The Coffin Ship by Peter Tonkin Page B

anxiously across at the mate’s back. “Sand’s giving false echoes on this now, Ben,” he said tensely.
    “What are we, Ben?” asked Richard, crossing to the captain’s chair. With his arrival, some of the tension seemed to leave the situation.
    “Half ahead, making eight knots,” answered Ben, a mea sure of relief audible in his voice. He drew both hands back through the sun-bleached shock of his hair.
    “Come to slow and make five.” Richard stood for a moment by the big black leatherbound chair on the port side of the bridge; then he sat with every appearance of ease.
    “Slow ahead,” acknowledged Ben, his hand moving on the Engine Room telegraph. The pounding of the engines slowed further, pulsing to a funereal beat. “Five it is.”
    The light thickened. Shadows crouched like monsters in corners, under tables. The Sampson posts, two vertical, white-painted loading posts twenty feet high halfway down the deck became almost invisible. “Jesus!” said Ben. “This is impossible. How’s the radar?”
    “Murky,” answered John.
    “Start the siren, please,” ordered Richard quietly. Immediately, the lost-soul howl boomed out over the Gulf.
    The situation was rapidly becoming dangerous. They couldn’t see the length of the deck. They couldn’t rely on the radar. Only the Channel was busier.
    “Sparks in the Radio Room?” asked Richard nonchalantly, already certain of the answer.
    “Yes,” said Ben.
    “Good.” He could warn local shipping if things got any worse. “But I think I still want a particularly sharp pair of eyes up for’ard. Mr. Slope?”
    “Sir?”
    “Take some glasses and a walkie-talkie. Stroll up to the forecastle head, if you’d be so kind. I’ll arrange for a member of the crew to relieve you shortly.”
    “Right, sir.” He turned to go.
    For some reason he would never understand, Richard added, “And keep in touch.”
    “Right-ho, sir,” said Slope cheerfully, and he was gone.
    Richard leaned back against the headrest which, with the swivel foot, made his chair look like a dentist’s chair. On the shelf beneath the port windows was his radio transceiver handset: his R/T. He picked it up and switched it on, ready to receive.
    “Third Mate here. Sir?”
    “Captain here. Receiving you loud and clear.”
    “Just going out onto the port…” Slope probably said more, but he cut himself off by switching to Receive too soon.
    “Report when you reach the Sampson posts. Over. Can you see him, Ben? The port bridge wing’s in my way…”
    “No, sir.”
    “No? Strange. Must be thicker than I…”
    “It’s not that, sir. I can see the deck. He’s not there.”
    “Third Mate. This is the captain. Do you receive me?”
    The R/T hissed. Nothing more. Like sand grains brushing over silk. A sinister sound. Something’s wrong, thought Richard.
    “Slope?”
    No reply. Nothing.
    He was on his feet without further thought. His voice remained calm, but he let a little urgency into it. “She’s yours, Ben. I’m going to look for the third mate.” There was another R/T on the chart table. He gestured to it. “John. You monitor me.”
    “Aye, sir. But take care. She’s a tricky ship.”
    Richard gave a bark of laughter, then realized the Manxman was quite serious.
    Crossing to the lift, he left the R/T on, but only a hiss came in, ghostly enough to make him think about John Higgins’s instinctive superstition.
    The lift whispered down until the doors opened on A deck. Richard hurried across and stepped out onto the port side without pausing to think. Immediately, his face filled with sand. He had forgotten about this. Now that the
Prometheus
was at slow ahead, the wind was effectively gusting ten to fifteen knots; and freshening, by the feel of it. He slitted his streaming eyes and bundled his handkerchief over his nose and mouth, sneezing convulsively. The sand moved down his collar with a disturbing sense of personal invasion. Into his ears and up his nose. He sneezed