And the Devil doesn’t really exist — not in the South Atlantic anyway.
…or does he?
They entered the master’s day-room under the bridge very cautiously indeed, the Commander slightly in the lead stepping over the low coaming while the First Lieutenant followed, this time with his hand unashamedly firm on the plastic butt of the pistol in its webbing holster.
The Commander smiled to himself in anticipation as he saw the pile of closely-written papers lying on the desk between the silver, company-crested coffee pot, now filled to overflowing with a leprous mould, and the yellowed pages of an open book. He stepped across the expensive and still curiously pristine Egyptian carpet, frowning slightly at the brown stain that marred it under the low coffee table, and leafed through the sheets of what appeared, at first sight, to be some form of manuscript.
They met the rather grimy and sweating Petty Officer Torrance as they stepped out into the sunlight which flooded the silent boat-deck. The Commander returned the salute, at the same time being careful not to drop the papers he held covetously under his arm.
‘Proper rum do, Sir,’ the P.O. said, in a voice of such low pitch that one might almost have felt he was afraid the dead ship would hear and resent the imputation of abnormality. ‘The only sign we could find that she ever had a crew aboard was… this, Sir.’
And the Commander and the First Lieutenant stared uncomfortably at the yellowed officer’s pattern deck shoe held unconcernedly in the Petty Officer’s outstretched hand.
‘Good God — there’s still something in it,’ the First Lieutenant muttered, taking an uncertain step backwards.
‘Yessir,’ the P.O. whispered conspiratorially. ‘A bit of a foot, Sir. I thought, like, that you might want to… well, inter it with proper respec’, Sir?’
‘Quite correct, Petty Officer Torrance,’ boomed the Commander approvingly. ‘Perhaps you would be good enough to… ah, take charge of the remains until we can conduct the appropriate ceremony.’
The First Lieutenant blinked doubtfully — did one perform a ceremony over what was, after all, only a very little part of a man? ‘I now commit this deck shoe and contents to the deep…’
‘Where did you find it, P.O.?’
‘Sort of caught up in the traverse ring of the 4.7 on the poop, Sir. Proper bloody old cannon it is too.’
But the Commander wasn’t really listening again, being more anxious to get back to his ship and begin his study of the manuscript clutched under his arm.
They left the Petty Officer and two rather uneasy ratings aboard the mouldering ship and, on the way back to the survey vessel, took the gleaming black and white pinnace on a complete circuit of the rusty, once-grey hull towering above them.
As they rounded the great, overhanging stern they could still see the ship’s name and port of registration cut into the rounded steel plates of her counter: CYCLOPS… LIVERPOOL.
‘It’s a long time since she last saw the Formby Light,’ said the Commander reflectively.
They cut sharply under the surprisingly modern flare of her bows and the First Lieutenant watched as the black shadowed line of the corroding starboard anchor cable ran quickly aft across the upturned faces of the Navymen. The once fine edge of her weed-trailing cutwater was twisted and distorted, with several rusted plates gaping wide at the seams.
‘Seems she was involved in some sort of collision,’ he observed to the impatient Commander.
Which at least accounted for the slender hull being slightly down by the head; though it was still strange, because one would have thought that her chief engineer would have had time to trim his tanks in the placidity of that island lake.
Dinner was served rather later than usual in the survey ship’s wardroom that evening and, when her officers did eventually take their places round the table, the Commander’s seat remained vacant.
Because the Commander was already sitting down in his own quarters, and the plate of finely-cut ham sandwiches slowly curled at the edges while the pot of untouched coffee beside him grew colder. Outside, the sun sank lower over the motionless, silent fleet of mutilated ghosts that had sat there since before the survey ship had been even a pensive twinkle in her builder’s eye.
And the Commander sank lower in his solitary chair. And read, and read…
The Personal Log
of
Jonathan Kent
Chief Officer
M.V. Cyclops
Voyage No. 13
CHAPTER ONE
I was eating a jam sandwich when the first ship of our group went down.
At least I think it was jam, it was red and sticky like blood anyway. I wasn’t really enjoying it though — have you ever tried eating jam sandwiches at five-thirty in the morning in the South Atlantic? By the time the Third Mate has picked out the best of them around ten p.m. the evening before, then the Second has poked and prodded them during his middle watch and forgotten to put the lid back on the box when he’s finished, they’re more like curled up little wafer biscuits when it’s your turn. The only consolation was that, being Chief Officer, at least I had priority over Brannigan, the Fourth, and young Conway, who shared the four to eight watch with me.
Stepping out through the chartroom door I stood chewing gloomily and looking around for a few moments. It was shaping up to be another hot, listless day, which was what you’d expect with us well into the Benguela Current and the coast of South West Africa nine hundred miles away on our port beam. The stand-by quartermaster was already rolling down the canvas bridge dodgers to allow what little breeze there was to fan the bridge, and I mentally thanked God that at least we had the advantage of a seventeen-knot passage to help create a wind.
We were four ships altogether; all much faster than the normal 1941 convoy establishment, but that was because we were something special. I didn’t really know why, not then, but it was certainly an unusual set-up. Three freighters and an escort corvette, all modern and all capable of pushing at least nineteen knots — twenty even, once the engineers heard the dull thud of underwater charges rebounding off the hull. There’s nothing like a bit of explosive as an incentive for getting the best speed out of a ship.
We were steaming in a sort of ‘L’ formation — my own ship, Cyclops, at the head of the ‘L’, with the Frenchman, Commandant Joffre, and our sister ship, Athenian, lying one thousand yards astern and steaming abreast with about six cables between them while, darting in and out of the group like a frustrated moth round a candle, little Mallard showed us with monotonous persistence just what an eleven-hundred-ton corvette could do in the way of tight, stern- skidding turns.
I watched her morosely, thinking that was about all she could do — she didn’t have enough fire power to fight us, never mind the bloody Germans, with her single four-inch main armament! Even Cyclops had an antiquated 4.7 mounted on the poop aft and I felt some sympathy for Mallard since, while she had to be facing the enemy to fire, we could at least make fearsome if ineffective bangs while running away. Mind you, the early escort corvettes were almost purely designed for anti-submarine measures and, with the new Asdic gear and the twin rows of depth-charges on their after-decks, they were pretty well equipped for that.
Our Junior Cadet, Conway, was hanging over the sand and canvas scrubbed teak rail of the starboard bridge wing. The backs of his knees looked very white under the slightly too long tropical shorts, and I noticed how the sun, reflecting up from the green-painted navigation light screen, threw a sickly pallor over his pale features. He was watching the skips of water as flying fish skimmed across the oily swell with an expression of youthful fascination. It was his first trip to sea, and four-winged fish that flew in the air for up to a quarter of a mile were still a source of constant wonderment to him.