Free The White Voyage by John Christopher Page B

roll, he was thrown against the hatch cover.
    The mast had crashed down across the forecastle. The result was untidy but did not seem serious. Carling was there with a couple of hands. Mouritzen spoke to Carling but he did not seem to hear. He cupped his hands over his mouth and shouted.
    ‘Nothing we can do about this just now. It will have to wait till things are quieter.’
    Carling made no answer. He stared at Mouritzen, his face wet and bewildered in the light of the torch. Mouritzen heard a shout behind him, and turned to see another of the hands coming up from the direction of the forward hatch. Whatever he was saying was carried away by the wind.
    Mouritzen shouted: ‘What was that?’
    He came up to them. ‘The bear?’
    ‘What about the bear?’
    ‘The bear’s loose!’
    ‘Are you sure?’ Mouritzen demanded.
    ‘She’s down there, on the deck.’
    Carling spoke then, his voice trumpeting over the massed violins of the storm.
    ‘The first sign!’
    ‘What are you talking about?’
    ‘The first sign …’ Carling roared again, ‘– the beast walks free!’
    Mouritzen considered, as clearly and rapidly as he could, the two new factors. Of the two, a crazy C.P.O. seemed to him to constitute the greater nuisance.
    He shouted: ‘Get Carling below, and look after him. And send Herning up to the bridge for orders.’
    He saw the men clustering round Carling, talking to him, and raced down to the well-deck, getting down the steps during the ship’s slow roll to port and hanging on at the bottom while the next wave smashed across. Then he made his way to the bear’s crate. The securing ropes had broken and the crate had been thrown up against the forecastle. In doing so it had shattered, and the door of the iron cage within had sprung. In the light of his torch, Mouritzen saw it gaping open, and empty. He flashed the light around, but there was no sign of the bear.
    He kept a look-out on his way to the bridge, but found nothing. Olsen looked up from the chart as he came in. Fatigue and strain had made his face pale, giving him the appearance of an intelligent child under pressure. The deepness of his voice, when he spoke, was incongruous.
    ‘Well? How is it?’
    ‘The port rail is smashed. Nothing serious and nothing one can do now. But there’s another complication. The bear’s loose. Her cage has been cracked open and she’s wandering free.’
    Olsen asked sharply: ‘Where?’
    Mouritzen shook his head. ‘No sign of her, but I’ve not made a thorough search.’
    Olsen made a gesture of despair. ‘Animals are worse than passengers! I’ve got two men down below seeing to those cursed horses as it is – both very reluctantly.’
    The door opened with an inrush of wind and spray, and Herning entered. He ranked next to Carling and was a quiet, earnest man, with prematurely white hair and a slight limp, from an injury to his knee when his ship was torpedoed during the war. He had stood for years in Carling’s shadow, and during the latter’s increasing moroseness and withdrawal of the past year had shown no signs of being able to step out of it.
    ‘Reporting, sir,’ he said to Olsen.
    Mouritzen explained quickly: ‘Carling’s having some kind of a brainstorm. I got some of the men to take him below and asked them to send Herning up here.’
    ‘A brainstorm?’ Olsen looked incisively from Mouritzen to Herning. ‘Where is he now? How is he?’
    ‘He’s below, sir,’ Herning said.
    ‘In his cabin?’
    ‘They’re persuading him to go there.’ Herning looked uneasy. ‘He’s not dangerous, but he’s rambling a bit.’
    Mouritzen said: ‘He was shouting something about the bear and the first sign.’
    ‘It’s a bit queer,’ said Herning. ‘It’s these spiritualists he goes to in Dublin. They told him there was going to be trouble on this trip, and they said that the beast would go free. It’s queer, sir. They weren’t to know we’d be carrying a bear.’
    ‘Perhaps they weren’t