Little God Ben

Copyright

COLLINS CRIME CLUB

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain for Crime Club by W. Collins Sons & Co. Ltd 1935

Copyright © Estate of J. Jefferson Farjeon 1935

Cover design by Mike Topping © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2016

Cover background images © shutterstock.com

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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Source ISBN: 9780008155971

Ebook Edition © August 2016 ISBN: 9780008155988

Version: 2016-06-14

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Chapter 1: Mainly About Knuckles

Chapter 2: Something Happens

Chapter 3: The Fruits of Panic

Chapter 4: What the Dawn Brought

Chapter 5: Behaviour of Mr Robert Oakley

Chapter 6: The Resuscitation of a God

Chapter 7: Alias Oomoo

Chapter 8: The Village of Skulls

Chapter 9: Wooma and Gung

Chapter 10: The Shadow of the High Priest

Chapter 11: A Language Lesson

Chapter 12: Preparations for a Test

Chapter 13: The Misery of Ardentino

Chapter 14: The High Priest Calls

Chapter 15: The High Priest V. Oomoo

Chapter 16: The Transition of Ben

Chapter 17: Noughts and Crosses

Chapter 18: Gold

Chapter 19: A Summons to Oomoo

Chapter 20: To the Priest’s Quarters

Chapter 21: In Conference

Chapter 22: Oakley Goes Scouting

Chapter 23: The Plan

Chapter 24: Blessings Before Battle

Chapter 25: Through the Night

Chapter 26: The Yellow God

Chapter 27: The Flaw in the Plan

Chapter 28: Ben Plays the Joker

Chapter 29: For the Duration

Keep Reading …

About the Author

Also in This Series

About the Publisher

1

Mainly About Knuckles

‘Something’s goin’ ter ’appen,’ said Ben, as the ship rolled.

‘Well, see it don’t ’appen ’ere,’ replied a fellow-stoker apprehensively.

‘I don’t mean that sort of ’appen,’ answered Ben. ‘Yer feels that in yer stummick. I feels this in me knuckles. Whenever me knuckles goes funny, something ’appens.’

The fellow-stoker did not care much for the conversation. But they were off duty together, drawing in a little evening air to mingle with the coal-dust in their throats, and it was Ben or nothing. So he murmured,

‘Wot’s goin’ ter ’appen?’

‘I dunno,’ said Ben. ‘Orl I knows is that it is. It’s a sort of a hitch like. Once it was afore I fell inter a barrel o’ beer.’

‘I wouldn’t mind ticklin’ a bit fer that,’ observed the fellow-stoker.

‘Ah, but it ain’t always so nice. Another time it was afore a nassassinashun. I fergit ’oo was nassassinated. A king or somethin’. And another time I went ter bed and fahnd the cat ’ad ’ad kittens. I slep’ on the floor. Yus, but they never hitched like this. Not the kittens, me knuckles. If somethin’ ’orrerble don’t ’appen afore midnight I’ve never seen a corpse!’

The fellow-stoker’s dislike of the conversation increased. He preferred conversations beginning, ‘Have you heard the one about the lady of Gloucester?’ But Ben was a human anomaly, a man with a dirty face and a clean mind, and some error in his make-up had eliminated all interest in Gloucestershire ladies. It was unnatural.

‘’Ere, that’s enough about corpses,’ growled the fellow-stoker, ‘and I’ll bet you ain’t seen none, neither!’

‘Lumme, I was born among ’em!’ retorted Ben. ‘I spends orl me life tryin’ ter git away from ’em. If there’s a star called Corpse I was born under it! I could tell yer things, mate, as ’d mike yer eyes pop aht o’ their sockets. I seed one in a hempty ’ouse runnin’ abart—oi, look aht!’

The ship gave a violent lurch and threw them together. As they untied themselves Ben continued:

‘It mide me run abart, too.’

‘’Ere, I’ve ’ad enough of you!’ gasped the fellow-stoker, and hurried away to less gruesome climes.

Ben looked after him disappointedly. He hadn’t meant to be gruesome. He had merely been relating history. He didn’t like corpses any better than the next man, but you talked about what you knew about, and there it was. If Ben had lived among buttercups and daisies, he’d have talked about those, and would infinitely have preferred it.

He gazed at his knuckles. ‘Somethin’ orful!’ he muttered. He stretched them, opening and closing his fingers. He shook them. The prophetic itch remained. He tried to forget them, and stared at the heaving grey sea.

It shouldn’t have been grey, and it shouldn’t have been heaving. It should have been blue and calm, like the posters that had advertised this cruise, and stars should be coming out to illuminate sentiment. There was a lot of sentiment on the ship. Ben had spotted some of it, and had envied it in the secret labyrinths of his heart. They would be dancing soon up above. ‘’Ow’d I look in a boiled shirt,’ he wondered, ‘with a gal pasted onter it?’ But the Pacific Ocean often belies its name, and it was belying it drastically at this moment. Waves were sweeping across it in angry white-topped lines, indignantly slapping the ship that impeded them and sending up furies of spray. The wind was in an equally bad temper. It made you want to hold on to things. ‘I didn’t orter’ve come on this ’ere trip,’ decided Ben. ‘I orter’ve tiken a job ’oldin’ ’orses!’ Had he known the job to which the wind and the waves were speeding him, he would probably have shut his eyes tight and dived into them.

But he was spared that knowledge, and meanwhile the rolling ship and his itching knuckles were quite enough to go on with. It wasn’t merely the itching that worried him. It was a vague sense of responsibility that accompanied the inconvenience. When you receive a warning, you ought to pass it on. ‘Course, I couldn’t ’ave stopped the kittens,’ he reflected, ‘but I might ’ave stopped the nassassinashun!’

The Second Engineer staggered into view. He, like the stokers, had come up for a little air, and was getting larger doses than he had bargained for.

‘Whew!’ he exclaimed. ‘Dirty weather!’

‘Yer right, sir,’ answered Ben. ‘Somethin’s goin’ ter ’appen.’

‘Going to happen?’ grinned the Second Engineer, as another fountain of spray shot up and drenched them. ‘It’s happening, ain’t it?’

‘Yus, but I means wuss’n this,’ replied Ben, darkly. ‘Me knuckles is hitchin’.’

‘I beg your pardon?’ said the Second Engineer politely.

‘Knuckles, sir—hitchen’,’ repeated Ben. ‘That’s ’ow I knows. Yer may larf, but yer carn’t git away from it, when me knuckles hitch, things ’appen.’

The Second Engineer was a good-natured man. He could retain an even temperament with the thermometer at 120. He had to. But superstition was one of his bugbears, and he always came down on it, particularly when the atmosphere was a bit nervy. He was aware of its disastrous potentialities.

‘Now, listen, funny-mug!’ he remarked. ‘I know that itches are supposed to mean things. If your right eye itches it’s good luck and if your left eye itches it’s bad luck, and if they both itch it’s damn bad luck—but knuckles are a new one on me! Shall I tell you what all this itching really means?’

‘Somethin’s goin’ ter ’appen,’ blinked Ben.

‘No, you dolt!’ roared the Second Engineer. ‘It means you want a good scratch! So give your knuckles a good scratch and stop talking about ’em! Get me? Because if you don’t, sonny, I’ll give you a taste of my knuckles!’

Then he passed on.

‘Meet yer when the boat goes dahn!’ muttered Ben after him.

His retort increased his depression. It was the first time he had definitely focussed his fears. Of course, that was what his misbehaving knuckles meant—the boat was going down!

‘Well, wot’s it matter?’ he reflected, catching hold of a rail as the ship heaved again. ‘Am I afraid o’ dyin’? Yus!’

The handsome admission completed his depression.

But Ben was never wholly absorbed in his own discomforts. An under-dog himself, he had a fellow feeling for other under-dogs, and the stokehold and engine-room were full of them. If they weren’t particularly nice to him and kicked him about a bit, well, who was nice to him—barring, perhaps, the Second Engineer one time in three—and who didn’t kick him about? He’d been born a football, and it was human to kick anything that bounced. And even the top-dogs did not arouse Ben’s personal enmity. The world had to contain all sorts of people to make it go round, and he was a man of peace, though he found little. It would be a pity, for instance, if that pretty girl in the blue frock—the one the Third Officer had brought down yesterday to have a look at the engine-room—came to any harm. Nice hair, she had. And slim-like. She had smiled at Ben and had said, ‘Don’t you find it terribly hot here?’ And when he had replied, ‘’Ot as ches’nuts,’ she had laughed. Nice laugh, she had. And nice teeth. Yes, it would be a pity.

‘And the Third Orficer ’iself might be wuss,’ decided Ben, now he came to think of it. ‘Corse, the way ’e looked at the gal’d mike a cod sick, but yer carn’t ’elp yer fice when yer feels that way. Mindjer, some of ’em could do with a duckin’. That Lord Wot’s-’is-nime wot’s orl mide in one piece. ’E’d brike if yer bent ’im. And that there greasy bloke I seen torkin’ to ’im. I’ll bet ’e’s a mess fust thing in the mornin’! If ’e was ter go ter the bottom, the bottom ’d git a fright and come up ter the top. But—well, Gawd mide ’im, so there yer are—’

A voice in his ear made him jump. He jumped into the chest of the Chief Engineer. The Chief Engineer’s chest was the size of Ben altogether.

‘What’s the matter with you?’ inquired the Chief Engineer, picking the population off his chest.

‘Oo?’ blinked Ben.

‘Do you feel as green as you look?’ demanded the Chief Engineer.

‘Yus,’ answered Ben.

‘If you can’t stand a bit of weather, why did you come on this trip?’

‘Well, the doctor ses I orter ’ave a bit o’ sunshine.’

‘Don’t be cheeky, my man!’

‘Oo’s wot?’

‘I’ve had my eye on you for some time, and I’m asking you why you came on this trip?’

‘Gawd knows!’

‘Do you call that an answer?’

‘Oh. Well, it was like this, see? Second Engineer engiged me. “Bill’s ill,” ’e ses. “Ben’s ’ere,” I ses. “’Oo’s Ben?” ’e ses. “I am,” I ses. “I shouldn’t ’ave thort you was anything,” ’e ses. “Life’s full o’ surprises,” I ses, “once I fahnd a currant in a bun. Give us a charnce,” I ses, “I’ve walked orl the way from the nearest pub.” Mide ’im larf. That’s the on’y way I can do it. Mike ’em larf. Like Pelligacharchi. You know, the bloke in the hopera. I seed it once. Lumme, them singers fair split yer ears.’

‘Do you know what you’re talking about?’

‘No.’

The Chief Engineer stared at Ben very hard. Like many before him, he couldn’t quite make Ben out.

‘Have you ever seen a louse?’ he asked.

Ben stared back and got ready for it.

‘Not afore I see you,’ he muttered.

The Chief Engineer’s fist on Ben’s chest made a deeper impression than the whole of Ben on the Chief Engineer’s chest. Ben sat down and counted some stars.

‘I sed somethin’ was goin’ ter ’appen,’ he muttered, ‘but it don’t matter, ’cos this ain’t it. You’ll be goin’ dahn, too, in a minit!’

‘Oh! Will I?’

‘Yus. The ’ole boat’s goin’ dahn. I knows ’cos me knuckles is hitchin’.’

‘Of course, this fellow’s mad,’ said the Chief Engineer.

He took a deep breath. He was sorry he had lost his control for a moment, but he couldn’t say so with four stripes on his sleeve. It was the nervy atmosphere. Everybody was nervy. He stretched out his hand and hoiked Ben up again, and something real or imagined in his attitude gave the little stoker a sudden and embarrassing disposition to cry.

‘That’s orl right, sir,’ he mumbled, ‘on’y it’s true, see? I ain’t kiddin’ yer, and some-un orter tell the Captain afore it’s too late.’

‘Tell the Captain?’ frowned the Chief Engineer.

‘Yus.’

‘Tell him what?’

‘That me knuckles is hitchin’.’

The Chief Engineer shook him.

‘If they go on itching, report to the Second Engineer, and ask him if you should report to the Doctor. Meanwhile, get some stuffing into you and remember you’re a bit of the British Empire!’

‘Yus, a lot the British Hempire’s done fer me!’ thought Ben, as the Chief Engineer departed.

Report to the Second Engineer? He had already done that. Report to the Doctor? No, thanks! If you weren’t ill what was the use? And if you were ill you died of fright knowing …! But what about reporting to the Captain?

As Ben stared at his knuckles, which were not even soothed by the portions of ocean that periodically splashed on to them, the audacious idea grew. Report to the Captain—direct! Give him the red light! And then, when the ship had been saved through the warning of a little stoker whom everybody trod on, perhaps people would stop treading on him, and they might even erect a statue of him over the Houses of Parliament.

‘Little Ben on top o’ Big Ben!’ reflected the lesser of the two. ‘Coo, that’d put the hother sights o’ Lunnon in the shide!’

He glanced furtively around him. Nobody about. He glanced towards the companion-way that led for’ard up to the boat deck. He shook his head.

‘No!’ he said.

Then he thought of the pretty girl in the blue frock. ‘Fancy ’er torkin’ ter me!’ he reflected. ‘“Doncher find it ’ot ’ere?” she ses, and then I ses, “’Ot as ches’nuts,” I ses, and then she larfs. Nice larf. It’d be a pity …’

He moved towards the companion-way. It is to be remembered that Ben believed implicitly in his knuckles.

2

Something Happens

To walk from a well-deck to a Captain’s quarters is ordinarily quite a simple job, but the difference between a journey you may make and a journey you may not is abysmal. The latter is ten times as long, and ten times as difficult.

Ben’s difficulties were increased by the unusual rolling of the ship. Although he had spent many years in the merchant service he had never permanently discovered his sea legs. Sometimes they obeyed the oceanic instinct, at other times they did not, and this was one of the other times. Twice before he completed the first stage of the journey to the companion-way he shortened his left leg when he ought to have lengthened it, and thrice he lengthened his right leg when he ought to have shortened it. The result was dislocating to joints, and he arrived at the companion-way playing for safety, with both legs shortened.

Then he paused. A hurrying figure appeared on the ladder above him. Still squatting, he watched it descend and materialise into the Doctor.

‘Are you the fellow who’s come out in spots?’ demanded the Doctor brusquely.

‘No, sir,’ replied Ben. ‘That’s Jim—but they ain’t nothing.’

‘How do you know?’

‘’E ’as ’em in ’ealth.’

‘Thanks for the information, my man, but I’ll do my own diagnosing, if you don’t mind.’ Ben didn’t mind. He had no idea what diagnosing was, but it sounded nasty. ‘What are you supposed to be doing?’

‘Eh? Oh! Restin’.’

‘Ah—not practising a Russian dance! Well, take my advice and rest under cover, or you’ll be washed overboard!’

The Doctor proceeded on his way, and Ben proceeded on his. But at the top of the companion-way he shot into another figure. Lord What’s-his-name, the man who found it difficult to bend. As they regained their breath they regarded each other from opposite angles. This was the first, and least strange, of many meetings, although neither of them knew it.

‘You appear in a hurry,’ observed the lordly obstacle, refixing his monocle.

‘Yus, I got a messidge,’ mumbled Ben.

‘In that case I must not detain you,’ replied Lord What’s-his-name. Other people knew him as Lord Cooling. It was a name that had appeared on many glowing company prospectuses, the prospectus usually being more glowing than the company. ‘I trust we may meet again one day in less urgent circumstances. Good-evening.’

Then Ben escaped to the second companion-way leading from the main deck to the saloon deck. The higher he got the more anxious he grew. He was permitted on the main deck, provided he did not linger and merely used it as a passage from the quarters where he slept to the quarters where he worked, but the saloon deck was taboo, and he hoped there would be no more awkward meetings. Fortunately for this hope the weather had driven most of the passengers inside, and apart from slipping on a step, tripping over a rope, hitting a rail, and nearly being shot into a ventilator, he passed safely through the next few seconds. But just as he was about to ascend the third companion-way to the boat deck he heard voices; and, still being near the ventilator that had just failed to suck him down into the unknown region it ventilated, he slipped behind it. The manœuvre was necessary since one of the voices he recognised as the Third Officer’s.

‘You’d better go in, Miss Sheringham,’ the Third Officer was urging.

‘It’s certainly blowy,’ came the response, and then Ben recognised that voice also. It was the voice of the pretty girl in the blue frock. But now she was wearing oilskins.

‘And it’s going to get worse,’ answered the Third Officer. ‘Nothing whatever to worry about, you know, but it’s pleasanter inside.’

‘Why did you say there was nothing to worry about?’ asked the girl.

‘Because there isn’t,’ returned the Third Officer.

‘Or because there is?’

The Third Officer laughed.

‘That’s much too clever for me! I’ve been through gales that make this seem like a sea breeze, but—’

‘But it’s a jolly good sea breeze!’ Now the girl laughed too. ‘Won’t the dancing floor be wobbly tonight? I wonder how many will be on it!’

‘If you’re on it, I expect you’ll be dancing a solo.’

‘I have a higher opinion of British manhood, Mr Haines! I shall certainly be on it. I rather like the idea of trying to do a slow fox-trot up a moving mountain—’

‘Look out!’

Ben accepted the warning as well as the girl, but none of them ducked quickly enough. The sudden fountain drenched all three.

‘Really, Miss Sheringham, I wish you’d go in!’ exclaimed the Third Officer, after the drench. He made no attempt now to hide his anxiety.

‘I think I will!’ gasped the girl. ‘I’m soaked! But how did you know I was out?’

‘Well—I’ve eyes.’

‘Jolly quick ones! I hadn’t been out two minutes before you pounced on me!’

‘We try to look after our passengers.’

‘Beautifully put! Still, you’re quite right—I’d no idea it was so awful … I say, what’s that?’

‘What?’

‘Over there! Towards the horizon—where I’m pointing!’

There came a short silence. The wind rose to a shriek, then died down again. Ben could only hear the voices because the gale was blowing in his direction.

‘I can’t see anything,’ said the Third Officer.

‘Nor can I now. That mist has blotted it out. It was dark—like a whale. If I saw it at all.’

‘And that isn’t mist, it’s rain,’ answered the Third Officer briskly. ‘It’ll be here in a moment and drown you! Go inside at once. It’s not a request this time, it’s an order!’

Ben heard a little laugh, and then the voices ceased. Footsteps sounded, and faded away. Ben was alone again.

He waited a second or two. The long terror through which he was to reach the strangest salvation he had ever known began to grip him. He didn’t like his memory of the Third Officer’s tone. He had studied tones. He knew whether ‘That’s all right’ meant that it was or it wasn’t and whether ‘Come here’ meant a kiss or a kick. He knew that the Third Officer’s ‘That’s an order’ meant trouble.

This, however, was not the entire cause of Ben’s new anxiety. He had an instinct for the tone of a gale as well as the tone of a human being. The instinct was now informing him that the gale was ‘behaving funny.’ Possibly not another person on board received the warning in precisely the way Ben received it. As though to compensate in some degree for his colossal ignorance, he had been granted an uncomfortable sensitiveness to certain impending occasions. The sensitiveness was variously expressed in various parts of his anatomy. Itching knuckles—that meant general danger. Twitching knee-caps—that meant personal danger. A sort of tickle in his nose—that meant cheese in the vicinity. A violent throbbing of his ear-lobes—that meant the wind was about to behave funny. You couldn’t get away from it.

Well, no matter how one throbbed and tickled and twitched and itched, one could not remain behind a ventilator for ever; and so, creeping from a concealment no longer necessary, he skated—first uphill and then downhill—to the rails. He wanted to know whether he could see what the girl had thought she had seen, and devoutly hoped that he wouldn’t. The hope was so devout that at first he searched with his eyes shut. Then he opened them.

‘Vizerbility nil,’ he murmured. ‘I don’t see nothing!’

Nothing, that was, beyond the most unpleasant ocean he had ever gazed at. It seemed to be in a kind of white fright and to be attempting to escape from the low clouds and the tearing wind, but the wind was chasing it mercilessly, emitting sounds that clearly came from some elemental madhouse; and the rain was in its wake. In a few moments the rain would add its stinging dampness to the starboard bow.