‘Shall we try to lasso it for you, Pegs?’ Petty Officer Griffiths was saying to her, laughing.
‘I think it’s love at first sight,’ remarked Lieutenant Strain drily.
There was more to come. Soon another haystack appeared in the distance, this one topped off not by a cat, but by a chicken.
‘Ruddy hell, is this some evil communist torture?’ Frank said. ‘God, what I wouldn’t give to see that roasted on a plate.’
But if the chicken had roused the crew’s hunger, the next thing had them drooling – for it was not a haystack this time, but a pig!
‘Saints alive,’ somebody shouted from above me. ‘Someone fetch some rope or something! Anything! We can get that! A whole pig!’
There was a frantic scrabble while everyone flew in all directions, trying to find something to lasso the animal with before the tide pulled it out of our reach. And they made a good fist of it; more than once managing to get a rope round it before the current got the upper hand and the pig, looking up at its tormentors with terrified eyes, managed to slip the makeshift noose.
‘No fresh pork for dinner tonight, then,’ Frank observed, as it disappeared into the distance and whatever alternative fate awaited it. ‘Bully beef it is, then,’ he added, sighing, and as I looked at the men’s expressions, the brief excitement snatched from them – literally – I couldn’t help but wish they liked sardines as much as I did. For all the privations, we had more than enough of those.
‘Woof,’ said Peggy, dolefully. We all knew how she felt.
Though the effects of Typhoon Gloria were largely behind us now, we had much to be grateful to her for. We didn’t know it yet, but the high tide, the current and the flooding on the banks were all going to be our friends.
However, when I entered Captain Kerans’ cabin that afternoon, in the interests of giving him some moral support, I had no idea quite how much Gloria was going to mean to us, and how soon.
There was no getting away from it; conditions were deteriorating rapidly. I had come from the wireless room – no longer a warm cosy spot but a raging cauldron – so much so that poor Jack was barely able to think straight from heat exhaustion. Junior ratings were taking turns to sit with him and pump a pair of the ship’s bellows over him, but he was in such a bad way now that he sometimes struggled to write, let alone try to decode incoming messages – of which, over the last few days there seemed to have been many.
There were also mutterings all over the ship – mutterings the captain had been at pains to quell – about what was going to happen once this new oil ran out, which it soon would, even with the ship being powered down at night. And what about the food? We were almost out of flour, the sugar was spoiled now, the rats – growing fatter on it – were breeding unchecked.
The flooding hadn’t helped, either. Because of it, communication with the shore had been impossible, so such supplies as we’d been able to trade for were no longer available to us.
No, all in all, things were not looking good for the Amethyst, and as I caught the captain’s eye once inside his cabin, I could tell he was thinking about that too; about just how far the communists intended to push us. To the death? Then, with a thrill of excitement, I saw something else twinkling in his eyes. Did he know something no one else did?
I settled myself down in my usual spot, just beside the typewriter on which he bashed out his reports. But it seemed that he hadn’t been writing, but drawing. He picked up the result of his efforts – a pencil sketch of a ship – and hung it from his fingers in front of me.
‘Shall I tell you a secret, Simon?’ he said.
Galvanised and rapt now, I stood up and stretched, then resettled and made myself more comfortable. I was glad I had, because it turned out to be quite a big secret. And also an explanation for all the strange goings-on that almost the entire crew had been muttering and moaning about these past couple of weeks. The business of the greasing and blanketing of the anchor. The business of the Amethyst being shrouded in sheets. The business of taking down all that metal topweight and slinging it unceremoniously overboard or below. The business of still being so frugal with the oil.
He wasn’t losing his marbles. He had had all his wits about him. He was setting things in place to try to silence and disguise the Amethyst. He was preparing for us all to escape!
‘What we’re going to do,’ he confirmed, to my great excitement, ‘is make a dash for it. Tonight. Yes, I know it’s dangerous, but there’s no need to look at me like that, Simon. I promise you, I have thought all this through. For weeks, let me tell you. We’re going to make a break for it under cover of darkness later this evening. Look. See this here?’
He pointed to where he’d done some shading with his pencil. ‘I’m going to disguise the Amethyst – well, to the extent that I can do, at any rate – disguise her enough to at least give those communists pause for thought. To be uncertain that they are looking at what they think they are looking at. And then we are going to escape.’
There was no hesitation. No judicious use of the word ‘try’. We are going to escape. So the men had been wrong in their mutterings and chunterings. Captain Kerans had pulled the wool right over their eyes.
Having already told Williams, the chief engineer, earlier in the day, so he would have time to raise steam in the boilers, Captain Kerans gave Frank a list of names. He was to inform everyone on the list – all the chief petty officers and petty officers – to assemble in his cabin, plus a number of the senior ratings, all of them maintaining utmost security at all times.
It was early evening when they arrived, the sky outside turning a darkening peachy pink, and the temperature still as warm as it had been all day. So with some seventeen men crammed into the tiny airless space, it was something of a hot, uncomfortable squeeze. I didn’t mind, though. I was too excited about everything to want to be anywhere else, so I settled again, just by the voice pipe to the wheelhouse, keen to listen in on his briefing.
‘I have decided to make a break for it tonight,’ he told everyone. ‘Now, I know it’s not going to be easy without a pilot to guide us, but the darkness is going to help us – the moon sets just after 23:00. And it won’t be as good for another month after tonight. The river’s high because of the typhoon, too, which should give us some advantage, and we need to slip at 22:00.’ He paused to let this sink in. ‘That’s crucial if we’re going to pass the big guns at Woosung before dawn. I don’t doubt that if they are on to us, that’s where we’re going to get it. So speed,’ he glanced over at Williams, ‘is going to be of the very essence.’
There was silence for a moment as the officers took this in, then the mood changed and they all began bombarding him with questions – every one of which he seemed to have an answer for. He really had been thinking about this for a long time, I realised. No wonder he’d seemed so preoccupied.
They soon dispersed – because now time was very much of the essence – and everyone had a precise role to play to make Captain Kerans’ dream of escape a reality. There was no room for doubt. This was our only chance of making a run for it, and there wasn’t a man there, I think, who didn’t want to take it.
Frank grinned at me, then, having saluted the captain, as if on an impulse, scooped me up and tucked me under his arm. I wondered if – perhaps given what had happened the last time – he intended to take me down to the wheelhouse to bring him luck.
‘You hear that?’ he said. ‘Finally, it’s happening! You know what we’re going to do, Blackie boy? No? Well, I’ll tell you. We’re going to give that ruddy Kang a right smack in the eye!’