A superstitious person might have imagined that Joe Veal was taking some part in the situation and exacting his revenge. If nothing more, his parsimony was coming into its own.
But Madge Veal was not a superstitious woman. She was far too self-centred to believe in omens. She was not interested in retribution, divine or astral-human, nor if she had been would she have thought herself a subject likely to incur it. Anything she had done she had done with the best of intentions; indeed, she had never acted but on the highest principles and from the highest possible motive, that of her own welfare.
But Perry … Perry, like all sailors, had a strong thread of superstition in his character. Not that he had been a sailor any length of time. Three years of hardship before the mast when a young man had given him a working knowledge of the argot but no further desire to employ it in its proper element. After that when he travelled he travelled as much as possible on dry land. Cab-driver in Cape Town, waiter in Buenos Aires, casual cow-hand in Texas, hobo, soft-drink attendant at a drug-store in San Francisco; these were casual points in the career of a rolling stone who had attracted a record low level in moss. Then a lucky ticket in a sweepstake had put him on top of the world and given him the money to travel home to England first class. It had been the beginning of a run of luck which had brought him a comfortable corner by his brother Joe’s fireside and the favour and side glances of his brother’s statuesque wife. It wasn’t that he’d ever been really attracted by Madge, it was only that he never could resist an implicit challenge of that sort: there was the mischievous temptation to know what the statue was like when it was tipped off its pedestal.
Well, he knew now.
He had thought then that it never would end, that run of luck; there seemed no reason why it should. But imperceptibly the change had come. Not at any single point could he say the vein had given out; nor was he the sort of man who would ordinarily concern himself with regrets that it had done so. Not ordinarily.
But these last few weeks he had begun to wish he had never left San Francisco.
He knew now, although his mind was working in a haze of rum and sea-sickness, that there was only one serious concern in his head: to cut the painter and slip away. To do that he would take any reasonable risk. His was not a conscience which had been unduly exercised in the past; it had accepted shady little episodes and adventures without protest. But the essence of them was that they were little. He knew his limitations. And for the last few months he had been playing right out of his class. For the last few weeks he hadn’t been able to call his soul his own.
The knowledge was on his lungs. Not so much his conscience as his lungs. The knowledge was a weight; it was a tangible thing. Sometimes he found he could hardly breathe for it. The only palliative was rum.
As the storm grew worse he left Madge and went to lie down in his bunk, aware of the quiet figure of the boy in the other bunk. If he had any beads to tell he would have ‘told’ them. He could not escape a superstitious twinge at the fury with which the gale had broken upon them, but he still had the gambler’s belief that his sudden bad luck was about to change and that the gale might yet turn to his own benefit. Now that they were being forced to run for one of the Bristol Channel ports he might get a chance to slip ashore unobserved.
What disconcerted him in this hope was the manner in which Madge was bearing up. By all the laws this storm should have shaken her nerve. The only sign she gave was that of going into her most withdrawn mood. But she was far from any mood in which she could be easily given the slip.
The boy stirred and sneezed but didn’t speak, although he was certainly awake and had seen his uncle come in. Perry had never wanted to bring the boy at all. To him he represented an encumbrance and an added risk. But Madge, with an inside knowledge of the facts, had said that he could not be left behind to bear tales and tell everyone where they had gone, or at least how they had gone. During his five months’ stay he had seen too much. Little boys had big eyes. Besides, he had done all her shopping for her. If examined by some impudent prying busybody he would give too much away. And, though she did not put it into so many words, Anthony still fulfilled a purpose he had fulfilled for some time: he lent respectability to a ménage which without him would be morally suspect. When they reached Portugal, Aunt Madge said, they could put him on a boat to Canada from there; it would be a nice surprise for his father who, even if he hadn’t sent for him, would certainly be glad to see him. But Perry was not quite sure if she meant this; he would never be sure of anything Madge said again. He was coming to appreciate Madge’s conscience which, if always active, was always malleable; he had known it to make the most acrobatic volte-faces. He was not exactly comfortable about the future of the boy.
Anthony would have been much better left behind.
But as the night advanced Perry’s fuddled humanitarian promptings were lost in fear for his own safety. In his few years at sea he had known enough of storms to recognise the dangerous quality of this one; and his experience of ships was at least sufficient to tell him that the barquentine was fighting for her life, and fighting with declining heart.
At five o’clock Captain Stevens was brought down into the water-logged saloon amid the wreckage of the furniture. A wave had brought a broken spar round and knocked him down with it. He was conscious but in considerable pain. Nobody but himself had the least knowledge of medicine, but he said he thought he had broken some ribs. At this stage Perry realised that their chances of survival were becoming slight. In the Atlantic they might have drifted before the storm until it abated. In these narrow seas they were likely to pile up on the rocks which could not be far away.
They took Stevens into his own cabin where Mrs Veal sat stubbornly in a corner and would speak to no one but herself. Perry made an effort to get him comfortable in his bunk and then put on the captain’s oilskins and went on deck. At least he succeeded in opening the companion doors and putting out his head as one will put one’s head out of a train when it is rushing through a tunnel. (There is only the noise and the pitch blackness and the flying wind.) The doors banged to after him as he retreated into the cabin and more water followed him down.
He wiped water from his face and poured himself out a tot of rum.
He sat there all alone, feeling desolate and trapped and frightened. He would have given a good deal merely for a confidential friend to talk to. But in one cabin there was a sick boy distant and reserved; in the other was an injured man watched over though not tended by a woman who frightened him more than anything else in the world except the things she had done.
So there was nothing for it except to get drunk, and that was something beyond his powers; all he could do was take enough to solace his loneliness and deaden the worst of his fear.
A member of the crew sighted land at 6.35 when dawn had begun to thin the blackness of the flying night. For twelve minutes with O’Brien and another man at the wheel, barely able to cling to it and constantly washed by half seas, they kept their distance from the high desolate coast. More desperate attempts were made to increase the jury rig, not without success, and O’Brien brought her up a little to the north. But then as they plunged on he saw through the slow, fitful daylight that the coast ran out ahead of him across the path of the wind.
He knew then that The Grey Cat was on her last voyage.
A wave came over and swept the length of the deck, licking like a hungry animal over a bone which has already been picked clean.
‘May!’ he shouted at the top of his voice to the carpenter. ‘Below! Get ’em up.’
May the carpenter did not hear what was said, but he understood the gesture that went with it. He glanced backwards at the hurrying mountainous seas, then quickly unlooped the rope about his waist and dived towards the hatchway.
Perry was still alone in the saloon, leaning heavily on the table with a glass before him and water swilling about his knees. He had been singing glassily to himself, having almost achieved the end he had not t
hought possible.
‘ ’Elp me to get the cap’n up,’ said May. ‘We’re drivin’ in ’pon the land. Stand a chance.’
Perry followed him into the cabin. May had already explained the position to Mrs Veal. She was standing up, steadying herself by holding to a bookshelf which had long since emptied its books into the water at her feet. She had put on her hat and coat, and her pince-nez was awry. She looked highly indignant that this was happening to her and peered at May with hostility for disturbing her.
‘On deck,’ Perry said thickly. ‘All hands. Safest place now. There’s rocks ahead. Get the boy. Bring him up. Safest on deck.’
Captain Stevens said: ‘Leave me here. Look to yourselves.’
‘Come along now,’ said May.
Between them the two men lifted the captain from his bunk and staggered with him out of the cabin. For the moment the onset of immediate danger had cleared Perry’s brain; he was not so much afraid of the sea. The companion was not sufficiently wide to allow of three abreast, but he brought up the rear without stumbling.
Left behind, Madge took off her pince-nez and carefully stowed them away in an inner pocket of her dress. Without them her face looked curiously bare, bare and plain and commonplace; passing in the street you would not have given it another glance. She drew on her kid gloves, fastened the two buttons of her black astrakhan cloak, took out her hatpin and thrust it back in a different position, picked up her bag. Her mind could not visualise what the scene was likely to be on deck. She could not dissociate herself from the conviction that she would step into a dinghy and be rowed ashore. That was the only fitting way out. Her sense of dignity would not allow it to be otherwise.
She splashed her way across the saloon to the stairs but turned back towards the spare cabin. There was the boy in there. She reached the door of the spare cabin and then saw that there was a key in the lock and that the door was of good teak. She turned her head without haste in the direction of the companion way. The others were already on deck. She put out a gloved hand and turned the key. Then she took out the key and dropped it in the water.
She turned away and crossed the saloon and began to climb the slippery companion ladder towards the deck.
Epilogue
By noon of that day the worst of the gale had spent itself, though the seas were mountainous and puffs of foam still eddied about the streets of Sawle. Before dark the sky cleared and the sun came out.
All day the village had been in a hubbub. Most of the survivors were housed in the Tavern Inn, but one or two had overflowed into the cottages of hospitable neighbours. Altogether it had been a busy time, and when evening came the bar of the Tavern Inn was crowded with men in need of something to wet their parched throats and congenial company with whom to share the experiences of the day. Wrecks were not so frequent as they had once been, and this one had yielded interesting dividends in crew and cargo.
All the members of the life-saving rocket crew were there, except Tom Mitchell, who was a little boy and had been put to bed, and Abraham Jarvis who was a teetotaller, and Mike Smith who had begun celebrating too early and had gone to sleep outside his own front door. There had been one or two reporters down during the day asking questions and taking photographs and generally getting in the way, and tonight two had arrived from Plymouth and had attached themselves to Benjamin Blatchford, the captain of the crew.
Now that all that could be done while daylight lasted had been done, he was not averse from giving them an account of the wreck in return for a measure of free beer. Ben Blatchford had a wholesome dislike for charity; he would not have accepted a free drink from a foreigner in ordinary circumstances; but in this case he was giving the two reporters something in exchange, so that set things to rights in his mind.
The bar was full of smoke and noise and good-humoured banter.
‘Mind you,’ he said reasonably, ‘ ’twas Abe Jarvis’s idea to pull the old gun round upon that point. I think ’twould have come to one or another of us soon enough, but he thought on it first. “Try ’er over to Sawle Point,” he said. “ Run her down right b’low Hoskin’s field.” And sure’nough, though ’twas plaguey work gettin’ ’er thur, once she was thur, first rocket fell plumb acrost the barque. Handsome bit o’ shooting, ’twas, though I say it myself. We’d the wind almost abeam, see? A nice judgment was all that was required.’
‘About how long did it take to get them all off, Mr Blatchford?’ asked one reporter with gold-rimmed spectacles.
‘… Once the line was took fast, you mean? I couldn’t say that fur certain; we wasn’t looking at no clocks. A ’our, p’raps. Thur was no time to waaste, mark you, not a minute to waaste. We was all sweatin’ bad when ’twas over, though the wind was as cold as charity. That’s what I said at the time. “ Thur’s no time to waaste, lads,” I said. “We must get the line acrost now,” I said, “or else …” ’
The reporter nodded sympathetically. ‘Yes, I suppose it was touch and go. Who did you rescue first; the lady passenger, I suppose?’
Ben Blatchford wiped his beard. ‘No. They sent the ship’s boy over first to test the line. Then the captain –’
‘The captain? I thought usually –’
‘He was ’urt about the ribs. He was in a bad way when he come over. We thought he was dead, but ’e was only knocked out. They do say he’s been took to Truro Infirmary. The lady came third. Then seven of the crew, mate last. That made the lot.’
‘Was she the captain’s wife?’
‘No.’
‘Ah,’ said the other reporter, scenting romance.
‘They do say as she owned the ship.’
‘Is she still in Sawle, do you know?’
‘In the Tavern Inn when last I heard. They give her the best room over the parlour. So Mrs Nichols says, and I’ve no cause to think ’ er a liar.’
‘Another pint, Mr Blatchford? Certainly. Three pints, if you please, miss. I wonder if we could see her, George? Might add a feminine interest.’
‘I’ll have a shot later. Carry on, Mr Blatchford, what were you saying?’
‘ ’Lo, Tom,’ said Ben Blatchford, putting down his mug. ‘Got away from the missus at last? Rare good job she made of getting that barrel ashore this morning. What was in it?’
‘Well, I s’pose you ’ad your eye on it yourself, Ben Blatchford?’
A good-tempered wrangle sprang up amid the smoke, and other voices joined in. Mr Nichols, the landlord, leaned his elbows on the bar and argued with a fat man in a tight red jersey. In the corner a blind man nodded his head and grinned and chewed his toothless jaws. Presently Blatchford gave his attention to the reporters.
‘Do we understand that a man was drowned, Mr Blatchford? A member of the crew?’
‘No, ’twas a passenger. Tried to swim ashore wi’ a line when they thought we was not going to get a line aboard. Foolish that, but they say there was no ’olding him. Said ’e’d been a champion swimmer and wouldn’t listen. Many a man’s done it before. ’ Tis a question of keeping your nerve, see? Before now, I’ve seen ’em try to launch a boat. A pity, for ’tis just throwing away good lives. We always try to signal to ’em to stay where they are, but they won’t see.’
‘This passenger; was he any relative to the lady, do you know?’
‘Brother, I bla’. But you’d best ask her, didn’t you?’ Ben Blatchford’s small grey eyes brooded on nothing as he re-lit his pipe. ‘ He’d be sucked out, ye see. They always are. They say when he went under they pulled in the line, but it had broke. What else did they expect? ’Twas a pity, too.’ Blatchford’s eyes transferred themselves to the spectacled reporter. They seemed to mourn the loss of a man.
‘Those two were the only passengers, I suppose? Sad, as you say, that one of them should have been lost. All the crew were saved, I take it?’
The Cornishman’s eyebrows came together in a slow frown.
‘Thur was one other passenger.’
‘A man? He was saved, I presume?’
‘No-o … A boy. A lad of eleven or twelve, I s’pose. No … He got lef be’ind.’
The noise in the bar had increased during the last few minutes, and the two reporters pressed forward so as not to miss any word which came from the bearded lips of the man who was speaking to them. But for a moment he did not go on.
‘Left on the wreck?’ prompted the spectacled reporter. ‘ Then there were two lives lost. How did that happen?’
‘Gracious knows. There was some confusion betwixt the first boy that come over and this one, they do say. An’ then wi’ the captain being knocked out … Mebbe you can imagine what ’tis like on the deck of a ship which is being washed b’ the sea. ’Tisn’t a time when you always remember to count ’eads. I reckon ’twas the leddy’s fault; he was with she, and she ought to have seen he was took off wi’ the rest.’ Blatchford stroked his beard. ‘One thing did seem a straange thing to ’appen. He’d somehow got himself locked up in a cabin in the captain’s quarters. Whether he’d locked himself in thur fur safety, or …’
The reporter motioned for another refill. ‘Has the boy’s body been recovered, do you know?’
Blatchford’s eyes travelled to the approaching mug. ‘Oh, the boy was all right. ’E were as safe as any of ’ em. We found him thur still in the cabin when the tide went out. Scared, you know, as any young tacker would be. Scared, but keepin’ his end up like a good ’un. Just broke down a bit when we busted the door in. Boys o’ that age have plenty o’ give an’ take, as you might say. Like a sapling, bend but won’t break, see? I well remember when I was ten … Yes, ’e’s upstairs too. They put ’im to bed, and I bla’ Landlord Nichols gave ’im a tot o’ brandy to keep the chill out … But I can’t understand ’ ow that thur door come to be locked.’