went out, a captain had to be on his bridge.
He said good morning to the new helmsman-always an AB, able-bodied seaman-at the wheel, and saw that Ratter, his first officer, hadn’t gone down to his cabin at the end of his watch but was out on the starboard wing of the bridge, sweeping the horizon with his binoculars. U-boats might well be out hunting, even this close to the British air cover from Gibraltar, and from the open deck of the bridge wing you could see much better than on the enclosed bridge. Not that it mattered, DeHaan thought, they couldn’t run and they couldn’t fight. They could break radio silence, a hard-and-fast rule for merchant ships since the beginning of the war, but that wouldn’t save the Noordendam.
Still, despite the war, despite anything, really, it eased his heart to be back at sea.
The Atlantic on a spring morning, six miles off the coast of Africa. Low cloud bank on the horizon, gray, shifting sky, sea the color of polished lead, stiff breeze from the northeast trades, gulls swooping and crying at the stern as they waited for the breakfast garbage. The real world, to DeHaan, and reassuring after the strange dinner four nights earlier. The blazer was back in his locker, and DeHaan was himself again-faded denim shirt rolled up above the elbows, gray canvas trousers, tie-up leather ankle boots with rubber soles. And a single badge of authority: a captain’s hat, a very old and hardworn friend-the gold stitching of the Hyperion Line insignia, twisted rope in the shape of an H, faintly green from years of salt air-which he wore with peak tilted slightly over his right eye. A good Swiss watch on a leather strap, and that was that.
Done with his survey of the horizon, Ratter came in off the wing deck and said, “Morning, Cap’n.”
“Johannes.”
Ratter was in his thirties, with a long, handsome, serious face and dark hair. Three years earlier, he’d lost an eye in a wheat-dust explosion on the Altmaar, one of the Noordendam ’s sister ships. There’d been no glass eye for him at the hospital in Rangoon, so he’d worn a black eye patch on a black band ever since. He was a good officer, conscientious and bright, who had long had his master’s papers and should have had his own ship by now, but the financial contractions of the 1930s had made that impossible.
“Service at oh nine hundred?” he said.
“Yes,” DeHaan said. It was Sunday morning, and an inviolable shipping tradition called for him to conduct a Divine Service, followed by captain’s inspection. He didn’t mind the latter so much, though he saw through all the tricks, but the former was a burden. “Compulsory today,” DeHaan added. “That means everybody. You already have the bridge, and you can keep the helmsman. Kovacz will take the engine room”-Kovacz, a Pole, was his chief engineer-“and I want everybody else on the foredeck.”
“All right,” Ratter said. “Full crew.”
DeHaan turned to the helmsman. “Come a point to starboard, and signal half speed.”
“Aye, sir. Point to starboard, half speed.” He turned the wheel-highly polished teak, an elegant survivor of the East India trade-and shifted the lever on the engine-room telegraph to Half Speed Ahead. From the engine room, two bells, which confirmed the order.
“I’m going to have to make a speech,” DeHaan said, clearly not happy about it.
Ratter looked at him. This never happened.
“We’re not going to Safi for phosphates.”
“No?”
“We’re going to Rio de Oro,” DeHaan said, using the official name for the strip of coastal sand known commonly as the Spanish Sahara. “Anchoring off Villa Cisneros-and I don’t want to get there much before nightfall, so, save the oil.” After a moment he added, “We’re changing identities, you might as well know it now.”
Ratter nodded. Very well, whatever you say. “Liberty for the crew?”
“No, they stay aboard. They all got ashore in Tangier, so they won’t take it too hard.”
“They won’t, and, even if they grumble, it’s Mauritania, whatever the Spaniards call it, and you know what they think about that.”
DeHaan knew. Sailors’ mythology had it that seamen on liberty in the more remote ports of northwestern Africa had been known to disappear. Kidnapped, the stories went, and chained to stepped wooden wheels, treadmills, in the lost villages of the desert interior, where they were worked to death pumping water from deep wells.
“We’ll have the local bumboats,” DeHaan said. “Crew will have to make do with that. And put the word out that we’re due for a long cruise, so, if they need anything…”
The mess boy came tramping up the ladderway-metal steps, too steep for a stairway but not quite a ladder- that led to the bridge. Known as Cornelius, he thought he was fifteen years old. He was, if that was true, small for his age, pale and scrawny. He’d grown up, he said, on the island of Texel and had first gone to sea on the herring boats at the age of nine. And running away to sea, according to Cornelius, had greatly improved his lot in life.
“Breakfast, Cap’n,” he said, offering a tray.
“Why thank you, Cornelius,” DeHaan said. Ratter had to turn away to keep from laughing. DeHaan’s breakfast was a mug of strong coffee and a slab of mealy gray bread spread thickly with margarine, which bore, at its edge, the deep imprint of a small thumb.
DeHaan chewed away at the bread and sipped the coffee and stared out at the low cloud on the horizon. In a moment, he’d go back to his cabin, read through the Divine Service-from a stapled booklet, dated Sunday to Sunday, provided by the Hyperion Line-and jot down what to say to the assembled crew. But, for the time being, with bread and coffee, Ratter’s silent presence, and fair weather, it was a pleasure to do nothing. The bridge was his true home on the ship-or, really, anywhere in the world. A sacred space, no clutter allowed. Only the helm, engine-room telegraph, brass speaking tube to the engine room with a tin whistle on a chain around its neck, compass mounted in a brass binnacle-a waist-high stand, signal flags in wooden compartments that climbed the port bulkhead, and an arc of grand, square windows in mahogany frames. Access was by doorways that led to the bridge wings, and a ladderway to the deck below-to the chartroom, captain’s and officers’ quarters, wardroom, and officers’ mess.
DeHaan permitted himself time for half his coffee, then said, “Well, I guess I have to go to work. Just keep it nice and slow, south-southwest at one-ninety degrees, and stay six-off-the-coast.” The phrase meant beyond the five-mile limit, international waters. “We’re running west of Morocco for the next few hours but, technically anyhow, that’s Vichy France.”
Ratter confirmed the order.
DeHaan took one last sip of coffee, then another, but he couldn’t leave. “I just want you to know,” he said, “that we’re really in it now, and it’s me who put us there. Maybe something had to happen, sooner or later, but it’s going to be sooner, and somebody’s going to get hurt.”
Ratter shrugged. “That’s the war, Eric, you can’t get away from it.” He was silent for a time, the only sound on the bridge the distant beat of the engine. “Anyhow, whatever it is,” he said, “we’ll come through.”
The wind blew hard on the forward deck, waves breaking at the bow, sun in and out of a troubled sky. The crew stood in ranks for the Divine Service, their heads uncovered, hats held in both hands. Kees, the Noordendam ’s second mate, a stolid, pipe-smoking classic of the merchant service, counted heads, counted again, and went off to retrieve a couple of convinced atheists skulking in the crew’s quarters.
Divine Service was meant to be vague and ecumenical: for Lascar and Malay crews from the East Indies, Moslems-as Mr. Ali was thought to be though in fact he was a Coptic Christian-for Catholics, for everybody; a few simple words addressed to an understanding and comprehensive God. But DeHaan knew the services to have been written by the Terhouven family pastor, a Dutch Reformed minister in Rotterdam with a pronounced taste for Protestant gloom. Thus that day’s service was based on the words of Martin Luther: “Everyone must do his own believing, as he will have to do his own dying.” Given the speech that DeHaan would be making after the service, the worst possible choice, but this was not the moment to improvise.
Belief mattered, went the homily, one had to have faith in the ways of the Lord, one had to be compassionate, to express this faith by charity toward one’s fellow man. A reading of Psalms 93 and 96 came next, followed by a recitation of the reverend’s chief work, The Seaman’s Prayer — a stormy, nightbound opus that made at least some of the men flinch. The word storm was not to be said at sea, lest there be one about, which, on hearing the mention of its name, came to see who was calling. After a minute of silent prayer, as most of the men bowed their heads, the service was over.
“Men,” DeHaan said, “before you are dismissed for captain’s inspection, I must say a few words to you.” DeHaan cleared his throat, consulted his notes, then held them behind his back. “We all know that half the world is at war, that we face a powerful and determined enemy. Over the next few weeks, the Noordendam and its crew
