appeal. The sooner I see passengers, crew, and myself transferred aboard the Ticonderoga the happier I’ll be. Only a fool kicks against the pricks; I know a fait accompli when I see one. You are going to transfer us all aboard the Ticonderoga, aren’t you, Carreras?”
“I shall have no further use for any member of the Campari’s crew, far less for the passengers.” he smiled thinly. “Captain teach and Blackbeard are not my ideals, Mr. Carter. I should like to be remembered as a humane pirate. You have my word that all of you will be transferred in safety and unharmed.” The last sentence had the ring of truth and sincerity, because it was true and sincere. It was the truth, but it wasn’t, of course, the whole truth: he’d left out the bit about our being blown out of existence half an hour later.
About seven o’clock in the evening Susan Beresford returned and Marston left, under guard, to dispense pills and soothing words to the passengers in the drawing room, many of whom were, after twenty-four hours of continuously heavy weather, understandably not feeling at their best.
Susan looked tired and pale — no doubt the emotional and physical suffering of the previous night together with the pain from her broken arm accounted for that — but I had to admit for the first time, in an unbiassed fashion, that she also looked very lovely. I’d never before realised that auburn hair and green eyes were a combination that couldn’t be matched, but possibly this was because I’d never before seen an auburn haired girl with green eyes.
She was also tense, nervous, and jumpy as a cat. Unlike old doc Marston and myself, she’d never have made it in the method school. She came softly to my bedside — Bullen was still under sedation and Macdonald either asleep or dozing — and sat down on a chair. After I’d asked her how she was and how the passengers were, and she’d asked me how I was and I’d told her and she hadn’t believed me, she said suddenly, “Johnny, if everything goes all right will you get another ship?”
“I don’t follow.”
“Well,” she said impatiently, “if the Campari’s blown up and we get away or if we’re saved some other way, will you…”
“I see. I suppose I would…”
“You’ll like that? Getting back to sea again?” This was a crazy conversation, but she was only whistling in the dark. I said, “I don’t think I’ll be back to sea again somehow.”
“Giving in?”
“Giving up. A different thing altogether. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life catering to the whims of wealthy passengers. I don’t include the Beresford family, father, mother and daughter.”
She smiled at this, going into the weird routine of melting the green in her eyes, the kind of smile that could have a very serious effect on the constitution of a sick man like myself, so I looked away and went on: “I’m a pretty fair mechanic and I’ve a bit of cash put away. There’s a very nice flourishing little garage down in Kent that I can take over any time I want. And Archie Macdonald there is an outstanding mechanic. We’d make a pretty fair team, I think.”
“Have you asked him yet?”
“What chance have I had?” I said irritably. “I’ve only just thought about it.”
“You’re pretty good friends, aren’t you?”
“Good enough. What’s that got to do with anything?”
“Nothing, just nothing. Funny, that’s all. There’s the bo’sun — he’ll never walk properly again; nobody will want him at sea any more; he’s probably got no qualifications for any decent job on land — especially with that leg — and all of a sudden chief officer Carter gets tired of the sea and decides…”
“It’s not that way at all,” I interrupted. “You’ve got it all wrong.”
“Probably, probably,” she agreed. “I’m not very clever. But you don’t have to worry about him, anyway. Daddy told me this afternoon that he’s got a job for him.”
“Oh?” I took a chance and looked at her eyes again. “What kind of job?”
“A storeman.” “A storeman.” I know I sounded disappointed, but I’d have sounded ten times as disappointed if I had been able to take all this seriously, if I’d been able to share her belief that there was a future. “Well, it’s kind of him. Nothing wrong with a storeman, but I just don’t see Archie Macdonald as one, that’s all. Especially not in America.”
“Will you listen?” she asked sweetly. A touch of the Miss Beresford that was.
“I’m listening.”
“You’ve heard that daddy’s building a big refinery in the west of Scotland? Storage tanks, own port to take goodness knows how many tankers?”
“I’ve heard.”
“Well, that’s the place. Stores for the oil port and the refinery millions and millions of dollars of stores, daddy says, with goodness knows how many men to look after them. And your friend in charge with a dream house attached.”
“That is a very different proposition altogether. I think it sounds wonderful, Susan, just wonderful. It’s terribly kind of you.”
“Not me!” she protested. “Daddy.”
“Look at me. Say that without blushing.”
She looked at me. She blushed. With those green eyes the effect was devastating. I thought about my constitution again and looked away, and then I heard her saying: “daddy wants you to be the manager of the new oil port. So then you and the bo’sun would be in business together after all. Wouldn’t you?”
I turned slowly and stared at her. I said slowly, “Was that the job he meant when he asked me if I’d like to work for him?”
“Of course. And you didn’t give him a chance to tell you. Do you think he’d given up? He hadn’t really started. You don’t know my father. And you can’t claim I’d anything to do with it either.”
I didn’t believe her. I said, “I can’t tell you how — well, how grateful I am. It’s a terrific chance, I know and admit. If you see your father again this evening thank him very much indeed from me.”
Her eyes were shining. I’d never seen a girl’s eyes shining for me before. Not in this way.
“Then you’ll — then you’ll…”
“And tell him no.”
“And tell him…” “It’s a foolish thing to have pride, perhaps, but I’ve still got a little left.” I hadn’t meant my voice to sound so harsh; it just came out that way. “Whatever job I’ll get, I’ll get the one I found for myself, not one bought for me by a girl.” As a thumbs-down on a genuine and generous offer, I reflected bitterly, the refusal could have been more graciously phrased.
She looked at me, her face suddenly very still, said, “oh, Johnny,” in a curiously muffled voice, turned and buried her face half on the pillow, half on the sheets, her shoulders heaving, sobbing as if her heart would break.
I didn’t feel good at all. I could have walked under a five barred gate without opening it. I reached and touched her head awkwardly and said, “I’m terribly sorry, Susan. But just because I turn down…”
“It’s not that, it’s not that.” She shook her head in the pillow, voice more muffled than ever. “It was all make believe. No, not that, everything I said was true, but just for a few moments we — well, we weren’t here. We — we were away from the Campari; it was something that had nothing to do with the Campari. You — you understand.”
I stroked her hair. “Yes, Susan, I understand.” I didn’t know what she was talking about.
“It was like a dream.” I didn’t see where she came into the dream. “In the future. Away — away from this dreadful ship. And then you burst the dream and we’re back on the Campari. And no one knows what the end’s to be, except us — mummy, daddy, all of them, Carreras has them believing their lives will be spared.” She sobbed again, then said between sobs, “Oh, my dear. We’re just kidding ourselves. It’s all over. Everything’s over. Forty armed men and they’re prowling all over the ship. I saw them. Double guards everywhere — there are two outside this door. And every door locked. There’s no hope, there’s no hope. Mummy, daddy, you, me, all of us — this time tomorrow it will all be over. Miracles don’t happen any more.”
“It’s not all over, Susan.” I’d never make a salesman, I thought drearily; if I met a man dying of thirst in the Sahara I couldn’t have convinced him that water was good for him. “It’s never all over.” But that didn’t sound any better than my first attempt. I heard the creak of springs and saw Macdonald propped up on one elbow, thick black eyebrows raised in puzzlement and concern. The sound of her crying must have wakened him.
