The Wreck Of The Mary Deare

I woke to complete darkness with water running like a dark river down the corridor outside my cabin. It came from a broken porthole in the saloon — probably from other places, too. The seas were battering against the ship’s side and every now and then there was a grumbling, tearing sound as she shifted her bottom on the shingle bed. I moved up to Patch’s cabin then. He was lying on his bunk, fully clothed, and even when I shone my torch on him he didn’t stir, though he had been asleep for over twelve hours. I made two trips below to the galley for food and water and the primus stove, and it was on the second of these that I noticed the little white rectangle of a card pinned to the mahogany of the door just aft of the captain’s cabin. It was a business card: J.C.B. Dellimare, and underneath — The Dellimare Trading and Shipping Company Ltd. The address was St Mary Axe in the City of London. I tried the door, but it was locked.

It was daylight when I woke again. The wind had died down and the seas no longer crashed against the ship’s side. A gleam of watery sunlight filtered in through the salt-encrusted glass of the porthole. Patch was still asleep, but he had taken off his boots and some of his clothes and a blanket was pulled round his body. The companion ladder leading to the saloon and the deck below was a black well of still water in which things floated. Up on the bridge, the sight that met my eyes was one of utter desolation. The tide was low and the rocks stood up all round us like the stumps of rotten teeth, grey and jagged with bases blackened with weed growth. The wind was no more than Force 5 to 6 and, though I could see the seas breaking in white cascades over the farther rocks that formed my horizon, the water around was relatively quiet, the broken patches smoothed out as though exhausted by their passage across the reefs.

I stood there for a long time watching the aftermath of the storm whirl ragged wisps of thin grey cloud across the sun, staring at the chaos of rocks that surrounded us, at the seas breaking in the distance. I felt a deep, satisfying joy at the mere fact that I was still alive, still able to look at sunlight glittering on water, see the sky and feel the wind on my face. But the davits were empty arms of iron uplifted over the ship’s side and the boat that had been hanging by one of its falls was a broken piece of splintered wood trailing in the sea at the end of a frayed rope.

Patch came up and joined me. He didn’t look at the sea or the sky or the surrounding rocks. He stood for a moment gazing down at the bows which now stood clear of the sea, the gaping hole of the hatch black and full of water. And then he went out to the battered port wing and stood looking back along the length of the ship. He had washed his face and it was white and drawn in the brittle sunlight, the line of his jaw hard ‘where the muscles had tightened, and his hands were clenched on the mahogany rail capping.

I felt I ought to say something — tell him it was bad luck, that at least he could be proud of an incredible piece of seamanship in beaching her here. But the starkness of his features checked me. And in the end I went below, leaving him alone on the bridge.

He was there for a long time and when he did come down he only said, ‘Better get some food inside you. We’ll be able to leave in an hour or two.’ I didn’t ask him how he expected to leave with all the boats smashed. It was obvious that he didn’t want to talk. He went and sat on his bunk, his shoulders hunched, going through his personal belongings in a sort of daze, his mind lost in its own thoughts.

I got the primus going and put the kettle on whilst he wandered over to the desk, opening and shutting drawers, stuffing papers into a yellow oilskin bag. He hesitated, looking at the photograph, and then he took that, too. The tea was made by the time he had finished and I opened a tin of bully. We breakfasted in silence, and all the time I was wondering what we were going to do, how we were going to construct a boat. ‘It’s no good waiting to be taken off,’ I said at length. ‘They’ll never find the Mary Deare here.’

He stared at me as though surprised that anybody should speak to him in the dead stillness of the ship. ‘No, it’ll be some time before they find her.’ He nodded his head slowly, still lost in his own thoughts. ‘We’ll have to build some sort of a boat.’

‘A boat?’ He seemed surprised. ‘Oh, we’ve got a boat.’

‘Where?’

‘In the next cabin. An inflatable rubber dinghy.’

‘A rubber dinghy — in Dellimare’s cabin?’ He nodded. That’s right. Odd, isn’t it? He had it there — just in case.’ He was laughing quietly to himself. ‘And now we’re going to use it.’

The man was dead and I saw nothing funny about his not being here to use his dinghy. ‘You find that amusing?’ I asked angrily.