Ben didn’t like it. He tried to make a stand.
‘Look ’ere,’ he said, ‘I wanter see the captain.’
‘And, of course,’ returned the third officer, ‘the captain’s just dying to see you!’
‘Yus, but I’m seerious!’
‘To do you justice, you look serious! What do you want to see the captain about?’
Ben couldn’t tell the third officer that. He fell back upon generalities.
‘I ain’t bein’ treated fair,’ he muttered.
‘It seems to me you’ve been treated with quite unusual fairness,’ answered the third officer. ‘You have been right to the fountain-head, and have had your case considered by the Old Man himself. You have not been put in chains. You have not been sent down to the stokehold. Instead, you are given a meal and a long sleep, and now you complain when I ask you to breathe on brass for a few minutes. I’m afraid I can’t see your cause for grumbling.’
But then the third officer could not see his own face. It was really the third officer’s face that was the trouble.
‘I bin a fool!’ Ben told himself, as he stared at the offending face and at the malignance with which it was saturated. ‘I orter’ve tole the captain more’n I did while I ’ad the charnce.’ Well, he would have to make another chance. Meanwhile, there seemed nothing to do but to obey the third officer.
‘Where are we goin’?’ asked Ben.
‘I don’t think that concerns you,’ retorted the third officer, ‘seeing you’ve no choice.’
‘No ’arm in arskin’, is there?’
‘Not the slightest, if you don’t expect answers. Now, then! Right turn! Quick march! And lift your feet!’
The final injunction came a moment too late. Ben tripped over a ledge, and went sprawling.
The third officer picked him up reprovingly.
‘You know, if you’re not more careful, you’ll go overboard,’ he observed. ‘You wouldn’t like that, would you?’
Ben did not reply. The remark, and the tone of it, chilled him.
They proceeded in silence. The sea churned darkly under a starry sky. The wind played its lonely night music. From somewhere in the distance, somewhere glowing with light, came other music. This other music was designed to destroy the loneliness of which the wind was chanting. The waltz from Bitter Sweet brought couples close in a miniature sanctuary of light and colour. Intimate smiles, whispered confidences, warm little pressures, flowed from the magic of the orchestra, combining to create the sweet illusions in which frightened humanity hides its head. But the song of the wind, rhythmless to finite ears, formless to finite minds, and designed by a fathomless need beyond human comprehension, told of the loneliness of oceans—the loneliness against which the other music fought—and of the might of space.
Ben, with each music in his ear, could not have described the separate messages. But he was conscious of them. He was conscious of the warmth of the one, and the coldness of the other.
They passed a few dim people. Some standing alone, some strolling or chatting in couples. Ben wanted to stop and talk to them, just to break up this horrible, silent journey with the third officer. But what could he have said? They were not of his world, or he of theirs.
‘’Ow much further?’ he asked, at last.
‘Up you go,’ replied the third officer.
They ascended a companion to the boat deck. It was deserted. The boats were the only company. The third officer walked towards the boats. They hung from their davits in static expectancy, waiting for the crisis that never came. The crisis of a wreck, or of a man overboard. Ben’s steps grew slower. He felt fingers on his sleeve. Not the firm, warm fingers of his little companion in the coal bunker. These were like the invisible fingers that had stretched towards him when he had been approaching dockland—the fingers that had drawn him through the opening in the wall, that had made him trip over the dead stoker, and shoot through the hole in the side of the ship. Only the fingers weren’t invisible any longer. They belonged to a third officer, and protruded from a respectable sleeve with a gold line and a diamond …
‘What’s the matter?’ asked the third officer.
Ben did not answer. The curve of one of the boats hung over their heads. Beyond the curve’s outline, and below it, was a rail, and beyond the rail was the sea. The sea, and the wind, and the loneliness …
They were not walking any more. They were standing.
‘So you want to see the captain,’ said the third officer.
‘Wot’s that?’ answered Ben.
The question surprised him, but only for an instant.
‘If I take you to the captain—I might be able to manage it, you know—what will you tell him?’
‘Wotcher mean, wot’ll I tell ’im?’ muttered Ben.
The third officer shrugged his shoulders, and waited. Ben noticed that the third officer’s fingers were still gripping his sleeve.
‘I ain’t bein’ treated fair, that’s wot,’ he said.
‘It won’t wash,’ sighed the third officer. ‘Really, old dear, it won’t wash!’ He shook his head. ‘I suppose what you really want to see the captain for is to spin him some more lies about—that chloroform.’
‘Me, lies?’ burst out Ben. ‘The lies was your’n!’
‘Not quite so loud,’ suggested the third officer, glancing round.
‘Why not?’ demanded Ben.
‘After all, it doesn’t really matter,’ the third officer retracted. ‘No one’ll hear you. We’re on the lee side. So—I told the lies, did I?’
‘Yus. You sed the clorridgeform was in my pocket.’
‘And wasn’t it?’
‘You knows it weren’t.’
‘In that case, where was it?’
‘Wotcher gettin’ at?’
‘Well, you and I are trying to find out things, aren’t we? Tell me—where was the chloroform, if it wasn’t in your pocket?’
‘On the grahnd.’
‘I see. And have you any idea how if got on the ground?’
And then Ben committed his blunder—the blunder he had been trying to avoid all this while.
‘P’r’aps you’d come back ter look fer it,’ he said.
His heart gave a leap the moment the words were out of his mouth. Now he’d done it! Lummy!
‘Come back to look for it,’ repeated the third officer slowly, and the point of his tongue appeared for a moment, as though to moisten suddenly dry lips. ‘Come back to look for it?’
‘’Ere, lemme go!’ exclaimed Ben, his anxiety growing. ‘Wotcher keepin’ ’old of me for? Yer gits me orl tied hup, and tha’s a fack. ’Oo sed anythink abart comin’ back? I ses p’r’aps yer ’d come ter look fer it—well, that don’t mean nothink, does it, when a feller’s bein’ got at like a Spannish Hinniquisishun. Lemme go, or I’ll ’it yer!’
To his surprise, the third officer let him go. The abrupt release gave the wind its chance, and sent him spinning towards the rail. He clutched it frantically.
‘Now you can begin your polishing,’ said the third officer, making no attempt to veil his sarcasm.
Polishing? Not it! It was clear by now, if it had not been all along, that Ben had not been brought to this deserted boat to do polishing. Then what had he been brought here for? The reason leapt at him with terrifying clarity. He had sensed it in his heart from the beginning, but had not known how to avoid it.
Ben’s world was no longer cheese and cigarette ends and Faggis and the girl. It was not the white-haired man with the sack even. It was the third officer, standing over him with piercing eyes and the expression of a man who has been driven inexorably to a purpose.
He tried to run, but now his arm was gripped again, and this time with iron firmness. The third officer glared directly into his eyes, but still kept up his game of bluff, even though their two souls were naked to each other.
‘Fool!’ growled the third officer. ‘What are you running for?’
Ben did not reply. What was the use?
‘Trying to get to the captain still, eh?’
Just keep quiet, that was the ticket. Get him off his guard, and then hit him. Biff and bunk. Biff and bunk. Biff and …
‘Tell me—how long had you been in that coal bunker before I found you, eh?’ came the third officer’s voice, like a low flaw in the wind. ‘Let’s have the truth this time!’
‘When ’e gits ’is fice a bit closer,’ thought Ben. ‘Then ’e’ll ’ave it!’
Of course, he could shout. He even prepared his throat at one moment to give the greatest bellow the world had ever known. But he knew his throat. It wasn’t doing what he was trying to make it do. And he knew the ineffective squeak that came from his throat when it was disobedient. It sounded like a hen swallowing a lozenge before it meant to. And then there was the wind. Who’d hear a shout in this wind? If they’d been on the weather side, there might have been a chance, but Ben was an old sailor, and he knew where you couldn’t spit.
The face was very close now. The words that came from it almost burnt.
‘Won’t answer, eh?’
‘Yus, I will!’ squeaked Ben, seeing red, green, blue, and every other colour. ‘Yer a dirty wrong ’un, and, tike that!’
He struck wildly. He hit the face. It was a moment worth living for and dying for. Well—living for. When he found he was going to die for it he rebelled. He rebelled with his arms and his legs, and his head and his mouth. Discovering that all these were useless, he went on rebelling with his mind. He drew a great picture of himself smashing the third officer to bits. He seized the bits and threw them high into the air. There he went! Up, up, up! Down, down, down!
‘Gawd—it ain’t ’im—it’s me!’
Realisation came back to him a blinding flash. He shot out his hands as space shrieked up to him.