Hammond Innes - Dead and Alive

Two plates had been buckled and looked as though they might have sprung a leak. Otherwise she seemed none the worse. Obviously she’d weathered bigger storms during the winter.

Bill and Anne came down to commiserate with us and we drove over to Boscastle for lunch. Stuart was in a sombre mood. He seemed dispirited about the whole thing. And his mood flared dangerously at an innocent remark of Bill’s, who was trying to cheer him up. ‘You think I’m a child to be patted on the hand and given crumbs of comfort like a bag of sticky sweets,’ Stuart cried, banging down his knife and fork. His voice was tense and strained and his eyes strangely narrowed. ‘When things go wrong with you, you can go crying to Anne for comfort. But I’ve got no one. Nobody in the world. All I’ve got to show for my life is an old landing craft. And that’s on the rocks. I’m no good. I’m finished. And bloody little fools like you come with words of comfort. I don’t want your comfort. I don’t want it — do you understand?’ And he flung out of the room.

It was a side of him that I hadn’t known about until then.

There was a stunned silence. And then Bill said, ‘What an extraordinary fellow!’

I said, ‘Not so extraordinary.’ Then I asked him if he’d been overseas.

‘No,’ he replied. ‘I was in a reserved occupation — they lowered the age just in time.’

I said, ‘Well Stuart was nearly four years overseas. He was wounded twice. And I rather fancy — he hasn’t told me, but I think I’m right — that his wife and child were killed by a flying bomb.’

Anne nodded thoughtfully. ‘Yes, I understand now. Those photographs — and that charred furniture. What hell for him! Find him a girl, David, before it drives him crazy.’

‘He’s trying to marry a landing craft at the moment,’ I told her. ‘That’s why he’s so upset.’

After lunch I sought out old Garth and asked him about the weather. He told me there should be at least two weeks of fine weather now.

I made no attempt to find out where Stuart had gone. I’d known men in his mood in the Med. He’d walk it off. The three of us drove into Tintagel and saw a frightful film which was made pleasant because Anne held my hand. She was a very sweet and understanding girl. She insisted on coming back and cooking dinner for us.

Down in the cove Stuart had already started rebuilding the ramp.

We were up next morning at dawn and were at work whilst the cove was still dark and sunless though the sky was blue. We decided to build the ramp of sand this time for it was difficult to find rocks. But the curve along which the stern would be shifted had to be of rocks in order to support the girders.

Stuart was in terrific form. He nicknamed the half-wit Boo, because of his goggle eyes. And for some reason the queer boy was pleased at that. Stuart drove him unmercifully. He drove the trippers too. A man had only to pause a second gazing upon our labours and Stuart, who had suddenly cultivated a broad Cornish accent, suggested that a little physical exercise would do him a power of good. They fell for it practically every time. And as soon as they’d a shovel in their hands, he’d got them. ‘Man, thee’ll never stand it for as much as a quarter of an hour.’ And then when they did stand it for quarter of an hour, he’d be so full of compliments that blisters or no they just had to go on. He paced them himself or set off one against the other. And all the time he sang old sea shanties and snatches of Negro spirituals. And periodically he directed a stream of curses at Boo’s rhythmically swinging back. And Boo would give him a loose grin and the sand would fly from his shovel.

It was a great day and by sundown sand and boulders were piled amongst the rocks.

The next day Bill and Anne came down and Stuart even bullied Anne into taking a shovel. And for the next hour there wasn’t a man in that cove who dared refuse the proffered tool. We ran short of sand as well as rocks by midday and after lunch we rigged one of the winches and, using an old piece of corrugated iron as a bulldozing blade, ploughed fresh sand up to the edge of the ramp. Then I borrowed Bill’s car and ran down into Boscastle. I was worried about the engines. I was afraid sand might have got into them and I was taking no chances of engine failure once we’d floated here. We had to get her out of that cove and into a harbour where we could tie up, for she’d no anchors and if the sea rose before we got her out of the cove she would be wrecked.

Garth told me that the nearest marine engineers would be over at Newport. He saw my disappointment and said, ‘Remember I told thee about a boy from the Navy who was looking round for work? I mind now that he was an engineer.’

And that was another stroke of luck, for Jack Dugan had served a year in landing craft. He’d been with a rocket ship in the Normandy and Southern France landings. ‘I’ll walk over in the morning, sir,’ he said.

I really felt we were getting somewhere at last.

Next morning the cove was deserted save for a few children and two girls who giggled at us from a nearby rock. All male holiday-makers decided to boycott the place. I wasn’t surprised. Their women folk were proba bly putting in overtime massaging their aching backs. One lone sucker appeared in the afternoon and was persuaded to hold a shovel in white hands. He leaned on it most of the time and insisted on telling Stuart all about the essay he was writing on — Life. At length, exasperated, Stuart tore the shovel from his nerveless fingers, thrust his bearded face into the face of the would-be essayist and said, ‘You’re useless. Do you hear? — useless. Get out.’

The young man was rather surprised and slightly scared. He got out.

Dugan had arrived shortly after breakfast and he was so thrilled at the sight of the familiar old Paxmans that by nightfall he had both engines stripped. He had dinner with us that night. ‘They’re all right,’ he reported. ‘But there’s a lot of sand needs clearing out of them. And the cylinder walls are slightly scored as though they’d been run recently.’ He said this accusingly and Stuart admitted his guilt.

‘I was so keen to see if they’d work,’ he explained.

‘No harm done, sir,’ Dugan told him. ‘But they need a right good clean out.’

‘How long will that take?’ I asked.

‘Two days,’ was his reply. ‘Oh, and the auxiliary for the dynamo is okay. Strange thing, sir,’ he added, ‘the batteries look as though they’re all right, too. They’re not good, of course. But no sand and sea water has got into them and I reckon I might be able to give you some light tomorrow night in place of these oil lamps you’re using. I took the liberty of breaking open a locker and I’ve found a lot more tools, some spares, including bulbs, and several rifles and revolvers and ammunition — German, I think they are. There’s grenades, too. But they’re pretty rusty. The water has been at them.’

Before he left he gave me a long list of things that would be required.

‘Good find of yours,’ said Stuart as we watched his flashlight moving like a will-o’-the-wisp up the path out of the cove.

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘our luck’s in, I think.’

By lunch-time the next day the ramp was complete again. The weather was set fair. In the afternoon we began running hawsers out. I had decided not to use the winches, but to work with pulleys. Bill and Anne came down and I persuaded them to go up to the farm, borrow Mervin’s trailer and drive over to Camelford to get things Dugan urgently needed like distilled water, petrol, cleansing oil, gear and lubricating oils, cotton waste and a firkin of beer.

By sundown we had two hawsers out, firmly fixed round great rocks on each side of the cove near the entrance. I attached a snaffle and pulley to the hawser fixed to the side of the cove opposite the stern of the ship and slipped the chain over one of the after deck bollards. Then we went to work on the pulley chains until it was taut.