The False Inspector Dew

7

It was the duty of the second officer to man the last gangway. The visitors had gone ashore and stood waiting in hundreds along the quay, shouting and waving to the passengers massed at the rails on every deck. The last few shore staff left the ship. The bugle was sounded and the watchkeeping and navigating officers went to their stations. The commander came on to the bridge.

Captain Arthur H. Rostron was a slightly built, clean-shaven man with silver hair. He could have passed as a shopkeeper except that his years at sea had toughened his skin and given his eyes the screwed-up look that comes from years of staring ahead into every kind of weather the elements inflict. He had taken command of the Mauretania in 1915. By then his name was a legend in the Cunard Company. One bitterly cold night in 1912, when he was in command of the Carpathia, Captain Rostron had received a wireless message from a vessel in distress. Other ships were closer. Arthur Rostron changed course and raced the Carpathia for sixty miles to the scene. He coaxed speeds from her that no-one believed possible in those waters perilous with icebergs. He rescued seven hundred survivors from the Titanic.

The captain looked down to where the second officer stood at the head of the gangway, craning to catch the signal from the bridge. He raised his hand and lowered it. The time was exactly mid-day. The last gangway was landed. The mooring ropes were slackened fore and aft. The stern tugs stretched the hawsers to their limit and began to tow the Mauretania away from the quay. The marine superintendent in his bowler hat supervised the shore gang. They followed the great ship along the quay until the last bow rope was released.

Steadily the tugs hauled the ship out of the Ocean Dock into her swinging ground in the fairway. On the bridge the outward pilot had taken the wheel. The tugs started to swing her. In less than five minutes she was pointing seawards. The tugs cast off.

'Sound the bugle,' ordered Captain Rostron.

The Mauretania was under way, first to Cherbourg to pick up more passengers, and then New York.

Under the direction of the master-at-arms, an immediate search was made for stowaways. The searchers looked in the traditional places, the lifeboats, storage chambers, engine rooms, laundry and kitchens. It was a token search to satisfy company regulations. As everyone acknowledged, any stowaway with a modicum of sense would mingle with the passengers at this stage. So Alma, trying to be calm in Walter's stateroom, and Poppy, in the arms of Paul, stayed undetected.