The Lighthearted Quest (6 page)

Blessing the kindly little man, warmed and comforted, Julia sat contentedly in his cabin till a fair rather sleek-haired young man entered to announce that the
Vidago
was about to get under way. Captain Blyth ignored this information till he had effected a rather formal introduction—“Miss Probyn, this is our second officer, Mr. Freeman; Freeman, this is our passenger, Miss Probyn.” After which he went leisurely into his inner cabin and emerged in an oilskin and a cap heavy with gold braid, Julia's mackintosh over his arm.

“Oh, thank you. But who do I give my letter to?” Julia asked.

“Put it on my desk—I'll leave my door open, and see that it goes.”

By now Julia felt sure that it would. She went to her cabin and scribbled a note to Geoffrey, telling him that they would be calling at Casablanca, and that he should therefore hurry up his enquiries at the Bank of England, and airmail the
results to her. Then the idea struck her—where should he write
to?
Poste Restante? A considerable experience of the difficulty attending the extraction of letters from Postes Restantes in France and the Iberian Peninsula had made Julia cautious; she decided that Geoffrey's letter had better be sent care of Paddy Lynch—she must just risk the Lynches being away. She would have written to Paddy too, but she hadn't enough stamps left for airmail, and the Captain and apparently everyone else was either on the bridge or for'ard ringing bells and shouting, as the
Vidago
nosed and edged her way through incredibly narrow locks and channels, gently bumping, sometimes, against the stone sides, on her way to the open river, Tying a scarf round her head Julia went on deck and watched this process for a while. Deck hands ran to and fro, slinging hempen fenders over the side when a bump seemed imminent; arc-lights fizzed above dark water, dirty with refuse of all kinds; figures in oilskins moved about on the wet cement which in this strange world represented land, shouting directions—once one of them bellowed for ‘the keys', and some keys tied to a piece of wood were flung down to him. That small circumstance intrigued Julia very much; but it was wet and cold, and on the whole rather monotonous—she went back to her snug little cabin, turned in, and slept.

Julia thoroughly enjoyed her voyage on the
Vidago.
Crossing the Bay of Biscay in January is not normally regarded as a pleasure-trip, but the weather was not excessively bad, and the little vessel rode well, lightly surmounting huge seas that would have dealt shuddering blows to a big liner. Indeed in every way, Julia felt, a small cargo-boat had immense advantages over the leviathans on which she had hitherto done her ocean travel. Personal relations, if slight, were genuine as far as they went; one met the officers at all meals anyhow, and chatted as human beings do over their food—what was wholly and mercifully absent was the forced and bogus heartiness obtaining on large passenger-boats, with their ghastly organised
deck-games and evening gaieties. She spent much of her time in her cabin—since except the gloomy little dining-saloon there was nowhere else to sit—or in the pilot's cabin next door, which she used as a study-cum-luggage room, tapping away at an article on ‘Dockside Diversions' for
Ebb and Flow.
Now and again, for air, she went on deck; she asked Captain Blyth if he minded slacks on board—such already was her feeling for the little Skipper—when he said “No, very sensible,” she wore those, with a duffle-coat and fleece-lined rubber zip-boots to the knee superimposed for her outings. Julia had swithered about taking those boots on a journey into sunshine, it seemed so silly; but she had decided to ‘for the Bay'—in fact they were to stand her in good stead on many journeys in Morocco.

The first time that Mr. Reeder, the mate, encountered her on deck thus equipped, he looked her up and down and said—“Jolly good boots. Where did you get the duffle-coat?”

“Buntings, in High Street, Kensington,” said Julia—“they go in for war surplus.”

She asked him about the shipping that dotted the horizon in all directions—the eastern approaches to the Bay seemed almost as full of traffic as Piccadilly—and had pointed out to her tankers, long, low, and ugly; tramps of various sorts, apparently all familiar to Mr. Reeder: “That's a John Doe Line,” he would say of some spot on the skyline; “They're small coal-boats.” Near the French coast, off Ushant, lively little fishing craft bobbed about on the grey-blue waters, causing Julia to opine that it must be frightfully difficult to avoid them at night, especially in fog.

“Not any more—radar's made all that easy,” he said.

“Oh,
have you
got radar?”

“Naturally,” he said, rather huffily.

“I wish I could see it,” said Julia.

“You must ask the Old Man about that,” said Mr. Reeder, repressively. “I've no objection to passengers on the bridge, in
fact I like the company, but it can't be done unless he says so.”

Of course Julia asked Captain Blyth at the very next meal, which was one of those rather indigestible spam-and-salad, cake-and-scone collations at the distasteful hour of five-thirty p.m., if she could go up on the bridge some time to watch the radar functioning.

“Yes. Better come up tomorrow night, when we shall be off Finisterre—then you'll see the land on it as well as the ships.”

They slogged down across the Bay, that evening and that night; next morning Julia awoke to see a rather thin watery sunlight seeping in at her cabin window. She scrambled hastily out of her bunk—a drawer, half-pulled out below it, she had learned to use as a ladder—and ran across to the window to look out. Yes, sun it was, albeit rather faint as yet; in London one had forgotten that such a thing as sunshine existed. And the sea was blue too—faintly blue; anyhow not that cold steely grey. She felt extraordinarily exhilarated as she climbed back into bed just as Andrews, the steward, tapped on the door with her morning tea; he came in wearing his usual rig-out of shirt-sleeves, no collar, a puce pull-over, and a dark stubbly chin. “It looks a nice morning, Miss,” he said—Andrews was evidently slightly exhilarated too.

So was everyone else. A sort of joy pervaded the ship at the sight of the sun; it took the very practical form of doing some washing. A positive efflorescence of washing broke out on both decks, and at the midday meal there were prolonged arguments between Mr. Struthers, the lanky Chief Engineer, Mr. Freeman, the fair-haired second officer, and Reeder as to the best way of washing woollens—
Lux
or
Tide,
and how hot the water should be. The Captain contributed a story of a very nice young fella who had been given a cardigan knitted by his mother, which he had boiled in soda—everyone laughed politely. Julia decided to do some washing herself: by plaintively asking Mr. Reeder where and how she could hang her
things, as she had no clothes-pegs, she caused him to run a line for her across the boat deck under the bridge—“When your stuff's ready I'll hang it for you without pegs,” he said briefly.

“Ready in half-an-hour,” said Julia equally briefly; and half-an-hour later she watched with amusement the big bearded mate attaching her nylon effects to the line. He did this by a most ingenious method: inserting the point of the marlin-spike on his clasp-knife into the cord, he unlayed it enough to slip one corner of a garment through, and did the same to a second corner; the cord, springing back into place, held the sweater or petticoat as in a vice, far more strongly than any clothes-peg.

“That's grand,” said Julia admiringly, watching a selection of her wardrobe flapping and fluttering, completely secure, in the brisk breeze. “How clever. Thank you so very much.”

“Ah,” said Mr. Freeman, pausing on his way up to the bridge to take his four-hour trick to observe these proceedings, “but that will leave nicks on the shoulders of jerseys. Now my wife, she always reeves an old stocking through the sleeves of her jerseys, and pins that to the line at the middle and ends—so the jersey itself doesn't get nicked, see?”

“That sounds very clever,” said Julia politely—“but I haven't any old stockings with me, and I'm sure this will be perfect.” Reeder, however, for whose benefit the last remark was intended, had stalked indignantly away.

“Oh,
what fun,” Julia thought, retiring to the pilot's cabin to type out more items concerning “Dockside Diversions” before Andrews went round the boat ringing a hand-bell to announce lunch—again she compared these direct simplicities with the atmosphere on large liners, to the latter's disfavour.

That night she had her usual whisky with the Captain about nine-thirty. Andrews always brought cocoa and biscuits to all cabins at eight-fifteen; Julia had amended this, in her case, to having her thermos filled with her own
Nescafé,
which blanketed the insupportable flavour of the condensed milk better than
cocoa—and being in a thermos, she could take it when she liked, which was when she was finally installed in her bunk. (She was much struck by the lack of such amenities, apparently willingly endured by the merchant navy.) At ten-thirty that evening—“Well, let's go up,” said Captain Blyth, “if you really want to see the radar carrying on.” And up they went.

A radar screen is more like a small television set than anything else. In the darkened chart-room behind the bridge proper—where a seaman stood at the wheel, and Mr. Reeder, his beard muffled in a scarf, strode up and down looking both business-like and sulky—there was no light except that from a shaded lamp, falling on the chart spread out on the big table against the bulkhead. The Captain went first to this, and studied the pencil line drawn on it to indicate the ship's course; he went out in front, glanced at the bearings on the illuminated compass in front of the helmsman, and then spoke to Reeder. “Have we picked up Torinan yet?”

Reeder moved rapidly over and stuck his wrist watch into the faint light of the binnacle.

“Three minutes ago, Sir.”

“H'm.” He went across to the port side of the bridge, remarking—“Like to come and see?” to Julia over his shoulder.

Julia went with him. Several steady lights, small and yellow, pricked the darkness, but after a few seconds a much more powerful one, infinitely far away, winked, flashed, paused—and then winked and flashed again.

“That's Torinan. One always gets it a bit before Finisterre.”

“How do you know which light it is?” Julia asked.

“By the number of flashes, and the intervals between. I'll show you”—and leading her back into the chart-room he reached down from a shelf a grey paper-backed volume, rather thumbed and dog-eared from much use, entitled, Julia saw—“Admiralty List of Lights, Vol. IV.” He licked a tobacco-stained finger and turned the pages. “There's Torinan.”

Julia bent over the chart-table and read, muttering the
words aloud—“Toriñana. 1470. Octagonal tower on white square building, 29 ft. high. I.W. Character and period G.P. Occ. (3) Miles seen in clear weather, 20. Light 5.5 seconds, eclipse 1 second, light 1 second, eclipse 1 second, light 5.5 seconds, eclipse 1 second.”

“There you are, you see,” said Captain Blyth. “Check the flashes with a second-hand, and you know at once. Now we'll see if Spain is showing yet.”

With him Julia peered at the dark glassy screen, on which small luminous objects showed here and there; he explained to her the meaning of the concentric rings of green light surrounding the central point which was the ship, and how each ring stood, at the present adjustment, for ten miles.

“Then that ship,” said Julia, indicating a white object like a small maggot, “will be about five—no, four miles away.”

“That's right. Four or three-and-a-half. Of course if you get really close you can magnify it.” He twiddled a knob, the green rings seemed to shift, the maggot was ever so slightly enlarged—“Now that's set at five miles,” said Captain Blyth.

“Yes—oh, obviously now it's three-and-a-half—no, three.”

“Well, we're both moving, you see.”

Julia was entranced by this magical gadget. “Can you make the range larger too, so one can see further away?” she asked.

“Yes. We'll pick up Spain.” He twiddled the knob again, and suddenly the whole screen went dark.

“Silly thing,” said Captain Blyth mildly. “We'll have to get Sparks.” He pressed a bell on the chart-table, and lit a cigarette, quite unperturbed. To the man who presently appeared, looking rather sleepy and dishevelled, he said—“Fetch Sparks.”

A moment or so later the wireless officer, also looking sleepy and dishevelled, appeared. “Sparks, this damn thing's conked out,” said the Captain equably. “Fix it.”

Julia was familiar with Sparks, the wireless officer, a curly-headed boy from the Midlands; she sometimes went and sat
with him in his cabin, next door to the pilot's and full of curious instruments, to listen to whichever English news service he could best pick up at the moment, through the singing tappings in Morse which never seemed to stop for an instant. Sparks, whose real name was Watson, was a happy youth, utterly devoted to his job; he would sit by the hour, headphones clipped round his curly brown skull, listening-in to the inter-ship messages which fill the ocean air with etheric chitchat. Now however his cheerful face wore a rather sulky expression as he fiddled with the radar, removing and replacing valves—it was getting on for eleven-thirty, and Sparks had been fast asleep. However when he had finished he said, “All right now, Sir, I think,” very respectfully.

“Thanks,” said Captain Blyth. Once again he twiddled a knob; the illumined maggots seemed to increase, and right up at the edge of the screen appeared some faint curved lines of light, more like the petals of a chrysanthemum, Julia thought, than anything else. The Captain pointed at them with his thumb.

“That's Spain—Finisterre. It'll show up better when we get nearer.”