Brace scrubbed pots, to see them immediately refilled. He was jolted into astonishment when the penurious Lamp railed at him to use an extra ration of coffee. Lamp squandered his commissary allowance like a man ashore with heavy pockets and a backlog of fantasies. Brace seemed suddenly grown thin of ambition, indifferent to lost hopes, and with mild distaste for all worlds including engine rooms.
“We’d ought to have a ghost more often,” Racca said. “We’d ought to have one every day.”
“You were scared three points off your compass,” Glass told him. “You’re a tough dago, Racca.”
“Especially around yids. Especially.”
And, as if it were Christmas, Levere, Snow, and Dane stepped from wardroom to messdeck, found space, and celebrated in a vague manner. Levere was serene but not withdrawn. Snow rode Racca and Fallon with small jokes. Only Dane was reserved. He watched Lamp, and his satisfied opinion showed only in a slight, forward shifting of his toadlike frame. Dane may or may not have known Lamp’s motives, but Dane liked what he saw.
As the freshening breeze kicked and moved Adrian against the pier, men relaxed with the tranquil readiness of sleeping cats. For some men, portent lived on an instinctive level. For other men, portent lived in the memory of harsh experience.
“It’ll be a yacht,” Conally said, “and it’ll be today, and it’ll be nightfall or a little after.”
“Don’t talk. Why ask trouble?”
“Summer sailors.”
“They always get caught. Count on it.”
“Yacht from the Virgin Islands,” Racca said. “Nothing but virgins aboard. Been at sea for three months gettin’ lonesome…”
“What would you know about virgins?”
Storm warnings never occur on a clear day, and as the light dulls into darkness in the northeast, and as the temperature crashes down like an anchor, vessels within reach of the coast make high-speed dashes to shelter. The channel lays a sharply pitching road for the pilot boat that heads seaward with pilots to meet more than one ship. A noble government—that is made of the firmest stuff—protects its cannon. From the sea-reaches come minelayers and destroyers, bulking rakish and gray against the dark sky as they head for the anchorage. The wind rushes, as if the continent has become a sudden vacuum, and the wind begins to howl above piling water. It does not moan, has no choreography, is only wind raised to a pitch of storm that denies any pretense toward music. In a while the howl will change to a scream, and the scream will be indifferent, although it seems, sometimes, to speak the name of a particular ship or a particular man.
Adrian bumped and banged against its fenders. The crew belched, yawned, hesitated with reluctance toward movement that, when it began, would be totally absorbing and would allow no quarter even for a single belch. Conally stretched, stood; his face an Indian mask of veiled intent, or of preoccupation with securing the decks. Howard, his belly tightly pressed against his belt, shrugged into his foul weather jacket which carried a multitude of stains but no fingerprints. He left the messdeck to buck into the increasing wind as he went to the Base for the mail. He returned, opened the few envelopes, and discovered that Brace was off the hook. Somewhere en route, steward apprentice Iris was ordered to Adrian.
“What kind of a name is Iris?” Lamp asked when Howard called him to the office.
“An easy-to-spell name… how should I know?”
“I’ll miss that Brace. That’s no bad kid.”
“Levere says not to tell him yet. Let it ride. Otherwise you won’t get anything out of him.”
“I can always get something out of him,” Lamp said. “If I want to, I can get work out of any guy.”
Howard, having loosened his belt and found that his waistband was still tight, was in no mood to disagree.
“You got a minute?”
“Sure.”
“What happened in Hong Kong?”
“The crew on a Navy can went asiatic.” Lamp leaned against the frame of the hatch as Adrian’s deck slid sideways in small, unexciting movements that were brought up short by the mooring. For the moment, at least, and having temporarily worked himself out of a job, Lamp had every reason to tell a sea story complete with embroidery, with moral twinges and judgment. His face settled in that direction. Then he seemed revolted by the idea. The directness of his morning’s labor was a contradiction to ample rambling. His face, which was naturally red beneath the red-blond hair, was also red from the steam of boiling pots and the heat of his small galley which no fan could clear. For a moment Lamp looked nearly wise.
“You remember how things got skiddy awhile back?”
“Yes. Well, no.”
“Things were disappearing.”
“Yes.”
“The same thing happened on that can. They’d been on station a long time. The officers were as nuts as the crew.” Lamp looked like he was going to apologize for something, then did apologize. “I’m not saying that our boys are that way.”
“What are you saying?”
“They beat a Chinaman,” Lamp said with genuine unease. “Only they beat him too hard. They had to toss him overboard to hide it.”
“Well… well, what?” Howard, who would have sworn that he could deal with reality, jumped mentally sideways. “They needed somebody to lynch. Ask McClean. Happens all the time in Mississippi.”
“He was just a guy trying to make a livin’. He was just a guy who came aboard every day with fresh stores.” Lamp seemed nearly as stalled by his story as was Howard. “It’s the way it built up,” he said. “The cook could’ve saved it, but he was asiatic as the rest.”
“I don’t know what you’re trying to say.”
Lamp looked suddenly shy, timid. “You think I fool around with stuff, and maybe I do. But we’re gettin’ some kind of sign.”
“Bad luck?”
“I just know how bad it can get. I can fight that part, anyway.” Lamp began backing from the office, one hand resting on the frame of the hatch. “They claimed that Chinaman was bad luck. The whole deal got hushed up. An officer was in on it.” He backed away further, then turned and nearly fled, a man who had gossiped about a memory for so long that he had forgotten that the memory was stark.
As a storm increases, ships fleeing past the Portland Head, chased by hugely running swells and by wind that raises shrieks in their rigging, have sometimes stumbled on the tide. The bottom builds out there. When conditions are exactly wrong, huge rocks are flung in grenades of water to explode high above the cliff where lore has it that they have occasionally knocked out the light. There is not much bottom. Small ships are twisted, flung, the helm a feeble protest when a fast-ebbing tide meets a full, incoming storm. It is like a giant roller coaster in an uncertain and macabre amusement park where tracks lead over the hump, come arcing down, and disappear into rock. Large ships have been gutted. Small ships, catching conditions that are exactly wrong, roll over. They offer a fast flurry of spray, a small contribution to that vast wealth of water that lies on the collection plate of the wind.
Yacht Aphrodite, schooner-rigged and not as old as mythology, but certainly as old as Adrian, and with a skipper who was no fool, confirmed Conally’s prediction an hour ahead of schedule. Aphrodite’s hull was disproving the idea that sound maintenance on an ancient bucket will avoid catastrophe. A design that had once held notions of watertight integrity had been violated through redesign. Aphrodite was taking water forward through a sprung plate. It had one watertight bulkhead just forward of midships. It had good pumps, a captain who was a friend of Levere’s… and, it carried a terrified owner who, downeast in Boston, was regarded as a valuable constituent. The man was “getting the cure” from the sea, which teaches that you cannot buy votes against a storm.