Pincher Martin by William Golding Read Free Book Online Page A

months to wear the right clothes or negotiate a ladder like a seaman. Dawn had found him shivering from inadequate rig, the mess-deck would find him hurt by the language, a butt, humble, obedient and useless.
    He looked briefly at the starboard horizon then across to the convoy, bulks just coming into view in the dawn light. They interrupted the horizon like so many bleak iron walls where now the long, blurred tears of rust were nearly visible.
    But Nat would be fumbling aft, to find five minutes’ solitude by the rail and meet his aeons. He would be picking his diffident way toward the depth-charge thrower on the starboard side not because it was preferable to the port rail but because he always went there. He would be enduring  the wind and engine stink, the peculiar dusty dirt and shabbiness of a wartime destroyer because life itself with all its touches, tastes, sights and sounds and smells had been at a distance from him. He would go on enduring until custom made him indifferent. He would never find his feet in the Navy because those great feet of his had always been away out there, attached by accident while the man inside prayed and waited to meet his aeons.
    But the deck-watch was ticking on to the next leg of the zigzag. He looked carefully at the second hand.
    “Starboard fifteen.”
    Out on the port bow Wildebeeste was turning too. The grey light showed the swirl under her stern where the rudder had kicked across. As the bridge canted under him Wildebeeste seemed to slide astern from her position until she was lying parallel and just forrard of the beam.
    “Midships.”
    Wildebeeste was still turning. Connected by the soles of his feet through steel to the long waver and roll of glaucous water he could predict to himself the exact degree of her list to port as she came round. But the water was not so predictable after all. In the last few degrees of her turn he saw a mound of grey, a seventh wave slide by her bows and pass under her. The swing of her stern increased, her stern slid down the slope and for that time she had carried ten degrees beyond her course, in a sudden lurch.
    “Steady.”
    And curse the bloody Navy and the bloody war. He yawned sleepily and saw the swirl under Wildebeeste ’ s stern as she came back on course. The fires out there at the end of the second crevice flared up, a needle stabbed and he was back in his body. The fire died down again in the usual rhythm.
    The destroyers in a V screen turned back together. Between orders he listened to the shivering ping of the Asdic and the light increased. The herd of merchantmen chugged on at six knots with the destroyers like outriders scouring the way before them, sweeping the sea clear with their invisible brooms, changing course together, all on one string.
    He heard a step behind him on the ladder and busied himself to take a bearing because the captain might be coming. He checked the bearing of Wildebeeste with elaborate care. But no voice came with the steps.
    He turned casually at last and there was Petty Officer Roberts—and now saluting.
    “Good morning, Chief.”
    “Good morning, sir.”
    “What is it? Wangled a tot for me?”
    The close eyes under their peak withdrew a little but the mouth made itself smile.
    “Might, sir——”
    And then, the calculation made, the advantage to self admitted, the smile widened.
    “I’m a bit off me rum these days, somehow. Any time you’d care to——”
    “O.K. Thanks.”
    And what now? A draft chit? Recommend for commission ? Something small and manageable?
    But Petty Officer Roberts was playing a game too deep. Whatever it was and wherever the elaborate system of obligations might lead to, it required nothing today but a grateful opinion of his good sense and understanding.
    “About Walterson, sir.”
    Astonished laugh.
    “My old friend Nat? What’s he been doing? Not got himself in the rattle, has he?”
    “Oh no, sir, nothing like that. Only——”
    “What?”
    “Well, just