The Sands of Shark Island

by Alexander McCall Smith

  But the prize that brought the biggest cheer was the one awarded to Tanya. Her prize was the Admiral Nelson Prize, which was always given to the person who had done the kindest deed that term. Tanya was awarded that for helping to treat Henry’s broken leg, and most people felt she richly deserved the prize.

  But not everybody thought this. Three members of the school scowled when Tanya walked forward to receive the prize, and one of them actually hissed under his breath – not that the Captain heard. The leader of this little group was William Edward Hardtack, the unpopular Head Prefect of Upper Deck, and his two equally unpleasant friends were Geoffrey Shark, widely known for his cruel ways and his hairstyle, which was remarkably similar to the fin of a shark, and Maximilian Flubber, whose ears moved whenever he told a lie – which was often enough. These three mocked anybody who won a prize, although it was widely believed that they would love to win a prize themselves.

  “There should be a prize for awfulness,” Poppy said. “And we all know who’d get that one – William Edward Hardtack.”

  Hardtack, who was standing nearby, over-heard this. “I heard you, Carrot-Top,” he hissed. “I’m going to get you one of these days. You just watch out.”

  Calling Poppy Carrot-Top because of her red hair was typical of Hardtack, who always tried to think of a cutting nickname for people. It did not worry Poppy, of course, who just laughed it off, but there were some who were upset by such insults.

  And there were also those who would be frightened by Hardtack’s threat to ‘get’ them. He was always threatening to ‘get’ people. Poppy was quite capable of looking after herself, but it could be different for people who felt a bit more vulnerable.

  After the Captain had finished, the liberty boats – the small rowing boats used to get ashore – were lowered to take everybody from the Tobermory to the town of Tobermory itself, where the ship anchored for the holiday. There people would be taken on two large buses that would cross to the mainland of Scotland by ferry before making their way to the station at Fort William, where they would either be picked up by their parents or board a train that would eventually get them home.

  Once everybody had gone, there were only the teachers and Ben and Fee’s group of friends left on board. The five students stood at the gangway, their kitbags ready beside them, waiting for the arrival of the Seabed Explorer.

  “I hope they haven’t forgotten us,” said Fee nervously.

  “Of course they haven’t,” Ben reassured her. “They’ve never let us down before, Fee.”

  They did not have to wait too long. About half an hour after everybody else had gone ashore, Poppy cried out that she had seen something moving in the sea not far from where the Tobermory was anchored.

  Rushing to join her at the railing, the others gazed where Poppy was pointing. Was that commotion in the water just a bigger wave, or perhaps a playful seal, or was it something else? It was something else. Slowly a dark shape rose under the water and then, with a final thrust, it broke the surface, its conning tower throwing off the water in a cascade of foam.

  “That’s them!” shouted Ben. “That’s our submarine!”

  They made their way over to the submarine in the rubber boat that Ben and Fee had brought with them when they first joined the Tobermory. It was a bit of a tight fit for the five of them and their kit-bags, but they managed to squeeze in, and the calm water that morning made the crossing quite easy. As they climbed onto the submarine, they waved to Matron, who was standing on the deck of the Tobermory with Cook, her husband.

  “Have a good holiday,” shouted Matron across the water.

  “We will,” shouted back Poppy, who was good at projecting her voice across wide spaces. She had learned to do that in the Outback in Australia, she had explained once. “When there’s nothing about you for miles and miles,” she said, “you learn to shout. None of us really bothers with telephones in the Outback – we just shout. People usually hear you.”

  Ben and Fee’s mother welcomed them all aboard and helped them lower their kitbags down the conning tower ladder. Then, when they were all safely on board and the rubber dinghy had been deflated and stowed away, they were shown the bunks where they would sleep on the journey to Glasgow. This trip would take more than a whole day, as research submarines are not designed to go all that fast, and there would be fish and other marine life to look at on the way. Once in Glasgow, the submarine would be tied up in dock and they would all go off for the two weeks of the holiday in the small village where Ben and Fee’s family had their home.

  Fee introduced the three guests to her parents, and everybody shook hands.

  “We’re delighted that you can spend your holiday with us,” said Ben’s father. “We’ve heard a lot about you in the postcards that Ben and Fee have been sending home.”

  Mrs MacTavish looked at her watch. “Well, if everybody’s ready,” she said, “I think we should go. I don’t know if you’ve had breakfast already, but I was planning to serve fried eggs once we were underway.”

  Ben glanced guiltily at Fee. Cook had made a good breakfast for everybody that morning, but he always liked his mother’s fried eggs and he was anxious for his friends to try them.

  “Even if you’ve already eaten I see no reason why you shouldn’t have two breakfasts,” said Mr MacTavish. “If you have a second breakfast you can eat the things you forgot to eat at the first.”

  There was no arguing with that, and the submarine hatch was closed. Then, amid a thick mass of bubbles, the vessel began to sink below the surface. At the observation window, the three guests – Poppy, Tanya and Badger – watched in fascination as the Seabed Explorer began to glide through the water. It was all so different down below. Large fish swam past, unconcerned by what they thought was just another sea creature – a whale perhaps; fronds of seaweed swayed gracefully in the water like tree branches in the wind; even crabs could be seen scuttling about sideways on the sea bed below.

  After half an hour, Mrs MacTavish served fried eggs. These were every bit as delicious as they smelled, and everybody wolfed them down. Then they were all given a turn at steering the submarine, while Fee explained the controls to them. They would not stay underwater for the entire trip, she explained, as it was quicker to travel on the surface like any other boat.

  They made good progress, and by late afternoon they were level with the top of the island of Jura, a small mountainous island off the Scottish coast. And that was where something alarming occurred. It was the sort of thing that makes you feel cold inside when you remember it later on. It was the sort of thing that makes you wake up at night in a cold sweat, just thinking about it. And like many such things, it all took place rather quickly and without anybody being prepared for it. This is what happened.

  The whirlpool

  Just off the west coast of Scotland there is a channel of water that is not very wide called the Gulf of Corryvreckan. It is far too broad, though, to swim across – unless you’re a very strong long-distance swimmer. And even then, trying to swim across the Gulf of Corryvreckan would be a very foolhardy thing to do. The reason for that is because in the middle of this channel is the third largest whirlpool in the world.

  Fee told Poppy and Tanya all about it as they made their way down the coast of Scotland in the MacTavish submarine.

  “A whirlpool?” marvelled Tanya. “A real whirlpool? With water that goes round and round like this?”

  She made a circling movement with her hand, and Fee nodded.

  “Yes,” Fee said. “You know what it’s like when you take the plug out of the bath and the last of the water is draining away, it goes round and round faster. That’s a small whirlpool. It’s the same thing.”

  “But where’s the sea draining to?” asked Poppy. “You’re not saying there’s a plug, are you?”

  Fee laughed. “No. There’s no plug. What happens is this. When the tide comes in it wants to get through the narrow channel, you see. But in the middle of the channel there’s a sort o
f underwater mountain. It doesn’t reach the surface, but it’s pretty big.”

  Poppy thought she could see what was coming. “So when the tide comes in it has to go round the mountain?”

  “That’s exactly what happens,” said Fee.

  “And when water goes round and round,” said Tanya, “you always get a sort of hole in the surface – just like in the bath.”

  Fee nodded, and went on to explain that the whirlpool in the sea only happened when the tide was strong. Once the tide stopped coming in or going out – at a point called slack tide, when the water wasn’t going anywhere – then the sea could be as calm as a sheet of glass.

  “So it’s safe to go through then?” asked Poppy.

  “Perfectly safe,” answered Fee. “All you have to do is work out when slack tide is, and start going through then.”

  Tanya shivered. “I’m not sure I could work that out,” she said. “And what if you got it wrong?”

  “If you got it wrong,” said Fee, “you’d be in trouble. Your boat could be sucked down and then …”

  “Then that’s the end of your boat,” said Poppy. And added, as if in an afterthought, “And of you too!”

  Tanya brightened; she had thought of something. “Of course, if you’re in a submarine – as we are – then it wouldn’t matter, would it? You would get sucked down, but that’s fine in a submarine, which is meant to be underwater.”

  Fee thought for a moment. “No, Tanya, you wouldn’t be all right,” she said. “If you were sucked down in a submarine you could be dashed against the underwater mountain.” She imagined what would happen then. “Or you’d be forced down onto the sea bed. If either of those things happened, your submarine could get a hole in it, and if you get a hole in a submarine …”

  “You never come up again,” finished Poppy.

  “So the important thing,” said Tanya thoughtfully, “is not to make a mistake.”

  It was at this point that Mr MacTavish came into the cabin where the girls were having this chat.

  “Time for you to go on watch, Fee,” he said. “Your friends can come and help you. I’ll go and tell the boys that you’re going to relieve them.” Ben and Badger had been on duty steering the submarine, and now it was their turn to have a rest while the girls took over.

  On their way to the control room, Mr MacTavish reminded Fee that they were approaching the Gulf of Corryvreckan.

  “You know about the whirlpool, don’t you?” he asked. “You know we can only go through on slack tide?”

  Fee told him she did. “I’m going to check the tide tables,” she said. “Then, if necessary, we can wait further out at sea until the tide is right and we’re ready to go through.”

  “That’s exactly what to do,” said her father. “You’re obviously learning a lot on that school ship of yours.”

  He was right. They had all been learning about tides with Mr Rigger. He had explained in a seaman-ship class one day how the tide spent six hours coming in and then the next six hours going out. That made four tides every day: two high and two low.

  “Except in some places,” Mr Rigger said.

  Poppy’s hand went up. “Yes, in parts of Australia,” she said. “Where I come from.”

  “That’s right,” said Mr Rigger. “In northern and southern Australia you only get …”

  “ … one of each a day,” provided Poppy. “One high and one low. That’s because we’ve got two oceans around us – the Pacific and the Indian.”

  “And they cancel each other out a bit,” said Mr Rigger. “Tides are just like water slopping round in a bowl – it bumps into things and gets all mixed up.”

  Fee remembered this as she went to the locker in the control room to find the tide tables. It would be easier to work things out before they took over from the boys, so she and Poppy began to page through the tables. These set out exactly when high and low tides would be on any particular day. They were quite simple, and she had used them before in Mr Rigger’s class.

  But then Fee made her mistake – and it was a mistake that could have cost them all their lives. The timings of tides differ widely depending on where you are. So if you are in the south of England, the time of high tide there might be very different from the time of high tide in the north of Scotland. Or if you are on the coast of Maine, say, high tide may not be at the same time as down at the tip of Florida.

  But that does not make tide tables for one place useless for others. You can still use the tables – all you have to do is adjust the times. Fee forgot to do this. And as a result, when she said that slack tide would be at two o’clock that afternoon, she was wrong. At two o’clock the tide would be coming in, and the water would be racing through the Gulf of Corryvreckan. So if they started to go through the channel at two, then they would be heading straight into danger.

  “We’ll go through at two o’clock,” she said, when she assumed control of the submarine.

  “Have you checked the tide tables?” asked Mr MacTavish.

  “Yes,” said Fee. “We’ve just done that.”

  “Good,” he said. “Then we’ll be safe.”

  He was wrong.

  They went through submerged, as it is always calmer down below the waves than on the surface. At first the submarine moved slowly as it glided through the dim green water, but then, quite suddenly, it began to rock slightly.

  It was Tanya who noticed it. “Why are we moving up and down?” she asked.

  “Are we?” asked Fee. She had not felt anything unusual, but then Poppy agreed with Tanya. She, too, could feel an unusual movement – rather like being on an aeroplane when it flies into some bumpy air, she thought.

  Now the rocking sensation became much stronger, and Fee noticed it too. Peering through the observation glass, she tried to work out what was happening. It was hard to make anything out, as the light, falling from the surface above in eerie shafts, was very weak. She thought she could see something ahead – a dark shape rising up from the seabed, but the next moment it seemed to have disappeared. Deciding to be on the safe side, she swung the submarine to the right – to starboard, as she had been taught to say. The nose of the underwater craft shifted, but not very much, and the next moment it swung back, as if pushed by some great unseen hand.

  “Is something wrong?” asked Poppy, a note of anxiety rising in her voice.

  “I’m not sure,” said Fee.

  “We’re going faster,” said Tanya. “And look, I think we’re being turned round.”

  The submarine was now beginning to go out of control. As firmly as Fee pushed on the control column, equally – or even more – firmly did it resist. Outside, visible through the observation window, there were bubbles and pieces of seaweed being flung about as if they were trapped in an enormous washing machine.

  Fee’s parents had been alerted to the fact that something was wrong when they felt the unusual movement, and they were now trying to get back into the control room. But every time they took a step forward, they were thrown back by a lurch of the vessel. It was impossible for them to help.

  As the submarine spun round the great stack of rock Fee racked her brains to think of what she should do. She had tried steering the submarine, but it was simply not responding. And that was no surprise, with that force of water rushing round it, hurling it in a desperate circle.

  She closed her eyes for a moment and thought, What would Mr Rigger do? As she did so, she thought she saw him, standing there in his fine white uniform, his moustache waving in the breeze. And then she remembered something he had once said: If all else fails, try putting the ship in reverse!

  She opened her eyes again. They were very close to the rock now, and she thought that at any moment they would hit it. And then, reaching forward, she pulled the lever that would put the submarine’s engine into reverse.

  For a moment nothing happened. But after a few seconds, as the powerful engine went into reverse, she felt the vessel slow down. This gave her the chance to turn the cont
rol column as far over to starboard as it would go.

  “We’re turning,” shouted Poppy.

  Fee pushed harder, and suddenly, as a cork or a float might pop out of the water when released, they shot out of the whirlpool into calmer water.

  “You’ve done it!” yelled Tanya, flinging her arms round Fee. “You’ve done it, Fee!”

  Poppy gave a whoop of delight. “I thought we wouldn’t make it,” she said.

  Now that the submarine was steady once more, Fee’s parents were able to join her in the control room. They were followed by Ben and Badger, both boys having been knocked about a bit by the violent bucking of the submarine.

  With Mrs MacTavish now at the controls, the others gathered round the chart table to discuss what had gone wrong. As soon as she saw her tide calculations on a scrap of paper, Fee realised what her mistake had been.

  “It was my fault,” she said miserably. She found herself shaking as she spoke; it was only now dawning on her what a close-run thing it had been.

  Mr MacTavish put an arm about her shoulder. “Every single one of us,” he said, “has made a bad mistake some time or other.” He paused, and looked at the others about him. “Hands up anybody who’s never made a mistake.”

  Not a single hand went up.

  “Well, there you are,” he continued. “So nobody’s blaming you, Fee. The important thing at sea – and anywhere else, I suppose – is to learn from your mistakes.”

  Fee felt grateful to her father. She would have understood had he told her off publicly in front of her friends for threatening the safety of the submarine – and risking the lives of all of them, for that matter – but he did not. He was a kind man, and she was proud to have him as her father.

  “Thank you,” she whispered under her breath.

  He smiled. “I bet you won’t make that mistake again!” he whispered back.