Early the following morning I drove to Hareissoun.
It wasn’t an easy or pleasant drive, but I didn’t mind. Strange as it may seem, I was, in spite of everything, rather looking forward to that day. In a sense I was making a sentimental journey.
The Ile de Rouad is a port south of Latakia which used to have a small shipyard. In the latter part of the nineteenth century, this yard began building two-hundred-ton schooners and made itself something of a reputation in that part of the world. They were all wood but very sturdy, fully decked, and Bermudian rigged with two raked pole-masts and a heavy bow-sprit; useful little ships. Although no new ones have been built for years, there are still quite a few of them coasting in the Levant.
When I was a small boy the Agence Howell owned three of these Rouad schooners and my father used to make a joke about them. He wasn’t much given to making jokes about things we owned, so I have always remembered this one. It’s a bit complicated, because you have to understand the background. All ships have to have their bottoms cleaned from time to time. The ordinary small coaster is hauled out of the water on a skid-cradle so that the job can be done. At Rouad, however, they used to careen the schooners; that is, pull them over onto their sides in the water by the masts. Then, instead of scraping them clean, they would drench the exposed bottom side with kerosene, set light to it, and bum off all the barnacles and muck. My father took me once to see them do it. That was where the joke came in. He said that the Agence Howell was “burning its boats”. Not very funny, I admit, though it made me laugh at the time. The strange thing was that there were never any accidents; only the kerosene and the barnacles and the muck would burn. It must be harder to set a wooden hull alight than one would think.
So, I was looking forward to seeing a Rouad schooner again. On the outskirts of Hareissoun I left the car and walked down to the harbour. I saw her masts first. She was moored by the stern at the mole. I went along to her.
I had forgotten how small these boats were. Seventy feet on the waterline isn’t much, and the high stem and massive bowsprit made it seem even less. She must have been over forty years old. There were traces of paint on her topside but not many; she was a work boat, and her paint — black, tarry stuff — was where it mattered, on the hull. She had no name of her own now. There was faded yellow lettering on her bow: jeble, the name of her home port, and the Arabic numeral khamseh: number five out of Jeble. Before being taken over by the PAF she had probably been sponge-fishing. Now she was back to carrying cargo and lying low enough in the water to suggest that she had a full load aboard.
The old man I could see on deck was dressed like a fisherman and could have been the skipper, but when I called up to him he shouted to someone below.
The person who came on deck then was not at all the fisherman type. Except for the suit of blue dungarees that he was wearing he might have been the young headwaiter at the Semiramis Hotel, an impression reinforced by the fact that he was holding a clipboard in his hand like a menu.
“Mr. Hadaya?” I asked.
“Mr. Howell?”
“Yes.”
“Just a moment, please.”
The old man shoved a rope ladder over the stern counter and I climbed up awkwardly. Hadaya helped me down onto the deck.
“A little inconvenient, I’m afraid,” he said, “but we don’t encourage visitors.”
“That’s all right.”
He sounded like an Algerian. His shirt was unbuttoned to disclose a hairless chest and a gold chain with a gold identity disk on it. A flashlight stuck out of his breast pocket. His smile was affable.
“May I say how surprised I am suddenly to be conversing with Mr. Howell as a comrade.”
“Have we met before, Mr. Hadaya?”
“No, but once I very nearly worked for you. There was a vacancy for a second mate. Your regular man had broken a leg. In Bône that was. I applied, but someone else got the berth.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It would only have been temporary.” He flashed the smile again. “Like this one. Would you like to see the engine first or hear about it?”
“Hear about it, I think. What about this local mechanic? Is he still working?”
“No, I sent him away. He was well recommended and he had a kit of tools. I let him remove the old pump and install the new one. With the old pump the engine had worked unevenly, but it had worked. With the new one it does not work at all. I think the timing is all wrong.”
“I see”
“I am only guessing.” He grinned. “The mechanic suggested that the trouble might be with the ignition.’’
“Oh.”
“Yes. That was when I got rid of him. I don’t think he can have done any real damage, but after that I knew that he wasn’t going to do any good. The fishing boats he is used to all have gasoline engines. I found that out later.”
“What about the owners in Jeble? Won’t they help?”
“We are the owners, or rather, Comrade Salah is.”
“I had the impression that she’d been chartered.”
“We bought her cheap. Too cheap.” He tapped his chest. “It is my fault entirely. I have told this to Comrade Salah. He is always tolerant of error when a comrade confesses it freely to him. I should have anticipated this trouble. She is the right size for the job, but that engine is twenty years old and we have overworked it.”
“The trips north?”
He nodded. “Never under sail. Engine all the time. No maintenance to speak of, either. What can you expect? Of course, it would have to happen now, but better now than later. Do you want to see it?”
There was a separate hatchway and a ladder down to the “engine room.” Originally, I suppose, it had been part of the after hold. A bulkhead had been added to make a compartment for the auxiliary, but it had been made as small as possible. There was scarcely room to move and the place stank; but although everything else was filthy, the engine wasn’t. There may have been no maintenance to speak of, but there hadn’t been total neglect.
“What did she give you?” I asked. “Before the pump started going, I mean.”
“Six knots. Sometimes a little more.” He pointed the flashlight beam. “There’s the old pump.”
It was on an oil drum chocked against the bulkhead. I wasn’t really interested in the old pump, but I made a show of looking at it.
“Have you an engineer?”
“One of the crew knows enough to act as a greaser, but he’s ashore now. Except for the old man on anchor watch they’re all ashore. Comrade Salah’s orders. One of them might have recognized you and started talk.”
“You’d better send them ashore tomorrow, too. I’m going to try to get a foreman fitter down from Latakia to attend to the engine. It may be tomorrow or the day after, but you’ll be kept advised. His name is Maghout.”
“A comrade?”
“No, but he won’t ask questions or talk. If the job’s simple he’ll just do it and go. I’m hoping it’s simple, but he could still need odd spares, gaskets or something like that. He’ll have been forewarned of the nature of the problem, but I’ll take the type and serial numbers of the engine. They may give him an idea of what he ought to bring with him.”
He turned his light on the clipboard. “I had expected that you would need that information.”
“You have it there? Good.”
He tore the top sheet off the clipboard and handed it to me with a little bow.
“I could not ask Comrade Howell to crawl about this engine room on his hands and knees looking for numbers.”
“Very thoughtful of you, comrade.”
I glanced at the paper and he shone the light on it. The information was all there — written in purple ink. I folded the paper and put it in my pocket before climbing back up the ladder.
Hadaya was behind me and stopped to close and secure the engine compartment hatch, so I strolled forward along the deck. Although I had seen the bottom-burning done I had never actually been aboard a Rouad schooner and I was curious. She had no wheel but an enormous tiller. I was remembering my father telling me that in heavy weather two helmsmen were not enough and that they had to rig relieving tackles to hold the ship on course, when I stumbled and stubbed a toe.