The Wreck Of The Mary Deare

‘Is there anybody about?’ I yelled. ‘Ahoy! Anyone there?’ No answer. I went back to the ‘tween-decks alleyway that ran the length of the port-hand midships section. It was as silent and as black as the pit of a mine. I started down it, and then I stopped. There it was again — a sound I had been conscious of, but had not thought about; a sound like the shifting of gravel. It echoed within the ship’s hull as though somewhere the steel plates were shifting on the bottom of the sea. It was a strange, uncanny sound, and it stopped abruptly as I walked on down the alleyway so that, in the vacuum of abrupt silence, I heard the wind’s howl again.

The door at the end of the alleyway swung open to the roll of the ship, letting in a glimmer of daylight. I started towards it, conscious that the acrid smell of burning had increased until it quite overlaid the fusty mixture of hot oil, stale cooking and sea water dampness that permeates the ‘tween-decks of all cargo ships. A fire-hose, fixed to a hydrant near the engine-room door, snaked aft through pools of water and disappeared through the open door, out on to the well-deck beyond. I followed it. Out in the daylight I saw that Number Three hatch was burned and blackened, eaten half away by fire, and Number Four had been partly opened up. Fire hoses curled round the deck, disappearing into the open inspection hatch of Number Three hold. I went a few rungs down the vertical ladder, flashing my torch. But there was no smoke, no lurid glow, and the acrid fumes of fire had a stale, washed-out smell, mixed with the pungent odour of chemicals. An empty foam extinguisher toppled on its side, clattering against the steel of the bulkhead plating. My torch showed the black pit of the hold piled high with charred and sodden bales of cotton and there was the sound of water slopping about.

The fire was out — dead — not even a wisp of smoke. And yet the ship had been abandoned. It didn’t make sense. I was thinking of last night, how the smell of burning had lingered in the mist after the ship had gone past us. And there was the coal dust on the captain’s desk and in the galley. Somebody must have put that fire out. I ran back to the engine-room door, remembering the grating sound of gravel shifting. Could it have been coal? Was there somebody down in the stokehold? Somewhere in the ship a hatch slammed, or maybe it was a door. I went in, on to the catwalk that hung over the black abyss of the engine-room, criss-crossed with the steel of gratings and vertical ladders. ‘Ahoy!’ I yelled. ‘Ahoy there!’

No answer. My torch showed a glint of polished brass and the duller gleam of burnished steel amidst the shadowy shapes of the engines. No movement either … only the sound of water that made little rushing noises as it slopped about to the roll of the ship.

I hesitated, wondering whether to go down to the stokehold, held there by a sort of fear. And it was then that I heard the footsteps.

They went slowly along the starboard alleyway — boots clanging hollow against the steel flooring; a heavy, dragging tread that passed the engine-room door, going for’ard towards the bridge. The sound of the footsteps gradually faded away and was lost in the slapping of the water in the bilges far below me.

It couldn’t have been more than twenty seconds that I remained there, paralysed, and then I had flung myself at the door, dragged it open and dived out into the alleyway, tripping over the step in my haste, dropping my torch and fetching up against the farther wall with a force that almost stunned me. The torch had fallen into a pool of rusty water and lay there, shining like a glow-worm in the darkness. I stooped and picked it up and shone it down the passage.

There was nobody there. The beam reached the whole shadowy length as far as the ladder to the deck, and the corridor was empty. I shouted, but nobody answered. The ship rolled with a creak of wood and the slosh of water, and above me, muffled, I heard the rhythmic slamming of the door to the after deckhouse. And then a faint, far-distant sound reached me, a sound that had a note of urgency in it. It was Sea Witch’s foghorn signalling me to return.

I stumbled for’ard and as I neared the ladder to the deck, the foghorn’s moan was mingled with the noise of the wind soughing through the superstructure. Hurry! Hurry! There was a greater urgency in it now; urgency in the noise of the wind, in the foghorn’s blare.

I reached the ladder, was starting up — when I saw him. He was outlined for an instant in the swinging beam of my torch, a shadowy figure standing motionless in the recess of a doorway, black with a gleam of white to his eyes.