The Kraken Wakes

So there can have been very few shrieks that night. Those unfortunate Japanese women — and men — had time to wake, and then, perhaps, a little time to wonder, bemused with sleep, and then the water came to choke them: there were no shrieks, just a few bubbles as they sank down, down, down in their nineteen-thousand-ton steel coffin.

When I had read what there was I looked up. Phyllis was regarding me, chin on hands, across the breakfast table. Neither of us spoke for a moment. Then she said:

'It says here: "— in one of the deepest parts of the Pacific Ocean." Do you think this can be it, Mike — so soon?'

I hesitated. 'It's difficult to tell. So much of this stuff's obviously synthetic… If it actually was only one minute… No, I suspend judgement, Phyl. We'll see The Times to-morrow and find out what really happened — if anyone knows.'

We drove on, making poorer time on the busier roads, stopped to lunch at the usual little hotel on Dartmoor, and finally arrived in the late afternoon — two hundred and sixty-eight point seven, this time. We were sleepy and hungry again, and though I did remember, when I telephoned London, to ask for cuttings on the sinking to be sent, the fate of the Yatsushiro on the other side of the world seemed as remote from the concerns of a small grey Cornish cottage as the loss of the Titanic.

The Times noticed the affair the next day in a cautious manner which gave an impression of the staff pursing their lips and staying their hands rather than mislead their readers in any way. Not so, however, the reports in the first batch of cuttings which arrived on the afternoon of the following day. We put the stack between us, and drew from it. Facts were evidently still meagre, but there was plenty of comment. My first read:

'Mystery still shrouds the fate of the ill-starred Japanese liner, Yatsushiro, which plunged to her doom bringing sudden death to all but five of her seven hundred passengers, including women and children, on Monday night off the southern islands of the Philippine group. No mystery of the sea since the still unsolved riddle of the Marie Celeste has presented more baffling queries…'

The next one read:

'It seems likely that the fate of the Yatsushiro may well take a place in the long list of unsolved mysteries of the sea. Nothing quite so unaccountable has occurred since the schooner, Marie Celeste, was discovered adrift with…'

And the next:

'Statements made by the five Japanese sailors, the only survivors of the Yatsushiro disaster, serve only to deepen the mystery surrounding the ship's fate. Why did she sink? How could she sink so swiftly? Answers to these questions may never be forthcoming, any more than they were to the questions posed by the mystery of the Marie Celeste which have eluded solution…'

And the next:

'Even in these modern times of radio, etc., the sea can still produce mysteries to defeat us. The loss of the liner, Yatsushiro, presents puzzles as baffling as any in the annals of navigation, and to all appearance no more likely to be satisfactorily explained than were the problems aroused by the famous Marie Celeste, which, it will be recalled…'

I reached for another.

It says here,' Phyllis broke in, looking at the cutting in her hand, with a slight frown: '"The tragic loss of the Yatsusbiro bids fair to rank high among the unsolved problems of the high seas. It is, in its way, only a little less baffling than the still unanswered questions posed by the famous Marie Celeste…"'

'Yes, darling,' I agreed.

And the one before said:' "A mystery even deeper than that surrounding the celebrated Marie Celeste veils the fate of the vanished Yatsushiro…" Wasn't the whole point about the Marie Celeste that she didn't sink?'

'Roughly — yes, darling.'

'Well, then what is all this about her for?'

'It is what is known as an "angle", darling. It means in translation, that nobody has the ghost of an idea why the Yatsushiro sank. Consequently she has been classified as a Mystery-of-the Sea. This gives her a natural affinity with other Mysteries-of-the-Sea, and the Marie Celeste was the only specific M-of-the-S that anyone could call to mind in the white heat of composition. In other words, they are completely stumped.'

'It's not worth looking through the rest, then?'

'Scarcely. But we'd better. I'd like to know if anybody is speculating — and if not, why not? We can't be the only people who are putting two and two together. So just keep an eye out for guesses.'

She nodded, and we went on working through the pile, learning more about the Marie Celeste than we did about the Yatsushiro. There was only one check. Phyllis gave a 'Ha' of discovery.

'This one's different,' she said. 'Listen! "The full story behind the sinking of the Japanese vessel Yatsushiro, is not likely to be revealed. This luxury liner, lavishly decorated and furnished, was built in Japan, with capital emanating largely from Wall Street, at a time when the gap between uncontrolled wage-levels and the rising cost of living for the Japanese worker —" Oh, I see.'

'What do they work round to?' I asked.

She skimmed the rest. 'I don't think they do. There's just a kind of all through suggestion that it was too contaminated by capital to keep afloat.'

'Well, that's the only theory out of this lot,' I said. 'All got a strong dose of not-before-the-children this time. And not altogether surprising, seeing the hell the advertisers raised over the last global panic they pulled. But they're going to have to do better than this skulking behind the Marie Celeste; you can't just proclaim a thing a Mystery-of-the-Sea and stop all theories for long. For one thing, the more intelligent weeklies haven't such sensitive advertisers. Somehow I can't see Tribune or the —'

Phyllis cut me off:

'Mike, this isn't a game, you know. After all, a big ship has gone down, and seven hundred poor people have been drowned. That is a terrible thing. I dreamt last night that I was shut up in one of those little cabins when the water came bursting in,'

'Yesterday — ' I began, and then stopped. I had been about to say that yesterday Phyllis had poured a kettle of boiling water down a crack in order to kill a lot more than seven hundred ants, but thought better of it. 'Yesterday,' I amended, 'a lot of people were killed in road accidents, a lot will be to-day.'

'I don't see what that has to do with it,' she said.

She was right. It was not a very good amendment — but neither had it been the right moment to postulate the existence of a menace that might think no more of us than we of ants.

'As a race,' I said, 'we have allowed ourselves to become accustomed to the idea that the proper way to die is in bed. at a ripe age. It is a delusion. The normal end for all creatures comes suddenly. The —'

But that wasn't the right thing to say at that time, either. She withdrew, using those short, brisk, hard-on-the-heel steps. I was sorry. I was worried, too, but it takes me differently.

I was evidently not alone in thinking that a solution would have to be provided. The next day, it was. Almost every newspaper explained it, and on Friday the weeklies elaborated it. It could be compressed into two words — metal-fatigue.