He could hardly believe that he was only twenty years of age. He seemed to have grown old and weary. He had had only this small portion of life and now it was almost gone.
One morning he was too weak to crawl out from the shelter of the awning in the bows. He lay on the mattress, not moving. He lay there all day and all night with his eyes closed. He did not know when the next day dawned.
Chapter Ten
Return to Life
Keeton could see a line of rivets above his head. He tried to puzzle out how they came to be there. There were surely no rivets in the awning. He was still worrying over this problem when he heard the voices.
I should be dead, he thought; but instead I am still alive and imagining things. Or perhaps, after all, I died in the boat and have come to another life, that life the preachers always talked about — the hereafter.
But he did not really believe that this was so. He believed that this was merely a kind of hallucination — the rivets, the white-painted iron above him, the men’s voices. He believed that he was still in the boat and that soon he would feel the water lapping at his feet and hear the creaking of the mast.
Instead he heard the men’s voices, murmuring in low tones, and the measured thumping of the ship’s engines; and after a while he came to the conclusion that this was indeed no dream but reality. He had been picked up. A ship must have come at last and he had been lifted out of the boat, lifted back into life.
He sighed.
A man’s head appeared above him. A voice said: ‘So you’re awake then.’
Keeton was aware of thirst. ‘Water!’ He could scarcely hear his own voice; it was a croaking whisper. ‘Give me water.’
He felt a hand under his shoulders raising him. A cup was pressed against his lips and he drank. The liquid tasted sweet; it could have been a mixture of water and condensed milk.
The voice that had spoken before said warningly: ‘Not too much, Bates. Mustn’t overdo it to start with. Might do more harm than good.’
‘Very good, sir.’
The cup was taken away from Keeton’s lips and he was lowered again to the pillow.
But he was still consumed by thirst. ‘More,’ he whispered. ‘More.’ He felt that he could have drunk a gallon, ten gallons; that all he wanted in the world was to drink and drink and go on drinking.
But the man who was giving the orders was firm. He leaned over the bunk again and Keeton saw a round, rosy-cheeked face and two pale blue eyes.
‘My name’s Rogerson — Captain Rogerson. You are on board the steamship Southern Queen. We picked you up from a lifeboat. Do you want to talk?’
‘Water,’ Keeton said.
‘Very well, Bates,’ Rogerson said. ‘Give him a little more.’
Again when Keeton had drunk Rogerson asked: ‘Do you want to talk?’
Keeton closed his eyes. ‘I want to sleep.’
‘As you wish. We’ll talk some other time. There’s no hurry.’
Keeton heard them go away; he heard the door close. He lay with his eyes shut, not asleep but thinking. By a miracle he had been saved from death, had been plucked out of the grasp of the sea and was going to live. He knew that he would not die; he was weak but he would recover. And one thought hammered in his brain — the treasure. No one but he knew about the Valparaiso; he alone held the secret of the gold, and it was a secret that he had to keep. To have endured so much and then to lose the reward would be senseless. His initial plan had failed because he had been unable to reach Fiji, but already in his mind the seed of another one was germinating, one that would avoid the necessity for telling any story.
‘And you mean to say you can’t remember anything?’ Rogerson asked.
‘Nothing.’
‘Your name is Keeton; that was on the discs. Doesn’t that mean anything to you? Doesn’t it bring back some memory?’
‘No.’
Keeton was glad that he had kept the identity discs; the fact that they knew his name made things easier. They would be able to tell him certain details about himself and this would narrow the field in which he had to profess ignorance. But the one thing they must never know about was the fate of the Valparaiso.
Rogerson was speaking again, probing his brain, trying to strike some chord of memory.
‘Have you heard of a ship called the Valparaiso?’
Keeton controlled himself; he must show no reaction. He kept his voice dull and expressionless. ‘I cannot remember.’
‘We found you in number one lifeboat of the S.S. Valparaiso. You can tell me nothing of how you came to be in it? How you got away from the ship?’
‘No. It is just a blank.’
Rogerson believed him; there was no hint of suspicion on his face. But there would be others who might be more difficult to convince.
‘Memory’s a funny thing,’ Rogerson said. ‘Maybe it’ll come back. I shouldn’t be surprised if it did when you’ve had a good rest. Don’t worry.’
Keeton could almost feel the strength flowing back into his body like a liquid being poured into it. He lay in the bunk and listened to the throbbing of the ship’s engines; he ate; he slept. The steward had shaved his beard, trimmed his hair, cut his nails.
‘Now you’re a new man,’ the steward said. Keeton thought there might be more truth in that than he realized.
Rogerson came and talked. He talked about all manner of things; he was like a swordsman probing for a weak spot in his opponent’s defence. Now and then he would let fall some remark that might seem casual but which Keeton guessed had a purpose behind it. Rogerson was far less guileless than he appeared to be.
‘By the way, did I tell you the war is over?’
‘What war?’ Keeton asked.
He left the Southern Queen in Vancouver. The ship had called at Honolulu and there Keeton had been interviewed by United States naval officers and the inevitable newspapermen.
‘You’re a celebrity now,’ Rogerson told him. ‘A survivor from the Valparaiso is news. You know what she had on board?’
‘You told me. Gold.’
‘A fortune. Too bad it all had to go to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. No hope of salvage at that depth even if anybody knew where to look.’
‘Yes,’ Keeton said. ‘Too bad.’
There had been some talk of putting him ashore in Hawaii so that he could go into hospital, but finally it had been decided to send him on in the Southern Queen. Doctors had checked his physical condition and had reported that he was fit to travel.
‘The Royal Navy are pretty keen to get their hands on you,’ Rogerson explained. ‘After all, you are one of their boys, aren’t you?’
‘So I’ve been told.’
Rogerson stroked his chin; it was smooth from shaving and had a shine on it as though it had been polished. ‘You know you’re not the only survivor from the Valparaiso?’
‘No. You didn’t tell me that.’
‘It must have slipped my mind. There were two others — the mate, Rains I think his name was, and a steward called Smith. Mean anything to you?’
‘Nothing.’
‘They were pretty far gone when they were picked up. There had been others in the boat but they’d died. There’d been another boat too — not yours — but that was never found.’
Rogerson began to fill his pipe, not looking at Keeton. ‘So there we are — three survivors, and a fortune in gold bars down at the bottom of the Pacific. You three ought to find it interesting to compare notes. That is, it would be interesting if you could remember anything.’