In a dark swirling sea, cunning, limitless and hungry, three men lie in a lifeboat built for forty. I am one of those men; Rykard, and O’Driscoll are my companions. I am the second wireless operator, O’Driscoll the assistant purser, and Rykard the third engineer. Our ship lies under ten thousand feet of water, its burned and torn metal quenched by the ferocious sea. The occluded November wind whips the Atlantic spray into pellets of liquid ice that will flay our faces. I lie crouched on the bottom of the lifeboat, legs drawn close to my body, yet still shivering in reefer jacket and thick moleskin trousers. I cast a glance at the other two men – mute shadows in the freezing night – and then look to the sky, framed by the twisting gunwale.
Rykard shifts, he is in pain. “I am thirsty,” he says. “Is there any water?”
O’Driscoll does not move. A voice, with a familiar Irish intonation, answers from the darkness. The voice is tired, yet defiant. “Water? Ha! Haven’t we water enough boys!”
“Have we no water?” Rykard asks again, ignoring the sarcastic rebuttal, a more imploring note in his voice.
“We have water,” I reply. I struggle to raise chill numbed limbs to life; there is no feeling in my hands. I crawl slowly to the stern of the boat where the water butt and provisions are located, its dark timbers striking my limbs as we roll in the sea. As I raise the dark ladle to the lip of a tin cup, my cold-chilled mind tells me that fresh and salt are alike in the final darkness, indistinguishable.
It was O’Driscoll who, driven by alcohol or insanity, had raised the crazy prospect that suited his temperament but has bound us together to death. Our ship was a creaking single stack four hundred berth liner that plied the North Atlantic, bringing the huddled masses of the Old World to the welcoming facade of the New, along with mail bags packed so tight they resembled the bulging white shrouds of fallen giants. Obsequious and offhand by turn, O’Driscoll not only had access to the ledgers and the cash boxes, but he was privileged to know the combination to the ship’s safe. The wealthy passengers, not Rockefellers or Astors, but men who had solid gold watches on chains and women who sparkled with lesser gemstones, used the facility afforded by the shipping company, secreted away in the purser’s office.
“There’s diamonds,” O’Driscoll had informed us in our cabin the night after we left Shannon. It was an ill-omened statement. I have spent in bitter reflection and self-reproach the few precious hours left to me to understand why we had entertained him. I can only surmise that greed rots the soul where lack of money has made a breach. Rykard swung around in his seat, I sat up on my bunk.
“Aye, diamonds. A Dutchman, a Jew I think, diamond merchant, on his way to New York. He deposited them today as soon as he came aboard.”
“How d’you know they are diamonds?” asked Rykard.
“He had to declare them, and” O’Driscoll laughed, “I counted ‘em!”.
“With the purser there?” I asked.
“No, not with that fat walrus anywhere near!”
“You could get into trouble for that, that’s a sacking offence,” remonstrated Rykard.
“Only if they catch me.”
“What are you planning?” I had asked. I remembered how O’Driscoll’s eyes had shone, hinting at an obsession, or the effects of hard drink.
“To bide my time, bide my time,” he said, “until the dancing starts.”
“Are you going to steal them?!” cried Rykard.
“Aye! But I need help. Diamonds for all, boys, diamonds for all! Can I count on you?”
I looked at Rykard, an expression of deathly excitement erupting across his features.
“I’ll do it!” he said.
“And you?” O’Driscoll asked, looking hard at me. In that moment all sanity departed.
“Yes,” I replied. “But in God’s name, how are you going to do it O’Driscoll?”
“I’ll set them a dancing, and as they dance, we become the richest men in the ocean!”
He said nothing more, despite our questioning. I looked to Rykard; he shook his head to denote that he did not understand the Irishman’s rant, and taking up his pen, turned away.
O’Driscoll laughed silently; his eyes still radiant as his gaze fell to the cabin wall. I lay in my bunk, reflected for a while on O’Driscoll’s madness, eventually reckoning that he was a fantasist. Of the three of us, O’Driscoll had the most freedom to move around without arousing suspicion, to visit passengers, to check that everything was in order, in all compartments, as the ship bit her way through the great rolling ocean beyond the steel plating.
Copyright © David Alexander 2023