pea-green. But then I was in a Portuguese tramp.’ He had to shout to make himself heard. ‘That was a different kettle of fish: feel how this old crate rides, and look at the give in her.’
The Wanderer lifted to a monstrous sea, standing almost upright on her stern; she twisted and thrust like a living creature. ‘Look here,’ shouted Sullivan, pointing to the angle of the bulkhead. The joint between two thick timbers opened and closed an inch at a time. ‘Teak and ironwood,’ he said, ‘with oak backbone and knees. She was made to give so. She can whip anything made of metal.’ He patted the wood, wedged himself into a bunk, and in two minutes he was asleep.
Derrick, clinging precariously to his seat, watched him with astonishment. An enormous din pervaded the whole space; the ship was being hurled about like a chip in a mill-stream, but still Sullivan slept on, braced against the pitching and the corkscrew roll. Derrick had always wondered at his uncle’s ability to snatch a spell of sleep at odd moments, but never so much as now.
The time passed, lost in the prodigious hullabaloo: Derrick hardly noticed that the hands of the clock had crept on and on. He had been rather alarmed: the word typhoon has a very ugly ring in the China Seas, but the sight of his uncle sleeping there, even more than his reassuring words, was wonderfully comforting. Now Derrick could concentrate on gathering the various objects that had broken loose from their fastenings and stowing them away, rather than on the dozens of stories that he had heard of ships lost without a trace – and he could stop thinking about the tiger-shark under the Wanderer’s stern.
Suddenly, above the steady roar, there was a report like the firing of a gun. At once Sullivan was awake. ‘That would be the jib,’ he said, forcing his way through the wind-locked door. ‘Stay where you are.’
Derrick listening intently, fancied that he heard a change in the voice of the typhoon after some minutes; there seemed to be a shriller note in it, louder and more savage.
A solid mass of water shot into the saloon as Sullivan staggered in with Olaf over his shoulder. ‘Lash him into a bunk,’ he shouted, ‘and get into oilskins.’ He disappeared. Derrick lugged Olaf to the bunk, waited for the Wanderer to roll, and slid him into it. He took off the Swede’s dripping clothes, covered him with a rug and lashed him into the bunk with a dozen turns of a rope. Olaf was unconscious; his shoulder hung strangely, and there was a streaming gash on his forehead. Derrick did the best he could with the sleeve of a shirt by way of a bandage, and hurried into his oilskins and sea-boots. He was hardly ready before Sullivan came down again.
‘All fixed, Derrick?’ he asked, looking at Olaf. ‘Ready? Good. You’ll have to give me a hand on deck. Olaf will be all right – collar-bone, that’s all, and a bang on the head. Now listen, we’ve got to clear away the wreckage of the deck-house. There’s a lot of rigging loose, so watch your step. Hang on to the hand-line all the time, and watch for the green seas. Look out for yourself, and don’t let go the hand-line.’
Derrick nodded. His heart was beating violently. Sullivan handed him an axe, and they went on deck. The moment Derrick left the shelter of the companion-way the wind knocked him clean off his feet, but the hand-line brought him up. The shrieking air was full of flying water: he could hardly see or breathe. Following his uncle along the hand-line he made his way for’ard. They came to the wreckage: it had been stove in by a piece of drift-wood, and some of the timbers were pounding furiously. It was plain that they must be cleared at once, before they could spring the deck planking.
Derrick cleared some of the smaller debris: the moment it was free it shot away, carried by the wind. He came to a thick rope, a fallen shroud that held two heavy timbers threshing against the deck. He hacked and hacked at it, but it would not part: he could not hit it square. He let go of the hand-line, held the shroud with one hand and cut at it with the other. At the same moment a heavy sea broke over the stern, a wall of green water swept along the deck, caught Derrick as he cut through the rope and shot him along the deck. He found himself under a cloud of spray, with his back against the capstan. He was still holding the end of the severed shroud. The spray cleared: he saw that he was still alive, but immediately another surge of water buried him. He held tight, snatched a breath of air as the water poured over the Wanderer’s bows, and began to work his way aft. Then, as suddenly as he had been swept for’ard, he was swept back: the Wanderer was climbing the back of a huge wave, with her nose pointing at the sky, and the water on the fo’c’sle surged back and carried him with it. He was among the wreckage again almost before his going had been seen. He took a turn about the hand-line and went on cutting the loose wood free.
Again and again the great following seas smashed over the schooner’s stern, and each time she wallowed under a sheet of water and spray. But each time, after the spray had half drowned them, she would rise, the water shooting from her scuppers, lighten herself and speed on. Derrick grew used to the rhythm of it: he would see the sweep of water out of the corner of his eye as he worked, hang on, hold his breath and crouch until it had passed. At last, as he emerged from a welter of spray, he saw that the whole of the wreckage had been swept away, and his uncle, on the other side of the deck, was pointing aft. Bent double against the furious blast they clawed their way along: they passed Ross and one of the Malays, lashed to the wheel. Derrick, held motionless by the wind, noticed that the big Scotsman had his useless pipe clenched in his teeth, and that he was grinning. Derrick had never seen him looking so cheerful before. Usually he wore a solemn, dour face, but now he had the uplifted expression of a man in a winning fight. He nodded to Derrick, and shouted with all the force of his lungs; but Derrick, who was within a yard of him, only saw his mouth open and close.
Once they were below it seemed that they had passed from one world to another. The relief from the immense noise and the strain made the saloon feel like a peaceful, silent parlour on dry land. Derrick sank down and savoured the delight of breathing air that was not mixed with sea: he suddenly felt extremely weak. His uncle was speaking to him, shouting, but he could not hear, and he found that the infernal howling on deck had deafened him. Sullivan helped him off with his oilskins, pointed to a bunk, to the clock, held up four fingers, and went.
By the madly swaying light Derrick saw that the clock said half-past two. ‘It can’t be right,’ he thought. ‘It must be …’but before he could even finish the thought he was asleep.
‘It’s not half-past two,’ he exclaimed, waking suddenly, as someone shook him by the arm.
‘No,’ said Li Han, ‘this person did not suggest it was.’
After hours of labour Li Han had managed to get a fire going in the galley, and the steaming mug of cocoa that he held out to Derrick was the result of his efforts. Derrick collected his wits as he sipped the sweet, scalding liquid. He felt horribly sore and stiff all over, as if he had been put through a clothes-wringer. There was a deep gash on the back of his left hand – he had never noticed it at the time – and one of his front teeth was gone. But the cocoa was wonderfully good: he had never liked the stuff before, but now it sent down a flood of warmth into him.
‘Gee, that’s good cocoa, Li Han,’ he said, ‘you are a swell guy.’
‘Is approximately one-half rum,’ replied Li Han, refilling the mug for Olaf. ‘Other half mostly Yellow Sea.’
‘That’s a good sea-cook,’ said Olaf, thoughtfully, after Li Han had gone. ‘Although he’s only a poor heathen.’
‘What’s happened?’ asked Derrick, suddenly aware of a change in the ship’s motion.
‘The Old Man put her about at dawn. We’re riding it out now.’
Derrick hurried on deck. ‘You take care,’ shouted Olaf after him, ‘this ain’t no day for a swim.’
He saw at once that the worst was over. There was still a huge sea running, and the wind was a full gale, but it was nothing to what it had been, and the Wanderer was riding it out with a high and buoyant ease.
But the deck was a dismal sight. The ordinarily trim expanse of holy-stoned wood was a tangle of ropes and cordage, broken spars and storm-wrack: a gaping hole showed where the davits had torn out, and the deck-house was gone entirely.
His