The Year is Almost Over

The Cork-Lined Box

"If I were killed, thrown overboard for the waiting sharks, who would find out?"

In August of 1933 I decided to cross the Mediterranean to Alexandria, in search of specimens for my butterfly collection. My finances were a little thin, so I was forced to have my luggage sent ahead and take passage from Marseilles on the Epidaurus, a small tramp freighter. My only experience of sea travel had been the ferry across the channel when I first began to explore Europe - this was the first time I had taken a sea journey of considerable length. I suppose I should have gained some forewarning of the frightful ordeal I was about to endure from the state of the shipping office - my first thought was that I had been sent to an abandoned building by mistake. But on looking through the door I was beckoned by a large, sweaty man into an office containing a chair, a table, a broken desk fan, a pile of yellow newspapers in the corner and numerous dead flies everywhere. The fellow began mumbling at me, while pushing dirty pieces of paper around his desk, looking for a pen. My French is adequate, but I couldn't understand a word.

"Pardone, m'sieur, you'll have to slow down, I can't understand you. Perhaps you can speak English?"

He looked at me with disgust, then belched.

"Aaaaaah oui. PLEASE. Very good morning."

This was as much English as he was willing to attempt. He found a pen, and I put on my spectacles and filled out the papers as best I could. The whole time I could sense this oaf scowling at me. I paid my fare and followed his grubby finger toward the dock.

The captain was a doddering old man who seemed to be wandering around the ship as if he didn't belong there. He accompanied me to my cabin, an iron cell with a hammock and a bucket. The walls were humming with the sound of the engines. I looked around to ask if there was some alternative, but he had staggered off.

Soon the ship was moving. The smell of the ocean, mixed with the stink of grease and diesel fuel and oil and Heaven knows what else it took to run a ship, almost made me want to keep my nose permanently covered in my handkerchief. There was also a faint smell similar to an abattoir, and I wondered what our cargo was. The hull was riddled with rust from stem to stern, and the gangways were so narrow that I was forced to wrestle past anyone moving in the opposite direction. The ship heaved back and forth in the slightest swell, and was constantly followed by a cloud of screeching gulls, drawn by the stench, and on the lookout for garbage being thrown over the side. The crew were a mixed group of lascars and Africans, and few of them showed any sign that they were aware of my existence. It seemed unlikely that they could speak English anyway. Needless to say, this was a particularly low point in my travels. And unlike a town or hotel that I might have disliked, I couldn't leave

My first night at sea brought me little sleep. Every so often the engines made a belligerent knocking sound, and my hammock tended to hit the wall with the larger swells. The next morning my mood was frayed, to say the least. I went in search of the galley for some kind of breakfast. This, and in fact every meal, turned out to be black bread and corned beef. The crew devoured it with equanimity.

Other than my cabin, it seemed the best place to spend the time was the forecastle. At the railway station in Cologne I had bought a cheaply bound copy of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. Even after forty-five years as a librarian there were still a number of the great works of literature which I had not read - a fact for which I was often grateful on long rail journeys. I also wore a pair of dark blue-tinted spectacles which I had bought in Paris, and a battered pith helmet. I found a suitable spot and began reading. As I read the first few chapters, describing at great length the mysterious threat to shipping of some enormous entity, I began to grow a little uneasy, as if I was tempting fate... But I had once read that lifeboat number thirteen on the Titanic carried all its passengers comfortably to safety. I decided to leave superstitions to the sailors, and kept reading.