A wind from Africa! Fee loved the sound of that; she had always wanted to see Africa, and although it was out of sight over the horizon, at least they would feel a wind that came from there. She imagined that it would be a warm wind, with a bit of sand in it, perhaps, carried all the way from the great Sahara Desert. Or it might smell of West African jungle, a green sort of smell, a reminder of the tall trees and hanging vines it had caressed before it set out to sea.
Fee liked to think about such things, but for the most part everybody was kept far too busy to daydream. Not only were there all the usual school classes – history and science, and things like that – but there were lessons devoted to subjects associated with the sea. One of these was a class run by Miss Worsfold on the sea and its creatures which was very popular and always packed.
The first of these classes was about dolphins. Just about everybody had seen dolphins by now, as these friendly creatures appeared almost every day, frolicking in the bow wave, accompanying the ship across mile after mile of sea before suddenly losing interest and darting off on some other business.
“They probably like the sound a ship makes,” said Miss Worsfold. “They like the creaking sound of the timbers. Perhaps it sounds like music to them.”
The class on dolphins was followed by one on whales.
“Whales have songs,” explained Miss Worsfold. “They sing these to each other over hundreds of miles. They sound like random squeaks to us, but the whales know what they mean.”
They learned about how people used to hunt whales for their oil, and how some cruel people still did that.
“They are very intelligent creatures,” said Miss Worsfold. “They have feelings, just like us.”
Tanya, in particular, was saddened by the story of the whales. She thought of the men in their whaling ships, with their sharp harpoons, chasing these gentle creatures until they were too exhausted to flee any more. “How would they like it,” she asked Fee, “if they were to be chased by whales with harpoons?”
Then there was a lesson on squid – odd, rubbery creatures with long tentacles and great dish-shaped eyes. Many squid are not all that big, Miss Worsfold told them, before going on to talk about giant squid, which live far below the surface and whose tentacles can be much longer than a person.
“They’re very elusive creatures,” Miss Worsfold explained, “so we don’t see them very much. But they are there, nonetheless, lurking way down below where the light never penetrates and it’s dark and gloomy.”
Poppy glanced at Tanya, and shivered. “Imagine having a giant squid down below you when you’re swimming,” she whispered.
Tanya closed her eyes. “I’d never get in the water if I thought there might be a giant squid beneath me.”
“But how would you know?” asked Poppy. “We can’t see much underwater, can we? So there could be giant squid anywhere, just waiting for their chance.”
“To do what?” asked Tanya, by now thoroughly alarmed.
“To shoot up from down below and grab you in its tentacles,” said Poppy.
“Now, girls,” said Miss Worsfold. “Don’t worry about things that are very unlikely to happen. There have been no recorded instances of a giant squid attacking anybody.”
“There’s always a first time,” muttered Poppy. “We knew somebody back in Australia who said that dingoes – those wild dogs we have – never harmed anybody. Then he went for a walk in the bush and he never came back. They just found his shoes – that was all.”
“Eaten by dingoes?” asked Tanya.
“Who knows?” said Poppy.
About a week into the voyage the wind that had blown them down from Scotland disappeared. Mr Rigger was sure that the wind from Africa would not be long in coming, but for a few days they were becalmed, the sails hanging limp on their spars or fluttering gently and ineffectually from their masts like washing hung out to dry.
Mr Rigger explained that they could turn on the engine, but that this would use a lot of fuel.
“We like to save our fuel,” he announced to the school at morning muster. “There may come a time when we really need it to get out of trouble. So the Captain says we’re to wait this out. The wind will come sooner or later, and that’ll set us off on our course like a rabbit across a field.”
Being becalmed was a strange sensation. The sea was utterly still – a great flat expanse of water, like silvery glass, reflecting the sky. Every so often, the surface would be broken by movement of some sort – a flying fish, perhaps, escaping from a bigger fish below – but for the most part it seemed as if the ocean was one great sleepy pool.
The Tobermory drifted with the current, but even that was not very strong, hardly moving in places, and sometimes seeming just to go round in circles. Since they could make no progress in their voyage, the Captain authorised swimming parties, with each deck being allowed to take it in turns to have a dip from the side of the ship. A special ladder was lowered with a platform at the end of it where people could sit and dangle their legs in the water or use it to dive from.
Ben and Fee were both strong swimmers, as were Poppy and Badger. Thomas was even better, as he had been brought up in Jamaica in a house right beside the sea, and he had been able to swim ever since he had been old enough to walk. Tanya and Angela Singh were not so experienced though, and Angela in particular was nervous about entering the water.
“Come on!” shouted Poppy from the water when it was Middle Deck’s turn to swim alongside the gently drifting ship. “The water’s really warm.”
Standing on the platform, Tanya and Angela hesitated. They looked at each other for encouragement.
“Shall we?” asked Tanya.
“I suppose so,” said Angela. “We don’t want them to think we’re scared.”
They looked at the others, who were already frolicking in the sea. Ben had dive-bombed Badger, who was energetically splashing him in self-defence. Poppy and Thomas were busy checking how far they could see underwater – not far, as it happened, as the ocean was very deep at that point and everything disappeared into an infinite blue beneath them.
At last Tanya jumped in, quickly followed by Angela. When they resurfaced, both were smiling. The water was pleasantly warm – just as Poppy had said it would be – and it was a wonderful feeling to be surrounded by such a vast amount of ocean. It was like floating in space, with nothing below you …
Below you … Tanya began to think about what might be down there. Thousands of feet of water, and … Suddenly she was gripped by a feeling of cold panic. Giant squid … what if a giant squid were at this very moment looking up from the depths with its eyes as big as saucepans, gazing at legs dangling down from above? And what would a giant squid think in such circumstances, especially if it happened to be hungry?
It was too much to bear, and Tanya struck out for the side of the ship as fast as she possibly could, creating a splash of white water as she did so. Shaking with fear, she hauled herself up onto the platform, noticing, as she did so, that Angela was not far behind her.
“I suddenly felt really frightened,” Tanya said to Angela as she helped her friend out of the water.
“Me too,” said Angela. “Giant …”
“… squid,” completed Tanya.
They looked at one another and smiled. They didn’t care if people laughed at them; better to be thought scared than to be wrapped in the tentacles of a giant squid.
Tanya and Angela soon dried off and climbed the ladder back onto the main deck. They were still in their swimming costumes and were about to go down below to change when they sensed the first breath of wind.
“Did you feel that?” asked Tanya. “I’m sure I felt a breeze.”
Angela nodded. “Yes,” she said. “That was definitely a puff of wind.”
Within a few seconds, there could be no doubt about it. What had started as the tiniest breath, the smallest movement in the air, now became a gust of real wind, hot and dry. It was the wind from Africa.
; From his position on the quarter deck, Mr Rigger walked swiftly over to the railing. Putting his whistle to his mouth he blew several long blasts – the agreed signal to let the swimmers know they had to come in immediately. In the water down below, Poppy looked up and waved to show that she had heard the whistle.
“Time to get out,” she called to Fee, who was floating in the water a few yards away.
Fee looked around. Ben, Badger and Thomas had not climbed out yet and must still somewhere in the water nearby – but where?
“Have you seen the boys?” she called to Poppy.
Poppy had not. “They’ll have heard the signal,” she said. “They’ll turn up. Maybe they’re on the other side of the ship.”
She was right – at least about their being on the other side of the ship. But she was wrong about their having heard the signal. When Mr Rigger blew his whistle, Ben, Badger and Thomas had been diving underwater, seeing how long they could hold their breath, and they were quite unaware that it was time to get out. And now, even as Fee and Poppy clambered out of the water onto the platform, the Tobermory began to move through the water. Although her sails were not yet even half-full, they were beginning to billow in the wind, providing some pull for the ship.
Down in the water, Badger tried to keep calm.
“Try not to panic,” he called out to his fellow swimmers. “Save your strength to keep afloat.”
“Do you think they’ve seen us?” spluttered Ben.
“I hope so,” said Thomas. “Otherwise …”
Ben felt himself gripped by despair. He felt terribly lonely – a tiny creature in a vast ocean, with only two other equally frightened people to keep him company. It occurred to him that Mr Rigger might have thought they were already on board and that any moment Ben would see the sails pulled out and the ship gather speed. And if that happened, how long would it be before they were missed? There was a muster call later in the afternoon; they would certainly be missed then, but that was some hours off and it would take the ship a long time to retrace its course to find them. By then it could be too late, as they would not be able to keep afloat indefinitely.
Ben thought this, and in fact it was exactly what the other two boys were thinking. None of them said anything about it, though – each was alone with his nightmare.
“Let’s start swimming towards the ship,” said Thomas. “Don’t thrash around in the water – swim slowly and firmly. I’m sure they’ll turn back soon.”
Ben and Badger did as he suggested, and as they swam Badger told them what had happened to him once in Maine.
“I went swimming at the beach one day,” he said. “Usually that beach is safe enough, but that day there was a rip. Do you know what a rip is?”
Thomas did, but Ben did not, so Badger explained. “It’s a strong current that flows parallel to the beach,” he said. “It carries you along with it and it’s really strong. You can’t swim back to the beach once you’re in a rip – you’ll just exhaust yourself and drown.”
“So what do you do?” asked Ben, trying hard not to feel any current in the water around them.
“You let it carry you along,” said Badger. “Then you swim out of it once it slackens. That’s what happened to me. I survived.”
“Obviously,” said Thomas Seagrape. “Otherwise you wouldn’t be able to tell this story, would you?”
As they were having this conversation, up on the deck of the Tobermory, Mr Rigger’s attention had been attracted by Henry, who was standing at the stern, looking out at the sea and barking as loudly as he could. Everybody was used to Henry doing this from time to time – particularly when he thought he saw a mermaid – and for the most part they ignored it. But this time there was something in the tone of the dog’s bark that made Mr Rigger uneasy.
“Have you seen something, Henry?” he asked, going over to stand beside him. As he asked this question, he looked down at the water behind their wake, and what he saw made him gasp in horror.
“Swing her round,” he called to the person at the helm. “Hard to port!” Shouting out orders that the sails should be dropped, he immediately started the ship’s engines and rushed to take control of the wheel. This took some time, but it soon became apparent to the boys in the water that they had been seen and that help was on its way.
“We’re safe!” exclaimed Thomas. “They’re coming back for us.”
Had they not been in the water, Ben would have jumped for joy; as it was, all that he could manage to do was to stop swimming for a moment and clap his hands together as energetically as he could. Badger did the same thing, as did Thomas.
Captain Macbeth had now come up on deck and stood beside Mr Rigger at the helm.
“Carry on, Mr Rigger,” he said. “I’m here if you need me.”
With all the skill of an experienced helmsman, Mr Rigger guided the ship towards the three boys. Then, stopping the engine so that they would be in no danger from the propeller, he ordered a boat to be lowered. This was rowed across to where they were doggy-paddling in the water. Matron, who was in charge of the boat, reached down and hauled each one up in turn, spluttering like half-drowned rats. Then, with all three safe, the crew rowed them safely back to the Tobermory.
At dinner that night, all eyes were on the three boys.
“You were really lucky,” said Poppy. “That could have turned out very differently.”
“Well, it didn’t,” pronounced Ben. “And that’s the important thing. Thanks to Henry.”
“A giant squid could have eaten you,” Tanya chipped in.
“Well, it didn’t,” said Badger, echoing Ben. “So what’s the point of worrying about something that didn’t happen?”
Nobody could think of an answer to that, so nothing more was said about it. That night, though, Ben dreamt that he was in the sea all by himself, miles and miles from land, with not a ship in sight. It was not a pleasant dream, and when he woke he was pleased to find himself in his hammock, being gently rocked by the movement of the ship. It was a safe, secure feeling, and he felt even safer when he looked across the cabin in the dark and saw Badger in his hammock, which was also swinging ever so slightly as the Tobermory made its way across the empty ocean, blown on its course by the warm wind from Africa.
Ready-made knots
With the wind in their sails they made good progress across the wide Atlantic. Some of the young people on the Tobermory had done an ocean crossing before, but for Ben and Fee it was all new, and even those days when nothing much happened seemed exciting enough to them.
“I could do this forever,” Ben said to his sister, when they were talking together on deck one morning. “Isn’t it wonderful, Fee? Being out here, so far from everything, with just the sea all about us?”
Fee agreed. She loved the open sea and she loved being there with her friends. “I don’t want this voyage to end,” she said. “It’s just perfect.”
Of course it was not all just fun. The Tobermory was, after all, a school as well as a ship, and they had normal classes to attend. Each morning after breakfast, once they had finished the tasks assigned to them – scrubbing the decks, trimming the sails, and so on – they all filed into the ship’s classrooms for the day’s lessons. Because there were too many people to fit into a single room, they were divided into groups, each named after the points of the compass. So there was North Group, which included Fee, Poppy and Angela, and which would do maths, whilst South Group, in which Badger, Ben and Thomas found themselves, would do science. In the meantime, East Group would be studying oceanography with Miss Worsfold while West Group would be hard at work in Mr O’Brian’s history class.
While classes were in progress, there were always some people who were excused because they were on duty, serving what was called a watch. These people would spend the whole morning on deck, attending to the ropes and sails or helping the helmsman and navigator to keep the ship going in the right direction. They did that for three days, and then it was somebody else’s turn and they w
ent back to the classroom. Most people enjoyed every minute of their watch. Sometimes something exciting would happen – there would be a sudden squall or gust of wind, perhaps, or they would see another ship – but for the most part it was a simple routine which many of them, including Ben and Fee, felt they were beginning to master.
Then there was lunch, which marked the end of classes, or at least of classes in the ordinary school subjects – land subjects, as they called them. In the afternoon there would be more instruction, but this was always connected with the business of sailing. These classes, known as sea training, were always held in small groups of five or six people, and were always very practical.
“We’re not telling you how to do things,” said Mr Rigger. “We’re showing you how to do them.”
One of the most popular subjects was knots, which was taught by Mr Rigger himself. It was said that as a young man he had been the champion knottier of the Royal Navy, but nobody knew whether this was true or not. Mr Rigger was too modest to confirm or deny it, and simply smiled when asked directly. “Can’t say yes, can’t say no,” he would reply. But if you watched him tying a knot, you were left in no doubt at all that here was a real expert.
“Show us how fast you can tie a bowline, sir,” Badger asked one afternoon. “They say that you’re …”
Even before Badger could finish his sentence, there was a flurry of rope and hands and there before them, beautifully tied, was the famous bowline knot – a circle that looked rather like the end of a cowboy’s lasso.
Badger whistled in admiration. “That was fast, sir!” he exclaimed.
“If you practise, you’ll be just as fast,” said Mr Rigger, with a smile. “Now, everybody pay attention and I’ll show you how to do it.”
He took a length of rope and made a circle with one end. “Now,” he said, “this goes in here, over there, through that, and then down again ... like so!”
The Sands of Shark Island Page 6