There was a loud, sharp crack and everyone on deck immediately froze. The woman handed the gun back to the ship’s captain. He took it, a look of confusion on his face.
“You know who I am,” the woman said in a deep firm voice, her eyes moving slowly from one of her fellow passengers to the next. “Keep calm and do what the captain and his crew tell you to do. The sick must be taken ashore first and the rest of us must wait.”
A heavily built man began protesting in a shrill voice. He was a typical first-class passenger wearing a tailor-made wool suit and elegant leather shoes. The woman looked at him without saying a word. When their eyes met, his courage deserted him and he began stammering before falling silent. With a dull murmur the crowd slowly moved away and broke up.
The woman turned to me. The features of her face were earnest, her olive-toned skin tight over her cheek bones. 83
“Do what you need to now, ape,” she said and went and sat in the shade of the deckhouse.
Who the woman was and why she had such power over the other passengers was something I didn’t discover until much later. But at that point I just knew that she had saved Rosa and me from failing in our task.
The evacuation of SS Campania proved difficult enough anyway. The ship’s hold had been converted into accommodation for third-class passengers. It was dark and crowded down there and the sweetish smell of disease made me feel sick. In the weak light of the oil lamps I caught glimpses of rats scuttling about in the dark corners.
It took me two hours to move twenty of the most severely ill passengers to the transport. Most of them were children with swollen throats and foreheads hot with fever. Some of them were frightened when they first caught sight of me, others thought they were dreaming, but none of them put up any resistance as I carried them up on deck.
A couple of men who were already infected helped me as much as they could. We laid the sick on a sailcloth hammock, which I could then winch down to the transport using a rope 84and tackle. Rosa met them down there and helped each of them to a good place to sit or lie.
By the time twilight fell over the river that evening, we had made four trips back and forth between the quayside and the Campania. Just about half of the sick passengers were now being cared for in the field hospital.
Both Rosa and I were beyond exhaustion.
A westerly gale moved in from the Atlantic the following morning. The rough swell made the task of moving passengers from the Campania to the transport even more difficult than the day before. It was early evening by the time we were ready to leave the quarantined ship with the last load of infected passengers.
As I was about to climb down the rope ladder to the transport boat I caught sight of the woman who’d tamed the disorderly mob the day before. She was standing alone at the rail a short distance away. She bade me farewell with an almost imperceptible nod and I nodded back.
It was already eight o’clock when I drew alongside the quay at the naval base. Two men in protective suits scrubbed me all over with carbolic soap and gave me a new set of overalls from the navy store. My old overalls were to be burnt. 85
There was no sign of Rosa Domingues. She was presumably fully occupied caring for her new patients. And no one else seemed to be interested in me, so I walked out of the base and took the tram to Alfama.
Once on board the Hudson Queen I cleared the decks for the night and then made myself a bedtime snack in the galley. A few crusts and tea were all I could find. The lamp hanging above the table flickered as I ate. I realized the paraffin must be running out, so I took the lamp and went to the workshop to refill it.
The Hudson Queen’s small workshop is tucked into a corner of the engine room. As I made my way down the ladder to the engine room, the flame flickered a few times and then the light went out. Everything suddenly became as dark as the grave. But I don’t need a light to find my way around my engine room. I felt my way over to the workbench and took down the can of lamp oil from the shelf.
That is when I had a sudden feeling I wasn’t alone in the darkness.
It was a smell. A very faint smell. It didn’t fit in, but nor was it completely unfamiliar.
I kept very still and held my breath. There was nothing to be 86heard apart from the usual creaking noises of the ship. After a while I opened the can of lamp oil, refilled the lamp and lit it.
Of course there was no one there! I felt rather foolish. It wasn’t like me to be frightened of the dark.
But the strange smell still hung in the air. I hadn’t just imagined it. I shone the light over the mixture of tools, rags, engine parts and bits and pieces on the workbench.
Then I looked down at the floor. Something was lying there.
It was a feather.
A black feather with ragged grey edges.
I picked it up and cautiously sniffed it. Now I recognized the musty, slightly rancid smell.
The feather had come from Harvey Jenkins’s cockerel. I was absolutely certain of that.
But how on earth had it got here?
The answer was simple and occurred to me immediately: the cockerel must have shed the feather the first time we met Jenkins. On that occasion the Chief had shown both of them around the whole ship.
Pleased with myself for solving that little mystery, I threw the feather into the engine room waste bin and went back to the galley to drink my tea.
87A little while later I was lying snug in my hammock. Through the porthole I could see the shrouds of mist hanging over the river. In the far distance I caught a glimpse of a deserted jetty, lit by the pale yellow light from a solitary gas lamp. Waves were splashing against the hull and the taut mooring ropes creaked softly.
I was about to fall asleep when a thought suddenly flashed into my head. Why hadn’t I found the feather before this evening?
It was at least a fortnight since Harvey Jenkins and his cockerel had been down in the engine room with the Chief. And I’d been down there almost every day working on one thing or another.
Wouldn’t I have noticed the feather earlier?
And what about the smell?…