Endangered Species Read Free Page B

the men to heave on the forward guy of the old-fashioned radial davits to carry the bow out over the ship’s side. The boat swung clear, hanging over the black Atlantic twenty feet below, and they began to clamber into it.
    There was a terrific noise, so unfamiliar they stopped and looked at one another for a petrified instant. Then more depth charges exploded on the far side of the convoy and the black hull of a following ship steamed silently past them, her wash spreading out from her bow and striking the sides of the
Matthew Flinders
. Plumes of water shot vertically and were torn across the boat-deck, dousing the already rain-soaked men who swore with true, seamanlike ferocity and began again to scramble into the lifeboat.
    At the same instant a starshell went out and the unexplained noise grew louder, shaking the ship.
    â€˜Lower away there!’ yelled Captain Robson, motioning Mackinnon into the boat. A moment later the lifeboat began her jerky descent. A rising sea struck her and she was lifted bodily and swung outwards, away from the ship’s side which rose now like a black wall beside them. Then the sea fell away with a suddenness that brought Mackinnon’s stomach into his throat, the falls snapped tight and the boat whippedthe length of her keel and swung inboard, striking the rusty steel topsides, her frames cracking as she bounced off with a flexing of her gunwale.
    â€˜Lower, lower!’ Captain Robson was shouting and the boat resumed its progress until another wave caught her and, ready for it, Captain Robson roared, ‘Come up!’, and the men on the falls threw the turns off the staghorns.
    The boat wallowed into the sea and the falls were unhooked. The side of the
Matthew Flinders
seemed immensely high, looming up into the night sky like a great cliff.
    â€˜Christ, she’s breaking up . . .’
    â€˜She’s rolling over!’
    Split in two as her exploding boilers tore her apart, some quirk of the destruction wrought to her ancient fabric caused her to roll away from the boat. The men who had lowered it and should have followed down the rope ladder went with her. It was over in a matter of less than a minute.
    The lifeboat was alone on the empty, heaving ocean, the centre of a small circle of black sea circumscribed by a pall of rain and spray. The crumps of the depth charges of the counter-attacking escorts seemed much farther away and the starshells finally went out.
    All that remained of the ship’s company of the SS
Matthew Flinders
were two able seaman, the Chief Steward, three greasers, a fireman and Apprentice Mackinnon. He was sixteen years old.
    He remembered few details after that nightmare evacuation of the old ship. Memory told him his exemplary conduct during those next few days had recommended him to the ‘Old Woman’ and she, after the war, had insisted he became the Third Officer of the brand new
Matthew Flinders
.
    Now, as his thoughts came full circle and he drifted off to sleep, he felt the prickle of disappointment that his ship no longer carried apprentices. The lack of them had been thesurest indication that the owners no longer considered there was a future for their ships, or cared very much. This was now proved by their voyage to the scrapyard. This, Mackinnon considered as he rolled over, was a tragic shame; true, the system had been abused to provide cheap labour and not even a war had prevented sixteen-year-old boys being exposed to its merciless rigours, but it had provided thousands of young men a chance in life . . .
    It was history now and he was an old man approaching retirement. Slowly his brain relinquished its hold on consciousness and he drifted to sleep.
    Dawn had found them quite alone on the heaving sea. The Chief Steward took nominal charge and the older of the able seamen sat aft at the helm. The rest of them huddled disconsolately on the thwarts shivering in the damp chill, for it still rained, a