar swinging in his hand. I raised my rifle. I would have shot him dead. He knew that and he stopped. He was scared.

“You must be mad, Corporal,” Halsey said.

“Mad!” I cried. “Who was working on the boats in Murmansk—Hendrik and Jukes. Both men who served with you on the
Penang
.” I saw Halsey start. “Who’s left on the ship now? Just the four of you—just the four who ran the
Penang
in the China Sea. What’s your game, Halsey?” I asked. “Why have you murdered the crew of the
Trikkala
? Is this another act of piracy?”

Halsey gave a little quick nod of the head. And at the same moment Bert shouted, “Look a’t.”

I swung round. Jukes was close behind me. As I turned
he had his fist drawn back. I saw his thick, powerful body lean towards me. The face, with its broken nose and small eyes, was set and hard. Then he hit me.

The next thing I knew was a dizzy sensation of rising and falling in infinite darkness and the sound of water all about me. Very faint I heard Bert’s voice say, “’E’s cornin’ ra’nd, miss.” Then, nearer, “You orl right, Corp?”

I felt sick and my head hurt. I lay still, my eyes closed, and all the time I had that horrible, dizzy feeling of being lifted up high as a church steeple and then shot down again as though in an express lift. I struggled with a dark nausea. I was soaked to the skin and shivering. The sound of water persisted, the angry hiss and roar of waves breaking. I struggled to sit upright. Somebody supported my back. “What happened?” I mumbled. My jaw was almost too painful to open. “Something hit me.”

“I’ll say it did,” Bert’s voice answered. “That fellow Jukes, it was. Crep’ up behind yer an’ then, when the Capting nodded ’e ’auled off an socked yer. ’Ow yer feeling?”

“Bit dizzy, that’s all,” I said. I opened my eyes. I could see nothing. All was inky darkness. For a moment I panicked at the thought that I had been blinded. Then as we shot skyward I saw a blur of white all round us—the white of breaking waves. Then we plummeted down again.

Somebody’s hand was stroking my head gently. “Who’s that?” I asked. “I can’t see a thing.”

“It’s me,” replied a girl’s voice, and I realised with a shock that they had put Jennifer Sorrel on to the raft after all. “Oh, God?” I said, “I’m sorry.”

“You ain’t got nuffink to be sorry aba’t, Corp,” Bert said. “She’s safer ’ere than wot she would be in that boat.”

I sat up and looked about me. There were just the three of us on the raft, vague shadows only visible against the boiling white of a wave crest. “Where’s Rankin?” I asked.

“He stayed be’ind. Capting’s orders. ’Alsey was most apologetic to Miss Sorrel, but said ’e couldn’t risk ’er stayin’ on board the
Trikkala
till ’e left in ’is boat. Promised to pick ’er up in the mornin’ when it was light.”

On the top of a wave I saw a line of lights. “Is that the
Trikkala
?” I asked.

“That’s ’er, mate,” Bert answered. “Capting told us to shove orf. ’E was afraid we wouldn’t be clear when she went da’n. The wind’s carried us well clear of ’er.”

Jennifer Sorrel suddenly spoke. We were in the trough of a wave and it was strangely silent. “Funny!” she said. “Our whole world has dwindled to a dark, cold, seething mass of water. And yet over there, there are cabins and hot water and food and lights.”

“That’s right, miss,” Bert put in. “An ’alf a million quid’s worf of silver—all ba’nd for the ruddy bottom.”

We rose, the raft slanting crazily. Then the water boiled all about us, the wind cut through our wet clothes and out there in the darkness were the lights of the
Trikkala.
The raft tilted. We raced down the back of the wave. All was quiet for a moment. There was no wind. Then suddenly we seemed lifted skyward by unseen hands and we were on top again of a raging torrent of water. The lights of the
Trikkala
showed for an instant and then were suddenly gone, leaving just a blank, empty darkness. For a moment I thought we had dropped to a trough again. But the water still boiled all round us and then the raft tilted and raced down the back of the wave. When we rose again, there was no flicker of light.

“Listen!” I said, “I thought I heard the sound of her engines.”

“Just a trick of the wind, mate,” Bert said. “She’s gone.”

And I was convinced he was right. The
Trikkala
had gone to the bottom. We were alone on a raft in the Barents Sea.

“The Captain said he’d pick us up in the morning,” Jennifer Sorrel said.

I lay back and closed my eyes, trying to think. All those accusations I had made. I had been so sure of them in the heat of the moment. But what reason could they possibly have had for tampering with the boats? They couldn’t have known they would hit a mine. And if it was the silver they were after, they wouldn’t get much of it away in an open boat. I felt I’d made a fool of myself and yet …

There followed hours of terrible darkness. On the wave crests the wind cut through our soaked clothing like a knife. The water surged around the raft. Sometimes it broke right over us. The rolled canvas-covered bulwarks became coated with ice. We hung on to the ropes with frozen fingers. In the troughs it was comparatively warm. It was a dizzy nightmare of violent movement. I was shivering violently. I felt ill and dazed. We huddled close against each other for warmth. As though by common consent we didn’t talk of what had happened. Bert began to sing. And for what seemed hours we sang old Army favourites, going over and over again our limited repertoire. And when we could think of nothing more, Jennifer suddenly began to sing arias from operas—Boheme, Rigoletto, Tosca, the Barber and others that I did not know. She had a clear, sweet voice. The gayer songs sounded strange in that wretched welter of foam and wind and dizzy movement.

So we passed the time, waiting for dawn. We dared not sleep though we were all half dead with tiredness and cold. We were none of us sick. The movement was too violent. It numbed our frozen guts. The time went slowly by in a leaden daze.

And when at last a faint light crept into the sky it made the wretchedness of our state more apparent. It is difficult to imagine what it is like on a raft in a gale in those northern waters—the awful sense of loneliness, the deadly fear that you are simply waiting for the end in a living death. In twenty-four hours we should be dead from the cold. We could not possibly survive another night. We were soaked and shivering and frozen. And all around us was that grey, mercilessly wind-torn sea.
Not a sign of the
Trikkala
. No boats—nothing but storm-tossed water, surging restlessly, and the sky leaden with the promise of snow. Bert voiced my thoughts. “Gawd!” he said. “Fair beast of a mornin’, ain’t it? Yer know, Corp, I was ’appier in the dark. Couldn’t see them waves then. Fair vicious they look. This one, for instance. You can’t hardly believe we’ll make the top of it, can yer?” We were in a trough at the moment and high above us towered a green mountain of a wave, its crest curling wickedly in a surge of wind-whipped spray. It looked as though it were tumbling down on top of us, bent on crushing our frail craft. It didn’t seem possible that we could survive. Yet the raft tilted quickly and was born aloft in an instant to be almost submerged in that foaming surf. And so it went on until we took it for granted that we should make it each time.

I tried standing up for the instant that we were poised on the crest, Bert gripping my legs at the knees. But I could see nothing—no sign of the
Trikkala’s
boats, nothing. Visibility was barely a mile. A cold haze hung over that desolate sea.

Jennifer was shivering. Her face was dead white with strain and there were dark rings under her eyes. I thought of all she must have been through. And now this. And only a few hours ago she had been talking rapturously of England! She no longer sang. She just sat there, patient, exhausted—resigned to the inevitable. The spirit which showed in the strong formation of her face was crushed out of her with this final blow.

Once, when I stood up, I caught sight of something dark in the sea near us. The wind drove us quite close to it. A wave crest hit it so that it turned over and swooped down into a trough with us. It was a wooden seat. For a moment the word TRIKKALA stared at us from the water. Then it was gone, swept away in the break of another wave. It was one of the seats that had been fixed below the
Trikkala’s
bridge.

Shortly afterwards an oar drifted alongside. Bert leaned out and made a grab for it. He missed and only the united efforts of Jennifer and myself saved him from
going in. Next instant the oar was thrown right against the raft and we took it on board. There was nothing to tell us definitely that it was an oar from one of the
Trikkala’s
boats. But Bert and I exchanged a glance and he said, “Poor devils!”

Strangely enough my watch, though soaked with water, still continued to function. At nine-forty, standing up for a quick look round as the raft steadied itself on a wave top, I saw the dim shadow of what looked like a ship on the edge of visibility. I tried again on the top of the next wave, but I could see nothing. I kept on trying—though fearing that my eyes had deceived me—and the fourth time I really saw it, a corvette, rolling drunkenly on the top of a wave and half-hidden in spray. I reckoned she’d pass within about half a mile of us.

I told the others and when we hit the next wave top we could all see it quite plainly, half drowned in water which streamed off her as she rose from the trough.

“We must wave something,” Bert said, “on this oar. Got anyfink coloured, Corp? Khaki ain’t no good.”

I shook my head. Then Jennifer said, “I’ve got a red jumper on. If you two boys will just turn the other way.”

“No,” I said. “You’ll get cold.”

She suddenly smiled. It was the first time I’d seen her smile that morning. It lit her whole face—it was like a ray of sunlight. “I can’t be colder,” she said. “Anyway, I don’t mind if it means a hot drink and bed afterwards.”

Bert said, “Go on, miss—’urry up. If that ship don’t see us we’ve ’ad it. She’s ’eadin’ up into the wind, back towards the convoy.”

A moment later a red jumper swung from the top of the upraised oar. It hung limp for a moment in the trough and then bellied out as the wind tore through it so that it looked like the trunk of some strange scarlet spectre, its arms outstretched in mute appeal. Each time we hit a wave top we swung the oar back and forth, our eyes watching the sleek, half-smothered outline of the warship. She was abreast of us now. There was no doubt about it,
she was headed back to the convoy. The water creamed from her dripping bows as she made what speed she could in the teeth of the wind.

Our hearts sank. A squall of sleet came down and for a time she was blotted out. When we saw her again she was passed us. We could begin to see her stern. We looked at each other as we lay for a second in a trough. Bert’s lined, monkey-like face was set in desperation. Jennifer’s was blank, hopeless. The next wave top showed the corvette farther off. It was the end. Soon she would vanish into the curtain of the mist.

And yet when we rose again, she still seemed just as near. She presented no more of her stern. It was as though time had stood still. Up again and there she was still, but broadside on to us. And when we rose again, it dawned on us. We cheered wildly—a thin ragged sound in that waste of water. She was turning in a wide circle towards us.

A few moments later and her small, knife-sharp bows were pointed straight at us. She looked like a toy, the slim hull of her pitching violently, her mast and funnel like matchsticks waving in the wind.

Within half an hour Bert and I lay in bunks in borrowed pyjamas in the corvette’s little sick-bay, each of us with two hot-water bottles pressed against us and a tot of rum in hot cocoa inside us. I never slept so solidly in all my life.

Next morning the skipper came to see us. He was a lieutenant, a youngster of about twenty-three. His voice had the fatherly tone of a man who had been brought up to treat all men as his children. It was from him I learned that we were the only survivors of the
Trikkala
. The
Trikkala’s
wireless operator had contacted the escort ships of the convoy and the corvette
Bravado
had been ordered to stand by till dawn to pick up survivors. She had seen a good deal of wreckage which had been identified as belonging to the
Trikkala.
But there was no sign of the boats. I was staggered. All the wild thoughts I had had about the
Trikkala
and her skipper crumbled away. The accusations I had hurled at him seemed like the
ravings of a delirium. The third boat—Halsey’s boat—had gone down with the rest.

A medical orderly treated my jaw, which was swollen and painful. My temperature was normal. I felt tired and stiff, otherwise all right. But Bert was running a bit of a fever and starting to cough. His face was unnaturally flushed and his eyes bright. The orderly told him he’d have to stay in bed. I could get up when I liked. I asked him how Miss Sorrel was. He told me she was fine.