Lynne Barrett-Lee - Able Seacat Simon

Lieutenant Hett said nothing this time, but I caught him raising his eyebrows while the captain wasn’t looking, his attention still on the errant anchor chain.

‘That’s all, sir?’ asked Frank.

‘For the moment,’ said the captain. ‘And as soon as possible,’ he added. ‘Okay, Frank? That’ll be all. As you were.’

Captain Kerans stood and watched Hett and Frank walk away and down the ladder to the quarterdeck. He was looking very thin, and I wondered if he was eating his rations. Since I’d got to know him, I’d come to realise the sort of man he was, and I wouldn’t have put it past him to have his own food distributed elsewhere.

And it was then that he looked up and saw me. ‘Ah, there you are, Able Seacat Simon!’ he said, grinning up at me. Then he tapped his nose. ‘Ah,’ he said, mysteriously. ‘Walls have ears, Simon, my lad. That’s the thing you must remember. Walls have ears .’

I stared back down at him, every bit as confused as his officers. Walls had ears ? Perhaps Jack had been right about the marbles.

The 30th July 1949, a day that would prove to be unlike any other, dawned hot and humid, as per usual. The only difference to be seen and felt was the effect of Typhoon Gloria. Though she’d not quite made a visit, she had come pretty close, the result of which was a high tide and fast-flowing current, and flooding on both banks of the river.

Gloria had certainly made herself felt over the previous week, and in our already difficult straits had added another set of problems. The top of the ship had to be stripped of anything that might be blown away – all the canvas the men had been busy assembling and hanging at the captain’s orders, plus the covers over the guns, and all the other awnings. Then it was simply a case of waiting and hoping. As the wind rose and rose, most of us huddled under some sort of cover – at least grateful for the marked dip in temperature – till the worst of it blew itself out.

Not that it had all been doom and gloom. And, as I’d suspected, it had certainly stirred things up a bit. Just after the worst of the wind passed, there was suddenly a great commotion – Peggy, who I’d thought had been dozing in Petty Officer Griffiths’ cabin, was out on deck, barking herself hoarse.

We all went out to find out what was going on, gathering at the guardrails, to see a haystack floating past the Amethyst , with a dog standing on top of it, barking back. Peggy was beside herself, understandably. Was this the first fellow canine she’d seen in a year? Probably. I wondered if we’d see a cat next.

‘Shall we try to lasso it for you, Pegs?’ Petty Officer Griffiths was saying to her, laughing.

‘I think it’s love at first sight,’ remarked Lieutenant Strain drily.

There was more to come. Soon another haystack appeared in the distance, this one topped off not by a cat, but by a chicken.

‘Ruddy hell, is this some evil communist torture?’ Frank said. ‘God, what I wouldn’t give to see that roasted on a plate.’

But if the chicken had roused the crew’s hunger, the next thing had them drooling – for it was not a haystack this time, but a pig!

‘Saints alive,’ somebody shouted from above me. ‘Someone fetch some rope or something! Anything! We can get that! A whole pig !’

There was a frantic scrabble while everyone flew in all directions, trying to find something to lasso the animal with before the tide pulled it out of our reach. And they made a good fist of it; more than once managing to get a rope round it before the current got the upper hand and the pig, looking up at its tormentors with terrified eyes, managed to slip the makeshift noose.

‘No fresh pork for dinner tonight, then,’ Frank observed, as it disappeared into the distance and whatever alternative fate awaited it. ‘Bully beef it is, then,’ he added, sighing, and as I looked at the men’s expressions, the brief excitement snatched from them – literally – I couldn’t help but wish they liked sardines as much as I did. For all the privations, we had more than enough of those.

‘Woof,’ said Peggy, dolefully. We all knew how she felt.

Though the effects of Typhoon Gloria were largely behind us now, we had much to be grateful to her for. We didn’t know it yet, but the high tide, the current and the flooding on the banks were all going to be our friends.

However, when I entered Captain Kerans’ cabin that afternoon, in the interests of giving him some moral support, I had no idea quite how much Gloria was going to mean to us, and how soon.

There was no getting away from it; conditions were deteriorating rapidly. I had come from the wireless room – no longer a warm cosy spot but a raging cauldron – so much so that poor Jack was barely able to think straight from heat exhaustion. Junior ratings were taking turns to sit with him and pump a pair of the ship’s bellows over him, but he was in such a bad way now that he sometimes struggled to write, let alone try to decode incoming messages – of which, over the last few days there seemed to have been many.

There were also mutterings all over the ship – mutterings the captain had been at pains to quell – about what was going to happen once this new oil ran out, which it soon would, even with the ship being powered down at night. And what about the food? We were almost out of flour, the sugar was spoiled now, the rats – growing fatter on it – were breeding unchecked.

The flooding hadn’t helped, either. Because of it, communication with the shore had been impossible, so such supplies as we’d been able to trade for were no longer available to us.

No, all in all, things were not looking good for the Amethyst , and as I caught the captain’s eye once inside his cabin, I could tell he was thinking about that too; about just how far the communists intended to push us. To the death? Then, with a thrill of excitement, I saw something else twinkling in his eyes. Did he know something no one else did?

I settled myself down in my usual spot, just beside the typewriter on which he bashed out his reports. But it seemed that he hadn’t been writing, but drawing. He picked up the result of his efforts – a pencil sketch of a ship – and hung it from his fingers in front of me.

‘Shall I tell you a secret, Simon?’ he said.

Galvanised and rapt now, I stood up and stretched, then resettled and made myself more comfortable. I was glad I had, because it turned out to be quite a big secret. And also an explanation for all the strange goings-on that almost the entire crew had been muttering and moaning about these past couple of weeks. The business of the greasing and blanketing of the anchor. The business of the Amethyst being shrouded in sheets. The business of taking down all that metal topweight and slinging it unceremoniously overboard or below. The business of still being so frugal with the oil.

He wasn’t losing his marbles. He had had all his wits about him. He was setting things in place to try to silence and disguise the Amethyst . He was preparing for us all to escape!

‘What we’re going to do,’ he confirmed, to my great excitement, ‘is make a dash for it. Tonight. Yes, I know it’s dangerous, but there’s no need to look at me like that, Simon. I promise you, I have thought all this through. For weeks, let me tell you. We’re going to make a break for it under cover of darkness later this evening. Look. See this here?’

He pointed to where he’d done some shading with his pencil. ‘I’m going to disguise the Amethyst – well, to the extent that I can do, at any rate – disguise her enough to at least give those communists pause for thought. To be uncertain that they are looking at what they think they are looking at. And then we are going to escape.’