by Julia Jones
Great Aunt Ellen looked as if she’d like to chuck him straight back.
“Get him below,” she snarled at Skye, who didn’t need hearing to understand what was meant, and to June, politely, “Perhaps you’d radio Spray to let them know all’s well? Then, if you wouldn’t mind wielding the boat hook, we’ll see how many of your family’s possessions we can fish out again before we get back on course.”
Dried, warmed and with half a mug of hot sweet tea inside him, Donny fell asleep in Skye’s arms.
It was mid-morning when they were summoned back on deck. Strong Winds was about to enter the Noord Hinder Traffic Separation Scheme.
“It’s not that you’ve escaped a thorough keel-hauling, reduction to the ranks for six months, docking of pay for a year and bilge-scrubbing duty indefinitely,” said Gold Dragon.
She had two deep new furrows running south-north between her eyebrows.
“It’s more that you and your mother have the sharpest sets of eyes on board this vessel and I might be found to be in breach of regulations if I neglected to make use of you for the next few hours. Since you’re unexpectedly available, that is,” she said, pausing to scowl ferociously at him before she carried on issuing orders.
“Visibility’s reducing fast and I expect heavy rain showers. Collect harnesses and full sets of oilskins and position yourselves on the port side. Traffic headed down-channel will be bearing somewhere around 40 degrees but we’ll be crossing at right angles so expect to see them broadside on. We’ll hardly have time to take bearings. The big fellows’ll be coming down at about twenty knots. That’s a mile every three minutes and, by my reckoning, visibility’s less than two miles already.”
“Have you not considered fitting a small radar set?” June enquired. She had not looked at Donny or spoken to him. She was still very angry.
“Money. Plus not expecting to be harried off by a scavenging pack of scurvy bureau-rats. I wasn’t even carrying enough diesel for a full trip such as this.”
“Why are we using the engine now?” Donny enquired timidly. “There seems to be plenty of wind.”
“And plenty more to come. We’re using the engine because we’re expecting some fairly unpleasant beam seas. We have to cross the TSS at 90 degrees. Best to get it over quickly, then we’ll bear away, switch the little donkey off and take them on the quarter.”
It didn’t feel like morning anymore. Everything was sludgy brown-grey with heavy charcoal clouds billowing up to starboard, and a thick wet haze obscuring the difference between sky and sea.
“Gold Dragon, Mrs Ribiero ... I need to tell you something. And Mum as well.”
June looked at him coldly but didn’t speak.
“Spit it out then,” said Great Aunt Ellen.
So he told them about seeing the Hispaniola slipping up the river on Sunday morning in the deadtime before the dawn; about searching for her but not finding her and about her continued absence from her Shotley mooring. He told them about Toxic too, the questions she’d asked him on Friday afternoon, the threatened visit to Strong Winds and the information she already had. He even told them about her plan to send him to be bashed up by Flint after school on Mondays.
“No wonder you jumped ship,” said June speaking to him for the first time. She’d pulled the hood of her heavy weather jacket down so its peak shadowed her face. Her voice was cool; he couldn’t read her expression at all. He assumed that she despised him.
“Actually,” he said. “That was about the only thing I wasn’t thinking of when I decided I needed to be back here with my mum. With my own family. I ...”
He stopped again. He couldn’t start telling her how ... dismissed he’d felt when Joshua began talking so casually about his intention to walk away from his problems at the hospital and to take his family to live abroad. Maybe it was good that he had felt he could talk to Donny like that, the two of them, in the early morning, sailing a boat together – but he’d so obviously had no idea that it might matter. That Donny might ... mind.
Time to change the subject.
“I know I’m needed to be keeping a lookout but could I take a quick look at the chart? I thought I sort of knew about it – from reading the book – but there wasn’t such a thing as a Traffic Separation Scheme in Arthur Ransome’s day.”
“Nor when I last pointed my bows in this direction, either,” Gold Dragon agreed. The North Sea might look featureless but it wasn’t. Not when you couldn’t quite remember whether you were navigating in the twentieth or the twenty-first centuries. Whether you existed now or in some odd time warp.
They were two cables away from the official start of the TSS and her own keen sight had registered nothing problematical as yet. She brought her logbook down to the chart table. She’d been using the GPS in the cockpit to check their position. It was time she transferred that data to the chart. A neat line of position-fixing crosses. Sinbad would like that.
He’d gazed at this chart so often, choosing it from the rack of charts, almanacs and pilot guides in Strong Winds’ cabin, plotting fantasy expeditions during those long winter evenings. Now he was here, bruised and nervous, doing it for real, while the junk rolled gut-wrenchingly from side to side and the drumming of her engine pushed her determinedly ahead.
“If you were the Tiger and you were planning to attack,” he asked. “Whereabouts would you do it?”
“Why the hell did you think I didn’t want you on board?” Gold Dragon asked him in reply.
CHAPTER TEN
Mayday!
Southern North Sea, Monday 16 April 2007
“What sort of answer is that? If this trip isn’t safe enough for me, it’s not safe for my mum either. Or for Xanthe and Maggi’s mother. What is it with you, Gold Dragon? What do you know about these people? They wanted to make you turn and run and now you have. Why isn’t that enough? You say we’re in danger ... well, why?”
Gold Dragon looked ancient and exhausted: she also looked angry.
“Put a locking hitch on your tongue, young man, before I’m tempted to slip one round your neck. Do you think I haven’t asked myself that question? You think I press-ganged your mother and June Ribiero to sign on for this voyage, knowing that there might be more than dirty weather in prospect? You’re way off beam.”
“So why did you want to leave me behind?”
He knew he was sounding like a kid but that was how she was treating him.
“Apart from the little matter of the passport? Because, with you dutifully turning up at school and the doctor to his hospital, we still have a stake in the System. They know we’re going to come back so they’ve got to keep it legal. That’s what I’d hoped – before you came floundering across.”
He supposed she’d had to make decisions pretty fast.
“So you didn’t know about Mr Ribiero’s meeting? He resigned from his job last Friday and he’s seeing the manager or someone today to confirm it. Then the Ribieros are all going to leave as well.”
“Does June know that?”
“Not that he’s definitely resigned, no.”
“Then that’s the second piece of rank bad news you’ve lugged on board.”
For a moment she stood there, indecisive. She even seemed unsteady.
He’d never seen Gold Dragon look this way on board Strong Winds. Hesitantly he stepped towards her and held out his arm. She gripped it hard with her one good hand. Then they heard the sound of the engine being throttled back.
The junk’s momentum slowed dramatically and she began to roll so hard it felt as if she was wallowing herself into a pit. Great Aunt Ellen snapped back instantly into Polly Lee and headed for the companionway.
“You still haven’t answered my question,” Donny called after her. “What exactly do you know?”
Gold Dragon looked back for a moment. Her bright blue eyes were sad.
“I’m eighty whatever-I-am,” she said. “My memory’s shot full of holes. I know there must be a connection but I simply can’t remember what
it is.”
June had slowed the junk to give clearance to a super-tanker going south down the traffic lane. Its low black hull seemed to go on forever as it passed. Then, as it pulled away, Donny realised how swiftly it was travelling. They’d better not take time off for a single blink.
When the tanker’s wash came rolling by, the waves seemed to double in size. June turned the junk to face them. Strong Winds began to take huge, twisting leaps as the water heaved beneath her. June reached into her pocket for a packet of Stugeron, passed two to Skye and took two herself.
“What about you?” she asked Donny. “Have you taken anything?”
“Um, I’m probably okay,” he said. “Thanks.”
Gold Dragon was hoisting something white and cylindrical to the top of the mainmast. Donny gazed upwards. The masthead seemed to have taken on a life of its own, scribing parabolas against the clouds like some gigantic etch-a-sketch. Watching it made him feel weird. Maybe he should have accepted a couple of sea-sick pills. His great-aunt was wearing a safety harness but hardly seemed to need it: her balance was extraordinary.
“So you do have a radar reflector!” June commented, as if there might have been some difference of opinion earlier.
“Damn silly things. Wouldn’t make a blip’s worth of difference to a big chap like that.”
“But you’ve decided to hoist it all the same. Why’s that, I wonder? New-found respect for the regulations? That would be a surprise!”
The warmth was creeping back into June’s voice.
“I’ve decided to go public. I’d hoped to slip across unnoticed and, as you know, a wooden boat makes a very poor target for radar. But young Sinbad’s brought as much bad news as a Jonah in reverse so I want to plant a dot on the coastguards’ screen. From now on any VHF transmissions that we make will be full power on Channel 16 and using correct identifiers.”
A survey team on a low-flying helicopter had already noticed the junk. For two of the three-man crew she was simply a curiosity: a brief unexpected diversion during a routine data-collecting exercise in the Southern North Sea. For the third man she was a shock. He stopped his meticulous annotation and stared down at her. A powerful sense came over him that something which was lost could be found and that there was truth in dreams.
Gold Dragon was telling June why she thought Donny’s failure to turn up at school plus Joshua’s resignation from the hospital had put them in danger.
“I’ll dance a hornpipe if I’m wrong, but I’ve lived with pirates. One sniff of weakness and they’re streaking for the kill. We’ve cut ourselves adrift and it might suit them if we never make it to the other side. Our only comfort is that it won’t be the powerboat in these conditions, it’ll be the schooner. She’s got powerful engines and she’s tough as they come, but we should see her masts a half mile or so before she sees us.”
“What then?” asked June.
Donny was almost too scared to want to know but he kept on signing to Skye. They were all in this together. She needed to understand.
“A soon as we spot those three tall masts we’ll send a nice loud Pan-Pan message claiming engine trouble. We’ll sound – god dammit – feminine! We’ll get the authorities out looking for us. Okay. Action stations. All eyes peeled.”
But no-one spotted the fake Hispaniola as they rolled their way across the TSS. Donny was positioned at Strong Winds’ bows, June amidships and Skye in the cockpit gazing fixedly over the junk’s high stern.
They didn’t see her when Polly Lee steered them with pinpoint accuracy to a gap in the long West Hinder Bank and took them through with breaking water metres away on either side.
This wasn’t the route for Rotterdam. Gold Dragon had set a new course south-east towards Belgium. They should arrive off the coast at twilight about two hours after low water. Then, if they had the strength, they could take the flood up into the Westerschelde and spend the night at Vlissingen, before entering the Dutch canal system the following day.
“And if we’re impounded on arrival, tant pis. You can all go back to England and I’ll sit it out eating schnitzel and frites until Edward gets home from his holiday. We all stay safe and the Tiger can go gnaw knucklebones.”
She caught them in the shallows just as night was closing in. She must have been shadowing them all day. Possibly she’d been one of that scatter of ships anchored beyond the Sunk, apparently waiting for the tide. Snow Goose could have passed her on the return trip into Harwich but Joshua and Xanthe wouldn’t have known.
Nor would Skye, watching steadfastly out over Strong Winds’ high stern, have recognised her, even if she’d seen her.
Which she didn’t because the fake Hispaniola kept out of sight. She was low in the water now so she could hide behind the Earth’s slight curve.
The ex-schooner no longer had three tall masts. It had taken less than an hour for a waiting crane to lift them out in Ipswich dock early on Sunday morning. Then she’d been winched up onto a cradle underneath a high tarpaulin. When she’d emerged she was no longer rusting red and white; she was gunmetal grey. That tint which blends so well with the colour of the sea – or with the no man’s land that merges sea and sky on a louring, stormy day.
Neither was she nameless. She was MV Pride of Macao. She had S band radar, two full tanks of diesel and a gun. You’d have thought she was ready to enforce national or international law in dangerous waters. Not that it was she who was setting out to make those waters dangerous.
Strong Winds’ crew was tired. They’d endured a blustery crossing and had been on high alert for hours. Finally they were nearing safe havens: Zeebrugge to port, Oostende to starboard.
The wind had dropped. If they could creep a little further in, they would begin to feel the benefit of the tide flowing into the thirsty mouth of the Westerschelde. Even when it was fully dark, they would be able to pick their way from one flashing buoy to another, ticking them off on their chart, until finally they would slip into the yacht basin at Vlissingen – or Flushing, as Gold Dragon continued to call it. It would be a slow four or five hours but then, oh bliss, they could sleep sound in their bunks.
No one had given more than a glance at the motor vessel that was closing their port quarter. Might she be official?
“Hell’s teeth,” Gold Dragon muttered, “If she’s some Belgian bureau-rat coming to tick us off for motor-sailing in the TSS without an up-turned cone, I might need you to lash me to the mast for their own protection.”
“Looks more like Customs & Excise to me,” said June, trying to stifle a yawn.
And Donny, remembering the warlike Valiant he and the kids had seen in Ipswich – how many years ago? – was about to agree with her when something about the shape of the bow triggered a memory.
No bobstay now and a hefty double fluke anchor where the bowsprit had been.
He borrowed June’s binoculars to read her name.
“Pride of Macao,” he said. “Never heard of her.”
Then he saw the flag stream out, orange and green, from the stumpy signal mast and a small man pulling a stocking over his face. The mystery boat surged forwards.
“It’s the Tiger! He’s going to ram us from astern!”
Half a minute ago they’d been sailing on a broad reach towards a low-lying coast that was barely visible in the gathering dusk. They’d noted reduced soundings as they crossed the Groote Bank and the Akkaerte Bank and had agreed that they would continue until the 10 metre contour before starting to think about supper. Now, suddenly, they were in extreme danger.
Gold Dragon gave an odd grunt. The colour had drained completely from her face, leaving its criss-crossed lines stark as pack-ice.
“Not Pride of Macao. That’s HMS Beckfoot!”
Donny gawped. Had her brain hit climate change? She was pulling a yellow plastic barrel from behind the mizzenmast and breathing quite quickly as she unscrewed its red lid. But her voice was audible and her instructions crystal clear.
“Sinbad,” she rasped, “take
the helm double quick and bring her up into the wind. Then round. Don’t let her lose way. I want 180 degree reciprocal course – or whatever you need to take us down his starboard side. Get your mother to do the sheets. June – VHF Channel 16. It’s a Mayday! Though I’m not sure whose.”
She grabbed something from the yellow barrel with her one good hand, gripped its end in her teeth and twisted. Then, as Donny and Skye swung Strong Winds through the first 90 degrees, she crouched down by the high aft deck and slammed the thing against the starboard gunwale.
A streak of bright white light went rocketing towards the gunboat. It hit her wheelhouse with a solid bang and a shower of sparks.
Donny didn’t dare stop concentrating. The junk was turning through the eye of the wind. Mainsail and mizzen were both a-quiver but Skye was putting tension back on the foresail to bring her head round quickly. His mum was good. All those days sailing Vexilla while he’d been stuck in school. Strong Winds was already paying off on the port tack.
Donny looked at the enemy. He didn’t know what other name to call her. She was much closer now. There was a big scorch mark on her newly painted upper works and her course might have wavered. The glass in the front of her wheelhouse was soot-blackened but there was a side-door open and the person at the wheel was bringing her round and at them again.
Skye kept the sheets taut. Donny could hear June from inside the cabin.
“Mayday! Mayday! Mayday! This is yacht Strong Winds, yacht Strong Winds, yacht Strong Winds. Mayday Strong Winds. Our position is ...”
The two vessels were terrifyingly close. The gunboat was far faster than the junk and hadn’t the impediment of sails. She was turning all the time, turning directly into the wind, coming for them. She was going to hit them square amidships. And she was heavy. Solid metal with that anchor like a ram head.
She’d sink the junk. No doubt of that.
If Donny luffed up to port at the last moment, it’d be a glancing blow: she’d catch their stern, carry away the steering gear. They’d be helpless but they’d gain time. Only minutes. Was that what he should do? It wasn’t what he’d been told.