MAMBAS ARE DEADLY

Gazing at a photograph of my father’s post-war Liberty ship Fort Spokane sailing under Sydney Harbour Bridge made me wonder about the scope and energy of this man from Loch Lomondside whose wanderlust made him stoke that cargo ship, to work his passage to Australia.

My dad's ship sailing under Sydney Harbour Bridge, 1950

The wandering sailor had even been in Tasmania before me, I know, and in Canada before me for sure. I was born there when he and my mother Cathie settled near Toronto for seven years. My older brother Fearghas came with her to join him and Stuart was born in Toronto before my father found work in Ajax where I came along.

He was an apprentice plater in Denny’s shipyard in Dumbarton, Scotland, but sent to Mombasa to hammer buckled frigates back together in the Second World War, and became a young petty officer in the Royal Navy.

His ship was torpedoed in the Indian Ocean. He said he would like to tell us he had been heroic, calmly informing the captain when he and a fellow officer of the watch saw a silver trail ripping through phosphorescent sea towards their ship that dark and, he admitted, fearful night. But he wasn’t and he ran one way and the other ran another, and they collided with each other in stark desperation. The “fish” crashed in through the ship’s shattered bow plates and they waited for the moment the explosion would send them down. Yet, death did not come that night. The torpedo was a dud. 

This insatiable reader and amateur writer often spoke of his love of Ernest Hemingway, his terse style, his economy of description in conveying love or hate or fear. What he didn’t tell us was that he could do this himself. He was rumbled by Fearghas and a story was published in the Scottish literary magazine Chapman (issue 47-48) - a tale of a vicious struggle in a Mombasa Military Police cell. This then, from a man who stoked tons of powdered coal across the world and saw things to inspire the eye of a writer:

MAMBAS ARE DEADLY

 By Stuart McKinlay (Sen.) Deceased

My dad, Stuart McKinlay (Sen.)

The cell door lay open and the bright sunlight hurt my eyes. I just sat there and thought what I was going to say when they came for me.

The events were clear in my mind.

It all started one night in the Fleet Canteen in Mombasa. I was sitting there drinking beer, under waving palm trees and the wide African sky. Then a fight started.

This night the place was full. Half of the Pacific Fleet was in harbour. As usual the Big-ship men got to arguing with the Destroyer men, and I managed to get involved in the fracas that followed. Personally, I couldn’t have cared less about their crummy tin-cans, seeing as I was off the Boom-boat, which had the very unromantic task of dragging the anti-submarine net across the harbour entrance. But some clown knocked over my beer.

When the hullabaloo was at its height, I was dragged off by the beach patrol, heaved into the Chockey-waggon, and hauled up before the Officer of the Day. My apparently innocent escapade appeared as a heinous crime in the eyes of that good man. It staggered him. I had to be dealt with at a higher level. He put me on Commander’s report.

At the trial, it was evident that I had played a major roll in the disturbance. In fact, the evidence all seemed to suggest that I had planned and executed the entire battle. I was the ringleader; a trouble maker and a complete liability to the service, and a mutinous dog to boot.

Old Knocker White laid it on thick. Such conduct was detrimental to the good name of the Navy. This kind of thing had to be stopped. They were going to make an example of someone. You know the old crap. Somebody was going to be strung from the yardarm, and this time it was going to be me.

I was awarded twenty eight days detention (get that AWARDED), and second class for leave and conduct. On capped, about turned and marched off under escort.

I wasn’t worrying much. Twenty eight days were nothing. Although, when I doubled in the gates of Nyalli detention barracks with my kit-bag on my head, I had the feeling my troubles were just beginning.

Right away I ran foul of Stark. He was a sergeant of Military Police, which was probably the main reason he couldn’t live with himself. He landed me in trouble straight off. All I did was complain about the grub.

Once more I was branded as an agitator and a rabble-rouser. The Colonel in command of East African prisons gave me the business. Three days in solitary on prison diet number one, (Bread and water to you). That made good business for Stark. He was flogging our food anyway.

So they led me across the field to the cell which stands alone. I stood outside while Stark searched me thoroughly for tobacco or weapons - anything that would let them take another dig at me. He looked disappointed when he didn’t find anything.

“Have a good night’s sleep”, he sneered, as he shoved me inside. I glared at him, but said nothing. I was thinking there wouldn’t be much to do but sleep anyway. I didn’t know Stark.

I waited till the door clanged shut and his footsteps grew fainter. I waited while the stillness and blackness settled on me like layers of coal dust. Then from a small hole I had made in the fly of my pants, right next to the zipper where the cloth is doubled, I carefully extracted a cigarette and three matches. I held the cigarette in my mouth a long time savouring the taste. I struck a match and raised my cupped hands to my mouth. In the light cast by the flickering flame, I saw something writhing slowly in the corner of the cell. I looked closer, two snakes were coiled in a loathsome heap on the floor. The match fell from my palsied hand.

For half a minute there wasn’t a part of me that would move. It was as if the current had been switched off. Then suddenly the juice came on again, and I was all motion. The cigarette fell from my lips, as I leapt for the steel mesh which formed the ceiling. I only got half a grip on the wire with my left hand. My weight swung me sideways and I crashed heavily to the floor. I was on my feet in an instant, flattening myself against the wall. I tried to claw my way up the door. I was frantic. “Staff”, I screamed, “Staff”.

It was the sound of my own voice that brought me to my senses. It didn’t sound like my voice. It was high-pitched and shrill. The gibbering idiot clutching the cell door couldn’t be me. I took a grip of myself. My emotions had run away with me. I tried to think.

I stared at the inky blackness and tried to picture the layout of the cell. The only weapon in the place was the latrine bucket. It was somewhere in the right-hand corner. In the middle of the floor were three planks raised high at one end. It was all nailed together and too heavy to throw around. You usually slept with your head at the high end. That was about all. Yet there should have been something else. I couldn’t think what it was, but it seemed important. There was something you always did in the tropics before turning in at night; something besides using the bucket.

The mosquito net - that was it! You let down your mosquito net. Hope welled within me. Once inside the net with the bottom tucked under the bed I would be safe. I peered into the darkness. There should be a mosquito net tied up in a loose knot from the ceiling. It was regulations. They didn’t have to give you blankets, but there had to be a mosquito net; and I had to go over there and get it down.

I figured three steps from the door would take me to the bed-boards. I stepped out quickly - too quickly. My toe caught the low end of the boards and I fell on my mouth and nose on the cement floor.

If anything cold and clammy had touched me then, I would have passed out. My skin felt far too tight for me and I had a rotten feeling in my stomach. It was pure fear. If only I could see: if only I could see.

My left leg was lying across the corner of the bed-boards. I twisted round and desperately scrambled aboard the bed like it was a raft in a shark infested sea. Then I got a break. Something rolled under my hand. It was one of my matches. I struck it and looked. It was a sickening sight. There seemed to be two heads and one writhing, coiling body. I didn’t want to look, but I couldn’t look away. One snake was in the act of swallowing the other. I stared, till the match burned my fingers.

I reached up and pulled the mosquito net down around me like a tent, tucking it well under the bed—boards. They say a snake goes to sleep after a heavy meal. Maybe I should have felt safe. I didn’t. Not one little bit. I sat in the dark and sweated it out.

Hours passed, or maybe it was days, or weeks, before I heard footsteps and a rattling of bolts and locks. The door was flung open and a feeble light from the pale African dawn came in. Stark was right behind.

He was big and loud and laughing his head off. “Did you have a good sleep boy?” he cried. “How did you enjoy the company of my little petsy-wetsy, my little snakesy-wakesy? eh!” he chuckled.

The bitterness came in my mouth like the taste of epsom salts. The dirty louse. Imagine it! He’d put a snake in the cell just to give me the horrors.

A couple of things could have saved Stark in the next few minutes. I could have warned him. If the light had been better he would have seen his mistake; but the sun hadn’t yet been catapulted into the sky, bringing broad daylight.

I just stood there and watched, while he bent down and picked up his big harmless grass snake which gave him laughs with clowns like me.

Unfortunately his “petsy-wetsy” was inside a Green Mamba, which must have got into the cell through the air-vent.

He dangled it in front of him and cooed at it, until with a vicious whiplike movement it struck his face. He plucked it from him in consternation, pulling away flesh and blood where the fangs had penetrated his cheek. He smashed the wriggling horror repeatedly on the stone floor.

He knew what it was. He turned and looked at me, but he didn’t seem to see me. His face was grey. He stumbled out of the door. Halfway across the field he looked as if he was wading through cotton wool. He didn’t quite make it to the other side.

I went back and searched under the bed until I found the cigarette I had dropped and my last match.

I lit up and took a long drag.