A faint glimmer of light filtered through the cloud layer. I found the ladder to the fo’c’sle deck and felt my way through the litter of anchor and mooring machinery to the bows. Here for the first time I felt safe. I had traversed the whole length of the tanker from the bridge housing to the fo’c’sle unchallenged, and now, standing with my back to the bows, all the details of the ship stretching aft to the superstructure invisible in the darkness, I felt relaxed and secure.
This was nearly my undoing, for I started back along the catwalk. There were shelters at regular intervals, two between the fo’c’sle and the manifold, and four foam monitor platforms like gunhousings with ladders down to the deck. I was using my torch to peer inside the second of these firefighting platforms when a figure emerged coming towards me along the catwalk. I just had time to reach the deck and was crouched under the platform when he passed, hurrying to the fo’c’sle with something that looked like a toolbox in his hand.
He didn’t re-emerge, though I stayed there several minutes watching the point where his figure had disappeared. Cautiously I moved to the ship’s rail, not daring to go back on to the catwalk. I could see the derrick now and by keeping close to the rail I was able to bypass both the breaker and the manifold. I was moving quite quickly, all the sounds of the ship, even the quite different sounds of the dhow scraping against its side, identified and familiar. A seabird squawked and napped past me like an owl. I could see the dhow’s mainmast, and had just passed the portside derrick winch, when I heard the clink of metal against metal. It came from further aft, somewhere near the deeper darkness that must be the superstructure emerging out of the gloom.
I hesitated, but the sound was not repeated.
I moved away from the rail then, making diagonally across the deck towards the line of pipes running fore and aft down the centre of the ship. Moving carefully, my eyes searching ahead in the darkness, I stubbed my toe against what seemed to be some sort of a gauge. There was a sounding pipe near it and another of those access hatches to the tanks below. I could see the pipes now, and at that moment a figure seemed to rise up, a looming shadow barring my way. I dropped instantly to the deck, lying sprawled against the steel edge of the access hatch, my eyes wide, probing the darkness.
There was something there. The shape of one of the foam monitor platforms perhaps, or was it a small derrick? Something vertical. But nothing moved, no sound I didn’t know. I rose slowly to my feet, and at that same moment the shape moved, growing larger.
No good dropping to the deck again. He must have seen me. I backed away, moving carefully, step by step, hoping to God I wouldn’t stumble over another hatch. If I could back away far enough to merge into the darkness behind me… The clink of metal on metal again, very close now, very clear, and the figure still seeming to move towards me.
I felt the sweat breaking out on my body, the wind cooling it instantly so that I was suddenly shivering with cold. That metallic sound — it could only be some weapon, a machine pistol like the guard in the wheelhouse had jabbed in my stomach. I wanted to run then, take the chance of bullets spraying in the hope of escaping into the darkness. But if I did that I’d be cornered, pinned up for’ard with no hope of making it back to my cabin.
My heel touched an obstruction. I felt behind me with my hand, not turning my head for fear of losing sight of the shape edging towards me. The winch — I was back at the derrick. I dropped slowly to the deck, crawling behind one of the winch drums and holding my breath.
Nothing moved, the figure motionless now, merging into the darkness. Had I been mistaken? Crouched there, I felt completely trapped. He had only to shine his torch…
‘Who’s there?’
The voice was barely audible, lost in the wind. The dhow thumped the side of the ship. A seabird flew screaming across the deck. Silence now, only the noise of the wind howling through pipes and derricks, making weird groans and whines against the background rushing of waves in the khawr, and the dhow going thump — thump.
Surely I must have imagined it?
I lifted my head above the big steel drum, staring towards the central line of pipes, seeing nothing but the vague shadow of the bridge-like outline of the firefighting platform, the foam gun like a giant’s pistol. Above my head the derrick pointed a long thick finger at the clouds.
‘Is there anybody there now?’
That voice again, in a lull and much clearer this time. So clear I thought I recognized it. But why would he be out here on the deck? And if it were Choffel, then he’d have a torch with him. He wouldn’t go standing stock still on the deck asking plaintively if anyone was there.
I thought I saw him, not coming towards me, but moving away to the right, towards the rail. He must have been standing exactly between me and the fire monitor platform, otherwise I must have seen him for he wasn’t more than ten paces away.
Then why hadn’t he shone a torch? If he were armed… But perhaps I’d been mistaken. Perhaps he wasn’t armed. Perhaps he thought I was one of the guards and then, when he’d got no reply and had seen no further sign of movement, he’d put it down to his own imagination. And the fact that he hadn’t used his torch, that could be explained by a standing order not to show a light at night except in extreme emergency.
What was he doing here anyway?
Without thinking I moved forward, certain now that it must be Choffel. Curiosity, hate, determination to see what he was up to — God knows what it was that drew me after him, but I moved as though drawn by a magnet. The outline of the rail showed clear, and suddenly beyond it the dhow’s mast. The figure had drifted away, lost from sight. I blinked my eyes, quickening my step, half cursed as my foot caught against another of the tank inspection hatches. A gap in the rail, and a few yards further aft the outline of a davit. I had reached the head of the gangway.
No sign of Choffel. I stepped on to the grating at the top. I couldn’t see him, but I could feel the movement of somebody descending. The dark shape of the dhow was for’ard of the gangway so that it was obvious there must be a boat for communication between dhow and tanker.
What a moment to take him! A push, a quick push — nothing else. I could dimly see the water rushing past, small whitecaps hissing and breaking as the wind hit the sheer side of the tanker, flurries gusting down into the sea. Quickly, my hand on the rail, I began to descend. The gangway swayed, clinking against the side. I heard his voice hailing the dhow. An Arab answered and a figure appeared on the dhow’s high poop, a hurricane lamp lighting his face as he held it high, and below, in the water, I saw a small wooden boat bobbing on a rope at the dhow’s stern. ‘O-ai, O-ai!’ The sound of a human voice hurled on the wind, the words unidentifiable. More voices, the cries louder, then the light of another lamp swaying up from below.
I squatted down, sure he must see me now, crouching low and pressing my body against one of the gangway stanchions, desperately willing myself to be unseen, my guts involuntarily contracting. When he had shone that torch, screening it beneath his jacket, I had seen the thin jutting pencil line of what I was certain had been the barrel of a gun.
There was a lot of activity on the dhow now, men gathered in the waist and the boat being slowly hauled along the ship’s side in the teeth of the wind and the breaking waves. Crouched there I had a crane’s-eye view as one of the Arabs tucked his robes up round his waist and jumped into the boat. Then they floated it down, paying out rope steadily, till it reached the staging where Choffel stood at the bottom of the gangway.