He paused, so that he could draw on his pipe, and keep it going. "If you are concerned about the company colours," he said, "I have two or three spare flags in my locker. Along with the Jolly Roger, of course," he added, with heavy sarcasm.
Edgar said tersely, "You really believe that a slantwise course would be more dangerous to the Arcadia than the course we're heading on now?"
Sir Peregrine nodded. And puffed. And then puffed again.
Edgar turned to Rudyard Philips. "Mr. Philips, what's your opinion? Would it be wiser for us to steer aslant to this storm, or not?"
Rudyard hesitated. He was waiting for Sir Peregrine to look round at him—maybe to wink, or at the least to give him a confiding nod. But he should have known better. Sir Peregrine remained in his chair, sending up intermittent smoke signals, like a Red Indian in a Saturday matinee cowboy picture communicating the message "I Am Imperturbable". The Arcadia collided with another cliff of solid seawater and groaned aloud. Edgar, for all his businesslike dignity, had to cling on to the rail that ran around the wheelhouse, just as tenaciously as Dick Charles.
Rudyard avoided Ralph Peel's intent stare. He said, too quietly for anyone to hear, "This is probably the best course."
"What?" demanded Edgar.
"I said—" and here Rudyard lifted his head so that he was looking directly at Ralph Peel, "I said that this is probably the best course. The course on which we're heading at the moment."
Ralph Peel wiped his mouth with his hand; and then, not knowing what to do or say, propped his fists on his hips and blew out his cheeks in frustration.
Edgar said, "You're sure we won't suffer anything more than superficial damage, Sir Peregrine? The sort of damage that we can repair before we reach New York?"
"Weather permitting," concurred Sir Peregrine.
"And you agree?" Edgar asked Rudyard.
Rudyard, feeling hot and nauseous, nodded his assent.
"Well, then, Mr. Peel," said Edgar, "it seems, to say the least, that you were acting overzealously. If the captain is convinced that he is handling the vessel in the best possible way, and his First Officer agrees with him, then there isn't a great deal more that we can say, is there? Except that I'm going to need your help in getting the Foster girl down from that crane, and that I'm going to take a pretty dim view of this incident once we've outrun this storm."
"Don't worry, Mr Deacon," said Sir Peregrine in a tired and slightly patronising tone, "I'm sure that I can deal with Mr. Peel in the appropriate fashion when the time comes."
Ralph Peel was about to say something but changed his mind and pulled his sou'wester onto his head with such fury that he snapped the clasp. "Permission to carry on, sir?" he asked Sir Peregrine sharply; but without the slightest trace of irony or temper. He was a good enough officer to know when he had lost a battle both of politics and rank.
Rudyard continued to stare at the wheelhouse door long after Ralph and Edgar had pushed their way back out into the storm again. He believed that he had done the right thing; and yet how had the right thing proved to be so wrong? How could he go back to Louise and tell her that he had decided not to wrest the wheel out of Sir Peregrine's hands after all? That instead he had agreed with Sir Peregrine that he was steering the right course?
How could he tell Louise that he had betrayed a brother officer in front of the Arcadia's owners, and that his mealy-mouthed agreement with Sir Peregrine would probably lead to Ralph Peel's dismissal?"
Sir Peregrine fished under his chair and produced a bottle of white Haitian rum. "Drink, Mr. Philips?" he asked. "Just a little celebratory snifter?"
Rudyard said, "No." And then, more clearly, "No, I won't, thank you, Commodore. I don't usually drink on duty."
"Please yourself," said Sir Peregrine, and swigged a whole mouthful of rum straight from the neck of the bottle.
"Your very good health," he said cruelly.
THIRTY-TWO
Monty Willowby found Harry Pakenow in the corner of the third-class bar, still nursing his glass of lemonade, his face as grey as a crumpled-up copy of the Daily Mirror. Beside him, her cheek resting on the sticky surface of the table, snoring harshly, was a cheap and pretty young college girl, with blotted lipstick. It was Philly, exhausted by seasickness and French brandy and a whole night of enthusiastic sex. She was dreaming that her next-door neighbour from back home in Minnesota, bald and fifty-five, was scooping vanilla ice-cream between her naked thighs. She often had dreams like that.
Harry, however, was dreaming of nothing. He was beyond seasickness, beyond exhaustion, beyond the class struggle and the international rights of the oppressed proletariat. He was staring at a framed photograph of Their Majesties on the opposite bulkhead, and waiting for the voyage to end. By whatever gods to whom it was necessary for a Marxist revolutionary to pray, please let it end.
"Hullo, it's Mr Pakemoff, isn't it?' said Monty, trying to be cheery. "Enjoying the ups and the downs, are we? Having a sociable time?"
Harry adjusted his spectacles and frowned at Monty blearily. "Oh, great," he said, in an accent that was far more Liverpudlian than New Jersey. "I can't remember when I've ever liked throwing up quite so much. Really great."
Six or seven third-class passengers were crowded around the bar, singing intermittent choruses of "Yesh, Shir, That'sh My Baby" in that strangled off-key warbling of the hopelessly drunk. One of them, with the collar of his green tweed jacket turned up, was trying to tell the others what his wife had said when they had bought their new three-piece sitting-room suite on "easy payments"—which was the latest and most popular way for working-class people to furnish their homes.
"She said—do you know what she said—she said, 'Do you know something, Wally? Only two more payments and the furniture's ours. Then we can throw it out and get some new stuff'!"
Nobody laughed much. Everybody had heard the joke before on the wireless. They had also heard the one about the new parents who had been paying their doctor's bill on the "never-never". "Only one more payment, dear, and baby belongs to us!"
Monty said to Harry Pakenow, "Do you mind if I sit down, squire? You see, I've got a bit of a problem."
"What's that? Piles?" asked Harry expressionlessly.
Monty managed a twitchy little smile. "We had a bit of a misunderstanding, you and me, the other day. Over that doll business."
"Oh. Misunderstanding, was it?"
"Well," grunted Monty, easing himself down on the settle next to Harry, and tugging at his cuffs, "the truth is that I have to stick to company regulations, even when I don't particularly feel they're necessary. One rule for everybody, don't you know? Otherwise, there'd be chaos."
"You told me. Regulations like, keep the champagne and the caviar of sight of the steerage, or they might start to get restless, and take over the ship."
"Well, squire, just my little joke," said Monty. "But the truth is, we need a bit of help."
"You need help from me?" asked Harry, running his hand through his prickly hair.
"Not me personally, you understand," Monty told him. "But it's that little girl Lucille Foster. She's stuck up a crane, you see, and she won't come down."
"She's stuck up a what?"
"A crane. You know the ones I mean. The ones we use for winching stuff on board. It seems like she climbed up, for some reason or another, and now she won't come down. And in this kind of weather, we can't reach her."