Bristow began to grumble as soon as Keeton stepped into the Oerlikon box on the starboard wing of the bridge.
‘You’re late. It’s gone eight bells.’
‘The P.O. stopped me,’ Keeton said.
‘All right for him. He don’t do watches. What did he want?’
‘Chewed me up for not bringing my helmet.’
‘He wants his nut seeing to. What’s he afraid of — sun stroke?’
‘You’d better ask him.’
Bristow went away and Keeton settled down to the long boredom of the afternoon watch. Astern the coastline of the Australian continent had vanished below the rim of the sea; ahead the ocean stretched away into the blue and placid distance. A seabird floated down out of the air to settle with a brief flutter of wings on the truck of the foremast.
Keeton rested his elbows on the edge of the gun-box and stared vacantly at the water. Behind him the barrel of the Oerlikon pointed at the empty sky, its metal gleaming darkly with oil.
It was the second mate’s watch. Mr Jones was a round-shouldered young man with a perpetual worried expression. He seemed to have very little confidence in his own abilities and appeared to be in a permanent state of apprehension that something might go wrong.
To Keeton it seemed that Captain Peterson was inclined to share Mr Jones’s misgivings, since he would frequently appear on the bridge during the second mate’s watch, as though to keep an eye on the way things were going. Peterson, a small, thin man with the haggard look of a martyr to chronic ill health, had a talent for moving about the ship almost as silently as his own shadow. On this occasion Keeton was unaware of his presence until a sudden gasping cry made him swing round just in time to see the captain suddenly collapse like a man struck down by a blow.
Keeton jumped out of the gun-box and bent over Peterson. He could hear a strange low whistling noise which after a moment he realized was the captain’s breathing. He put a hand on Peterson’s shoulder and could feel the bone under the drill shirt; there seemed to be very little flesh.
‘What’s wrong, sir? Are you ill?’ he asked; and felt immediately the stupidity of such questions.
There was no one else on this side of the bridge. Keeton ran to the wheelhouse, shouting for Mr Jones.
The second mate looked more worried than usual when he saw Peterson. He pulled nervously at his lower lip. ‘What happened to him?’
‘He just collapsed. Seemed to have some kind of attack.’
Mr Jones knelt down and tugged at Peterson’s shoulder, rolling him over on to his back. Peterson’s face was ghastly; although his eyes were open they seemed to be unfocused.
Mr Jones looked at Keeton. ‘You’d better fetch Mr Rains.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Keeton left the bridge quickly and went in search of the mate, aware that Mr Jones wished to shift responsibility to the shoulders of his superior. He found Mr Rains in his cabin smoking a cigarette and entering figures in a notebook. The mate was heavily built with a short, thick neck, lank black hair, a dark chin, and cheeks pitted with pockholes. He had a blustering manner and was not popular with the crew. Keeton detested him.
‘Well, gunner, what do you want?’ he asked.
‘Captain Peterson’s been taken ill, sir. On the bridge. Mr Jones would like you to come at once.’
Rains inhaled smoke from the cigarette and allowed it to escape slowly. He seemed to be in no hurry.
‘Would he now? And does Mr Jones think I’m a doctor?’
‘I don’t know what he thinks,’ Keeton said. ‘I’m only giving you his message.’
The mate got up from his chair and crushed out the cigarette. ‘All right, all right. I’ll come. You run along now and tell him I’m on my way.’
Mr Jones looked relieved when the mate arrived on the bridge. Rains stared down at Captain Peterson and made a low hissing noise with his lips. Then he said softly, almost as though speaking to himself: ‘He looks like a goner to me.’
‘Hadn’t we better get him to his cabin?’ Mr Jones suggested diffidently.
‘Well, of course we’d better get him to his cabin,’ the mate answered. ‘You could have done that without waiting for me.’ He walked to the after rail of the bridge and shouted to two seamen on the boat-deck: ‘Come up here. I’ve got a job for you.’
When the men had carried Peterson away Keeton returned to his drowsy watching of the sea. He wondered whether Rains had been right in suggesting that the captain was a goner. Peterson certainly looked bad; and if he died then Rains would take over command of the ship. Somehow Keeton found it impossible to view that prospect with any feeling of pleasure.
Bristow, that evening in the gunners’ messroom, seemed to be of the same opinion. ‘If the Old Man snuffs it there’ll be a right bastard to fill his shoes.’
‘What makes you think he’ll snuff it?’ Hagan asked. The petty officer had a tiny cabin of his own but for the sake of company he spent a lot of time in the gunners’ mess.
‘I heard he was bad.’
Hagan sniffed. He was nearly twice Bristow’s age and he had a craggy, weather beaten face that was almost exactly as wide as it was long. ‘You heard! Galley rumours. If you believe half of what you hear on board this ship that’s ten times too much.’
‘This wasn’t a galley rumour. I had it from that little runt of a steward, Smith.’
‘What’s he know about it?’
‘He’s seeing after the Old Man. According to Smith the trouble’s a dicky heart. He thinks we ought to go back to Sydney and put him in hospital.’
‘That’s not likely. The cargo’s too important.’
‘You mean that gold?’ Keeton said.
Hagan stabbed the air with his pipe. ‘You and your gold. That’s another rumour. Nobody saw any gold, did they? No, and if you ask me, nobody ever will, because there ain’t none.’
‘So why did they put an armed guard on that storeroom?’
‘Secret machinery, like I told you.’
‘Did you see the secret machinery?’ Bristow asked.
Hagan sucked at his pipe and dropped the subject.
The Valparaiso steamed serenely over a calm sea and the days passed like milestones on a journey. They were blue days — blue sky, blue water, and only the flash and stutter of foam at the bows and the churned-up wake astern to indicate that the ship was indeed moving onward and was not the motionless hub of a wide revolving wheel. Watches came and went. Keeton dozed in the Oerlikon box on the wing of the bridge for four hours at a stretch, dazed by the sun by day, unmoved by the brilliant display of stars by night; thinking only that here was another four hours of tedium to be endured and pushed away into the great unfillable store-cupboard of wasted time.
He had seen Peterson only once since the captain’s collapse on the bridge. This was two days later and well after midnight. Keeton was half-asleep. He heard a cough and, turning, caught sight of a small figure outlined palely against the dark background of the wheelhouse. A second glance convinced him that this was no phantom but Captain Peterson, bare-headed and dressed in pyjamas.
Keeton stared in amazement. Peterson was wearing felt slippers and the legs of the pyjamas flopped over them in loose folds.
‘Sir,’ Keeton said.
Peterson turned his head and peered at the gunner. ‘Well?’
‘It’s chilly out here, sir. Should you be out? You’re not dressed. I mean—’
‘I am aware of the state of my dress,’ Peterson said acidly. ‘I am also aware of the temperature of the air. If I require advice on such matters from you or anyone else I shall ask for it. Until then perhaps you will be good enough to keep your observations to yourself and attend to your duty, which I believe is to keep watch.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Keeton said. He turned away, angry with himself as well as with Peterson. He had left himself open to the snub and he had got it. He would take care that it did not happen again. If Peterson liked to kill himself, let him.