Some time after midnight the engines of the Erebus began to throb and shake. Ben Phipps, on the shaking floor of the cabin, said: ‘We’re about to slip silently into the night.’ The ship groaned and shuddered and seemed about to shatter with its own effort. Somehow it was wrenched into motion.
Next morning, when they went on deck, they saw above the southern cloud banks the silver cone of Mount Ida. On one side of the Erebus was the Nox; on the other there was a tanker that no one had seen before. The tanker, its plates mouldering with rust, was as decrepit as its companions, yet the three old ships had their dignity, moving steadily forward, unhurried and at home in their own element.
Most of the passengers took the pace as fixed and immutable, but Ben Phipps and Plugget, having conferred together, went to the First Officer with the demand that it be increased. They were told that the convoy must conserve its power for the dangerous passage past the coast of Cyrenaica.
Phipps, who had now established his authority over Plugget, went round the ship, his energy unimpaired by a night made sleepless by the thumping engine, the bugs, and the jog-trots of cockroaches and blackbeetles. Plugget felt bound to keep beside him, but Guy sat on the boat-deck, his back against a rail, and read for a lecture on Coleridge. The women, in a stupor, sat round him.
Ben kept returning to the group, trying to rouse in Guy a spirit of inquiring indignation, but Guy, refusing to acknowledge the changes and perils through which they were passing, would not be moved.
Ben Phipps had discovered that the lifeboats were rusted to the davits so there would be little hope of launching them. ‘Those two boy scouts, Lush and Dubedat, are trying to organize life-boat drill. If they come up here, tell them from me the boats are a dead loss.’ He went again and returned to report that there was no wireless operator on board, but he could work the transmitter himself and had talked to the Signal Station at Suda Bay.
‘Nice to know we’re not cut off,’ said Phipps, looking to Guy for agreement and admiration. Guy, as was expected, smiled admiringly, but it was a rather ironical admiration. Harriet began to suspect that Phipps was losing his hold on Guy. When he said persuasively: ‘Come and see,’ Guy merely stretched and smiled and shook his head. When Phipps took himself off, Guy returned to his books. He spent the day absorbed, like a student in a library. The only difference was that he sang to himself, the words so low that only Harriet knew what they were:
‘If your engine cuts out over Hellfire Pass,
You can stick your twin Browning guns right up your arse.’
sometimes changing to the chorus:
‘No balls, no balls at all;
If your engine cuts out, you’ll have no balls at all.’
Drowsy in the mild, spring wind, Harriet watched Crete take form out of the cloud. The sun broke through. Two corvettes from Suda Bay circled the convoy and let it pass. A reconnaissance plane came back again and again to look at the ships, flying so low that the black crosses were clear on the wings and some people claimed they had seen the face of the enemy. Nothing more happened. The civilian ships did not look worth a raid.
They turned the western prow of Crete, a route not much used by shipping, where the island rose, a sheer wall of stone, offering no foothold for life. Grey and barren in the brilliant light, it seemed an uninhabited island in an unfrequented sea, but during the afternoon a ship came into view: a hospital ship. It slid past slowly, like a cruising gull, and remained a long time in sight, catching the sun upon its silver flank.
As the afternoon passed, people began to rise out of their torpor and appear on deck. Among them was Pinkrose in all his heavy clothing. Feeling the heat, he began to unwrap, then, in a sudden nervous spasm, he hurried away and returned without his trilby. He was wearing instead a large hat of straw. This contented him for a time, then he felt the top of the hat and was again galvanized into action. He went off and, when he made a third appearance, had placed the trilby on top of the straw.
‘Good God,’ whispered Miss Jay, ‘why’s he wearing two hats?’
‘Because,’ said Phipps, temporarily back at base, ‘he’s as mad as two hatters.’
A very old man came on to the boat-deck trailing a toy dog among the hazards of bodies, baggage and packing-cases. Harriet sat up in surprise. It was Mr Liversage who had been her companion on the Lufthansa from Sofia to Athens. She had scarcely thought of him since and supposed he had gone on the autumn evacuation boat. Instead, here he was, jaunty as ever, with his old snub face, grey-yellow hair and moist yellow-blue eyes. The dog was an old dog, the hair gone from its worn, cracked hide, but it was as jaunty as its master.
Mr Liversage recognized her at once. ‘Chucked out again,’ he shouted. ‘Bit of a lark, eh?’
He squatted down with the group and Harriet asked where he had been all winter. He told her:
‘Cooped up indoors. Had a nasty turn; bronchitis, y’know.’ He had been staying with friends at Kifissia, an elderly English couple who had looked after him well. ‘Bully of them to take an old codger in. Lucky old codger, that’s me. They’d a lovely home.’ He described how his hostess had waked him early the previous morning, saying: ‘Come on, Victor. We’ve got to go. The Germans are nearly here.’ ‘The poor girl was very brave: had to leave everything; made no complaints. “Fortune of war, Victor,” she said. So we all came on the Major’s boat. Very kind of the Major, very kind indeed.’ Becoming aware of Phipps standing above him, Mr Liversage said: ‘See this dog! Best dog in the world.’
‘Oh, is it?’ Phipps bent slightly towards the old man but his eyes were dodging about in search of better entertainment.
‘Collected thousands of pounds, this dog.’
‘Oh, really! Who’s the money for? Yourself?’
‘Myself!’ Mr Liversage got to his feet. ‘My dog collects for hospitals,’ he said.
He was deeply offended. Guy and the women attempted to assuage him but he would not be assuaged. He lifted his dog and went. Before anyone had time to reprove him, Phipps, too, was off, in the other direction.
An hour or so later the ships slowed and stopped. Word went round that they were being circled by an enemy submarine and the Nox was preparing to drop depth charges. As this was happening, Ben Phipps returned with Plugget in tow. He was in an agitated state and the news of the submarine was as nothing compared with what he had to tell.
‘I’ve found a locked cabin,’ he said. ‘When I asked Lush for the key, he got into a tizzy. He refused to hand over. I said we’d a right to know what’s inside. I told him if he didn’t open up, I’d report the Major’s behaviour to the Cairo Embassy and demand an inquiry. That made him puff his pipe, I can tell you. I’m collecting witnesses. Come on, Guy, now, get to your feet.’
Guy stretched himself but stayed where he was. ‘I bet there’s nothing inside but luggage.’
‘I bet you’re wrong. Come along.’
Guy smiled, shook his head and said to Harriet: ‘You go.’
Bored now and ready for distraction, she rose and followed Phipps, who gathered more witnesses as he went.
When they reached the main corridor, Phipps strode past the Major’s cabin and shook the next door. Finding it still locked, he gave it a masterful kick, shouting: ‘Open up.’
From inside the Major’s cabin, Archie Callard’s voice rose in anguish. ‘This is too tedious! Do let little Phipps “open up”.’