Pincher Martin by William Golding Read Free Book Online Page B

look now, sir, aft on the starboard side.”
    Together they walked to the starboard wing of the bridge. Nathaniel was still engaged with his aeons, feet held by friction on the corticene, bony rump on the rail just aft of the thrower. His hands were up to his face, his improbable length swaying with the scend of the swells.
    “Silly ass.”
    “He’ll do that once too often, sir.”
    Petty Officer Roberts came close. Liar. There was rum in his breath.
    “I could have put him in the rattle for it, sir, but I thought, seeing he’s a friend of yours in civvy street——”
    Pause.
    “O.K., Chief. I’ll drop him a word myself.”
    “Thank you, sir.”
    “Thank you , Chief.”
    “I won’t forget the tot, sir.”
    “Thanks a lot.”
    Petty Officer Roberts saluted and withdrew from the presence. He descended the ladder.
    “Port fifteen.”
    Solitude with fires under the knees and a jabbing needle. Solitude out over the deck where the muzzle of X gun was lifted over the corticene. He smiled grimly to himself and reconstructed the inside of Nathaniel’s head. He must have laid aft, hopefully, seeking privacy between the crew of the gun and the depth-charge watch. But there was no solitude for a rating in a small ship unless he was knowing enough to find himself a quiet number. He must have drifted aft from the mob of the fo’castle, from utter, crowded squalor to a modified and windy form of it. He was too witless to understand that the huddled mess-deck was so dense as to ensure a form of privacy, like that a man can achieve in a London crowd. So he would endure the gloomy stare of the depth-charge watch at his prayers, not understanding that they would keep an eye on him because they had nothing else to do.
    “Midships. Steady.”
    Zig.
    And he is praying in his time below when he ought to be turned in, swinging in his hammock, because he has been told that on watch he must keep a look-out over a sector of the sea. So he kept a look-out, dutiful and uncomprehending.
    The dark centre of the head turned, saw the port look-out hutched, the swinging RDF aerial, the funnel with its tremble of hot air and trace of fume, looked down over the break of the bridge to the starboard deck.
    Nathaniel was still there. His improbable height, combined with the leanness that made it seem even more incredible, had reduced the rail to an insecure parapet. His legs were splayed out and his feet held him by friction against the deck. As the dark centre watched, it saw Nathaniel take his hands down from his face, lay hold of the rail and get himself upright. He began to work his way forrard over the deck, legs straddled, arms out for balance. He carried his absurd little naval cap exactly level on the top of his head, and his curly black hair—a trifle lank for the night’s dampness—emerged from under it all round. He saw the bridge by chance and gravely brought his right hand toward the right side of his head—taking no liberties, thought the black centre, knowing his place, humble aboard as in civvy street, ludicrous, unstoppable.
    But the balance of the thin figure was disturbed by this temporary exercise of the right hand; it tottered sideways, tried for the salute again, missed, considered the problem gravely with arms out and legs astraddle. A scend made it rock. It turned, went to the engine casing, tried out the surface to see if the metal was hot, steadied, turned forrard and slowly saluted the bridge.
    The dark centre made itself wave cheerfully to the foreshortened figure. Nathaniel’s face altered even at that distance . The delight of recognition appeared in it, not plastered on and adjusted as Petty Officer Roberts had smiled under his too-close eyes: but rising spontaneously from the conjectural centre behind the face, evidence of sheer niceness that made the breath come short with maddened liking and rage. There was a convulsion in the substrata of the globe at this end so that the needle came stabbing and prying