What did I see? Should I tell the others? When I got back to the cabin, it was 12.29, and I had to scramble to do the transmissions. I was two people. One was a wireless operator pedalling the bicyle generator; clipboard in his left hand, tapping the key with his right. The other was a man who’d just seen a ghost rise out of the sea. I can’t remember what I did after that. But I remember looking around me at the cabin. The orange glow of lamplight, the socks and dishcloths on the line above the stove. Gus and Algie tucking into Paterson’s Oat Cakes and Golden Syrup. I didn’t feel part of it. They were on one side, I was on the other. I thought, how can all this exist in the same world as that? Somehow, I got through the rest of the day. And oddly enough, I slept like a log. It was Algie’s turn to do the readings today, thank God. I was on kitchen duty. I clung to it the way they say a drowning man clings to straws. For breakfast I made what Algie calls ‘boardinghouse kedgeree’.
