The Wreck Of The Mary Deare

I started to explain about the letter Rice had written, but he interrupted me. ‘What else did he say?’ he demanded. ‘Anything about Dellimare?’

‘The owner? No. Only that he’d been lost overboard.’ And I added, ‘The Captain died, too, I gather.’

‘Yes, damn his eyes!’ He turned away from me and his foot struck the overturned glass. He picked it up and poured himself a drink, his hands shaking slightly. ‘You having one?’ He didn’t wait for me to reply, but pulled open a drawer of the desk and produced a glass, filling it almost to the brim. ‘I buried him at sea on the first Tuesday in March,’ he said, handing the drink to me. ‘And glad I was to see the last of him.’ He shook his head slowly. ‘I was glad at the time, anyway.’

‘What did he die of?’ I asked.

‘Die of?’ He looked up at me quickly from under his dark brows, suddenly suspicious again. ‘Who the hell cares what he died of?’ he said with sudden truculence. ‘He died and left me to face the whole …’ He made a vague gesture with the hand that held his glass. And then he seemed suddenly to notice me again, for he said abruptly: ‘What the hell were you doing out there in that yacht of yours last night?’

I started to tell him how we’d bought Sea Witch in Morlaix and were sailing her back to England for conversion into a diving tender, but he didn’t seem to be listening. His mind was away on some thought of his own and all at once he said: ‘And I thought it was decent of the old bastard to get out and make room for a younger man.’ He was laughing again as though at some joke. ‘Well, it’s all the same now. That bulkhead will go soon.’ And he looked at me and added, ‘Do you know how old this ship is? Over forty years old! She’s been torpedoed three times, wrecked twice. She’s been rotting in Far Eastern ports for twenty years. Christ! She might have been waiting for me.’ And he grinned, not pleasantly, but with his lips drawn back from his teeth, A sea crashed against the ship’s side and the shudder of the impact seemed to bring him back to the present. ‘Do you know the Minkies?’ He lunged forward and came up with a book which he tossed across to me. ‘Page three hundred and eight, if you’re interested in reading the details of your own graveyard.’ It was the Channel Pilot, Part II.

I found the page and read: PLATEAU DES MINQUIERS. — Buoyage. — Caution. — Plateau des Minquiers consists of an extensive group of above water and sunken rocks and reefs, together with numerous banks of shingle, gravel and sand… The highest rock, Maitresse lie, 31 feet high, on which stand several houses, is situated near the middle of the plateau… There were details that showed the whole extent of the reefs to be about 17 and a half miles long by 8 miles deep, and paragraph after paragraph dealt with major rock outcrops and buoyage.

‘I should warn you that the so-called houses on Maitresse He are nothing but deserted stone shacks.’ He had spread the chart out on the desk and was bending over it, his head in his hands.

‘What about tide?’ I asked.

‘Tide?’ He suddenly seemed excited. ‘Yes, that was it. Something to do with the tide. I was going to look it up.’ He turned and searched the floor again, swaying slightly, balanced automatically to the roll of the ship. ‘Well, it doesn’t matter much.’ He downed the rest of his drink and poured himself another. ‘Help yourself.’ He pushed the bottle towards me.

I shook my head. The liquor had done nothing to the chill emptiness inside me — a momentary trickle of warmth, that was all. I was cold with weariness and the knowledge of how it would end. And yet there had to be something we could do. If the man were fresh; if he’d had food and sleep … ‘When did you feed last?’ I asked him.

‘Oh, I had some bully. Sometime this morning it must have been.’ And then with sudden concern that took me by surprise, he said, ‘Why, are you hungry?’

It seemed absurd to admit to hunger when the ship might go down at any moment, but the mere thought of food was enough. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I am.’ Anyway, it might get him away from the bottle, put something inside him besides liquor.

‘All right. Let’s go and feed.’ He took me down to the pantry, holding his glass delicately and balancing himself to the sluggish roll. We found a tin of ham — bread, butter, pickles. ‘Coffee?’ He lit a primus stove he’d found and put a kettle on. We ate ravenously by the light of a single, guttering candle; not talking, just stuffing food into our empty bellies. The noise of the storm was remote down there in the pantry, overlaid by the roar of the primus.

It’s surprising how quickly food is converted into energy and gives a man back that desperate urge to live. ‘What are our chances?’ I asked.