Hammond Innes - The Wreck Of The Mary Deare

‘How do you know what I’d been doing?’ He suddenly seemed to blaze up, his eyes hard and angry and wild. He seized hold of my arm. ‘How do you know?’ he repeated.

‘There was a wisp of smoke coming from the funnel,’ I said quickly. ‘And then all that coal dust;

you were covered with it.’ I didn’t know what had roused him. ‘You must have been down in the stokehold.’

‘The stokehold?’ He nodded slowly. ‘Yes, of course.’ He let go of my arm, his body gradually losing its tautness, relaxing.

‘If the pumps could keep her afloat coming up through the Bay …’ I said.

‘We had a crew then, a full head of steam.’ His shoulders dropped. ‘Besides, there wasn’t so much water in the for’ard hold then.’

‘Is she holed?’ I asked. ‘Is that the trouble?’

‘Holed?’ He stared at me. ‘What made you…’ He pushed his hand up through his hair and then down across his face. His skin was sallow under the grime; sallow and sweaty and tired-looking. The ship lurched and quivered to the onslaught of another wave. I saw his muscles tense as though it were his own body that was being battered. ‘It can’t last long.’

I felt suddenly sick and empty inside. The man had given up hope. I could see it in the sag of his shoulders, hear it in the flatness of his voice. He was tired beyond caring. ‘You mean the hatch cover?’ He nodded. ‘And what happens then?’ I asked. ‘Will she float with that hold full of water?’

‘Probably. Until the boiler-room bulkhead goes.’ His tone was coldblooded and without emotion. That hold had been flooded a long time. The ship had been down by the bows when we had sighted her through the mist. And last night… I was remembering the draught marks high out of the water at her stern and the blades of the propeller thrashing at the wave tops. He had had time to get used to the idea.

But I was damned if I was going to sit down and wait for the end. ‘How long would it take to get steam up — enough to drive the pumps?’ I asked. But he didn’t seem to hear me. He was leaning against the deck, his eyes half-closed. I caught hold of his arm and shook him as though I were waking him out of a trance. ‘The pumps!’ I shouted at him. ‘If you show me what to do, I’ll stoke.’

His eyes flicked open and he stared at me. He didn’t say anything.

‘You’re just about all in,’ I told him. ‘You ought to get some sleep. But first you must show me how to operate the furnace.’

He seemed to hesitate, and then he shrugged his shoulders. ‘All right,’ he said, and he pulled himself together and went out and down the companion ladder to the main deck. The weight of the wind was heeling the ship, giving her a permanent list to starboard. Like that she rolled sluggishly with an odd, uneven motion that was occasionally violent. His feet dragged along the dark, echoing alleyway; at times he seemed uncertain of his balance, almost dazed.

We turned in through the engine-room door, crossed the catwalk and descended an iron ladder into the dark pit of the engine-room, the beams of our torches giving momentary glimpses of vast shadowy machinery, all still and lifeless. Our footsteps rang hollow and metallic on the iron gratings as we made our way for’ard through a litter of smaller machinery. There was a sound of water moving in little rushes and heavy thuds echoed up the tunnel of the propeller shaft.

We passed the main controls with the bridge telegraph repeaters and then we reached the doors leading in to the boiler-room. Both doors were open, and beyond, the shapes of the boilers loomed bulky and majestic, without heat.

He hesitated a moment, and then moved forward again. ‘It’s this one,’ he said, pointing to the port-hand of the three boilers. A dull red glow rimmed the furnace door. ‘And there’s the coal.’ He swung the beam of his torch over the black heap that had spilled out of the coal-box opening. He had half-turned back towards the furnace, when he checked and stood staring at the coal as though fascinated, slowly lifting the beam of his torch so that the white circle of it shone on plate after plate, all black with dust, as though he were tracing the line of the coal coming down from the bunkering hatch at deck level. ‘We’ll work two-hour shifts,’ he.said quickly, glancing at his watch. ‘It’s nearly twelve now. I’ll relieve you at two.’ He seemed suddenly in a hurry to go.

‘Just a minute,’ I said. ‘How do you operate the furnace?’

He glanced impatiently back at the boiler with its temperature gauge and the levers below that operated the furnace doors and the dampers. ‘It’s quite simple. You’ll get the hang of it easily enough.’ He was already turning away again. ‘I’m going to get some sleep,’ he muttered. And with that he left me.

I opened my mouth to call him back. But there seemed no point. I should probably find out easily enough and he needed sleep badly. For a moment, as he passed through the stokehold doors, his body was sharply etched against the light of his torch. I stood there listening to the sound of his feet on the steel ladders of the engine-room, seeing the faint reflection of his torch limning the open doorway. Then it was gone and I was alone, conscious suddenly of the odd noises about me — the murmur of water, the queer booming of waves breaking against the ship’s hull and the sudden little rushes of coal tipping in the chutes as she rolled; conscious, too, of a sense of claustrophobia, of being shut in down there below the waterline. Beyond the boilers were the baulks of timber shoring the bulkhead, and beyond the rusty plates was water. I could see it trickling down the seams.

I stripped off my borrowed jersey, rolled up my sleeves and went over to the furnace. It was barely warm. I could put my hands on the casing of it. I found the lever and flung open the furnace door. A pile of ash glowed red. There was no rush of flame, no sign of it having been stoked in hours. I picked up one of the crowbar-like slices that lay about and prodded the glowing mass. It was all ash.

I had a look at the other two furnaces then, but their draft vents were all wide open, the fires burned out, the boilers cold. There was just that one furnace still alive, and it was alive because the dampers were shut right down. I remembered then how his footsteps had dragged past the engine-room door that first time I had stood on the catwalk calling into the abyss below. He hadn’t been down here — then or at any time. Yet he was covered in coal dust. I stood there, leaning on my shovel, thinking about it until the noise of the waves booming against the hollow hull reminded me that there were other, more urgent matters, and I began shovelling in coal.

I piled it in until it was heaped black inside the furnace. Then I shut the door and opened all the dampers. In a few minutes the furnace was roaring, the bright light of flames showing round the edges of the door and lighting the stokehold with a warm glow, so that the shapes of the boilers emerged, dim and shadowy, from the darkness that surrounded me. I opened the door again and began shovelling hard, the shovel and the black coal lit by the lurid glow. Soon I was stripped to the waist and the sweat was rolling off me so that my arms and body glistened through their coating of coal dust.

I don’t know how long I was down there. It seemed like hours that I shovelled and sweated in the cavernous inferno of the stokehold. The furnace roared and blazed with heat, yet it was a long while before I noticed any change in the pressure gauge. Then slowly the needle began to rise. I was standing, leaning on my shovel, watching the needle, when faint above the furnace roar I heard the slam of metal against metal and turned.

He was standing in the rectangle of the stokehold doors. He didn’t move for a moment and then he advanced towards me, reeling drunkenly to the movement of the ship. But it wasn’t the rolling that made him stagger. It was exhaustion. I watched him as he came towards me with a sort of fascination. The furnace door was open and in the glow I saw his face sweating and haggard, the eyes sunk into shadowed sockets.