Storm Below. Hugh Garner

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СКАЧАТЬ rushed off to get the sick bay tiffy himself, the captain thought. Caught with his pants down. Bloody little snob. How did a Canadian get a hyphenated name? It was as ersatz as his Vancouver Island English accent.

      “I’ve got the Milverton, sir,” Wright said.

      “Eh? Oh, good! Good work!” said the captain, glancing at the screen.

      He took another turn around the bridge, standing for a minute or two in the shelter of the splinter shield, gazing to starboard where the serried rows of freighters bobbed up and down in the middle distance. Beneath their high-riding plimsolls the red oxide of their bottom plates showed momentarily above the whitecaps. The little Greek coaster trailed a soggy tassel of black smoke along her wake.

      ~

      Leading Seaman Hector McCaffrey lounged on the captain’s couch in the wheelhouse and puffed dreamily on a cigarette. In his hand rested a red-covered, lurid romance entitled The Fleshpots of Sin.

      He was a heavy young man who was on the sixth year of his first seven-year hitch in the regular navy. Because of his three-or four-year seniority over most of the other members of the crew he was inclined to be a little distant with them, and he could not forget that for the first three years of his enlistment he had hardly dared open his mouth. Since the advent of so many civilians — “plough jockeys” he called them — he had come into his own, and now that it was his turn to rule the roost he resented the lack of feeling for his position which the new entries showed him. Along with their ignorance of naval protocol was an easygoing camaraderie which they were forever trying to force upon him, a leading seaman. With the exception of the captain and the navigating officer who were ex-Merchant Navy men he had nothing but contempt for the officers, whom he grouped together, regardless of civilian occupation, under the opprobrious term of “bank tellers.”

      He settled himself more comfortably on the couch, placing his feet against the wooden foot of the bunk. He was using his duffle coat as a cover, and his lifebelt as a pillow. Over a suit of dungarees he wore a blue denim smock.

      “You wanna watch out, McCaffrey,” the seaman at the wheel said, covering the voice pipe with the palm of his hand. “You know what the Old Man’ll say if he knows somebody down here’s smoking. He’s up top, you know.”

      “He can’t smell this fag from here.”

      “He can smell ’em a mile.”

      “Is he on the blower now?”

      “No, it’s Harris.”

      “Quit worrying.” He went back to his book, waiting until nobody was looking before surreptitiously stamping out his cigarette.

      The wheelhouse was quiet again except for the da-da-da-dit, da-dit from the wireless room which was separated from it by a door, and the quartermaster’s answers to the officer on the bridge, “Steady on two-one-oh.”

      McCaffrey was immersed in the chapter of his book in which the white girl had been bought at auction by the Bey of Tunis, and was being led away bathed in tears to a fate worse, even, than she had experienced at home at the hands of her erstwhile boss, Karl Tarbish.

      The starboard door opened noisily, automatically plunging the wheelhouse into darkness, and a hand pushed aside the blackout curtain and shut the door, turning on the lights again. A seaman entered, the bosun’s mate, who had been sent down to the galley by McCaffrey to scrounge a cup of coffee and a sandwich.

      “Hey, Mac, young Knobby’s hurt pretty bad! They got him layin’ on the mess-deck table!”

      McCaffrey laid the book down and jumped to his feet.

      “What happened?”

      “He fell down the ladder right outside here.”

      “When?”

      “I guess it was about an hour ago when you sent him forward to wake the hands.”

      “Is the tiffy there?”

      “Yeah.”

      “You notify the officer of the watch?”

      “The subby is in there now.”

      “Okay. Go and report it to the Old Man —”

      “The subby’s gone.”

      “All right, get these blackout screens down and let some air in here. You relieve Wilson on the bridge and tell him to go aft.” His indolence had disappeared with the coming of the bosun’s mate and the news of Knobby’s accident. Now he was fully awake, his senses tuned to the emergency. There would be a man short on the next red watch. They would have to get the injured man’s hammock slung somewhere out of the way where he could have a tittle quiet and privacy. The coxswain would have to be notified. If they were going to keep a man in the crow’s nest today it would make them still another man short. Have to get the coxswain to take the extra man from the radar people....

      With a parting word to the man on the wheel he pulled on his duffle coat, picked up his lifebelt, and pushed his way out into the now lightened day. When he reached the deck he made his way forward under the break of the fo’castle to the seamen’s mess.

      Just forward of the depth-charge rails at the stern was the chiefs and petty officers’ washroom, which opened from the upper deck, and stood at the head of the companionway which led below to the quarters of the chiefs and POs. It contained a toilet bowl, a wash bowl, and a shower around which hung a grimy white curtain. It was utilitarian, and had the appearance of being placed aboard as an afterthought by a naval architect who had been under the impression that any ranks below commissioned should excrete over the side. It was much too small to contain more than one person at a time, unless the second person stood in the shower, and showers were disallowed at sea.

      Its occupant, Stoker Petty Officer Jimmy Collet, washed his face and neck with hot water preparatory to shaving. About a month before, he had experienced an accident involving a broken tube of shaving cream and a new tailor-made suit of blue officer’s serge which had come in contact, one with the other, in his bag. Since then he had shaved with face soap.

      He was a slight young man of medium height, with the arms and hands of a manual worker. His face, even under the quick ministrations of soap and water, showed the black pits which were the result of his trade, as though the pores had absorbed their quota of oil and grit from long association. He wore a pair of oil-dulled issue boots, above which hung from his spare hips a pair of stiffened, brass-riveted dungaree pants. He was naked from the waist up, and the white, almost feminine, skin of his arms was covered from wrist to shoulder with various inked mementos of the tattooist’s art.

      His face felt good after its eleven-day holiday from the razor. He figured out mentally that he had about two more days to go. He wouldn’t shave again until they entered the gates of St. John’s, Newfoundland. Then a real clean up, with a bath, and up to the canteen on Water Street, dressed in his second-best “drinking” suit — there to absorb a dozen or so bottles of ale to wash away the taste of the cook’s smoked fillets.

      The PO’s messman, a stoker, came through the hatch from the quarterdeck and leaned his body inside the washroom door.

      “One of the seamen is knocked cold,” he said.

      Collet turned from the mirror, half his face camouflaged СКАЧАТЬ