Read Online The Cruel Sea (1951) by Nicholas Monsarrat - Free Book Online

could find no more to complain of. Now it was his responsibility to say so, in unmistakable terms.
    The shipyard representative, a small brisk man whose badge of office – a bowler hat – he was reluctant to part with for more than a few seconds at a time, laid the printed form of release in front of him, and after reading it through Ericson put his signature at the bottom. Then he sat back.
    That’s that,’ he said. ‘And I’d like to thank you for all you’ve done for us. It’s been a great help.’
    ‘Glad to hear it, Captain.’ The small man snatched up the paper, folded it, and thrust it in an inner pocket, all in one swift movement, as though he feared Ericson would change his mind. ‘I hope she’ll not disappoint you, and you’ll have good luck in her.’
    Ericson nodded. ‘Thanks . . . How about a drink?’
    The small man shook his head and then, rather surprisingly, said: ‘Aye.’ When the drinks had been poured he raised his glass formally and said: ‘Not too late to wish you a Happy New Year, Captain.’
    Ericson drank to it in silence. So much depended on Compass Rose: in fact everything depended on her – perhaps even the bare fact of their survival through 1940. But that evening, when the ship at last was his, he did not want to share this thought with anyone.

9

    On her way north to Ardnacraish, Compass Rose spent her first night at sea.
    She was lucky in her weather: when she slipped through the boom during the late afternoon it was raining heavily, with the promise of a hard blow as well; but by the time they had passed the odd, conical mass of Ailsa Craig, and turned northward again, the sky had cleared and the wind gradually dropped to nothing. Later still, the bright moonlight gave them a visibility of several miles, and by midnight they were ploughing along at a steady twelve knots, with the mass of land to starboard as clearly discernible as if it had been full daylight. Compass Rose, with no sea to bother her and only a long gentle swell to surmount, had an easy motion: the pulse of the engine, and an occasional vibration from forward, served as reminders that she was now on passage instead of swinging round her anchor in harbour, but apart from that the night was as peaceful and as free from stress as any they had yet spent.
    Lockhart, muffled against the keen air in a kapok suit and seaboots, shared the middle watch – from midnight to four a.m. – with Bennett: it passed without incident or interest save that at two o’clock they met a southbound convoy and were fiercely challenged by one of the wing escorts, and that Bennett spent most of the watch dozing inside the asdic hut, leaving Lockhart to keep the lookout and write up the deck log every hour. He did not mind: indeed, he would have taken it as a compliment if he had not known that it sprang from pure laziness and not from any particular confidence in his ability. But the brief period of authority, when the ship was handed over to him as his personal charge, was helpful to his self-confidence, apart from its value as a first experience of watchkeeping. He had been wondering just how sure of himself he would be, when the moment came for him to handle Compass Rose: now he knew, and the answer was reassuring.
    Ferraby and the Captain came up together at four o’clock, to take over the morning’s watch: Lockhart was amused to note that Bennett handed things over with an air of weighty responsibility, as if he had been on tiptoe throughout the entire four hours and would, even now, hardly dare to close his eyes . . . For the first couple of hours Ericson dealt with everything there was to be done, leaving Ferraby to watch him, or stare at the horizon, and occasionally to check a buoy or a lighthouse on the chart inside the asdic compartment: but towards six o’clock, when they were set on a straight, trouble-free course which would need no alteration for thirty miles or so, he decided that he’d had enough of it. He had