by Derek Hansen
‘Stop!’ he screamed. I reckon my skid mark would’ve run seven yards, dead straight.
‘What’s up?’ I said. I was more excited than alarmed. A kid breaking his arm was always exciting, particularly if an ambulance came. Then I noticed how wet he was. And how exhausted. Ryan could hardly speak, let alone stand. He slumped down onto his knees and started crying. Suddenly Ryan didn’t look a bit like Elvis Presley and didn’t even look a bit tough. I began to feel scared, really scared.
‘Tell me,’ I demanded. ‘What’s happened?’
‘The water’s come up,’ he gasped. ‘It came up. Just like that. It’s trapped Gary. And Clarry.’
‘Where?’
‘The second shaft. The current was too strong for them. I kept going to get help.’
Ryan collapsed sobbing and who could blame him? It was my nightmare. Hell, it was all our nightmares and it was actually happening. I realised Ryan wasn’t going anywhere and that I’d have to get help. But from where? With everyone’s dad still at work or on the way home, my first thought was to run back up Cockburn Street to the school and get some teachers but just as quickly realised they’d all have left. My only hope was the two men I knew for sure would be home. Captain Biggs and Christian Berger. I told Ryan to knock on doors until someone answered and get them to phone the Water Board and the police. I set off for the Church Army, pedalling harder than I had in my life. My plan was simple. Cockburn Street was too steep to ride up and it would take too long to run up. I decided to stick to my original circuit even though riding on grass slowed me down. I hammered across Grey Lynn Park, rode up the bank to Dickens Street for the first time ever without having to get off and push. My heart felt like it was trying to burst. I rode up Rose Road into Chamberlain Street, barrelled past Eric’s place, dropped the bike by the hideout, scrambled up the bank on all fours, pushed aside the paling and burst into the Church Army grounds. I opened the back door and ran through the rabbit warren of corridors towards the lounge room, where I knew Captain Biggs and Christian Berger would be. I guess I was shouting and screaming, because Captain Biggs came running out of the lounge before I got within ten yards of it.
‘You gotta come!’ I gasped. ‘Gary and Clarry are trapped in the storm drain and the water’s rising!’
Captain Biggs turned white. I guess he’d been having nightmares, too, ever since I told him about the drain, up at the hospital. Christian Berger came out into the corridor to see what was going on.
‘What is it?’ he asked.
I told him, forcing the words out between breaths. The blood also seemed to drain from Christian Berger’s face. Blimey Charlie, he could’ve had some of mine. My face was so red it felt hot to the touch.
‘You’ll have to take us there,’ said Captain Biggs.
‘Torches,’ I said.‘You’ll need torches. My bike’s out the back. You go out the front down Cockburn Street and I’ll catch you up.’
I ran back along the corridors, across the lawn, through the hole in the fence and tumbled down the bank. I lay on the ground by the front wheel of my bike, helpless, sucking in air, not wanting to get up. Someone yelled my name. Eric. I waved him over and told him what had happened. He pushed my bike the rest of the way up Chamberlain Street, running while I tried my best to keep up. Captain Biggs saw us coming and stopped to wait for us. Eric yelled at them to keep going. Even with me puffed out and suffering from the worst stitch in the world, Eric knew we’d still beat them to the storm drain. He hopped onto my crossbar as soon as we reached Richmond Road. I got us going and turned down Cockburn Street. Even though Captain Biggs and Christian Berger were running as fast as they could, we whistled past them as though they were standing still. Eric started screaming for me to put the brake on but I was too tired to back-pedal. I concentrated on keeping the bike upright and straight as we set a new land speed record for two boys on a bike, a record which is probably unbroken to this day. Even though the beginning of Hakanoa Street is almost as steep as Cockburn Street, we overshot the easement by a good thirty yards. I left Eric waiting on the pavement for Captain Biggs while I ran to find Ryan. I found him in the clearing by the shaft with a man and woman old enough to have sailed with Captain Cook. Ryan had flagged down their car instead of doing what I’d asked. He hadn’t knocked on any doors. No one had rung the Water Board or the police. The old couple hadn’t a clue what to do. They looked relieved just to see me.
I continued on to the shaft and looked down. I couldn’t see much but the sound made my blood run cold. The water in the drain was a steady roar, almost as loud as it had been when we’d talked about riding the torrent down to Coxs Creek. Eric was still filling in Captain Biggs and Christian Berger on the shape of the drain and the distance to the second shaft when they finally made it to the clearing.
Captain Biggs grabbed hold of Ryan. ‘Are you sure they’re in the second shaft?’ he asked.
Ryan nodded and burst into tears.
‘They’ll be lucky if they don’t end up in Coxs Creek,’ I said. ‘Just listen to the water.’
‘Do you think we can get the cover off the second shaft?’ It was obvious to me that Captain Biggs would try anything before going down into the drain. Who could blame him?
‘No hope,’ said Eric. ‘The Water Board has concreted it over.’
‘Maybe we can chip it off.’
‘No,’ said Eric. ‘We’ve already tried that. The concrete’s got stones in it.’
‘Let me have a look down there,’ said Christian Berger. He took a torch off Captain Biggs and started climbing down the rungs in the shaft as though he’d done it a million times before.
‘Stop!’ I yelled. ‘It’s too deep. You’ll get washed away.’
‘That’s what I need to find out,’ he said. His head disappeared over the rim of the shaft.
I turned to Captain Biggs. ‘I asked Ryan to get someone to phone the Water Board and the police,’ I said. ‘But he hasn’t.’
‘It’s OK, I asked Sister Kathleen to ring them.’
We stared down into the drain at the flickering light from Christian Berger’s torch. He disappeared for a moment, reappeared and climbed halfway back up the shaft. I couldn’t help feeling relieved. For a moment I thought he was going to do something stupid like try to reach Gary and Clarry.
‘Tell me again. How far away is the shaft where the boys are?’
‘About two hundred yards,’ I said.
‘Which side?’
‘Left-hand side.’
‘Is it the same as this one?’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Just a series of rungs. Why?’
Christian Berger didn’t answer. For an instant his face looked like he’d just made the worst decision of his life. He seemed to just drop from sight. He and his torch disappeared.
‘No!’ I shouted. The drain took the sound of my voice away and swallowed it up. I turned to Captain Biggs. ‘He’s gone,’ I said incredulously. ‘Washed away.’ I couldn’t believe my eyes. Christian Berger had travelled halfway around the world to drown in a storm drain because of the stupidity of a couple of kids. He didn’t even know them. What was worse was that one of them was the son of Mr Gillespie, Christian Berger’s archenemy. I wondered if he knew. I wondered if it mattered. Bitter tears stung my eyes. It wasn’t fair.
I needed Captain Biggs to say something, to give me reason to hope, to give me any kind of encouragement. But seeing him just standing there, helpless and hopelessly inadequate, made everything seem his fault. He was Captain Biggs, he was a grown-up, he was our leader and he should’ve been doing something.
‘You!’ I shouted accusingly. ‘You should’ve gone down the drain, not him. It was your job! It’s your job to look after us, not his!’
‘I can’t swim.’
I think I was ready for any reply except that one. How many times had he taken us to beaches on Waiheke Island? How many times had we risked all to catch a wave, secure in the knowledge he was watching over us? But then my mind filled wit
h images of him standing on the shore, never more than knee-deep, sheep-dogging us, calling out to us to stick together, making sure we watched out for each other. Of course he couldn’t swim! Just as he couldn’t bat or bowl or kick a football or ride a bike or do any of the dozens of things he encouraged us kids to do, things he’d doubtless been deprived of doing as a child. If I felt bad about Christian Berger being swept away trying to save my pals, how bad did Captain Biggs feel having the commander drown trying to save two of his flock? My accusation still hung in the air and I thought Captain Biggs was going to burst into tears. I threw my arms around the poor bugger and cried for the two of us.
CHAPTER TWENCY-SIX
‘Alarm! Alarm!’
The captain heard the shouts from the conning tower in disbelief. He’d discounted the possibility that the Sunderland would return for a third pass; in fact, put it out of his mind entirely. Maybe the Sunderland had lights. If so, why hadn’t the pilot used them earlier? And why weren’t the flak guns firing? Maybe it wasn’t the Sunderland attacking them? Or maybe—and this possibility made his blood run cold—he’d failed to ensure that the dead and wounded gunners had been replaced. The flak guns opened fire but too late. He could already hear the droning of the aircraft’s engines, recognised it instantly. The Sunderland. Captain Berger had to admit to another misjudgement. Apparently there was still enough light for the bomb aimer.
When the depth charges exploded they unleashed a force like a giant hammer pounding down on the U-boat, caving in damaged plates and splitting welds as though they had no more substance than the skin of a ripe tomato. Sea water instantly engulfed the captain and swept him away and upwards, his body tumbling out of control, cannoning sickeningly from walls and hatchways. This was the death he’d long accepted would be his and he’d thought he’d face it with equanimity, with a sense of reaching an inevitable conclusion, a journey’s end. Instead he suffered the blind, consuming terror of all drowning men, of utter helplessness, of futility, of desperate, unjustified hope. With whirring brain and flailing limbs he railed against fate, fighting desperately to seize hold of anything—anything that would allow him to regain his feet, regain some control, find his bearings, save him. Instead he continued to tumble helplessly amid the flood, lungs at bursting point.
AN EXTRACT FROM ‘DEATH OF A U-BOAT’
Captain Biggs had often made the point to us that religion and belief was the fine line between civilisation and barbarity. Right then it seemed to me that there was a fine line between a lot of things. There seemed to be a fine line between order and disorder, decision and indecision, command and chaos, and those who were first on the scene certainly crossed all three. Two pals were stuck in the second shaft and my hero had been swept away. Every second counted yet nobody did anything. It was ten minutes before help arrived, which seemed like an eternity. Captain Biggs sent Ryan home to get out of his wet clothes. After that he just prayed. Eric kept staring down the shaft as if he was expecting Christian Berger to magically reappear. The old fogies wandered off to look confused somewhere else.
Nigel and Maxie turned up out of the blue. At first they were as stunned as we were, then had the bright idea of racing along to the second shaft and banging on the concrete covering the metal plate to see if anyone tapped back, just like they did in mining disaster movies. I’d already tried banging on the metal cover the afternoon I’d been trapped in the drain and no one had heard a thing, and that was before it had been covered in concrete. Two policemen finally arrived and all they did was hop on the radio and ask for more policemen. Two men from the Water Board turned up minutes later. They went straight to a neighbouring house to borrow their phone to ask for more men from the Water Board. Two boys were trapped and an adult had been swept away. What part of the message had they failed to understand when Sister Kathleen had rung them? When did an emergency become an emergency? All the while they dithered the water kept rising and I kept screaming at them to do something before it was too late.
More police arrived wearing dark blue overalls and carrying ropes but didn’t do anything with them. They said it was too dangerous to go down into the drain and the ropes weren’t long enough to reach the second shaft. An ambulance arrived with its siren screaming full blast but what could the Zambucks—the St John ambulancemen—do without patients? More men arrived from the Water Board. They wore white overalls and gumboots up to their knees but all they did was peer down the shaft and stand around looking concerned. They told us they were waiting for a compressor and jackhammers to come from the Department of Main Roads. They said there was a delay because work had finished for the day and everyone had gone home. Mr and Mrs Gillespie arrived and rushed over to Captain Biggs as though nothing had ever happened between them. Clarry’s mum and dad, Mr and Mrs Rycroft, arrived. Mrs Rycroft was crying. Captain Biggs did his best to comfort her. He gave the impression of being the only one in control but I was slowly learning that appearances, especially in his case, could be deceptive. Parents and kids came from everywhere. The police used their ropes to clear the area around the two shafts. A lot of people ran around but still nobody did anything that helped my pals or Christian Berger. I kept wishing Sergeant Rapana would magically appear. He wouldn’t just stand by. I reckon he would’ve gone straight down into the drain and rescued my pals. But he didn’t come and his colleagues did nothing constructive. To add insult to injury, the police made me go and stand behind the ropes. I called them a lot of useless bastards but that didn’t help much either.
The compressor arrived towed behind a Bedford truck but the track wasn’t wide enough for any truck or car to tow it through the bush to the second shaft. I’d tried to tell them that from the start but nobody bothered to listen even though the evidence was right in front of their eyes. Without the compressor, the jackhammers were useless. Just when I was at the point of total despair and hoarse from screaming at people, Dad appeared with his sledgehammer over his shoulder. Rod, Nigel and Maxie were hot on his heels. Thank God for the cavalry! I learned later that Nigel and Maxie had ridden home to get Dad’s sledgehammer and cold chisels. Dad arrived home just as they were about to ride back, took the hammer and chisels off them, grabbed Rod and bundled them all into the Chev.
‘Follow me!’ I yelled and jumped the police rope. I led the way to the second shaft with Dad, Rod, Nigel and Maxie following, and a comet tail of dads, police and Water Board workers streaming along behind them. At last we were doing something and it had taken my Dad to get things going. I hoped Mr Gillespie was taking note.
Dad took the first couple of swings but he was no expert when it came to swinging sledgehammers and it showed. The hammer skidded off the concrete and all Dad raised were sparks. A couple of Maori Water Board workers took over. Dad used to say Maori men weren’t born but carved out of kauri. He reckoned their heads were always two axe handles from their feet and their shoulders were a full axe-handle across. These two fitted the description to a T. One held the chisel and the other took a mighty swing at it. I thought the Maori holding the chisel had a death wish but one swing showed they’d worked together before. The hammer hit the chisel dead centre every time and chips of concrete shot past me like shrapnel.
‘I want you boys to go back to the first shaft,’ said Dad. ‘Rod, you stay, but the rest of you hop it. Now.’
I think the Maoris paused for a second as they and everyone else digested what Dad was really saying. Nigel reckoned it was Mr Gillespie who sobbed out loud. All of us kids took the cue and trudged back to the first shaft. Sometimes you just do as you’re told without argument. Dad didn’t know what they’d find when they finally managed to open the shaft but he was clear about one thing. He didn’t want us there just in case.
We reached the first shaft just as workmen arrived with a massive two-wheeled generator and the sort of lights road gangs used at night. While we were away the police had started setting up a command centre. Men were already up lampposts connecting the portable phones. All they needed was
power from the generator to become operational. At last I got the feeling things were beginning to happen as they should. I told Captain Biggs about the two Maori guys and that they were making progress. I made it sound as though they were hammering away big chunks of concrete instead of the little chips that had whizzed past me. Mrs Gillespie thanked me.
Eric and I hung as close as we could to the police command centre. When the phone rang we listened as intently as anybody. We learned that police were scouring the channel and the mud flats where the storm drains exited and so far hadn’t found anything. Eric and I looked at each other. If Christian Berger and either of the boys had been swept away they would’ve ended up in Coxs Creek by now. Daylight was fading but it was still light enough to find a body if there was one. We also learned the Water Board had opened the cover on the third shaft past Shadbolt Street and it was also clear. That meant the U-boat captain and our pals had to be in the second shaft. They had to be. We rushed over to Captain Biggs to pass on the news. This time Mrs Rycroft hugged me.
The police must’ve come to the same conclusion and realised the urgency because they began concentrating their attention on the second shaft. The onlookers also somehow got the message or maybe they just followed Captain Biggs and the boys’ mums as they headed off down the track. The police tried to stop them but were told to get out of their way in no uncertain terms by some grim-faced dads. Instead the police gathered up the ropes and posts from around the first shaft to set up a perimeter around the second. Some kids went with their parents but we had no choice but to stay put. As frustrating and infuriating as it was, Dad had been unequivocal.
Even though it was clear the action was elsewhere we hung around the command post, in the belief that if something did happen we’d at least be among the first to know. And we were. We were among the first to learn that rain was tumbling down up in Karangahape Road and the downpour had spread as close as Williamson Avenue on the other side of Grey Lynn Park. We were glad Captain Biggs and our pals’ mothers had moved on to the second shaft so we didn’t have to share this news with them. We knew for sure that whatever rain fell up there would find its way down to our drain. The Zambucks were packing up their stretchers and bags before heading off after everyone else. Only two policemen, a sergeant and a constable, were left manning the phones.