Scend of the Sea

by Geoffrey Jenkins

  She was strained, doubtful about her ability to steer in such an emergency. Jubela and I crawled forward along the steeply-angled deck while patchworks of torn, blown trysail snapped and yapped against the mast. I was glad that we had had the foresight to unbend and stow the mainsail; with it, Touleier would have been on her beam ends by now. 'Got it!'

  Jubela threw me a nod. The smaller, tougher sail was snugged home and began to draw. I slithered to the cockpit and took the wheel from Tafiine. The yacht came upright and shied like a startled horse under the drag of the small sail, even, Jubela threw himself flat up for'ard, watched anxiously for a moment or two, and then gave the thumbs-up sign. Water cascaded off the deck. Touleier picked up speed rapidly and shook herself clear.

  I threw all my attention into watching the yacht, the sea, and the sky. That squall had made it clear, even in this early stage, that no quarter would be given. Touleier gave a quick, duck-like shake. The contempt in it for my fears broke our tension for a moment. We both grinned. But Waratah was never far from our minds.

  She gestured at the sea. 'All those arguments by the experts seem so futile when you come face to face with the reality.'

  'They went for the ship, I go for the sea,' I said, knowing well what was on her mind.

  'And the gale,' she added.

  I liked the feel of the tight little craft under me and the confident way she behaved. The wind began to increase with every gust.

  Then — it roared into the south-west.

  Its onslaught was different from my previous encounter, but again there was the clear distinction between the advancing storm and the darkening land. Touleier had the rising sea abeam and started to put her rail under regularly.

  We found it hard to talk to each other because of the wind. But I leaned down to her ears, gesturing at the waves.

  'Waratah wasn't heading into a beam sea like we are doing. She was meeting it head-on. That lessened her problems a great deal.'

  She nodded, looked astern.

  Bashee light.

  Touleier's portents were identical to Walvis Bay's.

  An hour later, the wind notched up gale force. I estimated its speed at between forty and fifty knots. Icy rain sluiced along the deck. It was pitch dark, and a tremendous cross-sea was building up against the main current. I was a little startled at the way Touleier lay over at the crests under the impact of each savage gust, and the rag of sail slatted and roared. But it held. Soon — if the manoeuvre were to be carried out at all — I must put her on the opposite tack. I sent Tafline below, using the weather forecast which was due as an excuse. Jubela and I roped ourselves tightly to the cockpit in case it was swamped. I watched my moment.

  Suddenly Touleier took a deep lee lurch and at the same time she was struck by one of those hilly, sharp-topped pyramids of sea, unlike anything I have ever seen before or since. In a moment she was half-way on her side. I felt the wheel start to lose its positiveness. Water poured over us until I was knee-deep. Jubela was hurled against me, but he clawed himself away in order to give me freedom with the wheel. I tried it to starboard, hoping to bring her head more into the wind. Then I felt the storm jib bite as she rose to the crest, and tons of water were thrown along the unobstructed decks. Seizing the moment, I put the wheel hard over and Jubela, following my actions, let fly the sheet and then trimmed it for the new tack.

  Touleier was round!

  Sea surged and gurgled from the self-draining cockpit. Tafline came up from the cabin and looked about her, startled. It was impossible to see her eyes in the dim compass light. Her voice was strained.

  'The radio, Ian, it started all right, then something happened … she seemed to go right under! ‘

  I cupped my hands against her ears. 'She's all right now. If it becomes much worse, I'll heave to.'

  The lee deck was completely under water, but Touleier was lively and handling magnificently.

  'I'll bring you something hot,' she called back.

  The wind whipped back her sou'wester over her shoulders as she turned to go below. Ballooning out behind, for a moment it made her unsteady on her feet, the thrust was so powerful. Then she ducked out of sight.

  I kept Touleier under the rag of sail for the next couple of hours. By ten o'clock the wind had risen to a whole gale-sixty knots! Its roar was appalling and it was locked in violent combat with the Agulhas Current. It threw up sharp, deadly pyramids of water which spent themselves by falling bodily on the yacht's deck. Tafline reported the skylight over the radio broken, and Jubela crawled forward and secured a square of tarpaulin over it. If they had warned shipping away from the coast, we certainly had no chance of hearing it. I was soaked. She brought us relays of hot soup and coffee. At times the clash of the current and gale under her rudder made the yacht almost unmanageable. I had not the slightest idea of her position. While the wind had still been usable Touleier had, I knew, beaten some miles to the south of the Bashee, but it was certain that she had been driven back since. I decided to heave to.

  I went below to tell her of my decision, leaving the wheel to Jubela.

  On deck, my ears had been numbed by the thunder of the gale and the cold; here, in the confined space of the cabin, the waves added their drum-like crash against the hull to the general uproar. It was impossible to move across the place — streaming wet from rain and seawater jetting in through the tarpaulin-lashed skylight — without using the grab-handles. The motion was jerky, uncertain, unpredictable, violent; a sudden pitch or staggering roll could easily break a limb if one did not hang on.

  Tafline was very pale. 'Darling — is this the end? Are we sinking?'

  I wanted to hold her, comfort her, chase the shadows from those lovely eyes. All I could do was hang on against the wild, erratic motion.

  'Far from it,' I answered. I did not say, it will be worse before the night is over.

  She shuddered, looking at the untidy mess swilling about under the yellow oil lights. We had disconnected the battery supply and drained the acid from the cells, in preparation for the storm.

  'Was it worse — in Walvis Bay?'

  'Yes, but different,' I reassured her. 'Touleier's like a cork, she's under sail. Walvis Bay plugged into it, nose-down. In the whaler, I was able to hold the Waratah's course, but any set direction now is out of the question.'

  'No wonder they pray, "for those in peril on the sea".'

  'I'm heaving her to,' I explained. 'There's nothing to be gained by trying to sail. It will make the motion easier, perhaps.'

  She stared hard at me, and then asked in a small voice, 'This doesn't mean you're abandoning the Waratah, does it? I'd rather go on, come what may. If it's for my sake.. ’

  The question of speed worried me greatly, but I don't think it is a factor. You see, the Waratah was steering at thirteen knots, Gemsbok was flying at over 300, and Alistair over 600.1 can't see any connection. I feel sure that Touleier's being hove-to won't make any difference. If it-whatever it is-is to come, it will come, whether we are under way or not. From the way the yacht is behaving, I think the storm centre must be close. The entire storm moves strangely fast. In twenty-four hours one of these blows could have spent its main force.'

  'Over!' she echoed. I saw how near breaking-point she was.

  I said gently, 'If the gale sticks true to form, it will reach its peak sometime tomorrow morning.'

  'Morning!' she gasped. 'Will the yacht-can we-take much more?'

  'She's in good shape,' I replied. "There's not much damage so far.'

  She held my gaze. 'While she goes, I go — please remember that.'

  I remember that now, too.

  Before we put the helm up, I inched forward along the streaming deck on the lifelines and placed oil bags on each side of the bow. While I took the wheel, Jubela did the same over the counter. Immediately there was relief from her labouring, and she began to ride more comfortably. I got in the jib, and we hove her to on the port tack, streaming a sea anchor. The yacht shipped huge quantities
of water; the lee rail and deck were constantly awash. Meanwhile the dollops started to come over the stern, too. I attributed this to the head-on clash of the gale and the current. I was very anxious lest the self-steering gear should be damaged and tangle with the rudder, so we put another oil bag in an old fish basket and ran it out on a deep-sea lead, which was the only spare cordage we could find. The lines were stowed in the sail locker, but we could not risk flooding her forward by opening it. The makeshift bag served its purpose. Now the yacht rode more confidently, although I could visualize how terrifying in daylight the seas would look from wave-level in the cockpit.

  By midnight the gale was still increasing and a massive cross-sea threw the yacht about like flotsam. We double-lashed our minute storm jib to save it; high in the rigging the remnants of the first storm sail unravelled themselves, strand by strand. Touleier's head held well into the wind.

  As the violence and the din grew, I debated whether I should attempt bending a tiny trysail high up aloft, but I discarded the idea because of the danger of climbing the arching, jerking mast. There was the danger, too, of getting her long mainboom in the water. If she broached to and were pooped, nothing could save us.

  Through the rest of the night, Jubela and I alternately stood short helm watches until we could bear the breaking seas, the rain, and the icy wind no longer. Frozen, we came below, and Tafline fed us hot coffee and soup and her emergency sandwiches. Rest was impossible and the bunks were soaking. It was safest to wedge oneself on the floor gratings between foam rubber cushions off the lockers and cling on when a more violent shudder shook the hull in every plank.

  When it was light, the sea presented an awesome sight. Tafline came into the cockpit when it was my turn to relieve Jubela. The roar of the gale made speech impossible. I saw her give the same quick intake of breath, half-sigh and smothered exclamation, she had done when she first saw the wrecked deck of the Walvis Bay.

  The forward strike of the south-westerly gale, with its savage accompanying run of sea against the great current, had created an ocean of pointed hills which boiled and leaped high on either side of Touleier and fell over both the yacht's rails at once. Rain swirled in solid, icy sheets. The demented wind whipped off the summits of the wave-hills and bore them bodily aloft, higher than the mast, in a white shower of salt. The mast spreader, stays and blocks were white — not with salt but with threads of canvas stripped from the sail we had lost in the initial stages of the battle. Despite the oil bags, Touleier was swept fore and aft continually. The cockpit drainage could not keep pace with the inflow, so that there were never less than a couple of feet of water round one's knees. Touleier was still full of fight, although the lurches to lee that she gave as she reared to the crest of the waves were even more frightening on deck than they seemed below. There was no question of steering her among this watery valley of a thousand hills. She cavorted, swung, pitched, rolled and dipped all in one motion, it seemed. The oil bags were working well; we had renewed them an hour or two before. Without them, it appeared impossible that Touleier could have survived the storm.

  I took the wheel from Jubela, and signalled him to go below. Tafline was in the cockpit, crouched against the cabin woodwork out of the wind, securely roped to the grab-handles by the door. My eyes were full of blown spray and rain.

  I therefore never saw the thing that hit us.

  I had been guiding the kicking rudder-that violent cross-sea made her wild — to try and keep her head towards the eye of the gale. It must have been about half past eight. Only dim sunlight lit the awesome scene.

  Touleier took a deep lurch and at the same moment she was struck by a heavy weather sea. She seemed to be thrown sideways into another mountain of water. She went over at an impossible angle. The mainsail boom plunged under. Before I had time even to realize what was happening, I was up to my armpits in water. The yacht lay down, completely on her beam ends, with her keel showing between the waves.

  I went cold with fear.

  Touleier dropped like a stone.

  Here was the same sickening drop I had known in Walvis Bay. The whaler's head had been pointing into the storm and she had been under power; now I had under me a yacht without headway, lying on her beam ends with the long mast and submerged storm-jib acting as further makeweight to prevent her ever coming up again.

  I could not see Tafline. All that held me to the yacht was a bight of nylon fixed to the lifeline. My mouth and eyes were full of water and oil from the bags.

  Down the yacht dropped.

  The cabin door flew open as Jubela threw his weight against it from the inside. He was in shirt and trousers only — he must have stripped off the oilskins to dry them — and as he came out, the wind ripped the shirt from his back and whirled it away into the scud-filled sky.

  I spat and retched oil and sea water. 'An axe! Get an axe, man! Cut it away!'

  He seemed stunned, unhealing. Frantically I chopped my right hand into the left palm to show what I meant. He saw, and ducked away.

  I saw Tafline's terrified face. She, like myself, was roped fast to the lifelines. She cowered, half-crouched, half-squatted, on the inner edge of the gunwale planking which now lay parallel to and half under the water, instead of upright.

  Still Touleier lay over. Still she dropped.

  The stern started to slew from the greater weight of water aft in the cockpit. The rudder was beyond human control.

  Her head began to come away from the run of the sea. The next wave would send her stern-first to the bottom.

  Jubela, naked to the waist, broke from the cabin with an axe and raced up the weather rigging, now lying almost flat with the sea. I saw him hack at the tough light-alloy of the mast just above the spreader. It bent, but did not break.

  The bow started to corkscrew and the stern gurgled deeper under me. I yelled frantically to Tafline to get rid of her lifeline. If the yacht went down, she would take Tafline with her to the bottom.

  Jubela doubled back along the rigging and switched his attack to the stays and rigging-screws on deck. I do not know whether it was luck or shrewdness or desperation, but at his second stroke one of the main shrouds parted; a second went and he dodged its backlash; then the rest seemed to part all at once. The mast crumpled, snapped, broke free. A twelve-foot jagged stump was all that was left.

  Relieved of the mast's weight, I felt the first touch of life come back into the hull as the buoyancy tanks fought back. Jubela felt it, too, and hacked again and again.

  Touleier started to rise off her side. But she still continued that awful downward fall, like dropping in a bottomless air pocket.

  Jubela turned to leap forward to cut away some of the trailing wreckage.

  He stopped and froze. He pointed ahead with the axe.

  He turned and screamed at me, his face stunned with shock.

  I could not hear the words, but his meaning was clear from the frame of his lips. ‘A ship!'

  The wind eased momentarily. The air-pocket drop stopped.

  The death-dealing pyramids of water held back from giving their final coup-de-grace to the floundering yacht.

  Touleier pivoted back on to an even keel. Hundreds of tons of water cascaded free. Rigging trailed overboard from the truncated mast.

  Tafline. too. saw Jubela's shock. She scrambled on to the cabin roof towards him. She and Jubela could see. I could not, from the low level of the cockpit and the trough of the sea.

  She turned and called. My astonishment at hearing her vied with my amazement at what she said.

  ‘A sailing ship! Dead ahead!’

  I yelled to Jubela to cut away the overside clutter before it pierced the hull. He paid no attention. He stood transfixed, staring.

  Again I shouted at him. He did not carry out my orders. Instead, he slid aft to me at the wheel. His face was grey with fear.

  ‘I. . have never. . seen … a ship.. like it! ‘ he jerked out. 'Umdhlebe!' Umdhlebe! — something strange. The smell of death about it!
r />   I shoved the helm into his shaking hand. I freed my lifeline and jumped up alongside Tafline. She pointed.

  There was no mistaking Phillips' description: there was the high bow, pointing into the eye of the gale, and the squat, square stern. But she had no masts. Water creamed and broke over the bow. Between bow and stern the hull was rounded, disproportionately long, like a whale's back.

  A burst of spray hid the caravel.

  'It's impossible!' I got out. 'I've never seen a ship like that except on a picture..'

  She gripped my arm and said unsteadily. There is a ship. A whole ship. A big ship. It's nothing to do with that old-fashioned bow and stern. It's lying caught between them …'

  'Dear God! What sort of a nightmare is this!'

  'It's not a nightmare, and it's not a caravel,' she jerked out. 'It's an island! It's an island shaped like a caravel, Ian! And it's got a ship on it — upside down1'

  Touleier rose to the next crest. We could hear each other. Here was that merciful, unnatural lull Clan Macintyre had known, the lull which had saved Walvis Bay.

  I made a shambling run to the stump of the mast, grabbed it, and gave her a hand to me.

  Touleier lifted.

  'Look, Ian! The bow and stern don't rise to the sea! They're steady! They're — rocks!'

  Across the welter of sea, a few cables away, I saw what Phillips had seen, what I had seen under Walvis Bay's bows.

  A smooth hill of rock, one end shaped like the bow of a medieval ship and the other in perfect imitation of the stern, reared itself above the confused, grey sea. Between the extremities, it fell almost to water level, and seen from a distance, in the confusion of a gale and impending darkness, it presented the perfect silhouette of a caravel. Phillips had sighted it between himself and the land, against the backdrop of a dim sunset. It must have been a mere silhouette, and distant. What, I asked myself hastily, had caused Phillips to add that he had seen masts? Had it been some trick of the light, or had his overwrought, tired brain simply added them as a natural adjunct to the hull? Or, more simply still, was it that, against the shore skyline, where the great forests hang on cliffs above the sea, the trio of the huge, white, sparlike umzimbeet trees had provided the puzzling addendum?