jangling their moneybags and bemoaning their hard lot from hors
d’oeuvres right through to coffee, you must be out of your mind. We’ll
have it in my cabin.” and so we had it in his cabin. It was the usual
Campari meal, something for even the most blase epicure to dream about,
and captain Bullen, for once and understandably, made an exception to
his rule that neither he nor his officers should drink with lunch. By
the time the meal was over he was feeling almost human again and once
went so far as to call me “Johnny-me-boy.” it wouldn’t last. But it
was all pleasant enough, and it was with reluctance that I finally quit
the air-conditioned coolness of the captain’s day cabin for the blazing
sunshine outside to relieve the second officer. He smiled widely as I
approached number four hold. Tommy wilson was always smiling. He was a
dark, wiry welshman of middle height, with an infectious grin and an
immense zest for life, no matter what came his way. Nothing was too
much trouble for tommy and nothing ever got him down. Nothing, that is,
except mathematics: his weakness in that department had already cost him
his master’s ticket. But he was that rare combination of an outstanding
seaman and a tremendous social asset on a passenger ship, and it was for
these reasons that captain Bullen had insisted on having him aboard.
“How’s it going?” I asked. “You can see for yourself.” he waved a
complacent hand towards the pile of stacked crates on the quayside, now
diminished by a good third since I had seen it last. “Speed allied with
efficiency. When wilson is on the job let no man ever “the bo’sun’s
name is macdonald, not wilson,” I said. “So it is.” he laughed,
glanced down to where the bo’sun, a big, tough, infinitely competent
hebridean islander was haranguing the bearded stevedores, and shook his
head admiringly. “I wish I could understand what he’s saying.”
“Translation would be superfluous,” I said, drily. “I’ll take
over. Old man wants you to go ashore.”
“Ashore?” his face lit up; in two short years the second’s
shore-going exploits had already passed into the realms of legend. “Let
no man ever say that wilson ignored duty’s call. Twenty minutes for a
shower, shave and shake out the number ones “the agent’s offices are
just beyond the dock gates,” I interrupted. “You can go as you are.
Find out what’s happened to our latest passengers. Captain’s beginning
to worry about them; if they’re not here by five o’clock he’s sailing
without them. Way he’s feeling now, he’d just as soon do that. If the
agent doesn’t know, tell him to find out. Fast.” wilson left. The sun
started westering, but the heat stayed as it was. Thanks to macdonald’s
competence and uninhibited command of the spanish language, the cargo on
the quayside steadily and rapidly diminished. Wilson returned to report
no sign of our passengers. Their baggage had arrived two days
previously and, although only for five people, was enough, wilson said,
to fill a couple of railroad trucks. About the passengers, the agent
had been very nervous indeed. They were very important people, senor,
very, very important. One of them was the most important man in the
whole province of camafuegos. A jeep had already been dispatched
westwards along the coast road to look for them. It sometimes happened,
the senor understood, that a car spring would go or a shock absorber
snap. When wilson had innocently inquired if this was because the
revolutionary government had no money left to pay for the filling in of
the enormous potholes in the roads, the agent had become even more
nervous and said indignantly that it was entirely the fault of the
inferior metal those perfidious Americanos used in the construction of
their vehicles. Wilson said he had left with the impression that
detroit had a special assembly line exclusively devoted to turning out
deliberately inferior cars destined solely for this particular corner of
the caribbean. Wilson went away. The cargo continued to move steadily
into number four hold. About four o’clock in the afternoon I heard the
sound of the clashing of gears and the asthmatic wheezing of what
sounded like a very elderly engine indeed. This, I thought, would be
the passengers at last, but no; what clanked into view round the corner
of the dock gate was a dilapidated truck with hardly a shred of paint
left on the body work, white canvas showing on the tyres, and the engine
hood removed to reveal what looked, from my elevation, like a solid
block of rust. One of the special detroit jobs probably. On its
cracked and splintered platform it carried three medium-sized crates,
freshly boxed and metal-banded. Wrapped in a blue haze from the
staccato backfiring of its exhaust, vibrating like a broken tuning fork
and rattling in every bolt in its superannuated chassis, the truck
trundled heavily across the cobbles and pulled up not five paces from
where macdonald was standing. A little man in white ducks and peaked
cap jumped out through the space where the door ought to have been,
stood still for a couple of seconds until he got the hang of terra firma
again, and then scuttled off in the direction of our gangway. I
recognised him as our carracio agent, the one with the low opinion of
detroit, and wondered what fresh trouble he was bringing with him. I
found out in three minutes flat when captain Bullen appeared on deck, an
anxious-looking agent scurrying along behind him. The captain’s blue
eyes were snapping; the red complexion was overlaid with puce, but he
had the safety valve screwed right down. “Coffins, Mister,” he said
tightly. “Coffins, no less.” I suppose there is a quick and clever
answer to a conversational gambit like that, but I couldn’t find it, so
I said politely, “coffins, sir?”
“Coffins, Mister. Not empty, either. For shipment to New York.”
he flourished some papers. “Authorizations, shipping notes, everything
in order. Including a sealed request signed by no less than the
ambassador. Three of them. Two British, one American subject. Killed
in the hunger riots.”
“The crew won’t like it, sir,” I said. “Especially the goanese
stewards. You know their superstitions and how “it will be all right,
senor,” the little man in white broke in hurriedly. Wilson had been
right about the nervousness, but there was more to it than that; there
was a strange overlay of anxiety that came close to despair. “We have
arranged “shut up!” captain Bullen said shortly. “No need for the crew
to know, Mister. Or the passengers.” you could see they were just a
careless afterthought. “Coffins are boxed that’s them on the truck
there.”
“Yes, sir. Killed in the riots. Last week.” I paused and went on
delicately: “in this heat “lead-lined, he says. So they can go in the
hold. Some separate corner, Mister. One of the – um-deceased is a
relative of one of the passengers boarding here. Wouldn’t do to stack
the coffins among the dynamos, I suppose.” he sighed heavily. “On top
of everything else, we’re now in the funeral-undertaking business.
Life, First, can hold no more.”
“You are accepting this-ah-cargo, sir?”
“But of course, but of course,” the little man interrupted again.
“One of them is a cousin of senor carreras, who sails with you. Sefior
miguel carreras. Sefior carreras, he is what you say, heartbroken.
Senor carreras is the most important man “be quiet,” captain Bullen said
wearily. He made a gesture with the papers. “Yes, i’m accepting. Note
from the ambassador. More pressure. I’ve had enough of cables flying
across the atlantic. Too much grief. Just an old beaten man, First,
just an old beaten man. He stood there for a moment, hands outspread on
the guardrail, doing his best to look like an old beaten man and making
a singularly unsuccessful job of it, then straightened abruptly as a
procession of vehicles turned in through the dock gates and made for the
Campari. “A pound to a penny, Mister, here comes still more grief.”
“Praise be to god,” the little agent murmured. The tone, no less
than the words, was a prayer of thanksgiving. “Senor carreras himself!
your passengers at last, captain.”
“That’s what I said,” Bullen growled. “More grief.” the little
man looked at him in puzzlement, as well as might anyone who didn’t
understand Bullen’s attitude towards the passengers, then turned and
hurried off towards the gangway. My attention was diverted for a few
moments by another crate swinging aboard, then I heard captain Bullen
saying softly and feelingly, “like I said, Mister, more grief.” the
procession, two big, chauffeur-driven prewar packards, one towed by a
jeep, had just pulled up by the gangway and the passengers were climbing
out. Those who could, that was-or very obviously there was one who
could not. One of the chauffeurs, dressed in green tropical drills and