Tomorrow the World by John Biggins

Author:John Biggins
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781590134788
Publisher: McBooks Press

I stared at it for some moments. My mother had been in poor health for some years past, but it was still quite unexpected. Yet I felt no particular grief—except perhaps at my lack of grief. We had been strangers for years, but even so . . . I made a mental note to speak to the Captain when I came off watch and get permission to go ashore for an hour or so before we sailed, to send a telegram of condolence and perhaps arrange for a mass to be said in the Catholic cathedral. But my duties on deck got the better of my good intentions, and I only remembered about it when I put my hand in my jacket pocket and felt the telegram—by which time the cloud-covered top of Table Mountain was falling below the horizon astern of us.

What had diverted my mind from my mother’s death was the surf-boat: the one given us by King Matthew Neverwash III as our topside dash that day the treaty was negotiated at Bunceville. It had given us endless trouble as we considered how to turn it into a replacement for the lost eight-metre cutter. At first it had seemed a reasonable substitute, except for being double-ended. But after detailed inspection the Carpenter had shaken his head sadly. In his opinion the only way to turn it into an acceptable pulling-boat would be to dismantle it completely and rebuild.

“The trouble, Bo’sun,” he had explained to Njegosić, “is that the thing’s not really a boat at all, just a big paddling canoe. Oh yes, she’s strongly enough made: very good quality timber and nicely put together, all pegs—not a metal fixing in her. But build thwarts into her for rowers —that’s a different story. The frames are too light so she’d flex all the time, and the centre of gravity’s too high if you ask me: all right for paddlers kneeling round the gunwale but dead wrong for oarsmen sitting two-by-two. No, the tub’s a paddling canoe and if you try making anything else of her you’ll end up spoiling her and not get anything very good in return.”

So the surf-boat lay upside-down unused. Always enterprising, Linienschiffsleutnant Zaleski had tried manning her with paddlers once for a trip around Cape Town harbour, but there had been complaints from the Harbour Master that having naval seamen “peddling abite the horber lak a lot of Keffirs” was undermining the prestige of the white race, so the experiment was abandoned. In the end we resolved to take the thing back to Pola and present it to the Ethnographic Museum in Vienna, who could dispose of it as they pleased.

Our next port of call was to Luanda, the capital of the Portuguese colony of Angola, though we would make a brief stop on the way at Swakopmund to exchange courtesies with the German Governor of South-West Africa. After our transatlantic exertions it looked like being an easy passage up the west coast of Africa.

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