The Passing of Youth

That first evening at sea after leaving Karachi, we played darts together. We were exhausted after gruelling days working in the heat and fetid stench of the cargo holds. We unwound by playing game after game, sharing puerile jokes and teasing each other with mock insults, like the teenagers we were.

The engineer sat brooding in the corner of the room, watching us play. He was a few years older than me, shorter but stocky and strong. I was engrossed in the game and was startled when he stood up from his chair, grabbed and wrestled me, protesting to the deck. 

The other apprentices laughed and goaded him on. It was some light relief after long days of laborious work. He was only skylarking, after all. They cheered him as he yanked down my shorts, bared my skin and sank his teeth hard into the flesh of my buttocks.

He bit and chewed at me three or four times before letting me go. I staggered to my feet, wincing with pain. I cursed and laughed to hide my tears and humiliation amid the riot of boisterous cheering. 

By morning, I had recovered my lost pride. It was best to forgive and forget the high jinks of the evening before. Everyone else had, so I thought.

When I reported for duty, the mate sent me to work unsupervised and alone in the pipe tunnel, deep in the bowels of the ship. 

I didn’t know where in the engine room to find the tunnel, so I collected my tools from our workshop and set off to find it. When I opened the engine room door, I recoiled at the blast of noise and heat. The cacophonous roar sounded like some demonic orchestra, jarring my senses. 

I saw the engineer working on the cylinder heads. I shouted above the clamour and asked him to show me the way to the tunnel. He led me past the crankcase, down the zigzag maze of steep steel ladders, to the tunnel hatch in the engine room bilge. 

I climbed through the hatch, down the short ladder into the gloom of the tunnel at the very bottom of the ship. A trolley on a railway ran along its length to help move bulky loads, but I didn't need the trolley; I only carried two spanners and a hammer. 

The screaming tumult of noise faded as I crawled from the engine room toward the bow. After several minutes of crawling, bumping my head, elbows, and knees against the unforgiving steelwork of pipelines, flanges and girders, I was alone in the silence. 

Because of the mid-summer heat, I wore overalls but no shirt or trousers. I was well below sea level in the tunnel, out of the sun and away from the roar and heat of machinery. The tunnel was quiet, and I sat for a while in the gloom, simply enjoying the silence and coolness of my surroundings.

Despite my isolation, I heard sounds of movement, and in the dim light, I saw someone pushing the trolley along the track toward me. I thought it was one of my fellow apprentices, but I was astonished to find it was the engineer. 

He drew close and gave me his humourless smile. Instinctively, I shrank from him. He lunged at me, threatening, grabbing my arm and dripping with menace.

‘I’m going to have you. I’m going to fuck you—now!’

As I tell you this tale and relive those few desperate minutes, I can still picture the engineer’s leering face. I can even feel the press of his clammy, sweat-soaked overalls and smell his skin, stained with oil and grease.  

I fled like a rabbit down a burrow to escape. I crawled further up the tunnel toward the bow, but he quickly caught up with me on the trolley. My mind reeled and whirled with doubt and confusion. 

He must be joking, surely? Should I laugh? Did he mean what he said?—What should I do?

Here was the man who only the previous night had stripped me, in jest, I thought, to bite the bare flesh of my buttocks. Now he wanted to rape me. I was frightened and alone, beyond help in that remote, narrow space. 

No one could hear me yell that far down at the bottom of the ship. The engineer blocked my way out of the tunnel, and I couldn't escape. He reached out again and, this time, grabbed me by the ankle. 

He clawed his way up my body, pulling at my overalls. I wriggled like a fly trapped in a spider’s web. I tried to shake free, but he persisted and pressed home his attack. 

I was too afraid to kick him or hurt him. If I resisted, he might injure me. If I fought back, I might hurt or kill him—and then there’d be the Devil to pay. 

But doing nothing meant letting him rape me. I tried to wrestle out from beneath him. He pulled at my overalls as I lay on my back. His full weight pressed down on my legs. 

He yanked my overalls from my shoulders, pulling them to my waist, but my arms caught in the sleeves.

I was half-naked and struggled to free my hands. I couldn't move one leg. I thrashed and flailed about, drowning in a raging sea of panic.

I tore my right arm free of my overalls. My hand brushed against the spanner in my pocket. I pulled it clear and waved it like a toy wildly in front of his eyes.

He said nothing but pawed at me, trying to roll me over. Terror overwhelmed me. I felt my strength and will dissolve. Those two traitors, Fear and Doubt, conspired in my mind: ‘Succumb to him, submit and do nothing…’

‘I’ll belt you with this fucking spanner, I don’t WANT to hurt you, but I WILL—I’ll fucking kill you,’ I screamed. My voice was alien to me, high-pitched and ineffectual—What more could I do?

Summoning the tattered remnants of my courage, I shoved the spanner into his cheek, pressing hard into the skin beneath his eye. His body slackened, and I felt the fight drain from him like blood from a carcass—and my confidence surged. 

I snarled, swore, and brandished my spanner, bashing the ship’s steelwork. The loud, booming echoes reverberated through the tunnel like a carillon of bells ringing to celebrate my deliverance. 

The engineer retreated. He crawled away from me, climbed aboard the trolley, and skulked back to the engine room. My ordeal was over. 

I sat there alone and distraught, gasping for breath. Shivering and shaken, I pulled up my overalls, gathered my wits and completed my work.

Afterwards, I climbed out of the tunnel through the appalling heat and stifling air of the cofferdam. I found my friends, the apprentices, skiving on deck in the sunlight. 

I had fought the engineer and prevailed but felt weary, humiliated, angry, and scared. I wanted no further confrontation and made no complaint against him. 

Fifty years have passed since I was that boy, and I still wonder how many boys or girls suffered at his hands because of my passivity. The guilt of my silence endures as a shadow that lingers on the passing of my youth.