CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

in which Lom makes a sudden appearance and sings a song to himself

  That was all I could gather from the newspapers. But it was enough to upset me. On top of losing my boat, I had my first mate in a fix. Had I had my yacht I would have defied Kusaki and gone to rescue Lom. But here I was on board the trader and all I could hope for was to be brought to a Canadian port, where Fooks and I would be ourselves in a tight spot, our funds being quite slim. And the ship was barely crawling along too. So I went to the captain.
   "Couldn't we put on speed?" I asked him.
   "I'd be only too glad, but I haven't enough stokers, and those I have just barely manage to keep up the pressure."
   Well, Fooks and I talked the matter over, rested for another day and then hired ourselves out to the captain as stokers. The wages were not big, but then we would be getting free board, we would have something to do to kill the time, and the ship would get a move on.
   So we went on watch. They don't give you any overalls on traders, and we did not have any clothes to spare. So we stripped down to shorts. Actually it was best, seeing that the heat was terrible. But we could not make up our minds about the footwear. With hot slag underfoot, we could not stand in our bare feet, but we were sorry to spoil our last shoes too.
   But we thought of a way. We took four buckets, filled them with water and put our feet in them.Qt was a swell idea. We were quite comfortable in the buckets, like in galoshes, and if a live coal dropped out of the furnace into a bucket, it just gave a hiss and went out.
   Being used to all kinds of work, I was coping with my job pretty well, but I could see Fooks wilting. He had stoked the furnace so full the coal baked into a crust, and Fooks was taking half-hearted pokes at this crust with a shovel.
   "Hey!" I cried. "What's the use of all this poking? One has to hit it really hard, using all one's strength. Of course, what strength have you! Now if we had Lom with us ... I wonder where Lom is."
   "Lom's here, sir!" I suddenly heard a hollow voice behind my back.

   I whirled round-and saw my trusty first mate crawling out of the coal bin. He looked terrible, black, unshaven, and as thin as a rake. And yet it was him. I all but fainted with surprise. We hugged each other, of course. Fooks even shed a tear. We attended to the furnaces together, Lom making short work of Fooks's difficulty, and then sat down to listen to the story of his misadventures.
   The newspapers gave a more or less correct account of the happenings, except that it had been no raid and no propaganda trick, of course, just the trick of the wind. Well, after the tremurs subsided, Lom came down into the city. He had been badly scared by the police, and he walked along warily, casting apprehensive glances about him. And the set-up was not reassuring. There were droves of policemen all over the place.
   Perhaps he might have made it to the port had not he lost his nerve. Without noticing it he began to quicken his steps and soon broke into a run.
   Well, that started a hue and cry. He looked back and saw a crowd running after him-policemen, boys, dogs and mere pedestrians.
   Naturally, he ran towards the sea. He managed to reach the coal wharf ahead of his pursuers and dug himself into coal.
   And at that time the trader we were on began loading coal. They used a rope-drive for the purpose, scooping up coal into buckets and overturning them over the ship's hold.
   So Lom was scooped up too. He tried to jump out of the bucket, thinking it was his pursuers who had dug him out, but the bucket was already on the way and soon he was hurtled into the bunker. He felt his arms and legs, found them whole and decided to use this opportunity to catch up on sleep.
   And so he had been sleeping in the coal until he heard me call his name.
   Well, things had worked out in the best possible way. The crew of the Rage was reunited and we could now think of a way of reaching home. Soon our watch ended. It occurred to me that while Fooks and I were shipwreck victims protected by the law of the sea, Lom was, in the first place, a stowaway and, in the second, a wanted criminal. Who could tell what view the captain would take of the situation? For all we knew, he might decide to turn him over to the Japanese or Canadian authorities. Just try and rescue him from their clutches! So I advised Lom to stay put in the hold.
   "After all," I reasoned, "you are used to it. We shall be bringing you food, and we shall stand watch together. It will be easier on us as well. And safer."
   Lom was quite willing.
   "I don't mind," he said, "but I'll be bored. I've had all the sleep I need and I can't imagine what I can do in the darkness to make the time pass quicker."
   "Why," I said, "there are all kinds of things. You can compose verse, or count to a million - incidentally, it helps against insomnia."
   "And may I sing. Captain?"
   "Well, I would not recommend it," I replied, "but if you must, sing to yourself."
   Well, Fooks and I went off the watch, and Lom dived back into the bunker. Before we had spent five minutes airing ourselves on .the deck, out dashed the stokers, the watch that had relieved us, frightened out of their wits.
   "What's wrong?" I asked them.
   "There's some kind of goblin set house in the bunker down below. It wails like a siren, it's real creepy."
   I understood at once what it was all about.
   "Wait a minute," I said, "I'll go down and see."
   Down I went, and indeed it was creepy: the melody was like nothing on earth, the words were barely intelligible, the voice - it was horrible. I once heard elephants trumpeting on Ceylon, well, let me tell you that was like angels singing in heaven compared to this noise Of course it was Lom singing. As I started digging my way through the coal towards him, the words became clearer.
   Then I tumbled to it that again I had overlooked Lom's propensity for taking orders literally. I told him to sing to himself and that was what he was doing:

Poor Lom, you unfortunate fellow,
First mate of the corvette called Rage
You sit in the coal-bin and bellow,
Bewailing your ship's sorry fate.

   That was what he called "singing to himself, dense fellow. But why "corvette", I ask you. On the other hand, one is entitled to poetic licence in a song, it was not a report or bill of lading. Still, I cut Lom short.
   "You got me wrong Lom," I told him. "When I told you to sing to yourself, I meant that you should do it soundlessly, so that nobody could hear you. You've frightened the pants off the stokers. You don't want to be discovered, do you?"
  "No," he said. "I'd better count to a million then."
I went up and said to the stokers that it had been merely the flames wailing in the furnace. The mechanic sided with me, saying such phenomena do happen.