the matter? I can wake Knobby up, can’t I?”
“Leave him alone; can’t you see he’s hurt?”
He stared at the figure on the table. “Hurt?” he asked bewilderedly.
“He’s got a broken arm. Come on over here and eat.”
Poor Knobby! He had looked forward so much to his visiting with him in Montreal. Now they would be sure to take him off in Newfoundland and send him to hospital. He brightened suddenly.
And yet that didn’t mean that he would be unable to go. By the time they got their leave Knobby’s arm would be healed and he could come back to the ship. Sure, what was he worrying about!
He moved over behind the table and sat down on the locker. Maybe Knobby would like a cup of tea, he thought. He began shaking him by the shoulder to awaken him. Knobby’s eyelids fluttered and he turned his head, but did not awaken.
“Hey, Jenkins, here’s your grub over here,” Leading Seaman McCaffrey yelled through a mouthful of food. “Come and get it while it’s warm.”
“I don’t want any. I’ll sit here with Knobby until he wakes up.” “Suit yourself,” answered McCaffrey. Butch could hear him asking which of the others wanted an extra egg.
He and Knobby had gone through training class together. They had been inseparable on the liner going over to Scotland, and in the barracks there they had been together every time they got the chance. When the draft came for two men to proceed to Londonderry for the Riverford they had asked for it and, miracle of miracles, they had been sent together.
He was a year younger than Knobby, but between them was the bond which joins the last two entries into a mess, or the two youngest members of a group, anywhere. During the incubation period, before a man proves himself to his fellows, he is lonely and hurt at their misunderstanding. He wants them to know him as he really is, but is prevented from showing them by the fact that he cannot hurry up the process without being brash and forward, and thus defeating his purpose. Knobby had been a fellow sufferer upon whom he had leaned for the companionship denied him by the others. To remain alone was unthinkable.
Low, so that the others could not hear him, he whispered, “Knobby!”There was no movement to reward his plea. He pushed his way under the hammocks and went below to the sick bay, the euphemism given to a small cupboard screwed on the bulkhead in a corner of the communications mess. The sick berth attendant was eating his breakfast by himself. He looked up as Jenkins descended the ladder. “What do you want?” he asked.
“It’s about Knobby.”
“What about him?”
“He looks pretty sick.”
“Do you want me to hold his hand?” asked Bodley sarcastically. The remark was not meant to show a lack of feeling toward the injured man, but was a protective mechanism thrown up by a person who knows that something is beyond his limitations.
“I want you to do something for him,” cried Butch angrily. “Listen, mate, I’ve done everything I can, so far. After breakfast we might move him into one of the officers’ bunks, and I think that the Old Man is going to get the MO over from the St. Helens,” Bodley said, his impatience gone now as he saw the genuine distress upon the other’s face.
“Oh,” said Butch, mollified. He was glad to learn that others were also trying to do something for Knobby. “Okay, thanks!”
He hurried up the ladder and took his place again beside the table upon which Knobby was lying. He straightened out the blanket covering the boy, being careful not to move the injured arm. After this was done he sat staring silently at the face of his friend.
From across the mess could be heard the subdued laughter and talk of the other seamen. A stoker came through the hatch from below and took a look at Knobby. He asked an unspoken question of Butch, who shook his head.
After a few minutes Knobby seemed to rally. His head twisted on the rolled-up duffle coat serving as a pillow, and his legs stretched as though feeling for the bottom of a bed.
“That-a-boy, Knobby!” Jenkins said. “You’ve got it beat, kid.
Wake up, fella, this is Butch here.”
“How’s he doing?” McCaffrey asked from the other table.
“He’s coming round.”
“Sure, he’ll be all right.”
Butch lifted Knobby’s head and cradled it in his arm. The boy lifted his eyelids and stared uncomprehendingly at the low ceiling of hammocks above his face. Then he turned his eyes and looked at Jenkins. His good arm moved from beneath the blanket and gripped Butch by the front of his shirt.
“That’s the stuff, Knobby. Relax, kid, and I’ll get you a cup of tea,” said Butch happily.
The hand gripping his shirt twisted itself into the denim, and Knobby’s eyes fluttered wildly before rolling back into their sockets. His breath was expelled in a long, low snarl, and from his nose and ears the too-red blood flowed down in slow, limpid streams upon the shoulder of his friend.
“Hey!” yelled Jenkins, panic-stricken at the sight. “Hey, get the tiffy quick! Knobby’s bleeding!”
Two or three ran over from the other table. Jenkins saw it all in slow motion, even to one of the seamen dropping a cup he was wiping into the wash bowl. He saw their eyes, which were staring his way, slowly turn from disbelief, to compassion, to horror as they gazed at the boy cradled in his arms. And without looking down again he knew that Knobby was dead.
He tried to back away and remove his arm from beneath the other’s neck, but the death grip on his shirt held him fast. It held him while the blood of the other rolled slowly down across Knobby’s cheek and spread in a small pool on his own shirt. “Get him off!” he screamed. “Somebody get him off!”
“Shut up!” shouted a voice in his ear, and the heavy hand of McCaffrey slapped the panic from his face. The leading seaman unclenched the fingers of the dead boy and placed the limp arm beneath the blanket. Two of the others lifted the almost-fainting Butch from the locker and led him across the mess.
McCaffrey said, “Williams, you go and get the tiffy. Manders, go down to the wardroom and tell the Old Man that Clark is dead. You — you there with the dish-cloth — get something else and wipe this blood up outa here before it washes under the lockers.”
CHAPTER THREE
In the Riverford’s wardroom the stewards cleared away the breakfast things, except for those lying at the captain’s end of the table. At a small desk in a corner, Lieutenant Harris, who had finished his breakfast after being relieved on the bridge, was going over some new anti-submarine procedures before placing them between the covers of a weighted book.
As usual the captain had waited until the officers had eaten before taking his place at the table. This, like some of his other habits, he had brought with him from the Merchant Service. If he had been asked why he preferred to eat alone, he would have replied, “Well, it’s hard to say. It’s not snobbishness exactly — although I’d have a hard time proving it to the others — but it is something which I believe is necessary for the discipline of a ship. I may be wrong, but I believe
