The Black Tide

He half shook his head, sitting there unable to say a word. ‘My God!’ I said, swinging my legs off the bunk. ‘You come here, telling me I don’t understand, but it’s not only my wife you’ve killed—’

‘No!’ He had leapt to his feet. ‘I took his papers, yes. But the ship was sinking and he was dead already, floating face down in the oily water that was flooding the engine-room.’ And he said again, urgently, ‘He was already dead, I tell you. He’d no use for the papers any more.’

‘And Choffel?’ I asked. ‘Henri Choffel, who fell into the harbour at Cayenne just when you needed a job.’ I, too, was on my feet then, tucking the towel

around my waist. I pushed him back into the chair, standing over him as I said, ‘That was 1958, wasn’t it? Just after you’d sunk the French ship Lavandou.’

He was staring up at me, his mouth fallen open, a stunned look on his face. ‘How do you know?’ He seemed on the verge of tears, his voice almost pathetic as he said hoarsely, ‘I was going to tell you — everything. About the Lavandou as well. I was just twenty-two, a very junior engineer and I needed money. My mother…’ His voice seemed to break at the recollection. ‘It all started from that. I said it was a long story, you remember. I didn’t think you knew. It was so long ago, and ever since—’ He unclasped his hands, reaching out and clutching hold of me. ‘You’re like all the rest. You’re trying to damn me without a hearing. But I will be heard. I must be.’ He was tugging at my arm. ‘I’ve done nothing, nothing to be ashamed of — nothing to cause you any hurt. It’s all in your imagination.’

Imagination! I was suddenly shaking with anger. How dare the murderous little swine try and pretend he was misunderstood and all he had ever done was the fault of other people. ‘Get out of here!’ My voice was trembling, anger taking hold, uncontrollable. ‘Get out before I kill you.’

I shall always remember the look on his face at that moment. So sad, so pained, and the way he hung his head like a whipped cur as he pushed the chair away, stepping back and moving slowly away from me. And all the time his eyes on mine, a pleading look that seemed desperately trying to bridge the gap

between us. As the door closed behind him I had the distinct impression that he was like a drowning man calling for help.

Mad, I thought. A psychiatric case. He must be. How else could he try and plead his innocence when the facts stared him in the face? It was a Jekyll and Hyde situation. Only a schizophrenic, temporarily throwing off the evil side of his nature and assuming the mantle of his innocent self, could so blatantly ignore the truth when confronted by it.

God, what a mess! I lay back on the bunk again, anger draining away, the sweat cold on my body. I switched off the light, feeling exhausted and rubbing myself with the towel. Time stood still, the darkness closed around me. It had the impenetrable blackness of a tomb. Maybe I dozed. I was very tired, a mental numbness. So much had happened. So much to think about, and my nerves taut. I remember a murmur of voices, the sound of drunken laughter outside the door, and Rod Selkirk’s voice, a little slurred, singing an old voyageur song I had heard a long time ago when I shared a cabin with an ex-Hudson’s Bay apprentice. A door slammed, cutting the sound abruptly off, and after that there was silence again, a stillness that seemed to stretch the nerves, holding sleep at bay.

Thinking about the Aurora B and what would happen to us all on board during the next few weeks, I had a dream and woke from it with the impression that Choffel had uttered a fearful muffled scream as he fell to his death down the shaft of an old mine. Had he been pushed — by me? I was drenched in sweat,

the stagnant water closing over his head only dimly seen, a fading memory. The time was 01.25 and the faint murmur of the generator had grown to the steady hum of something more powerful — the auxiliary perhaps. I could feel it vibrating under me and some loose change I had put with my wallet on the dressing table was rattling spasmodically. I got up and put my eye to the little pinpoint of clear glass. There were men in the bows, dark shadows in the starlight, and there were others coming up through a hatchway to join them with their hands on top of their heads.

The crew! It was the crew, of course — the crew of the Aurora B. That’s why nobody had been allowed on the bridge, why there was a guard on the deck. They had been imprisoned in the chain locker, and now they were bringing them up and hustling them across to the starb’d rail at gunpoint. But why? For exercise? For air? They were at the rail now, a dozen or more, still with their hands on their heads, and above them the cliffs towered black against the stars.