Scend of the Sea

by Geoffrey Jenkins

  I rejected the doubt sabotaging the precious moments.

  'Bring her round! Gently, Jubela, if you value your life! Course — south, if you can. Watch it, for God's sake and ours! Choose your moment!'

  Jubela nodded helplessly at the bridge windows. Through them, one could not see even the foredeck.

  A racing driver, they say, steers by the seat of his pants. Yachting is like racing, but one steers by the soles of one's feet. The master helmsmen of Captain Ilbery's day of sail preferred to stand barefooted at the wheel — without a sou'wester if they could-so that they could feel the motion of the ship under their feet and the way of the wind on the nape of their necks. When a yacht is being hard pushed, one can detect the slight movement of the deck seams; these things are still more meaningful than all the instruments invented.

  Walvis Bay was riding easier now that the way was off her, but I felt sure that we were being pushed backwards by the storm.

  'Now!'

  But Jubela shook his head, poised slightly on the balls of his feet.

  The radio warning buzzed. Before Feldman could go, it buzzed peremptorily a second time. I jerked my head for him to go. All my attention was on the ship.

  The sea poured over the bow and sluiced down the deck. As she rose, the wind threw it bodily against the bridge structure and the rain added its quota of icy wetness.

  She sank in the trough and started to roll to starboard. Jubela flicked the wheel to port, eased it back, and flicked it again to meet it head-on as the next roller hit her. Water poured over the ship again, but this time the direction was slightly more on the bow.

  Walvis Bay had gained a few precious points of the compass towards safety. Again, Jubela waited.

  I went forward to the compass. South-south-west. That was better I Walvis Bay seemed to be regaining her resilience too. There was a faint improvement in her motion, although she rolled more heavily now that her bow was away from the eye of the gale.

  Feldman came back.

  'Urgent signal to you from Weather Bureau, sir.'

  I took the paper and turned from the compass. I started towards the port bridge windows, the way I was trying to edge her seawards. My attention was on the ship. I tried to penetrate the driving water. My eyes dropped to the signal.

  Urgent. Weather Bureau to Walvis Bay. Report your position immediately … The deck canted forward.

  Walvis Bay dropped her bows like a stone.

  Until now, she had been a ship labouring and fighting. Now she was out of control.

  I was thrown off my feet into the corner of the bridge. I had been too late in my turn-away! The name burned in my brain — Waratah!

  Walvis Bay was making her final dive to her death.

  As I sprawled, I had a momentary glimpse of Jubela throwing up his right hand to protect his face, as if warding off a blow. With the other, he still held the wheel. There was an awful sensation of the ship falling literally forward and downward.

  There was a tremendous crash, and the bridge windows splintered in, as if by bomb-blast. The lights went. I heard a heavy thud inside the bridge itself, and Feldman screamed as if in pain. Water — hundreds of tons of sea-came pouring into the shattered bridge.

  Still the ship nose-dived at that impossible angle.

  Waratah.

  I was picked up by the wall of water and carried headlong aft as it swept through the open door at the rear of the bridge, down the companionway into my cabin. I clutched at something metal and hung on against the rush of water. As the rudder lost its power to control her, so the seas took command. Now, as Walvis Bay dived, I could feel a frightening loss of control; she was, also slewing sideways as she dived. With the weight of water pressing her down thundering into her, she would be on her side soon.

  I hauled myself into a crouching position and threw my body forward to where I knew the wheel must be. The steep forward angle helped me, but the water catapulting through the broken windows hit me in the chest like a blow.

  The jar of the spinning wheel which I grabbed was almost as great as the water crashing in. Mine were instinctive movements; there was no time to think or reason. All I knew was that I must hold her, try and bring her head round.

  The deck levelled under my feet.

  Still the water poured in.

  For one irrational moment I thought the whaler was floating level under water, and that she would quickly fill and go to the bottom on an even keel. Strange, too, the wild motion of the past hours had eased. She rode, not easily, but dead. .

  Feldman screamed from the other side of the bridge. I started to turn a split second from my fight with the wheel.

  I stopped, transfixed.

  Dead ahead, through the gaping windows, loomed something big and black, right in the whaler's path.

  I spun the wheel to port, giving her the full weight of water and all the strength of the gale to try and bring her head clear.

  Then I saw nothing.

  Water burst through the bridge openings and the ship lay over again, tiredly, heavily. The sea tried to pluck my hands from the wheel. Yet I sensed that her head had fallen off the wind and the bow seemed to be sheering away from the danger — whatever it was-quicker than I could have hoped.

  I felt, but did not see, the next sea. This time, would the game little ship roll over on her side? Or would there be a sickening crash and rending of metal which meant that she had gone bows-on into the obstacle in her path? I felt the roll begin to port -1 detected that easier motion somewhere — and I waited, cowering, for the next hill of water to crown that which now pinned her down.

  Walvis Bay rolled farther.

  The sea held back its fatal punch.

  Hundreds of tons of water cleared themselves off the decks in that life-giving roll; somewhere aft I heard, above the gale, the tearing of metal.

  Feldman screamed again in agony behind me, and some

  heavy object rolled, bumped and thumped. Walvis Bay ca upright. Still the sea did not strike. Why?

  I was flabbergasted at the relative calmness of the sea. The gale still brought the icy rain and spray in bucketfuls through the gaps and Walvis Bay rose tiredly at first-as if herself cringing from that final crushing weight of water-and then more optimistically. Then she was on an even keel, sharp, back on her feet, fighting. She completed that long purgative roll to starboard and I caught the glimmer of clear deck below me.

  Where was that thing in our path? Whatever it was there was no sign of it now.

  Walvis Bay rose confidently to the next wave.

  She had won through.

  The bridge was a shambles. It was still a foot deep in water, which I could hear thundering into the bowels of the ship. There was broken glass everywhere. I tried to see our course, but the compass had been stove in.

  Something heavy bumped behind me. I risked a glance to see what it was. The barrel of the heavy winch below the bridge, which in her whaling days had been used to secure whales after harpooning, had been torn free by that crazed dive of hers and pitched bodily through the front of the bridge. Had I not moved away from the compass when I did, it might have killed me. Feldman had not been so lucky: the flying winch had struck him a glancing blow, breaking his left shoulder and pinning him against the deck until Walvis Bay's life-giving roll had freed him. He was lying amidst the glass and water, groaning, his right hand at his damaged left shoulder. Jubela, spitting seawater, was half on his feet, cut and bleeding about the head.

  The engine-room voice-pipe shrilled incessantly. At least something was working! Scannel was not a man to get rattled easily, but there was an overtone of fear in his voice.

  'What are you trying to do to us, skipper? I thought this was a whaler, not a submarine.. ’

  I explained quickly, at the same time leaning forward to try and assess the damage on the deck below me.

  'Get four men on to the foredeck, quickly!' I told him. 'Lash a tarpaulin over the deck where the winch was..'

  'Was?'

&
nbsp; 'It looped the loop and left a hole in the deck you could drive a car through. Caught Feldman up here,' I got out hastily. 'Get the men up quick, before another sea puts paid to us.'

  'There's enough of the ocean down here already,' growled Scannel. 'She's half full of water.' 'Pumps.. ?'

  'I've got them going full blast. I don't know for sure, but perhaps we're holding our own. Lot still coming down from your part of the world.'

  I quickly sketched what had happened to the bridge. My cabin and the ward-room were probably flooded too.

  'What's that noise?' I asked.

  There seemed to be a jarring thumping coming from outside the hull. The whole ship reverberated with it. I had new anxieties forward of the hole in the deck.

  'The foremast has come adrift,' I told Scannel further. 'Get another team up and frap the stays before it goes over the side altogether. Seems to have a couple of feet of play from here.'

  Amidst the stream of orders, I still had room for puzzlement. There remained that curious lack of punch about the sea. The waves looked the same, the wind looked the same, but nonetheless they seemed to lack the power to break and destroy.

  'It's not the mast making that racket,' Scannel retorted grimly. 'Something's hammering the hull from the outside.'

  His voice was drowned by a vibrating crash which I felt on the bridge. The enclosed space of the engine-room magnified it like a sounding-board.

  I heard Scannel shouting orders below, above the crash and bump of something heavy against the port quarter. At the same time, Walvis Bay started to slew against the power of the rudder. I corrected her quickly. I guessed what had happened. For some reason or other, one screw was out of action.

  'Port screw,' Scannel confirmed. 'Bit into something solid. Either badly chipped or smashed. Can't tell.' 'Rock. .?'

  'No, something's beating the hell out of the hull. Reckon it's one of those fancy crane things we took aboard in Durban.'

  The Van Veen grab with its chain-controlled bucket-like a small steam shovel, Alistair had said-was housed on the port rail.

  'Can you be spared from the engine-room for five minutes?' I whipped out. 'I'll get aft there to the grab. See you there.' 4Aye aye.'

  Smit was gaping at the wreck of the bridge. 'She's chasing her tail — one prop's out,' I told him. Jubela, on his feet now, still looked stunned.

  'Try and hold her steady,' I went on. 'No course. Anything-just keep the water out of her while we make some jury repairs.'

  'Came past the gyro gear on my way here,' replied Smit. 'It's gone for a Burton

  'It'll keep,' I snapped back. 'It's the ship now above anything.'

  I knelt and examined Feldman cursorily. His face was strained, white, terrified. He looked fearfully at the heavy winch barrel on the gratings.

  'Don't let it come at me again,' he mouthed. 'Keep it away, for Christ's sake. Not again.'

  I waited until it rolled towards us, then I guided it with my foot towards the doorway. It skidded and jammed itself across the lintel.

  Scannel was waiting for me at the stern with a torch. Walvis Bay still rolled heavily in the seas, but nothing like the previous quantity of water was coming aboard. Scanners light showed what was left of the Van Veen grab. It had been welded as a triangle of steel bars: one upright from the rail, one at the top jutting out horizontally, and a double support running upward and outward to form the third leg of the triangle. There were big block-and-pulleys at the top and at the extremity from which the bucket grab was suspended on chains. The two projecting bars had been twisted and buckled out of recognition by the sea and now trailed in the water. These had fouled the screw.

  Walvis Bay dipped for a lee roll and then started to come back.

  'Nick! Duck! Watch out!'

  A shower of sparks arced round towards us from the direction of the stern. The bucket grab, snapping and gaping with the ship's movement, swung round, from the remnants of its support, crashing and banging the steel deck straight towards the engineer. If those clamping jaws fastened on an arm, they would bite it off like a mechanical shark.

  Scannel threw himself on the deck and the torch went out. There was a crash and a clatter, another shower of sparks, and then the wild thing was past.

  I leapt to Scannel's side. The grab revolved out over the stern again; in a moment it would crash back in a malicious, deadly circle.

  My grip slipped on his wet leather lumber-jacket which he had thrown over his dungarees, but I scrabbled and snatched him to the safety of the lifelines, out of reach of the swinging grab. Scannel was shaking from cold and fright.

  'We've got to get that thing secured before we can attempt anything else,' I said quickly.

  'Aye,' replied Scannel. 'It could have taken my head ott-thanks.'

  Again the whaler rolled. We cowered back, waiting for the clatter and the sparks to go past. 'Now!'

  We raced for the rail. I reached out with a securing rope for the chains at the top of the grab, but the ship heeled and it slipped from my grasp.

  'Get back!'

  We dodged to safety while the grab made another spark-trailing orbit.

  'Next round, hang on to my legs — it's just out of reach,' I told Scannel.

  We waited our moment and sprinted to the rail. Had the supporting bars been in place, I could have used them to hold on and secure the grab with my free hand, but they were adrift, crashing and banging against the ship's stern-plates.

  Scannel took me round the waist as if in a rugby tackle. At the top of the pendulum swing of the bucket, I whipped the rope's end through the chains at the top. I tugged it fast. It took only a moment then to bring the grab itself inboard and lash it firmly to the shattered remains of its base structure.

  Scannel flashed his light over the Wreckage. 'You'll have to hang on to me this time,' he remarked grimly. 'Hell, what a shambles! This will need an oxy-acetylene cutter.'

  The sea came over and drenched us.

  'Can you keep the flame burning?' I asked anxiously.

  'Got to,' he jerked out. 'If those cables or chains wrap themselves round the screw..' he gestured.

  'One's already out of action,' I said.

  'I don't know how bad it is -1 stopped her before it could do itself more damage,' he replied. He took a hard, long look at me. ‘I guess you'll want everything she has, to get through the night?’

  'Yes, Nick. We're in trouble. Big trouble. But one dud screw or not, if another sizzler like that big wave hits us, we've had it. Just say your prayers-if there's time. She's got a hole in the foredeck the size of Table Mountain. No tarpaulin is going to be worth a damn in another sea like that.'

  Scannel's eyes were sizing up the job professionally as he spoke. ‘It wasn't like any wave I've ever encountered. The engine-room floor suddenly nose-dived. It was like putting her head down an escalator.'

  I found my hands shaking on the lifelines, reaction to the dive like a near-miss car smash. Deliberately, consciously, I crushed all thought of the Waratah out of my mind. I must not be hamstrung in coping with our mortal peril by shadows from the past.

  'Put that light on the gravity corer on the other rail,' I told Scannel. 'Maybe we'll have to cut that one away too. Not such heavy gear as this one, though.'

  Scannel laughed mirthlessly. 'Take a look.' Across the wet deck, only a few stumps of metal showed where the gravity corer had been.

  'The sea's done that job pretty well for us, but for this we'll want an oxy-acetylene cutter-le Roux can help. He's a good boy. Won't panic'

  'I'll wait,' I said briefly. 'Feldman's injured. Smit's trying to sort things out on the bridge.'

  I tried to get my bearings as Scannel staggered off along the bucking lifeline. On the exposed deck the gale was penetrating, Arctic. Walvis Bay rolled heavily, but still the seas were not sweeping the decks as they had done before the great wave. Something seemed to be taming them. The crests still broke aboard, but Walvis Bay, with all the weight of water inside her, was riding them, not plungin
g headlong.

  The fear rose in my throat at the thought of the black shape into which Walvis Bay had so nearly plunged. I took a grip of my nerves and edged over to the windward side of the deck, trying to pierce the darkness, trying to bring to rational, everyday terms the thing I thought I had seen. The gale still tore its Force 10 swathe from the south-west. Tears streamed down my face as I held my eyes into it to make sure it held the same quarter. Walvis Bay was edging slowly towards the deep sea-towards safety. Had the savagery of the seas lessened, I asked myself, because there was already deeper water under her? Had we side-stepped some diabolical sea-bottom contour which lashed the waves to such madness?

  I wiped the spray and the rain from my eyes with the back of my hand and tried again to find the black mass which had stood in our path. For perhaps half a minute I could see before the iciness brought a fresh gush of tears. Nothing. Could I find the place again? The compass was hopelessly wrecked; more than before, even, my dead reckoning was pure guesswork. We could be five miles in any direction. I turned my face from the scalpel of wind and spray. Had it simply been a trick of the light which had made a big sea loom to take shape like … I dared not bring the thought out from shadows as Avernal as the darkness around the battling ship.

  I heard Scannel shouting to me from the other side of the deck, near the grab. I made my way back cautiously. He and young le Roux were sitting astride a heavy gas cylinder. If that broke free, I thought quickly, it could be as big a menace as the swinging grab had been. A crushing impact against a broken-off stanchion could explode the high-compression gas inside …

  Scannel had not forgotten to bring a strong light as well as a rope.

  'Get a turn round her,' he panted. 'Can't work if this thing's going to go wild.'

  I wormed a noose over the steel neck of the bottle, round a couple of severed stanchions, and then back over the smooth cylinder barrel.

  'Every time that spar dogs into the ship, I die a little,’ Scannel remarked. 'It's bad enough here, but you want to hear it below in the engine-room. I'll bet there are some holes punched in her plates already.'