Free Endangered Species by Richard Woodman Page B

mates,’ he yelled, as if the gruff reassurance set all to rights. And as the bellowed and intended kindness fell upon uncomprehending ears, the seaman turned aside and let fly a muttered torrent of obscenities that expressed his disgust and impotence.
    Had Mackinnon felt something of the same futile exasperation the previous evening? Had it been the same stunned disbelief, compounded by a bleak despair that nothing ever changed, that man’s inhumanity to man stalked his vauntedprogress like a shadow?
    As the daylight finally triumphed and along the wharf the deck lights were put out by tired nightwatchmen, he found himself swearing under his breath like that old AB. The recollection had been vivid and he could almost smell the foul stench those poor men gave off. It permeated the
James Cook
and lingered for weeks as they engaged in the melancholy duty of repatriation.
    Mackinnon was distracted from these morbid recollections b? the arrival of a taxi at the foot of the gangway. He stared curiously down to see its occupant get out. It was Taylor.
    So the Third Mate had spent the night with a prostitute. Mackinnon was disappointed. He did not expect his officers to be angels, even those who were married, though the folly of risking HIV infection appalled him. There had once been a lapse in Mackinnon’s own marital probity, though Akiko had not been a whore. The intimations reaching Mackinnon that Taylor’s private life was unhappy did not, in the Captain’s opinion, entitle him to vengeful immorality. The Captain would have more readily forgiven Taylor a brief descent into a bottle. To do otherwise would have been sheer hypocrisy . . .
    â€˜Morning, sir.’
    Startled, Mackinnon turned to find the Radio Officer behind him, already immaculate in his white shirt and shorts.
    â€˜Morning, Sparks. You’re up early.’
    â€˜I wish I could say I was an early bird catching worms, but I didn’t sleep too well.’ He peered over the rail as the taxi pulled away and Taylor’s feet clattered on the gangway. ‘Night on the tiles, I see.’
    â€˜Yes. Pity. What kept you awake?’
    â€˜Oh,’ Sparks shrugged, ‘I don’t know . . .’
    â€˜Was it those boat people?’
    Sparks met the Captain’s eyes. ‘Bothered you too, sir?’
    â€˜Yes, and if I’m honest, more because I don’t want any similar complications on this of all voyages than from any great notions of compassion.’
    Sparks nodded. ‘Know what you mean. Upsetting, just the same. If they’ve got this far south, the China Sea must be full of them.’
    â€˜Yes, that’s what’s worrying me . . . Morning, Mr Taylor.’
    Both men watched the Third Mate climb sheepishly to the boat-deck.
    â€˜A bit knackered, eh, Chas?’ grinned Sparks, trying to head off any censoriousness on Mackinnon’s part.
    â€˜Morning,’ said Taylor, recovering himself. ‘No. I had an excellent sleep, thank you.’ He made for the accommodation.
    â€˜Mr Taylor!’ Mackinnon called, and Taylor swung round expecting some interference with his private life.
    â€˜Sir?’
    â€˜What,’ asked Mackinnon, ‘was
your
reaction to those boat people?’
    The question had sprung almost unbidden into Mackinnon’s mind, as though it had risen spontaneously from the depths of his subconscious. It was not what he had seen yesterday that had upset him so much as how it had made him react. He had experienced the feeling of impotent shame at being who and what he was all those years ago when, in the first flush of victory, he had walked the streets of Singapore – a youthful liberator.
    He had read accusation in every pair of eyes he had encountered: the white man had failed, the mantle of imperial protection had proved an illusion. To an eighteen-year-old raised on Churchillian oratory and imperial mythology the effect had been