Free The Golden Reef (1969) by James Pattinson

worrying‚’ Bristow said. He sounded envious. ‘Wish I had his nerve. This ship gives me the willies.’
    It was the sense of desertion that frayed the nerves. The ship was at sea and there should have been men on the bridge, directing her course, keeping watch, steering. Instead, there was nothing – just the broken glass and the abandoned wheel, the cat perched on the binnacle and the silence.
    They went into the chart-room, and that too was deserted. A few charts lay on the table, some instruments, drawing pins, an india-rubber. On the bulkhead the brass chronometer was still going. The time was twenty minutes past eleven.
    ‘They’ll have taken the log‚’ Keeton said. ‘They’d have to take the ship’s papers. Even Mr Rains wouldn’t forget that.’
    Strewn about were the fragments of a broken coffee cup and a ham sandwich, one bite taken out of it, the bread curling back as it dried. The spilt coffee had painted a dark stain on the boards.
    They went next into the wireless cabin, driven by a kind of compulsion to see all. No one was there.
    Keeton looked at the transmitter. ‘Know anything about using one of these, Johnnie?’
    ‘Not me‚’ Bristow said. ‘Do you?’
    Keeton shook his head. ‘Not a thing. It’s a pity. We might have sent out an S.O.S.’
    ‘I wonder whether Sparks did that before he left?’
    ‘Could have. But we must have drifted a hell of a way in the night; we’ll be miles off the mark by now. Besides, if anybody is picked up from the boats they’re bound to say the ship was sunk. Couldn’t say anything else, could they? Nobody’s going to hunt for us, so you can put that idea out of your head for a start.’
    ‘I expect you’re right.’ Bristow’s shoulders drooped and hemoved towards the door. Then suddenly he turned and gripped Keeton’s arm, shaking it in his excitement. ‘I just thought of something.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘The gold. It’s all there and it’s all ours, yours and mine, Charlie. We’re rich, rich.’
    Keeton said roughly: ‘Don’t talk like a fool. What’s the use of gold to us? How do we make use of it? Put it in a leaky boat and row home with it? Or do we use it to buy a yacht? Talk sense.’
    The fire went out of Bristow. ‘You’re right again, Charlie. You’re always right. There’s a fortune down there for the taking and we can’t take it.’
    ‘Forget it‚’ Keeton said. ‘Let’s go over the rest of the ship.’
    They went out of the wireless cabin with the cat at their heels.
     
    Keeton felt like an intruder when he went into the captain’s cabin. It was a room he had never entered before, and the contrast between it and the gunners’ quarters was marked. Here there was a carpet underfoot, curtains over the scuttle, a mahogany book-case, pictures, comfortable chairs; in fact, all the marks of civilised living that were conspicuously absent from the improvised accommodation aft.
    ‘Did hisself well, didn’t he?’ Bristow said. ‘Lived like a lord while we was living like pigs. That’s equality for you. Is it any wonder there’s Communists?’
    ‘He had the responsibility.’
    ‘Give me a cabin like this and I’d take the responsibility.’
    ‘No you wouldn’t, Johnnie. You’d be scared.’
    ‘All right‚’ Bristow said. ‘Maybe that’s true enough. And maybe you wouldn’t be so keen on it either.’
    ‘I don’t say that I would.’
    There was a doorway leading into an adjoining room which Keeton guessed was the captain’s sleeping quarters. Feeling even more like a trespasser on private property, he pushed open this door and went inside.
    It was not a large room. Along one side of it was the bed and on the opposite side an open porthole. The room was hot and close; it had the confined, distasteful odour of sickness. A beamof sunlight slanted down from the porthole and fell upon the bed, throwing into sharp relief the face of the man lying there. The face was gaunt and grey, with a thin stubble of white beard.