Claiming a need for fresh air, I returned to the deck. It was stupid of me to react so and my resentment towards Hernikof increased. I climbed rapidly to the top of the ship to stand beside the funnel overlooking the engine-room hatch. The deck-passengers had wrapped themselves up in their carpets for the night, though some were still smoking and talking. Candle-lamps burned here and there, together with the ship’s own lights. It was a strange, fascinating scene, but it had become impossible now for me to be alone there. I retreated to my cabin and by means of almost half my remaining cocaine fled into fantasies of the future, of my own success, and put Hernikof out of my mind.
Next morning I took my usual stroll but was intensely irritated by the people on the forward deck. For the first time the green woman had left her post. I saw her sitting under one of our swaying lifeboats, slowly arranging her pack. I decided it was time I attempted to address her directly, since we were both so discommoded, and was making my way towards her when our signals suddenly began to clang and the engine-note changed. The whole ship shuddered. She slewed sickeningly round. My first thought was that we had struck a rock, or another ship. The deck-passengers jumped to their feet yelling and pointing off the portside. I ran to the rail. In the choppy water, not more than a few yards from us, was the vessel we had almost hit. It was a long barge of the sort normally only seen on canals. She had no engine, no passengers, but was piled high with all kinds of trunks, suitcases, bundles and bags over which tarpaulins flapped. It was a strange and disturbing sight, for the barge had no business being at sea. We passed her and slowly she dropped behind us, rising and falling in the thickening mist. Her cargo might have been Bolshevik loot or the effects of a single aristocratic family. It could have been valuable, but with our decks so crowded it would have been madness to try to get alongside her. The water became choppier and the barometer was falling by the minute. Our breath steamed and joined with the mist. Gradually the wind increased and for a while the air was clear, but later the wind again dropped, the night became very foggy, and Jack Bragg was positioned forward with a searchlight to keep a look-out for ice.
After dinner that evening I joined Bragg at his post. He was smoking his pipe and humming a tune to himself as he pointed the little beam this way and that across the black, unpleasant water. The ship’s gloomy foghorn sounded every few minutes. The Baroness had gone to bed early, claiming to have caught a slight chill. I raised my coat collar, for some reason unwilling to return to my cabin. Instead I offered to take a turn at the light, but Bragg refused. ‘I can’t afford to get in the captain’s bad books again!’ Although the yellow beam did not pierce the fog very deeply, we were moving at half-speed in a heavy sea so there was not much danger of us running hard into another vessel or the pack ice which in the past two hours had begun to appear here and there. The inky waves made a horrible hollow sound on our hull. For a while Jack and I smoked and chatted about nothing in particular; then, suddenly, he frowned, his eyes following the beam. ‘Hello! What was that?’
I had seen nothing. He moved the beam back a few feet to reveal a dark outline not a hundred yards away from us. ‘You’d best take the blasted light after all,’ he said. ‘I’ll warn the captain.’
My hands were shaking as I did my best to keep the beam on what was obviously a fairly large vessel. We were passing very close. It seemed our course must inevitably bring us into direct contact with her. Now, as Jack went off to the bridge, I saw little white blotches everywhere and realised to my astonishment that these were human faces, apparently scores of them. When their thin cries gradually became audible across the water, I shouted back in response. They could hear nothing, of course. There were no engine-sounds and it seemed they were stranded. A moment later from the bridge the captain’s amplified voice called out our name, telling them we would try to come in closer. But the sea was beginning to rise even as we approached. I could see the vessel fairly clearly now. She was a little harbour-tug. There must have been two hundred people crammed on every surface of her. I thought I could read her name at one point, the Anastasia out of Akermann, but that might have been my imagination. Whoever commanded her was now shouting back, begging for help. They had lost their engines. Their propeller had been tangled in a hawser. Jack joined me again at the searchlight. We were by now both soaked in spray. ‘Poor bastards. They seem to be taking on a lot of water. They’re sinking for certain. She must have been hauling that lighter we saw. When the cable snapped it wrapped itself round their screw. Listen to the wailing! Isn’t it pathetic?’ He told me there was nothing the captain could do. He dare not risk his own people’s lives. He could only radio the nearest British warship and ask them to go to the tug’s assistance. ‘God help them.’ said Jack. ‘They can’t last another hour in these seas.’
Soon the tug with two hundred terrified faces had disappeared in the wild darkness. Our own deck-passengers had scarcely stirred. The sea grew heavier and colder. It was to remain bad for all the time it took us to reach Varna. We never learned if the tug was rescued, but Captain Monier-Williams asked me not to mention her likely fate. He did not want to distress anyone. In our hearts, we knew she had gone down.
At Varna we lay off near the harbour entrance while, to my great pleasure, boats removed over half our passengers. The ship seemed at peace again, though pack-ice still bumped our sides occasionally and there was snow in the air. To me the snow was almost welcome. I was not sure if I would ever be completely happy without it. My Baroness, her daughter and nanyana, stood next to me as the peasants, many of them shivering and blue, apparently seasick, were loaded into the boats. ‘At least the Bulgarians are Slavs.’ Leda was wrapped in her own thick, black fur. We must have resembled a pair of Siberian bears, for we both had black ‘three-eared’ caps pulled down over our heads. ‘But what’s to become of us in Berlin and London, Simka?’ She had taken to using this diminutive quite openly sometimes. ‘Won’t we seem strange, exotic creatures to them?’ She glared miserably at the leaden sea.
I told her I thought she was being a trifle melodramatic. Other nations read our literature as thoroughly as we read theirs. We had music and painting in common. The sciences. ‘We can rise above the differences, Leda, because we are educated. You’ll see. It would be worse for the likes of them,’ I indicated the frightened peasants clambering into the boats. ‘They have only Russia.’
She would not be comforted. ‘Certainly it’s pointless to worry. After all, there’s every chance I’ll be stuck in Constantinople for the rest of my life.’
I refused to be drawn. A wind had grown from the East to obliterate the Westerly. I fancied it still carried imploring voices from the tug. I had been unable to rid my mind of them, just as Hernikof still insisted on haunting me. I sympathised with the captain who had been forced to an unwelcome decision; the only decision possible. For all that, I had a dim sense that I had myself betrayed those little white human faces. In comparison, Leda’s concerns were rather feeble and I found them irritating. ‘I’m sure you’ll survive,’ I said.