Devil's work

‘She was launched on the 23rd of July 1879. Her maiden voyage was to the Isle of Man und by the end of the year she had sailed to her first foreign port. She’s been a working ship und a fighting ship in the Great War. She’s travelled to Trinidad und Brazil und Barbados. She’s navigated fog und ice und hurricane. She is three-masted with a deadweight of about 300 tons und her engine is a marvel, that is to say, a thing of beauty.’

Herr Oppenheim, a German engineer, knows his subject by heart and it holds him in thrall. ‘The ship dimensions are 115 ft. in length, breadth 25 ft., depth of hold 12 ft.’

We descend iron stairs into darkness. He begins to raise his voice over the roar. ‘Our speed is approximately six knots thanks to the 32 horse power single cylinder semi-diesel engine. Quite reliable.’

The immediate thing that assails me in the engine room is not the intense heat, nor the stifling gloom, nor the pungent reek of diesel and coal, nor even the terrific thunderous crank of the pump. Instead it’s the bone-jarring throb, which shudders from my toes to my fingers and drowns all other sensation.

He turns to me and shouts. ‘Are you okay? You seem rather, shall we say, distracted.’

I nod, but in truth I’m still seething from a conversation with my father only this morning. ‘It’s nothing.’ I can’t bear to have this all yelled at such a pitch.

Oppenheim is not so easily dissuaded. ‘Your father wants only what is best for you.’ As I've said, he’s an astute man.

I recall my father’s recent words of encouragement when, at last, I confront him about being working passengers. ‘My intention isn't to make your life a misery, Harry. I’m trying to make you a man. Work is good for you, Harry. The devil finds mischief for idle hands to do.’

As I consider his notion of a Christian work ethic I notice a movement in the recesses of the room. Two shining orbs bore through the gloom. Lights? I feel the hair on the back of my neck rise and a cold chill run down my spine.

They’re not lights … they’re eyes.

No sooner do I make this discovery than an extraordinary thing happens. That great thing of beauty, the ship’s 32 horse power engine heart, stutters, splutters and dies. Yet, still the vibrations run through me.

I dream of Bach

In the gathering cabin gloom, I wait. The dinner bell is struck sharply at six and it brings with it instant salivation. Who would have thought such muck could entice even my taste buds?

Father has retired for an aperitif (vermouth no doubt) on the starboard deck with the German. I can hear their muted conversation through the half-open porthole. (Incidentally, it is one thing to know it's the starboard deck, but the fact I insist on being precise about it, annoys me. Why can't I just call it the right side of the ship? Have the captain's silent stares somehow fashioned a nautical bent in me? Am I to be a sailor? Better than missionary, I suppose. Although, frankly, I'd rather walk the plank than fall into either profession.)

I dismiss the thought as irrelevant and roll onto my stomach so as to gain a clearer ear to their discussion. The German, Herr Hanz Oppenheim, who cuts a mysterious, elegant figure under a sloping fedora, is in full swing. 'I dream of Bach,' he says, in his heavily accented way. 'That is to say, I hear him in my sleep und indeed as soon as I wake. He is as constant, I should say, as the moon. It is the robust muscularity of the tone, you see. Ah, the way the music transports you ... no schooner can take you there.'

Try as I might, I cannot hear my father's response, his voice is snatched up by the wind and scattered at sea. But I am certain I can guess his tone and manner. Congenial. Pleasant to a fault. That's my father. Mild-mannered on the surface and yet, underneath, certain of himself. Of his cause. Of his beliefs. His ... not mine. Let me make that clear. We are not in this together. I am shanghaied by my father. He has dragged me here unwillingly and unwilling I intend to remain.

'Oh the bombast!' the German declares. 'The sheer outrageous pomp of the man. One can only marvel.' I assume he speaks of Bach, but the timing is quite perfect.

From the dipping musty corridor, comes the resonating donnnnng of a struck bell, and I salivate.