I reached with the boathook and got a grip on the 'lip'. The crawl along the flat broad bottom had been more difficult than dangerous; I remembered how the wind had plucked away Jubela's shirt.
We crouched behind the little cupola.
The hatch rectangle and surrounding jamb appeared much more rusted than the metal of the hull itself, caused no doubt by white-hot coals and cold water. There was a continuous discharge down the chute.
Also heavily rusted was a big eye-bolt set into the hatch cover, to which was attached a broken length of cable. I could not locate the aperture where this cable entered the hull because of the growths and corrosion, but it was clear that the trap could be pulled open at will from the inside, if there was need to get rid of the ash quicker than by the automatic way.
She crouched, simply looking at the hatchway. Her eyes met mine, and they were full of unspoken questions.
‘I’ll try,' I said, going to the eye-bolt. The odds are that the hatch is rusted solid with the hull by now. The metal round here in continual contact with the white-hot ash would deteriorate far quicker than the rest of the hull.’
I gripped the eye-bolt.
She stopped me. 'Open that, and perhaps you open a Pandora's Box. Remember Alistair's words: maybe a lot of skeletons only!'
It was so tantalizingly near.
'If it's no go, it's back to the yacht,' I replied.
I tugged. The hatch cover moved.
'It's quite loose! Give me a hand!'
She hung back, tense, uneasy.
'We needn't go in. We can shine the torch and see if we can spot anything.'
Together we lifted the metal cover about eighteen inches, but there was no way of keeping it open. I unscrewed the metal top of the boathook. We tugged the hatch open again. I jammed it with the boathook top.
The gale, ventilating the passageway, swept up to us a deep-sea smell of water and decay, a curious musty odour of rotting metal. The chute, we saw, widened slightly a little further in. It ended about fifteen feet down against a round watertight bulkhead door, clamped shut.
The torch beam also showed a narrow metal ladder, red-brown with rust, clamped against the side of the chute.
I played the beam to the bottom.
At the end of the ladder, against the floor formed by the bulkhead, hung two uniform jackets. One was white, the other blue.
She gripped my arm, and gave a sharp intake of breath, half-sigh, half-exclamation.
One of the jackets, on whose shoulders the green mould showed against the white material, was an old-fashioned naval uniform with a high upright collar. The once-gold epaulettes were also green with mould, and the brass buttons were as dim as the ship's name on the stern.
The other jacket was fresh blue. Its goldwork on the shoulders and sleeves was dimmed, but not completely tarnished.
I flicked the beam on to the insignia on the sleeve. It was a captain's jacket of the South African Airways.
My hand was shaking so much I could not direct the light. I gave it to her. She brought it back to the white jacket.
The collar was embossed with two blue anchors. The sleeves had the insignia of a merchant marine first officer.
She played the light over it inch by inch. I don't think either of us breathed.
She held it steady.
'There's something sticking out of the top pocket!' I craned forward as far as I dared. It was a black-covered notebook with a pencil in the spine. I found my voice.
'My father and my grandfather's jackets! ‘
'Your father must have scratched the panel down here! He wasn't blind or hurt — he was down there in darkness, next to his own father's jacket!'
'It must have got stuck on something — it only floated free when Walvis Bay's storm finally loosened it!'
The question seared both our minds. Would the probing flashlight next reveal two ragged heaps of bones which were my kith and kin?
It would be my duty to see them first. I took the torch from her.
Holding it at arm's-length down the shaft, I explored the corners below the jackets.
An old-fashioned miner's safety lamp with a gauze screen was in one corner. There was a scatter of matches round it.
'They used that sort of lamp in the old coal-burners' bunkers,' I said in a whisper, as if in the presence of the dead. 'Same as in the coal mines. It's a Davy lamp-couldn't cause a coal-gas explosion …'
'Ian! We must have those two jackets! Try and reach them with the boathook! ‘
I snatched up the long pole. Without its metal claw on top I could not unhook the jackets.
'I'll go down.'
'No! No!’ She held me tight. 'No! Don't! Let me! That rusted ladder won't take your weight…'
We argued; we lost life-ebbing minutes; she won.
I ran a bight of rope under her arms and eased her down. The first step held, but the second gave even under her slight weight. My heart was in my mouth. Step by step she edged her way to the jackets.
Then she was there.
She looked up and called. This old one is so fragile, I'm almost frightened to lift it.'
Before I could stop her, she unhitched the rope from under ' her arms and tied the notebook securely with it. I yanked it up. I pocketed it without looking.
My anxiety to get her out of that fate-filled tunnel and my haste made me fluff the rope on its return. The loop which I had hastily remade for her shoulders caught on the rusted rung which had snapped under her weight.
I jerked the rope.
The noose narrowed. It stuck tighter.
My hands started to sweat. I redirected the flashlight beam. I saw her upturned face above the polo collar of her sweater. For a moment, her eyes looked into mine.
I gave the rope a savage jerk.
It gave.
My arm shot wildly sideways, free of tension. It swept away the boathook prop. The hatch cover crashed shut.
All I knew was a stunning blow on the head, a crash, and a clatter.
How long did I lie there sprawled among the barnacles-five, ten minutes?
My first consciousness was of that inescapable deep-sea smell-my face was among the sea-things; second, of blood streaming into my eyes and salt on my lips; third, the stunning, overwhelming agony of mind which drove away the mists from my brain-she was trapped in the Waratah tunnel where the other Fairlies had died!
I grabbed the eye-bolt and yanked with all my strength.
It did not move.
I looked round for a lever. The boathook top and torch were missing-that had been the clatter into the chute I had heard as the hatch cover knocked me senseless.
The long wooden shaft of the boathook was there, however, and I thrust it through the eye-bolt to lift it. The effort brought a wave of nausea and a blinding stream of blood into my eyes.
I pried it. The shaft opened.
In frantic desperation I knelt down and shouted her name. There was no answer. I cupped my hands and shouted again, trying to penetrate the slab of rusty metal.
Then I saw. The jamb which had been weakened by white-hot ash in Waratah's lifetime and by over a half century of corrosion after her death had given way under the slamming weight of the hatch cover. The slab had sunk an inch or two into the rotten metal, jamming it tight.
A cold horror which had nothing to do with my stunned state came over me. I grabbed and tore at the eye-bolt until the ragged metal ripped my hands.
Still the hatch stuck fast.
I knew what I had to do. But first she must know that I had not forsaken her. I beat a rat-tat with the broken boathook shaft on the hatch cover. Had I not been so engrossed, I would have noticed that the wind had eased-that is why I heard.
Her signal came back faintly-a muted rat-tat.
I gave one final despairing tug at the unyielding eye-bolt.
Jubela! I must have his strength, an axe, some sort of lever to prise open that hatch.
I turned and got down on all fours, crawling back
along the keel towards the stern. Now I realized the wind no longer plucked the way it had done. I got half to my feet and made a shambling run towards the rudder. The dinghy bobbed at its foot.
I hung back.
I hadn't the rope or the boathook now. How was I to bridge the nine-foot gaps between the giant rudder pintles? I climbed clear of the hull proper along one propeller-shaft tunnel. I let go, holding on by my hands alone. My feet groped for a foothold on the lower pintle. It was out of reach.
I glanced down in desperation. Forty or fifty feet below was the dinghy and the sea. Three or four feet from me was the slime-covered pintle.
I let go. I came down half-sideways. I fought for balance. I snatched at the thick blade of the end-on rudder, and held on. I steadied myself. I was safe.
I wiped the blood out of my eyes and swallowed my nausea.
Frantic, I dropped again, slipped, grabbed, from pintle to pintle. Four times more my life hung on a thread above the kicking sea. Then I was in the dinghy, paddling for Touleier.
Jubela stood hanging on to the makeshift stay he had rigged, astonished.
Before I was half-way to him, I shouted, 'An axe! Get me an axe, a crowbar, a boom — anything! Quick! Quick!'
I knelt to the paddle, glancing up only to see my direction.
Jubela clutched the dinghy's grab-lines. He, too did not see it coming. The sea burst over us.
The gale had eased! The sea was rushing back! The 'valley' was filling! The seamount was submerging!
I had a glimpse of Jubela tottering on the deck. Then he was thrown into the welter of foaming water. My back fetched up against something hard. I clutched it fast as the sea fought to tear loose my grip.
Touleier was borne away, half-submerged, in a foam of sea, like a paper boat on a pond.
Five days. Five dawns.
Five days of undetermined merging of day and night.
Five days of gale.
Five crucifying days of agony.
How far I was blown that first day, I have no idea. In the first desperate hours after Touleier was blown away from Waratah's grave — the wild despair burned acceptance into my mind: her grave, too-I fought to get the yacht's head round to go back to her by bringing up the big mainsail from the locker and bending it to assist the rag I had managed to set in place of the jib. The rudder was jammed because the mainboom had crashed on to the self-steering gear, and the — first wild wave fused the two as if they had been welded. I saw the rudder was hopeless. I decided to steer her by sails. The fact that every moment I was being blown further away from her goaded me to a strength I did not know I possessed. There was no sign of Jubela. I presumed he must have been swept away and drowned in that first onrush of returning sea.
Each recalcitrant stay, each intractable sail gasket, each impossible sheet, I fought with a frenzy which ignored the pain of my blood-raw hands as the nails were torn from the sockets of three of my fingers and a thumb. In the end the gale won-that awful, thundering attrition from the south-west which resumed in full blast after the lull. What chance had I, one man, when a crew of race-proven, storm-toughened seamen were needed, against the fury of the gale when trying to break out a bolt of canvas which seemed to have all the devils of the deep lodged in its folds?
I failed.
I wept when the sail blew away into the white, driving gloom of salt and spray. I could not see a boat's-length ahead. I fought for hours after that to try and rig the jib as an emergency, but it, too, was ripped away into the sea-murk. Every time I managed to bring her head round, the yacht would start off in an eccentric circle because of the jammed rudder, until the gale and sea would catch her and throw her bodily to the north-east — away, away, each desperate mile, from the Waratah's grave.
When I realized I could do nothing to handle the yacht, I set about trying to get the radio to work. The rawness of my wounded hands was made worse by spilt acid from the cells, which I refilled and changed, at first with hope, then with despair. The set remained as mute as the hour she had reported it dead.
On the third day, when I ate the last of the emergency sandwiches she had made, and drank the last unpolluted water from the tanks, my frenzy turned to exhaustion, and then to calm-a kind of numb, uncaring calm. My reason told me I was in as almost severe straits as she the moment that steel lid shut on her upturned face; my heart told me it did not matter, and that soon we would be together again.
So I read the pitiful little log between black covers which she took from Douglas Fairlie's pocket and caused her own doom.
I read of the Waratah's doom.
SS. Waratah. 9 p.m.
July 27, 1909
I write this in the presence of Almighty God, to whose protection and mercy I shall go when it is finished, in the certain knowledge that I have only a little time to live. That I am alive, is a miracle, for around me tonight are the bodies of over 200 of my fellow-beings — passengers, captain and officers-in this ill-starred ship. I interpret this small reprieve from death as His grace to enable me, in my extremity, to record how the Waratah met her end.
We sailed from Durban at approx 8 p.m. yesterday. I had the first watch today. I was surprised, before it was fight, to have Captain Ilbery join me on the bridge. He wished me a formal good morning and then stood looking out ahead.
'As an old sailing shipmaster I must sniff the first wind of the day,' he said with an attempt at a smile, but it was clear to me he was very uneasy about something. I had
never known him be like that before.
'What do you make of it?' he asked me.
I was surprised that he did not address me by my rank. He was always meticulous about this, especially in front of the crew.
'Coming up for a south-westerly blow, sir,’ I replied.
Captain Ilbery kept on looking to the south-west, as if he expected to see something there. The sea was rising, and once or twice the ship put her head down. We had had trouble loading 250 tons of coal into the well deck bunker at Durban and we could not get the ship upright. Now I resolved to get the well deck coal below as soon as the day watches came on duty.
Captain Ilbery went to the extreme forward section of the bridge. He seemed to be studying the well deck.
To lighten his unease, I used a windjammer expression as a joke.
'No need to whistle for a wind, is there, sir?'
The Captain did not reply, but started towards the chart-room companionway. Then he said, 'Come below a moment, will you, Douglas?'
I was so startled by his use of my Christian name that I left the bridge and followed him without giving orders.
Again, in the chart-room, he used my Christian name. Even when he had officiated at my wedding aboard Waratah, he had only half-managed to get it out.
'Douglas, what do you make of it?'
The thought crossed my mind, how many great storms has he ridden out, and what is so special about this capful of wind from the south-west?
'It seems to be working up a bit from the south-west, sir,' I replied. There's not much to it at the moment. We had a bit of a blow from the same quarter outward bound round the Cape, you remember …'
‘I don't mean the storm, man-I mean the ship,' he retorted with a vehemence which was so strange from him. The ship and the storm together, if you like.’
'It's not a storm yet, sir,' I pointed out.
'It will come,' asserted Captain Ilbery. 'One develops an instinct, a sixth sense, about these things. It's coming-a big one. This ship has never been in a Cape buster before, Douglas.'
'I'd feel happier if that well deck coal were below for the sake of her stability,' I answered. 'The sea is working up, and she has an odd sort of dead feel to me.'
Captain Ilbery seemed relieved that I shared with him the unspoken fears we both felt about the ship, her stability, and her incredible roll and lurch.
4Do that then,' he said. 'Get it stowed below as soon as you can after daylight.'
'Can I compensate the ballast tanks as we
ll?' I asked. ‘I would like all the weight I can find as deep below her centre of gravity as I can put it.'
Captain Ilbery eyed me gravely, and was about to say something when a messenger came from the bridge. 'Steamer fine on the port bow, sir. Overhauling her.' I went to the bridge, but Captain Dbery stayed. A ship called the Clan Macintyre, bound for London, signalled us. We exchanged formalities. It was off Port St John's.
Shortly after Waratah had passed Clan Macintyre, Captain Ilbery returned to the bridge. He was formal, which showed he had reached a decision in a difficult situation. There are not many captains who would have the courage to risk censure by running from a storm which had not yet developed into anything special in a crack, well-engined 10,000-tonner.
'I am going to do what my sailing-ship instincts tell me,' he informed me. 'Haul out, Mr Fairlie.'
I set course as he directed, and Waratah headed seawards across Clan Macintyre's bows and across the scend of the sea — its run was now strongly from the south-west — while the wind rose to a full gale. The new course, taking the sea on her starboard bow, brought several heavy seas aboard, and drenched the coaling gangs I had set to work.
Shortly after 10 o'clock-it seems scarcely credible that it happened a brief twelve hours ago — Waratah was struck by a heavy beam sea. She hung at the end of her roll in her characteristic way until I was convinced she would never come back. She lay in that position for perhaps five or six seconds, and then yawed off course landwards. Her recovery from the roll had been so sluggish that I feared that the worst had happened below.
Within seconds, I had an emergency call from the chief engineer. Hundreds of tons of coal had shifted in that awful roll and were lying against the ship's steering rods, jamming the rudder. I sent to Captain Ilbery to come to the bridge while I ran to the engine-room. That is the reason why I am alive tonight. With the rudder jammed, the ship's head swung round, away from the safety Captain Ilbery had so wisely sought. The ship listed badly to starboard. It was now blowing a full gale from the south-west. The sea had worked up with alarming rapidity. The speed was still on her when I rushed from the bridge to the engine-room.
Scend of the Sea Page 20