before you and safely north by the time you reach the spot.
Got to give you credit. You are putting on a show for the kid. When he’s on watch at night he doesn’t even go back aft for a smoke when Sails relieves him; just goes to the other wing of the bridge and leans there staring forward. They put the lookout on the bridge two nights ago; you’re wetting down the foc’sle head nicely. The ship knows her way. She’ll bury her nose and take two seas, spouting them up through the hawse-holes, tumbling the chains in the lockers under the windlass; then she’ll shudder like a wrestler bunchinghis muscles, shoulder a streaming mantle of sea and spume back on to the foredeck, cut masses of water to ribbons with her bulwarks, and show her decks again. The engines are half-speed; you’ve got us there, old boy. The mill can take only so much; but the hull and those firm clean bulkheads are too much for you. That and the weight of 78,000 barrels of kerosene and furnace oil, and the tons of drums and crates in the fore and after holds.
Sept. 23, 1938
Davy Jones, I acknowledge your strength. It isn’t all it’s cracked up to be in the magazine stories. It couldn’t be. But I have found out since early this morning when we hit the first seventy-five mile squall, that wind and sea can be strong enough to tear great strips of paint off the deck; that they can crumple sheet-steel steamguards like cardboard; that they can tear up the welded bases of the kingposts we use for raising tank tops, hurling them over the side. But the ship is tight and bone-dry inside, since we battened down the after hold, dogged the watertight doors, covered the ventilators. And I can still work my away around the poop if I hold to the rail. I can still get up on deck and tell you to your fish face that in me, and in the ship I ride, you have met your match.
You are a murderer.
The third squall passed and we labored like a panting ox reaching the crest of a long hill with his load. The kid and I opened a watertight door on the lee side and slipped out on deck, dogging it behind us. We worked our way to the rail at the break of the poop, stood watching her take every sea. She’d plunge, hiding her bulk. To port and starboard was ocean. At our feet was ocean. Seventy yards away the midship house was an island. Then more ocean. Then the foc’sle head. Behind us the after house was an island. Then she’d heave herself out again, and be a ship again instead of three islands.
Patchy clouds hurtled overhead like stones thrown. One was low, five miles away, broad on the port bow. The moaning in the stays rose an octave, then another as the fourth gale struck. The black cloud paused, whirling, looming up, then charged us, shouting. Iyelled at the kid, “Look out! Come back!” but he never heard me. He stood there riding the deck as if he were a part of it. I vaulted the after cargo manifold, raced over the after hatch, and threw myself down behind the coaming, twisting my fingers around the batten. The rest happened in about three seconds, but it seemed to last forever … the squall swept down and brought twilight with it, and blinding rain; swept past and took the ocean away from under the ship … must have, for she dropped like a stone when the light left her. I saw that sea from where I lay, flat on my belly behind the hatch; saw its crest curling over the top of the foremast. And I saw the kid standing upright, both hands steadying him against the lashing wind, his face upturned to meet that wall of grey-green water. And I felt the ship jar as the midship house took the brunt of it, before I was covered by a great weight of strangling brine. Ages later it passed, and I breathed again, but the kid was gone. There was a white clot on the drum of the winch.
You dirty coward.
You win, Davy Jones. That sea stove in the midship house. Carried away the aerial. Smashed the lifeboats. Tore out the stack. Broke the ship’s back.
There is kerosene
Got to give you credit. You are putting on a show for the kid. When he’s on watch at night he doesn’t even go back aft for a smoke when Sails relieves him; just goes to the other wing of the bridge and leans there staring forward. They put the lookout on the bridge two nights ago; you’re wetting down the foc’sle head nicely. The ship knows her way. She’ll bury her nose and take two seas, spouting them up through the hawse-holes, tumbling the chains in the lockers under the windlass; then she’ll shudder like a wrestler bunchinghis muscles, shoulder a streaming mantle of sea and spume back on to the foredeck, cut masses of water to ribbons with her bulwarks, and show her decks again. The engines are half-speed; you’ve got us there, old boy. The mill can take only so much; but the hull and those firm clean bulkheads are too much for you. That and the weight of 78,000 barrels of kerosene and furnace oil, and the tons of drums and crates in the fore and after holds.
Sept. 23, 1938
Davy Jones, I acknowledge your strength. It isn’t all it’s cracked up to be in the magazine stories. It couldn’t be. But I have found out since early this morning when we hit the first seventy-five mile squall, that wind and sea can be strong enough to tear great strips of paint off the deck; that they can crumple sheet-steel steamguards like cardboard; that they can tear up the welded bases of the kingposts we use for raising tank tops, hurling them over the side. But the ship is tight and bone-dry inside, since we battened down the after hold, dogged the watertight doors, covered the ventilators. And I can still work my away around the poop if I hold to the rail. I can still get up on deck and tell you to your fish face that in me, and in the ship I ride, you have met your match.
You are a murderer.
The third squall passed and we labored like a panting ox reaching the crest of a long hill with his load. The kid and I opened a watertight door on the lee side and slipped out on deck, dogging it behind us. We worked our way to the rail at the break of the poop, stood watching her take every sea. She’d plunge, hiding her bulk. To port and starboard was ocean. At our feet was ocean. Seventy yards away the midship house was an island. Then more ocean. Then the foc’sle head. Behind us the after house was an island. Then she’d heave herself out again, and be a ship again instead of three islands.
Patchy clouds hurtled overhead like stones thrown. One was low, five miles away, broad on the port bow. The moaning in the stays rose an octave, then another as the fourth gale struck. The black cloud paused, whirling, looming up, then charged us, shouting. Iyelled at the kid, “Look out! Come back!” but he never heard me. He stood there riding the deck as if he were a part of it. I vaulted the after cargo manifold, raced over the after hatch, and threw myself down behind the coaming, twisting my fingers around the batten. The rest happened in about three seconds, but it seemed to last forever … the squall swept down and brought twilight with it, and blinding rain; swept past and took the ocean away from under the ship … must have, for she dropped like a stone when the light left her. I saw that sea from where I lay, flat on my belly behind the hatch; saw its crest curling over the top of the foremast. And I saw the kid standing upright, both hands steadying him against the lashing wind, his face upturned to meet that wall of grey-green water. And I felt the ship jar as the midship house took the brunt of it, before I was covered by a great weight of strangling brine. Ages later it passed, and I breathed again, but the kid was gone. There was a white clot on the drum of the winch.
You dirty coward.
You win, Davy Jones. That sea stove in the midship house. Carried away the aerial. Smashed the lifeboats. Tore out the stack. Broke the ship’s back.
There is kerosene
Similar Books
