Читать книгу The Classic Morpurgo Collection - Michael Morpurgo, Michael Morpurgo - Страница 37

“We’ve Only Gone and Hit A Flaming Iceberg”

My life as a stowaway didn’t last long. It took me a while to understand that I was in the First Class part of the ship; and when I did, I discovered it wasn’t at all easy to blend in with the First Class passengers all around me. Everyone was in their travelling finery, and dressed as I was in my uniform of a Savoy bell-boy, I stuck out like a sore thumb. They even moved differently, as if they belonged there, as if they had all the time in the world. Maybe you need a lifetime to learn how to look nonchalantly wealthy.

For a while the uniform actually helped. I could pass myself off as a steward, and of course that was easy enough for me. I knew well enough how to touch my forelock, how to help old ladies down the stairs, how to point out to people where to go – even if I hadn’t a clue where anything was.

For the first hour or so, as the other passengers promenaded the deck, exploring the ship, that was what I did too, until I began getting some strange looks from some of the crew and the other stewards who clearly thought my uniform a bit strange. I knew that sooner or later I’d be rumbled, that my luck couldn’t hold out for long if I went on pretending to be one of them. I also realised that if I stayed in First Class I was bound to bump into one of the Stanton family, and I wasn’t at all sure how they would respond if they discovered that I had stowed away. I could see the steerage passengers all crowded on the lower deck at the stern end of the ship. They were more my own kind I thought, I’d be safer there. So that’s where I headed. I took off my tunic and cap, and when no one was looking dropped them over the side. Then I vaulted over the rail, and tried to mingle in among the steerage passengers as best I could.

We were well out to sea by now, the last of England fast disappearing over the horizon. The sea was flat calm, like a silver blue lake. No one was paying me any attention. They were all enjoying themselves far too much to know I was even there. You only had to use your eyes and ears to know that these steerage passengers came from all over the world. There were Irish, Chinese, French, Germans, Americans and quite a few London cockneys too. I was feeling much more at home already. I went below deck, and after a long search, at last, found myself an empty berth in a dormitory at the bottom of the ship. There were a few men in there, but they paid me little attention.

I was lying down, my hands behind my head, my eyes closed, the ship’s engines throbbing through me, believing absolutely I had got away with it, when everything went badly wrong.

I heard voices, loud voices, voices of authority. I opened my eyes and saw two sailors coming through the dormitory. “We’re looking for a stowaway. Have you seen him? He’s kind of a Japanese-looking fellow.” One of them stopped by a table where some men were sat about playing cards. “Has he come through here? Little fellow he is. We know he’s down here somewhere.”

I think I would have been fine if I hadn’t panicked. I could have just pretended to be asleep. I didn’t look Japanese. They wouldn’t have bothered me. But I didn’t think. I got up and ran, and they came after me hollering at me to stop. I took the stairs to the deck three at a time. Once up there I hid in the first place I found – of course it was the most obvious, and therefore the most stupid place I could ever have chosen – a lifeboat. Inside I saw the Japanese man sitting at the far end, knees drawn up under his chin, rocking back and forth and gnawing at his knuckles. And that was where, only minutes later the two of us were discovered, caught like rats in a trap. We were not treated at all kindly as we were hustled along the decks, but at least I felt we had the sympathy of the steerage passengers. All the booing and jeering seemed directed more at our sailor escorts than at us. Both of us were taken before the Captain – Captain Smith he was called – and there were three other men there already. So there were five of us in all, all stowaways, an Italian I remember who spoke very little English, the Japanese man and three Englishmen, myself among them. From behind his desk the Captain looked at us wearily out of deep-set, sad eyes. With his great beard and calm bearing, he looked every inch a sea captain. He didn’t curse us or berate us as the sailors had.

“Well, Mr Lightoller.” he said to the officer standing beside him. “So, we’ve got five of them, have we? Not as many as I’d feared. What shall we do with them then? Where do we need them most, would you say?”

“Down below in the engine room, Captain,” the officer replied. “Stokers. We’re short of a dozen stokers at least. And if you want to make full speed as you say, if you want to make the crossing in record time, as you say, then we could do with them down below. Looking at them, I’d say they were a bit on the thin and spindly side, but there’s nothing we can do about that.”

The Captain looked right at me. “Why did you do it?” he asked me.

I told him the truth, part of it anyway. I had nothing to lose. “Because I didn’t want to leave the ship, sir. She’s so beautiful, and everyone says she’s very fast too. And I’ve never been on a ship before.”

“Well, I have, son,” laughed the Captain. “Dozens of them. And you’re right, this one is fast, the fastest ship that ever sailed, and what’s more she’s unsinkable too. Very well, Mr Lightoller, you will set these men to work their passage to New York as stokers. It will be hot work and hard, gentlemen, and for this you will be fed and looked after well enough. Take them away.”

So began the hardest three days I have ever worked in all my life. My body never ached so much, every bone, every muscle, every joint. My hands never bled so much either, open blisters on every finger. I was never so hot and dirty, never so completely and utterly exhausted. The stokers about me were strong men, big men, muscle-bound and sinewy. Stripped to the waist as we were I felt like a sparrow among eagles. The pounding thunder of the engines in my ears was deafening, the blast of the furnaces scorched my skin. But for all this discomfort I somehow found it the most exciting and invigorating place I had ever been. Every time I looked up and saw those great boilers, those great pistons driving, I marvelled at them, at the power and the beauty of it all. And believe it or not, as I shovelled coal for hour after hour in that stifling heat, there was only one thought that kept me shovelling: it was me driving these mighty engines, Johnny Trott. I wasn’t just a bell-boy anymore. I was a man among men, and our muscles were firing the boilers that were powering the engines that were turning the screws that were driving the fastest ship the world had ever seen across the Atlantic. I felt proud of the work I was doing.

My fellow stokers ribbed me mercilessly from time to time, for I was the baby among them. I didn’t mind. They ribbed the little Japanese man too till they discovered that, small though he was, he could shovel more coal than any of us. He was called Michiya, but we all called him Little Mitch – and he was little, littler even than me. Maybe because we had been fellow stowaways, or maybe because we were both about the same size, he became quite a friend.

He spoke no English at all, so we conversed in gestures and smiles. We managed to make ourselves well enough understood. Like the rest of them I was black from head to toe after every shift. But Captain Smith was true to his word, we were all well enough looked after. We had plenty of hot water to wash ourselves clean, we had all the food we could eat and a warm bunk to sleep in. I didn’t go up on deck that much. It was a long way up, and when I did have an hour or two off I found I was just too tired to do anything much except sleep. Down there in the bowels of the ship I didn’t know if it was night or day – and I didn’t much care either. It was just work, sleep, eat, work, sleep, eat. I was too tired even to dream.

When I did go up on deck I looked out on a moonlit sea, or a sunlit sea, that was always as flat as a pond and shining. I never saw another ship, just the wide horizons. Occasionally there were birds soaring over the decks, and once to everyone’s great excitement we spotted dozens of leaping dolphins. I had never known such beauty. Every time I went up on deck though, I was drawn towards the First Class part of the ship. I’d stay there by the rail for a while, hoping against hope I might see Lizziebeth come walking by with Kaspar on his lead.

But I never saw them. I thought of them though as I shovelled and sweated, as I lay in my bunk in between shifts, as I looked over that glassy sea. I kept trying to summon up the courage to climb over the railings and find my way again back to their cabin. I longed to see the look of surprise on Lizziebeth’s face when she saw I was on board. I knew how pleased she’d be to see me, that Kaspar would swish his tail and smile up at me. But about Lizziebeth’s mother and father I couldn’t be at all sure. The truth is that I still believed they would think badly of me for stowing away as I had. I decided that it would be better to wait until we got to New York, and then I’d just walk up to them all and surprise them on the quayside. I’d tell them then and there that I’d taken Lizziebeth’s advice and come to live in America, in the land of the free. They’d never need to know I’d stowed away.

I was half sleeping, half dreaming in my bunk, dreaming that Kaspar was yowling at me, trying to wake me. We were in some kind of danger and he was trying to warn me. Then it happened. The ship suddenly shuddered and shook. I sat up. Right away it felt to me like some kind of a collision, and I could tell it had happened on the starboard side. A long silence followed. Then I heard a great rushing and roaring of escaping steam, like a death rattle. I knew that something had gone terribly wrong, that the ship had been wounded. The engines had stopped.

Half a dozen of us got dressed at once and rushed up to the third deck, the boat deck. We all expected to see the ship we had collided with, because that was what we thought had happened. But we could see nothing, no ship, nothing but the stars and an empty sea all around. There was no one else on deck except us. It was as if no one else had felt it, as if it had all been a bad dream. No one else had woken, so it followed that nothing had happened. I was almost beginning to believe I had imagined the whole thing, when I saw Little Mitch come rushing along the deck towards us carrying something in both hands. It was a huge piece of ice shaped like a giant tooth, jagged and sharp. He was shouting the same thing over and over again, but I couldn’t understand him, none of us could. Then one of the other stokers said it. “Iceberg! It’s off an iceberg! We’ve only gone and hit a flaming iceberg!”