The Wreck Of The Mary Deare

SS It was under these that I found the brand-new leather writing case, the gift note still inside — To John. Write me often, darling. Love — Maggie. Wife or sweetheart? I didn’t know, but staring up at me was the last letter he had written her. My darling Maggie it began, and my eyes were caught and held by the opening of the second paragraph: Now that the worst is over, I don’t mind telling you, darling, this has been a trip and no mistake. Nothing has gone right.

The skipper had died and they had buried him in the Med. And out in the Atlantic they had run into heavy weather. On March 16 they were hove-to — a real buster — the pumps unable to hold their own, Numbers One and Two holds flooded, and a fire in the radio shack whilst they were trying to shore up the boiler-room bulkhead, with the crew near panic because that bastard Higgins had told them that explosives formed part of the cargo, whatever the manifest said. A Mr Dellimare, whom he referred to as the owner, had been lost overboard that same night.

Patch he described as having joined the ship at Aden as first officer in place of old Adams who was sick. And he added this: Thank God he did or I don’t think I’d be writing this to you. A good seaman, whatever they say about his having run the belle isle on the rocks a few years back. And then this final paragraph: Now Higgins is first officer and honestly, Maggie, I don’t know. I’ve told you how he’s been riding me ever since we left Yokohama. But it isn’t only that. He’s too thick with some of the crew — the worst of them. And then there’s the ship. Sometimes I think the old girl knows she’s bound for the knacker’s yard. There’s some ships when it comes to breaking up …

The letter ended abruptly like that. What had happened?

Was it the shout of Fire? There were questions racing through my mind, questions that only Patch could answer. I thrust the letter into my pocket and hurried down to the stokehold.

I had got as far as the engine-room before I stopped to think about the man I was going to question. He’d been alone on the ship. They’d all abandoned her, except him. And Taggart was dead — the owner, too. A cold shiver ran through me, and on the lower catwalk I stopped and listened, straining my ears — hearing all the sounds of the ship struggling with the seas, all magnified by the resonance of that gloomy cavern, but unable to hear the sound I was listening for, the sound of a shovel scraping coal from the iron floors.

I went down slowly then, a step at a time, listening — listening for the scrape of that shovel. But I couldn’t hear it and when I finally reached the door to the stokehold, there was the shovel lying on the coal.

I shouted to him, but all I got was the echo of my own voice, sounding thin against the pounding of the seas. And when I flung open the furnace door, I wondered whether he existed at all outside of my imagination. The fire was a heap of white-hot ash. It looked as though it hadn’t been stoked since I had left it.

In a frenzy, I seized the shovel and piled on coal, trying to smother my fears in physical exertion, in satisfaction at the sound of the coal spilling out of the chute, at the roar of the furnace.

But you can’t just blot out fear like that. It was there inside me. I suddenly dropped the shovel, slammed the furnace door shut and went rushing up through the ship. I had to find him. I had to convince myself that he existed.

You must remember I was very tired.

He wasn’t on the bridge. But there were pencil marks on the chart, a new position. And the sight of the seas steadied me. They were real enough anyway. God! they were real! I clung to the ledge below the glass panels of the wheelhouse and stared, fascinated, as a wave built up to port, broke and burst against the ship’s side, flinging up a great column of smoking water that crashed down on the foredeck, blotting everything out. The sea rolled green over the bows. And when the outline of the bulwarks showed again and she struggled up with thousands of tons of water spilling off her, I saw that the for’ard hatch was a gaping rectangle in the deck.

There was no litter of matchwood. The deck was swept clear of all trace of the hatch covers. They had been gone some time. I watched the water spilling out of the hold as the ship rolled. But as fast as it spilled, the angry seas filled it up again. The bows were practically under water. The ship felt heavy and sluggish under my feet. She didn’t feel as though she could last much longer.