Hammond Innes - The Doomed Oasis

He took off his hat and coat then and lay down on the bunk under a ship’s blanket, listening with his ears attuned to every sound. A gong sounded for the evening meal and there was movement in the next cabin, the gush of a tap, the bang of a suitcase. The shrill of the whistle on the bridge was answered a moment later by the tug’s farewell blast on her siren. The beat of the engines increased, and later, after they had slowed to drop the pilot, the ship began to roll.

He slept during the night, rolled from side to side of the narrow bunk. But when daylight came, he lay awake, tense and hungry. Footsteps sounded in the alleyway, cabin doors slammed, somewhere a loose porthole cover rattled back and forth. The hours of daylight seemed endless, but nobody came, nobody even tried the handle of the cabin door. It was as though he didn’t exist and perversely he felt deserted, lost, forgotten in this strange world he’d been thrust into by events.’ He had no watch so that he’d no idea of the time. The sky was grey with a low wrack of cloud, no sun. The violence of the movement was exhausting and towards nightfall he was sick, retching emptily into the washbasin. Nobody seemed to hear the sound of his misery, nobody seemed to care. The seas, thudding against the bows of the ship, made her tremble, so that everything rattled, and each time she buried her bows the noise of the impact was followed by a long, shuddering movement that seemed to run through his tired body as though he were himself being exposed to the onslaught of the gale.

Night followed the day at last and he slept; and then it was day again. Darkness and light succeeding each other. He lost count of the days, and when the sun came out and the sea subsided, he knew he was too weak to hold out alone in that cabin any longer. The moment had come to face the future.

Just above his head, within easy reach of his left hand, was a bell push. He lay half a day, staring at the yellow bone button imbedded in its wooden orifice, before he could summon the courage to press it, and when the steward came he told the startled Somali to take him to the Captain.

Griffiths was seated at his desk so that to David’s bemused mind it seemed like that first time he’d met him, except that now the cabin was full of sunlight and they were off the coast of Portugal. The Somali was explaining excitedly and Griffiths’s small blue eyes were staring up at him. The Captain silenced the man with a movement of his hand. ‘All right, Ishmail. You can leave us now.’ And as the steward turned to go, his eyes rolling in his head, Griffiths added, ‘And see you don’t talk about this. The passengers are not to know that a stowaway has been hiding in their accommodation.’ And when the door closed and they were alone, he turned to David. ‘Now young man, perhaps you’d explain why the devil you stowed away on my ship?’

David hesitated. It was difficult to know where to begin, though he’d had four days of solitude to think about it. He was scared, too. The little man in the worn blue jacket with the gold braid on the sleeves was more frightening to him than either of the judges who had sentenced him, for his future was in his hands. ‘Well, come on, man, come on.’ The beard waggled impatiently, the blue eyes bored into him.

I would like to think that he remembered my advice then, but more probably he was too weak and confused to invent a satisfactory story. At any rate, he told it straight, from the receipt of his mother’s hysterical letter and his escape from Borstal, right through to the tragedy of his return to the house in Everdale Road. And Griffiths listened without comment, except that halfway through he took pity on David’s weakness, for he was leaning on the edge of the desk to support himself, and told him to pull up a chair and sit down. And when finally he.was asked to account for his possession of the documents that had been his excuse for boarding the ship, he stuck to the explanation we’d agreed.

But Griffiths was much too sharp for him. ‘So you took the packet from Mr Grant’s office and decided to deliver it yourself?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘You say you found the door of Mr Grant’s office open. That means he’d only gone out for a moment. When he came back and found the packet gone, the natural thing would be for him to come down to the ship and give me some explanation. You’re lying, you see.’

There was nothing he could do then but tell Captain Griffiths the truth, and the blue eyes, staring into his, began to crease at the corners. By the time he had finished, Griffiths was leaning back in the swivel chair and roaring with laughter, his mouth so wide open that David could see the movement of his uvula in the red hollow of his gullet. “Well I’ll be damned!’ Griffiths said, wiping his eyes. ‘And Grant an accessory-’ And then he started in on a cross-examination that seemed to go on and on.

Finally he got up and stood for a long time staring out of the porthole at the sunlight dancing on the waves made by the ship’s passage through the water, whilst David sat there, numbed and hopeless. ‘Well, I believe you,’ Griffiths said, still staring out to the sea. ‘You could never have made all that up.’ There was a long silence. ‘You got Grant to help you — and how you did that I don’t know, considering he’d never met your father. He was risking his reputation, everything. You’ve no passport, of course? That means you can’t land in the normal way. And you’ve never had word from your father, which means he doesn’t care to acknowledge your existence — right?’

And when David didn’t say anything, Griffiths swung round from the porthole, his beard thrust aggressively forward. ‘And you stow away on my ship, expecting me to get you into Arabia. How the devil do you think I’m going to do that, eh?’

‘I don’t know, sir.’

‘Perhaps Grant suggested something?’ But David shook his head unhappily and Griffiths snapped, ‘A lawyer — he should have had more sense.’ And he stumped across the cabin and stood peering down at David’s face. ‘Is your father going to acknowledge you now, do you think? How old are you?’

‘Nineteen.’

‘And do you think Colonel Whitaker’s going to be pleased to have a bastard he sired nineteen, twenty years ago, suddenly turn up with no passport, nothing — and a jailbird at that?’

David got to his feet then. ‘I’m sorry, Captain Griffiths,’ he said stiffly. ‘I didn’t realize-’ The words didn’t come easily and his mouth felt dry and caked. ‘I’ve always dreamed of this, you see — of getting out to Arabia. I suppose it’s in my — bastard blood.’ He said it with bitterness, for he was convinced now that the world was against him, as it always had been — as it always would be. ‘I’ll work my passage,’ he added wearily, ‘and when we get to Aden you can hand me over to the authorities.’

Griffiths nodded. ‘That’s the first sensible suggestion you’ve made. And it’s exactly what I ought to do.’ He had turned away and stood for a moment lost in thought. ‘Your father did me a good turn once. I owe him something for that, but the question is would I be doing him a good turn-’ He gave a quick shrug and subsided into his chair, chuckling to himself. ‘It has its humorous side, you know.’ And David watched, fascinated and with a sudden feeling of intense excitement, as Griffiths’s hand reached out to the bridge communicator. ‘Mr Evans. Come down to my cabin for a moment, will you?’ And then, looking at David: ‘Well, now, for the sake of Mr Grant, whom I wouldn’t have suspected of such lawlessness, and for the sake of your i

father, who’s going to get the shock of his life, I’m going to sign you on as a deck hand. But understand this,’ he added, ‘any trouble at Aden and I hand you over to the authorities.’