‘You should be out on the other wing when the Master and I are here, Conway,’ I snarled brutally, trying to cover my own sick horror.
He gazed wildly at me from tear-bright eyes for a moment, then rushed blindly through the dark wheel-house. Brannigan hesitated, then followed slowly. I could feel his anger burning the back of my neck, but I wasn’t in the mood for apologies as I stared dully at little Mallard scurrying round the stained patch of oily wreckage like a bitch with worms chasing her tail. Then her siren whoop-whooped in a final lament and the white spray under her bows rose higher as she hurried anxiously after us and Athenian, still dipping to the slow swell broad on our beam.
Glancing over the six cables of tossing water compressed between our twin hulls, I noticed that Bill Henderson and a group of her officers were staring aft too. There wasn’t much left to see by then though.
I didn’t wave to him this time.
There were a few of the junior engineer officers at their places when I went below for breakfast, but the deck officers’ table held only the solitary figure of Larabee, the Second Wireless Operator. He glanced up and nodded perfunctorily as I sat down, then the saturnine face bent again and he dug viciously at his cornflakes. Sam Ling, the Mate’s Steward, appeared silently at my elbow and proffered a company-crested menu. I glanced at it, remembered the way in which the Commandant Joffre had taken her crowd down with her less than an hour before, and settled for toast and coffee. There wasn’t even any butter when that came so I poured myself a black coffee and gave the toast a miss too. Larabee raised his head again.
‘See the Frog go down, did you?’ he asked, still chewing stolidly.
I swallowed a mouthful of the hot liquid gratefully, feeling the slightly acrid grounds stimulating the back of my throat. ‘Yeah,’ I answered shortly. I didn’t really like Larabee anyway, with his skull-like features and endless questions about how things were going in every department of the ship from engine room to bridge. He was only a bloody number-two sparks and these things were none of his damned business.
He scraped his plate noisily. ‘She didn’t get off a four-S call in time,’ he said critically. ‘She should have put out a proper distress call, you know.’
SSSS was the distress signal made by merchantmen under attack from a submarine, QQQQ meant attacked by armed raider, all the A’s for aircraft, and so on. I didn’t feel much like talking, and certainly not to Larabee, but I glanced at him sourly. ‘What did she need to put a call out for, Sparks? All there is of the bloody Royal Navy in the South Atlantic’s steaming right alongside of us anyway.’
It wasn’t true of course — the Admiralty probably had at least another two ships somewhere between Africa and South America — but I wasn’t an RN admirer at the best of times. Who was it said that the only thing more obscene than an RN rating’s description of the merchant navy is a merchant sailor’s opinion of the Royal Navy? Larabee wasn’t put out either way.
The morose face inspected with suspicion the plate of Spam and dried egg that the silent Ling had placed before it. ‘Bloody typical of the Frogs, mind. Gettin’ snarled up in their own rigging.’
I slammed my empty cup down in the saucer loud enough to make Ferrier, the Third Engineer, glance over in surprise, then stood up and shoved my chair back, not wanting to get involved in an argument with anybody right then. ‘Just hope, if your time ever comes, Larabee, you’ll not be unlucky enough to get the chop from your own bloody wireless aerials.’
He raised an unperturbed forkful of Spam and solidified orange-yellow compo. ‘Not me, Mister Mate. And I’ll get a proper signal off first too, don’t you worry!’
I gritted my teeth and stamped out of the wood-panelled saloon, conscious of curious stares from the engineers’ table. The last thing I heard as I stepped out on deck was Larabee’s high-pitched voice, ‘Ling? Ling, you stupid bloody slant-eyed Chink. Where the hell’s my coffee…?’
Eight bells struck as I reached the top of the bridge ladder.
I strolled into the wheelhouse, where Brannigan was just handing over the watch to Curtis, the Third Mate. The four-to-eight helmsman, McRae, had already been relieved and had disappeared aft, presumably in search of breakfast and to regale the rest of the crowd with a highly coloured version of how the Old Man had appeared on the bridge wearing nothing but his hat and shaving soap.
A still shaken-looking Conway was out on the starboard wing, talking in low undertones to his opposite number, Cadet Breedie. I felt a twinge of guilt about speaking so sharply to him while the Commandant Joffre was belching her guts out under the green Atlantic swell. Still, I’d had it pretty rough when I was a youngster too, back in the bad old days of the post-First World War shipping slump. We’d been damned glad even to get a ship — any ship — with or without an irritable first mate.
Brannigan finished passing on the watch information. ‘Course 143. Emergency full speed until further notice from the escort. Right, Mate?’
Curtis nodded gloomily. ‘Right, Mate. I have the watch… An’ it’s deep fried Spam an’ yellow muck again for chow, while you’re on it.’
The Fourth Mate pulled a face, ‘Jesus! That bloody steward must have a nest of powdered chickens laying them under the galley.’ He turned to me and raised an eyebrow, ‘Permission to go below, Sir?’
I nodded, ‘Off you go, Four Oh. Er… where’s the Captain?’
He grinned before he slid down the ladder, ‘Gone down to put his clothes on, Sir. The rest of them anyway.’
Conway coughed diffidently behind me and I turned. ‘Can I go below for breakfast, Sir?’
‘Yes,’ I said, then seeing the hurt still burning in his eyes I jerked my head. ‘Conway!’
He swivelled back, tight-lipped, ‘Sir?’
I had meant to say something light to him, make him feel a bit better but, somehow, after seeing the little-boy peevishness in his face, I just made things worse. ‘Conway. If you ever come that prima donna act with me again I’ll have you on double watches from here right the way through to Aussie! Do you understand me?’
The kid swallowed nervously. ‘Aye, aye, Sir. Can I go now, Sir?’
I nodded and watched him hurry down the ladder with the flat-topped cap still with its wire support in it and the Company badge gleaming with pristine newness. I hoped someone would tell him to whip out the stretcher then leave it under the shower for a few hours so that it would get all floppy and more like an apprentice’s headgear than a master’s. The badge would go green in its own good time after the salt had got into it. Resolving to get Breedie, the Senior Cadet, to drop the hint, I wandered into the chartroom, feeling a proper bastard.
The Third Mate looked up from where he had been checking our dead-reckoning position on the chart. ‘Morning, Mister Kent.’
I lit a Players from the fifty tin I kept on the shelf and stared moodily at the bearded old Jack Tar in the lifebuoy on the label, wondering if he’d ever suffered from sadistic officers who took their own fears out on helpless juniors. He probably had — the sea isn’t the calling for anyone who aspires to democracy. Now young Conway was well on his way to finding that out, by courtesy of my good self.