Fellow Passenger (16 page)

On board the ship was plain indecision. Karlis’ insistence on nobbling the captain was justified again. The searchlight picked us up, and the black cliff of the bows turned slowly in our direction. But Muddle was gloriously complete. Captain not to be found. First officer still astonished that Elias Thomas, not I, had been overboard. Passengers and crew assuming that the long-legged American had eloped with Karlis. And second officer wondering which of the orders he gave or omitted to give would send him to navigate a raft on Siberian rivers. There was nothing much the ship could do except shoot at us - and that, in territorial waters and with passengers on board, was out of the question.

‘What did you tell the mate?’ I asked Karlis.

‘That the launch had picked up the wrong man and that you were still in the water. I had the boat cleared to prove that you had not been picked up and hidden.’

‘And he fell for that?’

‘Of course. He knew that the rescue had to be properly documented or we should all be in trouble.’

Karlis was certainly a master at spreading alarm and despondency. He had played for all it was worth the representative of inflexible bureaucracy.

The ship was now moving after us more purposefully. No doubt the first officer had discovered the American and her fortunate husband peacefully asleep in their cabin. We had a lead, however, of nearly a quarter of a mile and were steering straight for the scattered lights on the Essex shore which, I suppose, were around Shoeburyness. When the ship was disturbingly close and all else was blackness, a gigantic buoy loomed up in the dark with the flood tide beginning to pile against it. Karlis could not make up his mind which side to pass, but the current decided for him. Whatever that buoy marked, the ship didn’t like it. She went astern in a swirl of white water which accompanied us along some local channel, while the ship herself merged into a mere pattern of lights following the respectable course towards a pilot and London river.

For us, buoys became unreasonably frequent. I still have not the faintest notion where we were, even after looking at a chart. Light buoys and lighthouses winked at us from every direction but the south, and pretty soon they were there too. Whether they marked the Mouse or the Maplins or neither I do not know. There were also bells tolling at us. I imagine that anyone with a map or chart could no more get lost in the Thames Estuary than on an arterial road - provided he knew where he started from. We did not. I think that at one period - there were three feet of water under us and we backed out cautiously - we must have been mixed up with the buoys of the Artillery Range.

I produced my bottle of rum, but it had a cork instead of a stopper. In trying to knock off the neck I broke the bottle. I was not at my best. It seemed to me highly probable that daylight would find us stuck on a mudbank, from which one could neither walk nor swim, with a zealous lifeboat standing by to rescue us when the tide rose again. Meanwhile all we were doing and could do was to play ring-a-ring-a-roses round meaningless buoys. There were so many little lights in the darkness, obeying in their courses the impenetrable laws of Trinity House, that I had a befuddled vision of us upside down and navigating the firmament. I was also cold and wet and, with all the excitement over, sorry for myself.

Karlis was disappointed in me. His own seafaring had been merely as a policeman, and in the tideless Baltic at that. But me he expected to be able, as an experienced spy, to do a few boy-scout tricks or at least to know the marks of the chief entrance to his own land. As it was, I couldn’t even open rum without smashing it. The result was that the magic was broken. I became in his eyes a wretched, chilly embarrassment, no longer endowed with the superhuman cunning of years of subversive activities. I was the kind of person whom a policeman instinctively escorts to the nearest block of cells for shelter and investigation. Perhaps he would have done so in most kindly fashion if there had been a handy gaol. As it was, only the sea was open to receive me.

My Scandinavian partner disappeared, and I was left to deal with a resigned and melancholy Russian. The nation - to judge by my very short experience - seems to have a genius for a this-hurts-me-far-more-than-you attitude. Simple souls must find a delicate pleasure in receiving punishment from such nobly reluctant hands. It was Karlis’ unwillingness to lend me a pair of trousers which woke me up. I supplied myself with a dry sweater and shirt from my pack, but I had to ask for trousers from his suitcase. I assured him that he would get them back when my own were dry, but he grumbled. I saw his point of view almost at once. It was reasonable. Why waste a good pair of trousers overboard?

I could no longer hope to recover all my prestige. The situation had become too drastically simplified. Karlis had a pistol, and I had not. And how easy his story for the British police! He had escaped fearing the consequences of my disappearance; he had stopped to pick me up under the honest impression that I was the American; I had tried to get ashore through the mud, and been drowned. And of course it would be I who had crept up behind Karlis and Conger and pushed the latter overboard.

My only chance was to stop shivering and to forget immediately that I was a satellite in star flow. A pity. Whenever I am miserable enough for poetry, something always distracts my attention. I reminded myself firmly that it was what the English call a warm July night, and that hearty maidens, well protected by a layer of pink blubber, were likely to be gambolling in the sea off Southend Pier.

Southend Pier. I jumped to my feet and declared dramatically that we were saved: that the fixed light to port was the end of the pier and the revolving light to starboard the Maplin. They were the only two names I could remember. As a matter of fact the revolving light may have been the Nore. God knows what the other was! But I was concerned with humanity, not navigation. The essential was to radiate confidence.

‘Keep heading into the tide,’ I told him, ‘and we’ll get clear.’

I stood up in the bows, peering at nothing in a professional manner and giving him at intervals responsible but enthusiastic orders, such as ‘Starboard a little!’ and ‘Port a point or two!’ I did not much like turning my back to him, but I reckoned that, so long as he hadn’t spotted that I had spotted the regrettable decision passing through his mind, he would certainly want to preserve so admirable a pilot.

Fortunately we hit nothing, though once when I made a particular point of giving him a mark to steer on we slid closely over a bank. I don’t know whether he noticed it; but since, on the other side of the bank, there was an obvious channel marked by some dilapidated posts, up went my reputation.

Meanwhile it had occurred to me that light buoys must have ladders for the convenience of whatever electricians and window-cleaners plied their trade among the mudbanks. When we were out in more open water I directed Karlis towards a light, putting in a couple of wide turns to make our approach more impressive. The buoy indeed had a little spidery ladder leading over the curve to the foot of the tripod.

‘I want to know the state of the tide,’ I explained to Karlis. ‘If there’s another hour or two before the turn, we’ll be able to make one of the little creeks on Foulness.’

‘How can you tell?’ he asked.

‘There’s a glass case on top of the buoy,’ I said, ‘and they put the tide tables in there once a month.’

He seemed a bit doubtful, so I told him that the tables were put there during the war for the sake of torpedoed seamen. He swallowed that.

‘And they still do it?’ he asked.

‘Of course. In England once something has been done, it goes on being done. You’ve read enough about us to know that,’ I added severely.

The tide was ripping against the foot of the buoy. I hung on to the ladder with the boat-hook. I doubted if I could ever make him go on board the buoy. The only way was to let him think that I wanted to go myself.

‘Careful!’ I warned him, handing him the end of the boat-hook. ‘If you don’t hold on, the launch will be on the bank before you have time to get way on her.’

The tide obliged by piling up between the launch and buoy, and gurgling loudly.

He did not take the boat-hook from me. He was working it all out. The man on top of the buoy would be perfectly safe till he was picked up by a passing ship; he would also be very difficult to shoot if he kept the curve of the buoy between himself and a man trying to aim with one hand and steer the launch with the other.

‘There is no reason why
you
should go,’ he said sharply.

‘Go yourself then! All I must know is the time of high water on August 4th. But for God’s sake don’t make a mistake! You’ll find the frame directly beneath the tripod.’

He pushed past me and took to the ladder, carrying the end of the painter with him as a precaution. I had no knife to cut it. Regretfully I had to consider assault. A mere technical assault. A rap over the knuckles. I delivered it, with the brass end of the boat-hook, on the hand which held both the painter and the last rung of the ladder.

He did not drop the painter. The Russian gift of withstanding suffering was too great for me. Instead he caught the boat-hook with his other hand - for it was too clumsy a weapon to be quickly withdrawn - and gave a hearty push with it while I was standing in the bows off balance. I went overboard. So did he. It was the end of our partnership.

I was just able to grab the bottom of the ladder with the hook. Meanwhile the launch had drifted away with Karlis on the end of the painter. Eventually he climbed into it, for I heard the acceleration of the engine and the swirl of the propeller. He did not return to look for me. The chance of my having reached the buoy was negligible, and I cannot blame him for feeling that he had had enough of my society.

I sat huddled up beneath the tripod of the light. Morale did not exist. My watch, which had surprisingly lived up to its maker’s claims, was still going. It said 3.22. After infinities of cold it said 3.40. The top of a buoy in the loneliness of primaeval waters was the wrong place for a man of my temperament. It would have suited Karlis much better.

At last the sky to the east grew grey and the water was visible as water, and none the pleasanter for that. The tide still flowed. The land was under haze. No doubt the good people of Essex and Kent, suitably clad in dry pyjamas, were congratulating themselves on a warm night with a fine day to follow. I seemed to be rather nearer the Kent shore than I expected and out of the normal track of shipping - or at any rate the track which was familiar to me, who had only seen the Thames Estuary from the decks of liners.

Ships did indeed pass, but too far to the north to notice me waving and capering on my buoy. The capers were limited. There was only room for half a dozen seagulls to meditate in comfort on their digestive processes. At last a little coaster appeared from the general direction of Kent, heading straight for me. I climbed up the tripod and shouted at them. I didn’t care if they handed me straight over to the police so long as the station was warm. A faint flicker of the instinct of self-preservation made me yell in Spanish; if I could convince them that I spoke no English, it would give me time to hear what was said about me.

The sea was flat calm, and there was no need for the coaster to lower her dinghy. She came up alongside, and the mate threw me a rope. I chattered back to him in Spanish, took a turn round my chest and was hauled on board.

Rochester Star
she was called. She was returning empty from the Medway to Erith, and had a crew of seven - captain, mate, two engineers, two deck hands and a cook. They all had the amazing kindness of the Londoner to anyone in distress. They could not understand a word I said, but they had me stripped in a minute, and my clothes and even my money hung up to dry in the engine-room. Meanwhile I was wrapped in blankets and irrigated with hot, sweet tea - the only time in my life that I ever appreciated the stuff.

I explained in sign language that I had fallen overboard and swum to the buoy, at the same time telling my tale as dramatically as possible in case someone understood the language. But ‘Me Spanish’ was my only remark intelligible to them.

The engineer on duty was determined to get my story. He was one of those men - it’s a commoner gift among women - who refuse to be put out of their stride by mere differences of language.

‘What’s your ship? Ship? Name?’ he repeated.

‘Juan García,’ I answered, showing that at least I understood ‘name’.

He kept on at me. He patted his own ship. He drew a picture of a ship and pointed to where the name ought to be. I remained incredibly stupid, and insisted that I was called Juan García. I hoped that one of them would mention the name of a ship off which I could reasonably have fallen.

‘Can’t you let the poor bastard alone?’ the captain asked, impatiently rescuing me.

He was down in the engine-room, too, leaving the mate on the bridge. He wasn’t going to miss a scrap of the first adventure that had come his way in years.

‘He’ll be off one of them Barcelona fruit boats,’ he said.

That seemed to call for a sign of intelligence.

‘Fruta! Barcelona!’I chattered. ’Yes!’

But now I simply had to produce a name. I was feeling, thanks to those sturdy angels, very much better and able to think. And it did not really matter what I called my non-existent ship. If good fortune provided a more likely name whenever I was interrogated by some Spanish-speaking official, I could always pretend I had been misunderstood.