Hammond Innes - The Wreck Of The Mary Deare

I found the page and read: PLATEAU DES MINQUIERS. — Buoyage. — Caution. — Plateau des Minquiers consists of an extensive group of above water and sunken rocks and reefs, together with numerous banks of shingle, gravel and sand… The highest rock, Maitresse lie, 31 feet high, on which stand several houses, is situated near the middle of the plateau… There were details that showed the whole extent of the reefs to be about 17 and a half miles long by 8 miles deep, and paragraph after paragraph dealt with major rock outcrops and buoyage.

‘I should warn you that the so-called houses on Maitresse He are nothing but deserted stone shacks.’ He had spread the chart out on the desk and was bending over it, his head in his hands.

‘What about tide?’ I asked.

‘Tide?’ He suddenly seemed excited. ‘Yes, that was it. Something to do with the tide. I was going to look it up.’ He turned and searched the floor again, swaying slightly, balanced automatically to the roll of the ship. ‘Well, it doesn’t matter much.’ He downed the rest of his drink and poured himself another. ‘Help yourself.’ He pushed the bottle towards me.

I shook my head. The liquor had done nothing to the chill emptiness inside me — a momentary trickle of warmth, that was all. I was cold with weariness and the knowledge of how it would end. And yet there had to be something we could do. If the man were fresh; if he’d had food and sleep … ‘When did you feed last?’ I asked him.

‘Oh, I had some bully. Sometime this morning it must have been.’ And then with sudden concern that took me by surprise, he said, ‘Why, are you hungry?’

It seemed absurd to admit to hunger when the ship might go down at any moment, but the mere thought of food was enough. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I am.’ Anyway, it might get him away from the bottle, put something inside him besides liquor.

‘All right. Let’s go and feed.’ He took me down to the pantry, holding his glass delicately and balancing himself to the sluggish roll. We found a tin of ham — bread, butter, pickles. ‘Coffee?’ He lit a primus stove he’d found and put a kettle on. We ate ravenously by the light of a single, guttering candle; not talking, just stuffing food into our empty bellies. The noise of the storm was remote down there in the pantry, overlaid by the roar of the primus.

It’s surprising how quickly food is converted into energy and gives a man back that desperate urge to live. ‘What are our chances?’ I asked.

He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Depends on the wind and the sea and that bulkhead. If the bulkhead holds, then we’ll be driven on to the Minkies sometime during the night.’ The kettle had boiled and he was busy making the coffee. Now that the primus was out, the pantry seemed full of the noise of the gale and the straining of the ship.

‘Suppose we got the pumps working, couldn’t we clear that for’ard hold of water? There was a good deal of pressure in the boiler when I was down there and I stoked before I left.’

‘You know damn’ well we can’t clear that hold with the hatch cover gone.’

‘Not if we ran her off before the wind. If we got the engines going …’

‘Look,’ he said. ‘This old ship will be weeping water at every plate joint throughout her whole length now. If we ran the pumps flat out, they’d do no more than hold the water that’s seeping into her, let alone clear Number One hold. Anyway, how much steam do you think you need to run the engines and the pumps as well?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Do you?’

‘No. But I’m damn’ sure it would need more than one boiler; two at least. And if you think we could keep two boilers fired …’ He poured the coffee into tin mugs and stirred sugar in. ‘With one boiler we could have the engines going intermittently.’ He seemed to consider it, and then shook his head. ‘There wouldn’t be any point in it.’ He passed me one of the mugs. It was scalding hot.

‘Why not?’ I asked.

‘For one thing the wind’s westerly. Keeping her stern to the wind would mean every turn of the screw would be driving her straight towards the Minkies. Besides…’ His voice checked, ceased abruptly. He seemed to lose himself in some dark thought of his own, his black brows furrowed, his mouth a hard, bitter line. ‘Oh, to hell with it,’ he muttered and poured the rest of his rum into his coffee. ‘I know where there’s some more liquor on board. We can get tight, and then who the hell cares?’

I stared at him, my bowels suddenly hot with anger. ‘Is that what happened last time? Did you just give up? Is that what it was?’

‘Last time?’ He was frozen to sudden immobility, the mug of coffee halfway to his lips. ‘What do you mean — last time?’

‘The Belle Isle,’ I said. ‘Did she go down because …’ I stopped there, checked by the sudden, blazing fury in his eyes.

‘So you know about the Belle Isle. What else do you know about me?’ His voice was shrill, uncontrolled and violent. ‘Do you know I was on the beach for damn’ near a year? A year in Aden! And this … This first ship in a year, and it has to be the Mary Deare, a floating bloody scrap-heap with a drunken skipper who goes and dies on me and an owner …’ He pushed his hand up through his hair, staring through me, back into the past. ‘Fate can play dirty tricks, once she’s got her claws into you.’ And then, after a pause: ‘If I could keep this old tramp afloat…’ He shook his head. ‘You wouldn’t think it would happen to a man twice, would you,’ he murmured. ‘Twice! I was too young and green to know what they were up to when I got command of the Belle Isle. But I knew the smell of it this time. Well, they got the wrong man.’ He gave a bitter laugh. ‘A lot of good it did me, being honest. I got her up through the Bay. God knows how I did it, but I did. And round Ushant I headed for Southampton.’ His eyes focused on me again and he said, ‘Well, now I don’t care any more. You can’t go on fighting a thing. This gale has finished me. I know when I’m licked.’

I didn’t say anything, for there wasn’t anything I could say. It had to come from him. I couldn’t drive him. I knew that. I just sat there and waited and the silence tightened between us. He finished his coffee and put the mug down and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. The silence became unbearable, full of the death-struggle sounds of the ship. ‘Better come and have a drink,’ he said, his voice tense.

I didn’t move. I didn’t say anything either.

‘It’s tough on you, but you didn’t have to come on board, did you?’ He stared at me angrily. ‘What the hell do you think I can do?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘You’re the captain. It’s for you to give the orders.’

‘Captain!’ He laughed without mirth. ‘Master of the Mary Deare!’ He rolled it round his tongue, sneeringly. ‘Well, at least I’ll have gone down with the ship this time. They said she was jinxed, some of them.’ He seemed to be speaking to himself. ‘They were convinced she’d never make it. But we’re all jinxed when times get hard; and she’s been kicked around the world for a good many years. She must have been a crack cargo liner in her day, but now she’s just a rusty old hulk making, her last voyage. We’d a cargo for Antwerp, and then we were taking her across the North Sea to Newcastle to be broken up.’ He was silent after that, his head on one side, listening. He was listening to the sounds of the ship being pounded by the waves. ‘What a thing it would be — to steam into Southampton with no crew and the ship half-full of water.’ He laughed. It was the drink in him talking, and he knew it. ‘Let’s see,’ he said, still speaking to himself. ‘The tide will be turning against us in a few hours. Wind over tide. Still, if we could hold her stern-on to the wind, maybe we could keep her afloat a little longer. Anything could happen. The wind might shift; the gale might blow itself out.’ But there was no conviction in the way he said it. He glanced at his watch. ‘Barely twelve hours from now and the tide will be carrying us down on to the rocks and it’ll still be dark. If visibility is all right, we should be able to see the buoys; at least we’ll know-’ His voice checked abruptly. ‘The buoys! That’s what I was thinking about before I went to sleep. I was looking at the chart…’ His voice had become animated, his eyes suddenly bright with excitement. And then his fist crashed against the palm of his hand and he jumped to his feet. That’s it! If we were to hit the tide just right…’ He pushed by me and I heard his feet take the steps of the ladder leading to the bridge two at a time.