‘How’s it going?’ asks Guðmundur, looking at his watch.
17:21
‘Just fine,’ murmurs Stoker and pulls the cord, starting the outboard motor. ‘I EXPECT TO FINISH IT THIS EVENING!’
‘That’s good!’ shouts the captain, frowning in the dark blue smoke. ‘WE LEAVE FIRST THING TOMORROW MORNING!’
‘YEAH, OKAY!’ Stoker cuts off the one-cylinder, four-stroke engine by pressing a red button. ‘Then all we still have to do is pour some petrol into smaller containers and cut out a canvas tarpaulin, in case it rains.’
‘Yeah, that’s a good idea,’ says the captain, nodding his head. ‘Is the engine okay?’
‘Yep’ says Stoker as he gets down on his knees, places the patches over the holes and applies pressure with the tips of his fingers. ‘We just need to top up the oil and tune it a little.’
‘I thought you’d finished patching the dinghy?’
‘As good as finished,’ mumbles Stoker, standing up to fetch the soldering iron and aluminium foil. ‘I’ll inflate it after I’ve bonded the patches with the rubber. If it’s still hard tomorrow morning, then we’re safe to go.’
31°W 7°S
Stoker ambles down to the engine room in his clogs to fetch the screwdriver that he’s going to use to tune the outboard motor. He’s wearing overalls but he’s taken off the upper part and tied the sleeves round his waist. Even though the sun has set, it’s still twenty degrees outside, a densely humid equatorial calm that smells of salt and sunbaked land in the distance.
He crosses the steel floor, turns on the lights in the machine shop, finds the screwdriver he is looking for and sticks it in his pocket. But he doesn’t turn the light off straightaway, because there is something he wants to do before he goes back up to B-deck.
On a shelf under the working bench, a heater fan slowly revolves and in front of it there is something black and sticky, about the size of a tomato, sitting on a five-page-thick pile of newspaper, opened to a double-page spread. Stoker pulls the newspaper off the shelf and places it on the workbench. The black sticky thing glued to the newspaper is the heart of the fifth pirate. It’s shrunk to half its size and become much darker, but it’s still resilient to the touch and the newspaper is still absorbing blood, which colours it black and brown almost out to the edges.
Stoker grins to himself and slides the paper back onto the shelf in front of the heater. Once the heart is completely dry he’s going to grind it into a fine powder and keep it in a locked copper casket. Powdered heart of pirate! How much for a gram of that on the black market in New Orleans or Casablanca? If it’s even on offer!
But he’s not going to sell this treasure. No, he’s going to…Stoker is startled out of his daydreams when he hears a heavy thud.
Or was it?
He listens carefully but hears nothing but the tiresome rattle of the generator engine.
Boom, boom, boom…
There!
‘What…’ Stoker switches off the lights in the machine shop and walks out to the engine room. What’s that banging? Who’s hitting…?
Boom, boom, boom…
He walks over to starboard side and into the storeroom. Is the banging coming from above or…
Boom, boom, boom…
Stoker walks into the boiler room and from there up the steel ladder leading to the electrical workshop. That’s where the banging is coming from, he could be pretty…
Boom, boom, boom…
Yes! He turns to the right and along a corridor, totally unlit apart from a faint green light from above the door leading to the empty hold. On the cold steel floor are pools of oily dampness, the walls are covered with old and new rust, and the clacking of his wooden clogs echoes along the corridor.
Clack, clack, clack…
‘Is somebody there?’ calls Stoker, who has figured out where the heavy blows are coming from. Someone has left the door to the hold open, and the heavy metal door swings with the movement of the ship, slamming every now and then into the doorframe, which shudders, and the metallic blow is magnified in these empty metal surroundings.
Who opened the door to the hold?
Stoker holds the door with his left hand and the doorjamb with his right. then sticks his head into the darkness and calls into the cool emptiness.
‘IS SOMEBODY IN THERE?’
There is no answer. Of course there’s nobody in there! Who could be there? Jónas? No. The door opened by itself. It’s the only logical explanation.
‘Bloody stupid,’ mutters Stoker and straightens up. Just as he’s about to step aside, the ship takes a heavy blow and he slips on the floor, losing his grip on the door, which swings…
XXXII
31°W 8°S
It’s now or never! Well, maybe not never, but this is the right time, that’s for sure. If they mess up this opportunity, there’s little or no hope of another one.
Guðmundur stands out on the starboard bridge wing and checks the weather, then glances at his watch.
The sun is shining in a clear sky, the temperature is nearing thirty degrees and it’s ten past eight in the morning. He goes back in the bridge and looks over the control board and the table. He has compass, charts, pocket calculator and sextant. He’s recorded all the necessary information in the ship’s log: everything about the ship, the crew and the events of the past few days, in both Icelandic and English. Everything’s ready. If the foghorn were working he’d blow it as a sign that everyone should prepare to depart.
But since the foghorn is out of commission, the captain keeps shouting out to his shipmates as he makes his way down to B-deck.
‘IS EVERYONE READY? WE ABANDON SHIP IN TWENTY MINUTES. ALL HANDS ON DECK!’
When he walks out onto B-deck Sæli and Satan are there already, so he could have saved himself the shouting. Stoker is doubtless down in the engine room, fetching something or making some final adjustments.
‘Hello, lads!’ says the captain, who is both excited and anxious about the pending boat trip. ‘Ready to go?’
‘Yeah,’ says Sæli. ‘I guess so.’
‘Are you abandoning ship in this thing?’ asks Satan. He gives the inflatable a kick so it turns in a half circle on the slippery deck.
‘Yes,’ says Guðmundur, putting on a lifejacket and then tossing one to Sæli and another to Satan. ‘This boat is our only hope.’
‘How far is it to land?’ Sæli asks as he puts on his lifejacket.
‘About 110 kilometres, maybe more,’ says the captain with a shrug. ‘We should get to shore before dark, if all goes well.’
‘I’m not going anywhere,’ says Satan, throwing his lifejacket to the deck. ‘This thing’s going to sink, that’s for sure. I’m not leaving a million tonnes of steel to get in a bath toy. No way!’
‘You have no choice!’ says Captain Guðmundur, his eyes going red. ‘This ship is on its way to hell! One hundred and ten kilometres is quite a way, I’ll grant you that, but sunset tonight marks the end of any chance we have that this ship will ever be found! It could drift out beyond the earth’s atmosphere, as far as that goes – there’s just about the same degree of shipping traffic out there as in the godless depths this rustbucket is heading for. So there!’
‘No need to get all worked up, man,’ says Satan, squinting against the sun and lighting a cigarette. ‘Can’t we just drop anchor and hang out here until some losers find us?’
‘We might as well hang Christmas lights on the ship as drop anchor,’ says the captain with a grim laugh. ‘At a guess the water here is a good five kilometres deep.’