Little God Ben Read online

  Then Ben escaped to the second companion-way leading from the main deck to the saloon deck. The higher he got the more anxious he grew. He was permitted on the main deck, provided he did not linger and merely used it as a passage from the quarters where he slept to the quarters where he worked, but the saloon deck was taboo, and he hoped there would be no more awkward meetings. Fortunately for this hope the weather had driven most of the passengers inside, and apart from slipping on a step, tripping over a rope, hitting a rail, and nearly being shot into a ventilator, he passed safely through the next few seconds. But just as he was about to ascend the third companion-way to the boat deck he heard voices; and, still being near the ventilator that had just failed to suck him down into the unknown region it ventilated, he slipped behind it. The manœuvre was necessary since one of the voices he recognised as the Third Officer’s.

  ‘You’d better go in, Miss Sheringham,’ the Third Officer was urging.

  ‘It’s certainly blowy,’ came the response, and then Ben recognised that voice also. It was the voice of the pretty girl in the blue frock. But now she was wearing oilskins.

  ‘And it’s going to get worse,’ answered the Third Officer. ‘Nothing whatever to worry about, you know, but it’s pleasanter inside.’

  ‘Why did you say there was nothing to worry about?’ asked the girl.

  ‘Because there isn’t,’ returned the Third Officer.

  ‘Or because there is?’

  The Third Officer laughed.

  ‘That’s much too clever for me! I’ve been through gales that make this seem like a sea breeze, but—’

  ‘But it’s a jolly good sea breeze!’ Now the girl laughed too. ‘Won’t the dancing floor be wobbly tonight? I wonder how many will be on it!’

  ‘If you’re on it, I expect you’ll be dancing a solo.’

  ‘I have a higher opinion of British manhood, Mr Haines! I shall certainly be on it. I rather like the idea of trying to do a slow fox-trot up a moving mountain—’

  ‘Look out!’

  Ben accepted the warning as well as the girl, but none of them ducked quickly enough. The sudden fountain drenched all three.

  ‘Really, Miss Sheringham, I wish you’d go in!’ exclaimed the Third Officer, after the drench. He made no attempt now to hide his anxiety.

  ‘I think I will!’ gasped the girl. ‘I’m soaked! But how did you know I was out?’

  ‘Well—I’ve eyes.’

  ‘Jolly quick ones! I hadn’t been out two minutes before you pounced on me!’

  ‘We try to look after our passengers.’

  ‘Beautifully put! Still, you’re quite right—I’d no idea it was so awful … I say, what’s that?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Over there! Towards the horizon—where I’m pointing!’

  There came a short silence. The wind rose to a shriek, then died down again. Ben could only hear the voices because the gale was blowing in his direction.

  ‘I can’t see anything,’ said the Third Officer.

  ‘Nor can I now. That mist has blotted it out. It was dark—like a whale. If I saw it at all.’

  ‘And that isn’t mist, it’s rain,’ answered the Third Officer briskly. ‘It’ll be here in a moment and drown you! Go inside at once. It’s not a request this time, it’s an order!’

  Ben heard a little laugh, and then the voices ceased. Footsteps sounded, and faded away. Ben was alone again.

  He waited a second or two. The long terror through which he was to reach the strangest salvation he had ever known began to grip him. He didn’t like his memory of the Third Officer’s tone. He had studied tones. He knew whether ‘That’s all right’ meant that it was or it wasn’t and whether ‘Come here’ meant a kiss or a kick. He knew that the Third Officer’s ‘That’s an order’ meant trouble.

  This, however, was not the entire cause of Ben’s new anxiety. He had an instinct for the tone of a gale as well as the tone of a human being. The instinct was now informing him that the gale was ‘behaving funny.’ Possibly not another person on board received the warning in precisely the way Ben received it. As though to compensate in some degree for his colossal ignorance, he had been granted an uncomfortable sensitiveness to certain impending occasions. The sensitiveness was variously expressed in various parts of his anatomy. Itching knuckles—that meant general danger. Twitching knee-caps—that meant personal danger. A sort of tickle in his nose—that meant cheese in the vicinity. A violent throbbing of his ear-lobes—that meant the wind was about to behave funny. You couldn’t get away from it.

  Well, no matter how one throbbed and tickled and twitched and itched, one could not remain behind a ventilator for ever; and so, creeping from a concealment no longer necessary, he skated—first uphill and then downhill—to the rails. He wanted to know whether he could see what the girl had thought she had seen, and devoutly hoped that he wouldn’t. The hope was so devout that at first he searched with his eyes shut. Then he opened them.

  ‘Vizerbility nil,’ he murmured. ‘I don’t see nothing!’

  Nothing, that was, beyond the most unpleasant ocean he had ever gazed at. It seemed to be in a kind of white fright and to be attempting to escape from the low clouds and the tearing wind, but the wind was chasing it mercilessly, emitting sounds that clearly came from some elemental madhouse; and the rain was in its wake. In a few moments the rain would add its stinging dampness to the starboard bow.

  ‘Lumme, we’re goin’ ter git it!’ gulped Ben.

  He turned to complete his interrupted journey. Perhaps it seemed a little footless now. The Captain on his bridge did not need the information of a fireman that the weather was not fine! But, having started on his ridiculous mission, Ben wanted to finish it. He had detached himself from normal, sensible routine, and he was like a bit of homeless, wind-blown chaff. Things beyond his power were buffetting him about, and he would have to go on being buffetted about until he was buffetted to rest.

  He might have hesitated, however, if impulse had not caused him to turn his head for one more glance over the starboard bow, towards the oncoming rain. In that glance he saw what the girl had seen; and because it was closer, and because his eyes were more experienced, he interpreted it before it was wiped into oblivion again.

  ‘’Eving ’elp us!’ he gasped.

  And he sped up the third companion-way to the boat deck.

  As he did so the Junior Wireless Officer emerged from the wireless-room aft and began walking hurriedly towards him. The Junior Wireless Officer had a T T T message in his hand—a message which ranks second in importance to an S.O.S.—but Ben did not know this, nor would he have paused if he had. He paid no attention to the approaching officer, or to the notice that warned passengers and unauthorised persons away from the Captain’s deck, or to the unspeakable transgression of mounting the ladder without permission to the bridge. In a flash he was on the Captain’s deck and clambering up the ladder. The Junior Wireless Officer saw him, stopped dead for an instant, and then came forward again at increased speed.

  The Captain also saw him. He was standing on the bridge with the First Officer, and he was looking very grim. His grimness increased tenfold as Ben’s head popped amazingly into view below him.

  ‘What the hell—!’ bawled the First Officer, speaking the Captain’s thoughts.

  ‘Something ter report, sir!’ Ben bawled back.

  As his head rose higher the First Officer seized it and spun it. Ben felt like a top. He had not finished spinning before he received a fresh impetus from below, and found himself projected towards the starboard cab. It was the Junior Wireless Officer, mounting the ladder at express speed.

  The Junior Wireless Officer’s voice, however, was contrastingly composed. The wireless-room permits itself pace, but never panic.

  ‘Navigation Warning, sir,’ said the Junior Wireless Officer, saluting and holding out his envelope.

  The Captain took it and opened it.

  ‘Hallo—floating wreckage,’ he exclaim
ed, glancing at the First Officer. ‘Latitude—’

  ‘Lattertood ’Ere and Lojitood ’Ere!’ bellowed Ben. ‘Unner the surface—water-logged—I jest seed it orf the starboard bow!’

  Then the starboard bow got it.

  3

  The Fruits of Panic

  Ben never learned what happened immediately after the submerged wreckage struck the ship, for the impact toppled him over to the deck just beneath the bridge, and the suddenly descending rain pinned him there with the effectiveness of a vast moist weight. He never learned that, although water poured through the wound in the ship’s side, flooding it with devastating rapidity, shifting cargo, bursting fresh cracks, and eventually sending the ship to its doom, not a single life was lost. That was another story, not Ben’s; and, incredible though it was, Ben’s story was the more incredible. Indeed, since Ben was destined like the rest to continue life, no one could have predicted the circumstances that coupled his continued existence with such enduring ignorance.

  Above him, as he lay on the edge of his biggest adventure, the Captain was staggering to his feet. The Captain, the First Officer, and the Junior Wireless Operator had also been bowled over, and the two former had only one thought in their minds. The Captain was the first to regain himself and act upon it. He staggered towards the lever that worked the water-tight doors. He was too late, however. His half-blinded eyes watched the indicator move to ‘Quarter-shut’ and ‘Half-shut’—and there it stopped. ‘Three-quarters-shut’ and ‘Shut’ were unattainable goals. Something had jammed.

  Below, human pandemonium joined the pandemonium of the elements. It is perhaps less discreditable than is popularly imagined by critics in comfortable arm-chairs that certain people should develop panic during the first moments of a wreck. In this case the damage had occurred with nerve-shattering suddenness, and quite a number of folk lost their heads. It was during this preliminary period, which would have spelt complete chaos had it endured, that two incidents occurred beyond the control of a ship’s discipline.

  The first incident occurred at one of the boats. There was a mad, unintelligent rush for it. A few people scrambled in. The Third Officer, followed by Ruth Sheringham whom he had been conducting inside when the crash occurred, did his best to stem the rush, and then to organise it. ‘Yes, get in, get in!’ he shouted to the hesitating girl. As she climbed she stumbled, and he lurched forward to her assistance. The mad crowd behind him carried him forward with her. The ship heaved, the boat swung outwards, partly through the violent movement of the ship and partly through the insane work of clumsy, frenzied hands at the davits. Something gave way. The boat slid down, and the ocean rose dizzily to meet it. As the boat smacked the water, and the Third Officer endured the worst moment of his life, he bawled. ‘Unhook! Unhook! Release the hook!’ He was releasing one as he bawled. He told Ruth Sheringham later that she had unhooked the other, but she had no memory of it. The great, wounded ship towered over them. It shot away from them. Somebody was sick …

  That incident was noticed, and served as an awesome example to quell the panic on board and substitute a sense of numb discipline. The second incident was not noticed. The same violent lurch that had sent the little boat down also sent Ben down. In perfect, unprotesting obedience to the laws of gravitation, Ben rolled along the sloping deck, bounced, and shot into the Pacific.

  He sank like a log. He rose like the Great War. The sudden immersion somewhat anomalously brought him back to life, and his arms and legs worked as arms and legs had never worked before. He was unable to swim but he had an excellent sense of self-protection, and it told him that he would not sink so long as he kept every part of him moving at the same time. Possibly the sea held him on its surface for a while out of sheer interest. It did not often receive such astonishing gifts, and he was passed from crest to crest for moist examination. But at last it wearied of him and began to draw him down. Ben, after all, was very small fry for so large a host.

  His mould was not that of the hero who dies but once. He was the coward—and the first to admit it—who dies many times before his death, and he now added another demise to his unfinished record. In the space of five seconds he died, went up to heaven, was thrown, went down to hell, was thrown up, wondered who wanted him, decided to speak to God about it, climbed a golden ladder, told God it wasn’t fair, asked if he were going to receive the same treatment in this new world that he’d received in the last, asked why it was so wet, asked why it was so cold, asked why everything was bobbing up and down, asked whether he were on a blinkin’ dancing floor, thought of the girl in the blue frock—and then found the girl in the blue frock looking at him. Of course, it was impossible!

  ‘Oi!’ he sputtered. ‘Wot’s ’appenin’?’

  ‘Sh!’ replied the impossible vision.

  ‘Yus, but I ain’t ’ere!’ he protested.

  Another voice answered him.

  ‘We picked you up. Stay still, and don’t talk.’

  It was the Third Officer’s voice. Quiet and commanding. But a shower of water spilling over a great watery wall was more effective in securing Ben’s obedient silence.

  He gave up trying to work things out. He was in a boat. The boat was racing up and down mountains. That was enough to go on with.

  Time passed. The boat continued to race up and down mountains. He lost count of both time and the mountains. They seemed endless. He also lost count of himself. He had been through a number of shattering evolutions and his saturated form was full of bumps and bruises. If one detached one’s mind from the past and the future—particularly the future—and regarded oneself as a sort of tree-trunk, it was pleasant to remain inactive and do nothing. Ben’s spirit drifted while his body tossed.

  Grey became dark grey. Dark grey became black. In blackness, Ben opened his eyes again.

  ‘Oi!’ he mumbled. ‘Wot’s ’appenin’?’

  ‘If you ask that again,’ replied the Third Officer, ‘I’ll scrag you.’

  ‘Any assistance you desire in that line,’ came another voice, ‘will be gladly offered.’

  That was Lord Wot’s-’is-name. So he was in the boat, too, was he?

  ‘’Oo’s arst wot agine?’ murmured Ben.

  ‘Every time you open your eyes,’ Lord Cooling informed him, ‘you ask what is happening. This, I think, is the tenth occasion. It becomes slightly monotonous.’

  Ben had no recollection of the other nine times.

  ‘Well, wot is ’appenin’?’ he inquired.

  ‘Can’t someone keep that fellow quiet?’ groaned a man at the other end of the boat. He was a film star, who concealed his modest origin under the name of Richard Ardentino. The public would not have recognised his voice at that moment. In a film of a wreck it had been very different.

  ‘Don’t excite him, don’t excite him!’ exclaimed another sufferer, who had never attempted to change his own modest name of Smith. ‘If you do, he’ll only upset the boat!’

  The reference to excitement produced the condition. Smarting under a sense of the world’s injustice, Ben suddenly became emotional.

  ‘Why ain’t I ter be told nothin’?’ he cried. ‘One minit I’m on the Captin’s bridge—nex’ minit I’m on the deck—nex’ minit I’m in the sea—nex’ minit I’m ’ere! Corse, that don’t matter! It ain’t int’restin’! And if nex’ minit I find meself on top o’ the Hifle Tower, that’s orl right, I mustn’t arsk no questions, carry on!’

  He had raised his head to offer this protest. Now he sank back, coming to roost—though in the dark he did not know this—in the lap of the girl. The Third Officer replied, quietly:

  ‘Take it easy, sonny. I expect you’ve been through worse than the rest of us, but we’re none of us having a picnic. What’s happened is that the ship has been wrecked and that we have been saved, so let’s all be grateful and leave it at that for the moment, eh? As a member of the crew, you’ll know I’ve got a job on, and that I need discipline to carry it through.’

  ‘Sorry, sir,’
muttered Ben. ‘Blime the bump on me ’ead.’

  The boat slid down into a watery trough, took a dose, climbed to the next crest, shivered, and slid down again. Ben was forgotten.

  Then passed a succession of hours that were devastating in their varying hopes and fears. If this were a saga of the sea, each hour would be described in detail. If it were a treatise on psychology, the effect on each separate nerve-centre would be analysed and ticketed. But our tale does not aspire to be a classic or a work of reference. It is merely an amazing adventure, which did not separate itself from other adventures and gain its own individuality until a night and a day and then another night had passed, until storms had been endured (one, during the second night, of special violence), until winds, tides and rain had driven the boat across countless miles of unknown ocean, and until the terrifying monotony of the hazardous voyage came to a conclusion.

  It came to a conclusion just before dawn on a dark, unseen beach. Though unseen, the beach was heard, and the Third Officer’s eyes—the only eyes that had never closed—strained fruitlessly to pierce the booming blackness. ‘This is the end!’ he thought. But he did not relinquish his efforts. For thirty-six hours he had kept the boat right side up, and now he steeled himself for the stiffest test of all. He gave a few quiet orders as the boat rushed onwards. A black mass rose and missed them by a few feet. He managed to avoid another by inches. Rock scraped the boat’s bottom. The boat shivered, then lurched forward again. Ahead were more black masses, and a shouting white line. The boat raced through the line, hit something, staggered, swung round, reared and kicked. It could advance no farther, but the kick shot its human contents towards the goal it could not reach …

  Ben descended in a shallow, sandy pool. ‘Now I am dead—proper this time!’ he decided, as the pool shrieked around him. Finding that he wasn’t dead, he rose with a bellow and scrambled forward. Did someone pull him along as he went, or did he pull someone along? He did not know. All he knew was that the five oceans were after him, excluding the considerable portions he had swallowed. Those were with him.