The wake of the gertrud.., p.13
The Wake of the Gertrud Luth, page 13
“The gun! Get the gun!” Schepke shouted to the boy. Altmeyer went on staring at Müller lying face-down in the stairwell. “Find the gun!” Schepke shouted to his bending face. Altmeyer looked at him suddenly, then turned for the bridge.
All the left side of Schepke’s chest was numb and his breathing difficult, and the blood was running freely through his fingers where he held himself. As he waited for Altmeyer a stab of pain gradually centred through the numbness and grew with every breath. Müller had not moved. His mouth was open against the deck and there was blood running from his scalp and down through the dirty stubble on the side of his jaw. If Schepke had the gun right then he would have shot him. Instead he unbuttoned his tunic and pulled the sweat shirt from his trousers. It was a long open gash, parted so he could see the white gleam of bone through the blood.
Altmeyer had still not returned with the gun and he got up slowly, holding the wound together with the flat of his hand, trying to breathe easily and lightly against the deep stabbing pain. He waited with his back against the bulk head, his legs wide apart so as not to be taken off-balance if they hit a big one. The ship was not rolling so severely now and he could feel her with her head almost into the wind. Müller groaned and moved onto his side. Just then Altmeyer came down with the big black Mauser and Schepke took it and slipped the catch off and held it on Müller as he sat up. Altmeyer watched nervously, his face dirty and grey, deep circles under his eyes.
“Up, Müller! Get up!”
Müller moved sullenly, the hate showing in his flat little eyes, mean-looking and surly and with blood clotting the stubble on his jaw.
“Move!” Schepke told him, motioning him aft along the passage, and one sudden move and he would have put a bullet between his shoulders.
“All right!” They had stopped outside the dry food store next the galley. It had a high clipped-down door with a grated vent.
“Open it,” he told Altmeyer. “Go around back of me.” There were packing-cases stacked up inside and Schepke put the heavy gun to Müller’s back and he went inside, and Altmeyer quickly closed the door and pulled the clips down onto the stops.
Karl Schepke was thinking maybe he should have put a bullet in him after all. There was no one on board more mean than Müller and what made it worse was that he did not know the consequences of half he ever did. He was one of the bright boys who went through with things in a hurry and did not even think about them afterward.
“Is there anything else I can do?” Altmeyer asked, watching Schepke anxiously.
“You better go back on the bridge. See if they want anything.”
under it, her head falling away. Schepke hit the bulkhead, taking most of the blow on his shoulder, the impact driving the breath from him and the pain feeling as though it cut him through the middle.
The sweat ran coldly on his back as Altmeyer helped him to his feet.
“I’ll manage. Go on up to the bridge.”
Altmeyer looked at him for a moment then started back along the passage.
Both Sam and the boy were in the big cabin.
“Get some hot water and bandaging,” Schepke told them. “Hurry it!”
They went out, staring at the blood soaking Schepke’s tunic and trousers. Schepke took the tunic off and eased down into the big leather chair at the desk. The pain had settled into a long, deep throbbing through the left side of his chest. Sitting there, he looked across at the bunk. Rollmann had not moved. Then Sam and the boy came back bringing towels and water and bandaging.
“Here on the desk,” Schepke told them. “Tear one of those towels,” he told Sam.
Gritting his teeth, sweat streaming down his face and neck, he washed the wound then made a pad from part of the towel and put it over the wound. Then standing, he took the wide gauze bandage and began winding it around the lower part of his chest, running it firmly over the pad. Both Sam and the boy stood on the other side of the desk watching him, still wearing the bulky life-jackets.
“Here.” Schepke held his tunic to Sam. “Did you give it to Rollmann?” he asked as Sam helped him on with his tunic.
Sam nodded. “He wake up twice but go away again very quickly,” he said.
“If he wakes again tell him everything’s fine. Understand?”
Sam nodded again while Kuang looked vacant.
“Don’t open the store the other side of the galley,” Schepke told them from the doorway. “Müller’s there.”
Altmeyer had a number of windows blocked again and the wind was blowing in cooler than at any time during the storm. Pulst and Bahr were still handling the wheel between them.
“Ship’s head now lying one-one-five, sir,” Bahr called to him. “There was a sudden change of wind direction this side.”
Schepke nodded. The pain was throbbing all the way through his chest now. Glancing overhead at the compass, he suddenly remembered the wounded lascar. “Altmeyer. Go down aft in the port passage,” he said to him. “One of the black gang’s down there. Put him in the big cabin. And watch his leg, he’s been shot.” Then looking to Pulst: “The seamen should be sheltering somewhere on the starboard side. Get two of them up here. Get somebody you know can handle the wheel.”
He went into the charthouse and found the chart washed onto the deck. Spreading it out fiat on the table, he began making rapid calculations as to their estimated position. He was working on the canvas-backed log when he heard Pulst come back with the seamen. Both of them were openly apprehensive about being topside and they carried most of what they owned in linen wrapped bundles.
“Put those in the charthouse,” Schepke told them. “You don’t need them,” he said clearly in English. “The ship doesn’t sink. Understand?”
The seamen looked at each other, their frightened faces gleaming in the powerful light of the arc.
“Go on, put them away,” Schepke told them.
When they came out from the charthouse Altmeyer had arrived.
“Find him?” Schepke asked.
“There’s two holes high on the inside of his thigh,” the boy said, running his tongue around his mouth.
“Good. It’ll save digging for the bullet,” Schepke said. “Wash his leg then bandage it and ask Sam to get him some blankets. He better stay in the cabin. And when you’ve done that you better get some sleep yourself.”
“Yes, sir.” He was a good boy but tired and exhausted now and finding it difficult to accept what was happening.
“Give these two the wheel,” Schepke told Bahr. “Go on,” he said to the seamen. “All you do is keep her head where it is now on the compass.”
Bahr and Pulst waited, watching the lascars.
“You better turn in,” Schepke told them. “Don’t go below to your own cabins. One of you take mine and the other take Müller’s.”
“Are you sure you can manage alone?” Bahr asked, watching Schepke standing stooped over.
Schepke dismissed them with a nod. Then: “Wait!” he called after them. “What about the dead one who was here?”
“I put him aft in the cabin passage,” Pulst said.
“All right,” Schepke told them.
When they had gone he wedged himself between the telegraph and the bulkhead, his back and shoulder toward one of the open windows. The pain seemed to have settled dully in the pit of his stomach, jarring upward on the nerve ends every time the bows fell away. Daylight was beginning to come in, slowly greying the horizon to the east. The foredeck looked strangely barren when she rose, shedding water, the forward well a tangle of rigging and aerials, the forepeak completely devastated, all the rails and vents forward of the break gone. Settling himself against the bulkhead, he watched daylight come in.
Toward mid-morning the Gertrud Lüth was lying her head roughly on one hundred and twenty-seven degrees, the whole ocean shifting with the wind. Karl Schepke felt cold and raw with weariness and all that kept him awake was the terrible grating pain working on the nerve ends somewhere deep in his stomach, the left side of his chest completely numb now and only hurting inside, the pain stabbing fiercely upward whenever the bows fell away.
He tried thinking himself out of it all, and he thought about the girl, but he could not focus any picture of her clearly, and after a time he gave up trying to see her and just stood there jammed between the telegraph and the bulkhead feeling only the pain and tiredness, and occasionally everything would swing spinningly around and he would close his eyes and there would be only the pain and the storm outside.
Some time later, Pulst came in with a jug of coffee and some mugs. He set everything into the charthouse and came out and took the wheel, gesturing the seamen in to the coffee.
Karl Schepke saw him look at him uncertainly, his eyes screwed up against the wind whipping the spray in through the gaping window spaces. ·
“Where’s Bahr?”
“He’s gone below for our storm-coats,” Pulst told him.
The two seamen had come back onto the bridge with their linen wrapped bundles.
“You can go below now,” Schepke told them. Then said to Pulst: “Think you can manage for a time?” Pulst nodded, watching the compass.
“Keep her shifting with the wind,” Schepke went on.
“I’ll be in the charthouse.”
IT was Hechler who awoke him. Karl Schepke opened his eyes and saw Hechler leaning over him, his face grey and heavy with fatigue. He eased himself upright and sat his legs over the side of the bunk. All his left side had stiffened but with the pain now subsided into a steady numbing ache.
“What time is it?”
“It’s just gone three o’clock.”
“Who’s out there now?” Schepke asked nodding toward the doorway.
“Altmeyer and two seamen at the moment. They made up three watches, using the seamen to steer.”
“How is everything below?”
“We’re doing better than I thought we would,” Hechler said.
Schepke looked at the chart, then at the overhead compass repeater.
“As long as we can keep her head up we’re all right,” he said. “How long can you give us?”
“I’d say three days is about the limit, steaming as we are,” Hechler told him.
Schepke leaned over the chart, working rapidly with a pencil.
“How far are we from Hong Kong?” Hechler, watching him, asked.
“We can’t make a move until this eases,” Schepke was watching his face now. “How far can you stretch those three days?”
“You’d want plenty of luck,” Hechler said quietly.
“Maybe the luck’s due,” Schepke said, again looking at the chart. “We can start by stripping down everything that’ll burn. Come on.”
Wilamowitz’s body was still lying in the starboard passage, water and debris swilling around it.
“Most of them are in the machine shop,” Hechler said as they went aft past the quartermaster’s cabins.
“What’s in there?” Schepke asked stopping outside a steel door on the inboard bulkhead.
“That. That’s a storeroom. It’s not used much. There’s another one on the port side.”
“They can put the dead there,” Schepke told him, before going on to the machine shop. All the seamen were there except those on watch.
“I want two for sewing canvas,” Schepke said when the talking stilled.
One of the seamen moved off the after bulkhead. “I can sew, Kapitän,” he said. Schepke looked at him. He was old and stooped. “Who else?”
Another of the seamen raised his hand.
“All right. Get the dead together and put them in the storeroom next door. You can work there. The Chief will send firebars up for weighting them.” He paused, looking around the rest of the men, then saw the one he had put in charge of the deck. “You!” he said. “What’s your name?”
“Hussef, sir,” the lascar said.
“Start stripping the ship of anything that will burn. Understand?”
The lascar, watching him intently, nodded, his long moustaches moving with his head.
“Start on the passages,” Schepke told him. “Strip them of all wood and panelling. Cabins as well. And get that foremast in off the well. Send everything below to the boiler-room.” He turned and saw Hechler watching. “Any good?” he asked.
“It’ll help,” Hechler told him. “I’ll shut down on one of the boilers.”
“I’ll leave it to you.” He turned out into the passage and met the two seaman carrying Wilamowitz aft. The body had stiffened and they carried it as they might have done a hatch-cover.
Sam was waiting for him in the cabin passage. “The bo’sun is awake now, sir,” he said excitedly. “I was to look for you.”
Schepke followed him into the big cabin. Rollmann was lying very quietly on the bunk, his eyes closed and seeming very close to death.
“Horst,” he said leaning over him.
Rollmann’s eyes flickered open, then focused on him. “Get some water,” Schepke called to the boy.
He took the glass and held it to Rollmann’s lips and he sipped a little then choked, coughing.
“Take it easy,” Schepke told him, setting the glass on the shelf over the bunk.
“How are we?” Rollmann’s voice was very faint.
“Fine. We’re fine. You’re going to be all right.”
“My leg. It hurts. It hurts all the way up into my back.
It’s cold.”
“We’ll soon be in Hong Kong,” Schepke told him quietly. “Try and rest now.”
“Wilamowitz. I thought I saw him get caught.” Rollmann’s voice was getting further away now.
“He’s all right. Try and rest some and don’t worry.
You’re going to be fine.”
Rollmann’s eyes were already closed and he was not moving even when he breathed. He was still in the state of shock. And he was asleep now.
30
BY early next morning the seas had begun to lessen, the storm blowing herself further away to the north. A little while after midday Karl Schepke glanced overhead at the compass and saw their head had come around fifteen degrees since daylight had come in and was now bearing one-five-five. The ocean was grey again now and the seas coming on evenly spaced, their crests foaming and streaming in the wind. Watching them, he knew he must make the decision. With the weather broken the way it was there was a strong possibility that rain and fog would set in with the weakening of the wind.
He looked back along the wing to Bahr and the two lascars. “Stand by to come about after the burials.”
“I’ll take the wheel myself,” Bahr said.
Below in the cabin passage the air was thick with dust and smelling of freshly splintered wood and varnish. Beneath the panelling the bulkheads were coated with rust and grown over with fungus growths accumulated with years of sea-water dampness and darkness.
“Hussef!”
The tall moustachioed lascar came out from a group of seamen working abreast the galley.
“Bring four men with you.” Schepke went on down the main stairway, carefully holding to the rail, every step sending the pain jarring up inside his chest. Part of his left arm-pit and groin had swollen and he could feel something inside knotted up tightly.
The four canvas-wrapped bodies were laid out along the deck-space of the storeroom.
“Bring them out to the after well,” he told Hussef.
Out on deck the seaman set up two spare hatch covers on the starboard side and laid the bodies onto them. With such a wind blowing there was little use for the flag. There was still a lot of water coming inboard and the ocean was running big and the water a dirty greyish yellow with large patches of brown and green weed brought up from the depths; and it was not a day for a burial.
Stepping close to the covers, Karl Schepke removed his cap. “Man that is born of woman hath but a short time to live and is full of misery” The wind was whipping his words away across the fantail. “He cometh up, and is cut down, like a flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow and never continueth on one stay.” He was remembering it now, the ship wallowing deeply in the seas. “Yet deliver us not into the pains of eternal death, suffer us not at this last hour,for any pains of death to fall from thee. Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God to take unto himself the souls of our brothers here departed. We therefore commit their bodies to the deep.” He nodded to Hussef. The seamen slowly upended the hatch-covers and the bodies slid easily over the wall, entering the water together, going steeply into a gully.
“Looking for the resurrection of the body when the sea shall give up her dead. Amen.” He pulled his cap down over his head and turned to Hussef. “You better put these covers below with the rest of the wood.”
He went on up to the bridge. “Port fifteen!”
“Port fifteen, sir!” repeated Bahr. “Fifteen port wheel on, sir!”
The ship took a time to answer, then began to come around gradually, butting into the seas, driving the spray and spin’drift back into the face of the bridge. In a gully she took a long curling sea across her starboard beam, heeling deeply, rolling, then shedding water as she came away. .
“Up twenty!” Schepke shouted, watching the oncoming seas from the starboard wing. The seas were sweeping in just aft the beam now. She was coming around easily.
“‘Midships!”
“‘Midships! Wheel amidships!” Bahr shouted. “Course zero-four-four, sir!”
“Steady on zero-four-zero!” Schepke told him. “Half ahead!”
“Half ahead, sir!” repeated the lascar ringing the telegraph over.
“Very good,” Schepke said. Then looking from the after window at the seas: “Up ten.”
