The Wreck Of The Mary Deare

But Patch pointed to his jaw where the scar still showed, maintaining that it was quite impossible for it to have happened accidentally.

‘And when you came to, was there any sort of weapon near you that your assailant might have used?’

‘No, I don’t think so. But I couldn’t be certain. The place was full of smoke and I was dazed, half-asphyxiated.’

‘I put it to you that one of the crew — a man, say, who had a grudge against you — could have followed you down … hit you perhaps with his fist?’

‘He would have had to be a very powerful man.’ Patch was looking across at Higgins. And then he went on to describe how, when he had come to, he could still hear the men shouting as they got the boats away. He had crawled back up the vertical ladder to the inspection hatch, but the cover had been closed and clamped down. What saved him was the fact that the main hatch had been cleared at one corner and after a long time he had managed to stack enough bales of cotton up to be able to reach this opening and crawl out on to the deck. He had found Number Three boat hanging from its bow falls, the other davits empty. The engines were still running, the pumps still working and the hoses were still pouring water into Number Three hold. But not a single member of the crew remained on board.

It was an incredible, almost unbelievable story. And he went on to tell how, alone and unaided, he had put the fire out. And then in the morning he had found a complete stranger wandering about the ship.

‘That would be Mr Sands, from the yacht Sea Witch?’

‘Yes.’

‘Would you explain why you didn’t accept his offer to take you off?’

‘I saw no reason to abandon ship. She was badly down by the bows, but she wasn’t in imminent danger. I thought he would notify the authorities and that it would help the salvage tug if I were on board to organise the tow.’

He told them then how he had seen me fail to regain my yacht, how he had pulled me on to the deck, and then he was telling them of our efforts to save the ship in the teeth of the rising gale, how we had got the engines going and the pumps working and kept her stern to the wind. But he made no mention of the Minkies. According to him, we had finally abandoned the ship in a rubber dinghy taken from Dellimare’s cabin when she was on the verge of sinking. No, he couldn’t say exactly what the position was, but it was somewhere to the east of the Roches Douvres. No, we hadn’t seen her go down. The rubber dinghy? Well, yes, it did seem to indicate that Dellimare had been nervous, had not trusted the boats or the seaworthiness of the ship.

‘Two final questions,’ Holland said. ‘And they are very important questions for you and for everybody connected with the ship.’ He paused and then said, ‘On reflection, are you quite convinced that it was an explosion that caused the flooding in Number One hold? I put it to you that in the conditions prevailing it was almost impossible to be certain that it wasn’t some submerged object that you hit or a wave breaking against the bows.’

Patch hesitated, glancing round the court. ‘It definitely wasn’t a sea breaking,’ he said quietly.

‘It was afterwards that the next sea broke over the bows. As to whether we hit something or an explosive charge was set off, only an inspection of the actual damage could prove it one way or the other.’

‘Quite. But since the ship is probably lying in at least twenty fathoms of water and we don’t know quite where, inspection of the damage is out of the question. I want your opinion.’

‘I don’t think I can say any more than I have. I can’t be certain.’

‘But you think it was an explosion?’ Holland waited, but getting no reply, he added, ‘Having regard to the fire in the radio shack and, later, the fire in the after hold — taking them all together, you incline to the theory that it was an explosion?’

‘If you put it that way — yes.’

‘Thank you.’ Holland sat down and even then nobody moved. There was no whispering, no shuffling of feet. The whole court was held in the spell of the evidence.

And then Sir Lionel Falcett rose. ‘Mr Learned Chairman, I would be glad if you would put one or two additional questions to the witness.’ He was a small man with thinning hair and a high forehead, a very ordinary-seeming man except for his voice, which had great depth of tone and was vibrant, so that one was conscious of the power of great energy and vitality behind it. It was his voice, not the man, that instantly dominated the court. ‘Witness has made it clear that he is convinced, in his own mind, that some attempt, was made to wreck the Mary Deare.