The Wreck Of The Mary Deare

But there was no way of flooding her now. Every vent and hole was sealed off and we couldn’t get at the sea cocks. Even the doors of the engine-room had been welded to keep the water out. The salvage company had sealed that hull up as tight as a submarine. ‘We’ll just have to hope for the best,’ I said.

Patch laughed. The sound had a hollow ring down there in the steel vault of the alleyway. ‘A westerly gale will bring a big tide. She’ll float off at high water. Bound to, with nothing to hold her. She’s pumped dry, all but the two for’ard holds.’ His voice sounded hoarse and cracked. ‘I wouldn’t mind for myself.’ He was staring at me. ‘But it’s tough on you.’ And then he shrugged his shoulders and added, ‘Better see if we can find some food.’

I was appalled by his acceptance of it, and as I followed him back down the alleyway to the galley, I was thinking that if only I had woken in time. The French salvage men had had her securely moored with hawsers fore and aft, and Higgins had let them go. I couldn’t hate the man. I hadn’t the strength to hate. But if only I’d got up the instant I heard those footsteps… And as though he knew what was in my mind, Patch said, ‘One thing — Higgins is going to have a bad time of it out there in that dinghy.’

The galley was dark and it stank. The sea had been there before us, and so had the French. There wasn’t a tin of any sort in the place. There was a cupboard full of bread that was a pulped, mildewed mass and there was meat that heaved with maggots and butter thick with slime and sand. All we found was some cheese that was good in the centre, a jar of half-dried mustard, some pickles and a broken pot of marmalade. We broke our fast on that, wolfing it down, and then we searched the saloon and all through the officers’ cabins and the crew’s quarters. We found a sticky mass of boiled sweets and a jar of ginger and, best of all, some stoker had gone to earth with two tins of bully beef. We took our miserable haul back to the little deckhouse on the poop and ate it, sitting there, shivering and listening to the rising note of the wind.

The gale came up fast with the turn of the tide and soon the waves, breaking against the side of the wreck were reaching up to the bridge-deck and we could feel the stern beginning to move under us. Once, when I went to look out of the door, I saw the blue dinghy still bobbing in the lee of Grune a Croc.

By midday it was blowing full gale. All the forepart of the Mary Deare was being pounded and battered by huge seas, her bridge-deck hidden every now and then in sheets of white water, the whole hull quivering to the onslaught. Water swirled across the well-deck below us and the boom of the waves striking against the plates of her side was so shattering that I found myself holding my breath, waiting for them, as though the blows were being struck against my own body. The noise went on and on. It filled my head and left no room for any thought beyond the terrible, everlasting consciousness of the sea. And out beyond the sea-swept wreck of the Mary Deare, the stumps of the reefs dwindled as the Minkies gradually vanished in a welter of foaming surf.

I saw Higgins once more. It was about two hours before high water. The Mary Deare was beginning to lift and shift her bottom on the gravel bed and Grune a Croc was a grey molar stuck up out of a sea of foam with water streaming white from its sides and spray sweeping across in a low-flung cloud, driven by the wind. Higgins was moving on the back of the rock, climbing down towards the dinghy. I saw him get into it and pick up the oars. And then a squall came, blurring the shape of the rock, and I suddenly lost sight of him in a curtain of rain.

That was the last I saw of Higgins. It was the last anybody saw of him. I suppose he was trying to reach the Mary Deare. Or perhaps he thought he could reach the mainland in the dinghy. He had no choice, anyway; Grune a Croc would have been untenable at high water.

I stood in the doorway of our deckhouse for a long time, my eyes slitted against the rain and the driving spray, watching for a glimpse of him through the squall. In the end the seas drove me in and when I told Patch how Higgins had gone, he shrugged his shoulders and said, ‘Lucky bastard! He’s probably dead by now.’ There was no anger in his voice, only weariness.

The cabin in that deckhouse was about ten feet by six, steel-walled, with a bunk, some broken furniture, a window that had no glass in it and sand on the floor. It was damp and cold, the air smoking with wind-driven spray, and it resounded like a tin box to every sound throughout the ship. We had chosen it for our refuge because it was perched high up on the stern, and it was the stern part of the ship that was afloat.