It is hard to write of a man one has seen burned to death before one's very eyes. Vinney, the engineer, was waiting for me. The engine-room was a holocaust. Vast quantities of coal were lying across the steering rods and this would have to be cleared before the ship could be brought under control. Already two coal trimmers were not accounted for. The roar of steam being blown off drowned the senses. Vinney had also emptied the main furnace ash chute as a precaution.
It is impossible for me now to estimate times, or say how long I had been in the engine-room, but the engineer and I were on the catwalk by No. 2 boiler furnace making hurried plans to clear the coal when the disaster happened. I am still too dazed to give a coherent account of it, but do this I must, for this is my final task.
One moment Vinney was beside me; the next, the entire furnace seemed to tip forward as the ship's bows dropped at an angle so unlikely that it seemed to deny she was a craft on the surface of the sea. White-hot coal spewed from the furnace over the engineer and two stokers. I did not even hear them scream, it was so sudden. In a moment, it seemed, the whole engine-room — furnaces, engines, bunkers, boilers — turned upside down. At the same instant there was a tremendous crash and a rending noise whose like I have never heard before. Even now, nearly twelve hours afterwards, I have difficulty in crediting that this 10,000-ton ship capsized, turned completely turtle.
I found myself hanging on to the catwalk railing staring upwards through the metal tunnel of the ash chute which had been emptied. Had the engineer not dumped its contents at the first emergency, a cascade of white-hot ash would have written the same fate for me as for him. Scalding steam and smoke made it impossible to see across the inferno of the engine-room; the roar of escaping steam boomed and reverberated between the metal walls of the compartment like non-stop thunder.
As I groped to haul myself on to the inverted catwalk, I was confronted with another impossibility — I was looking at driving storm clouds across the sky through the chute opening! The cable to the ash chute hatch had been left unsecured in the haste to empty its contents and the watertight bulkhead intersecting the tunnel about fifteen feet from the bottom had swung wide of its own accord.
My movements were instinctive. My sole thought was to escape from the roaring, thundering, scaring engine-room before the boilers exploded. Everything was lit by the red glow of the flaming coal which had been ejected from the furnaces, and I coughed and gasped for breath in the swirling smoke. I had no conscious appreciation in those desperate first minutes of the nature of the disaster which had overtaken the ship — all I knew was that she had capsized completely. In the baleful light I saw a trimmer's lamp attached to the catwalk rail. I took it and climbed up into the ash chute. I closed the bulkhead behind me so that when the boilers exploded, I would be shielded against the concussion.
At that stage I considered that the ship, after turning over, was floating upside down with her keel in the air. I think I first intended to swim clear of her, but when I put my head outside the open hatch for a moment, the sight of the boiling sea and insane wind drove me back, terrified. I tugged the hatch cover closed by means of the cable and lit the trimmer's lamp. Better to have at least a floating wreck under one than be cast adrift on that awe-inspiring sea. I tried to pull myself together.
The catastrophe overtook the ship at between 10 and 11 this morning, but it was not for fully an hour afterwards-, sitting here in the ash chute in a state of numbed shock, that I came to realize that my first reconstruction of it, namely, that the vessel was floating upside down, was wrong. Shortly after I entered the chute there was a violent, grinding movement like an earthquake which brought terror to my already overwrought nerves: I thought the ship was settling and that the boilers would explode when the sea reached them. This cataclysmic noise drowned even the racket and vibration of the screws turning in empty air above my head. The grinding and rending threw me from side to side in the chute. I was too terrified to try and open the hatch again. When the violence and movement stopped, I came to the conclusion that the ship must have been settling down on some solid object, crushing the superstructure as she did so, with that nightmare of noise.
The boilers did not explode, as I feared. I felt the screws start to slow, and then stop, as the steam pressure fell away.
I blessed Vinney's foresight for throwing open the steam safety valves.
I am not sure now whether the noise, or the silence which followed, were more terrifying. I found courage at last to try the hatch again. I thought it had jammed, but the significance of it did not come home to me until I cautiously screwed open the bulkhead door through which I had come from the engine-room. A jet of compressed air and stale smoke whistled in, but before hastily screwing it shut, I caught a glimpse below.
The ship was full of water!
In this moment of my extremity — the light is beginning to flicker for want of air and my breathing becomes more difficult as the tunnel's oxygen is spent-I know that I am sealed alive in a ship which, for some reason which I cannot explain, is neither afloat nor ashore.
Later: Breathing very difficult. No point in prolonging my life further. Ship rocked and heaved. No. 1 hatch burst, I think. I will douse the light now to have use of the last of air for what I must do, namely, open the lower bulkhead to the flooded engine-room, and go through. I will then seal the chute behind me with this account to tell how the Waratah met her end, so that the sea will not be able to reach it.
Under my grandfather's signature was scrawled, 'Read this. Will scratch message for Ian on panel cut from Gemsbok — Bruce Fairlie, captain, SAA Viscount Gemsbok, July 19, 1967.'
I took the black-covered notebook, embossed with two blue anchors of the famous line, wrapped it in oilskin, and buried it deep among the other Waratah things which Tafline had so carefully stowed in the waterproof galley locker.
The frenzy of the gale made it almost impossible to write Touleier's log. I resorted to a kind of cryptic telegraphese to try and rush down on paper, amid the violent kicking and jerking of the hull, something of what was happening. Often I had to wait five minutes or more between individual words because of the bucking. To try and fix the yacht's position was out of the question.
A flicker of hope came to me on the afternoon of the fourth day.
I saw my chance. There was a lull in the gale in the late afternoon. If I could get rid of the mainboom wreckage locked in the self-steering gear, I might still save the yacht.
Not until I chopped at the gear with an axe did I realize how weak I was. I had had no food since the last sandwiches nearly two days before. The salt-contaminated fresh water had made me vomit. My feeble strokes simply bounced off. I switched my attention to the stump of the mainmast, whose heel was starting to thrash. Somehow I managed to fix it, but it cost me a left hand stripped of flesh to the bone of the thumb and two fingers.
Before I could attempt more, the gale resumed in full fury.
That night I gave up hope.
In the morning, Touleier was still afloat.
I did not think it possible for her to take any more punishment, or that there was anything left to carry away. But at dawn I was jerked from my semi-coma by a crash and a gust which even in my sinking brain stood out as more violent than anything I had yet encountered. It took away the stump of mainmast and mainboom wreckage. The starboard cabin ports were blown in and water cascaded into the shambles of a cabin.
I did not want to die down there, cowed, beaten, alone. I wanted to die with a curse on my lips at the south-west wind, facing it, feeling its plucking challenge on my face at the end.
I tried to say goodbye to her at the bunk where we had had the magic of that other dawn off Pondoland, looking down on her lovelines, but a lurch crashed me to my knees, and as I sprawled I prayed, oh Christ put an end to my thoughts like the south-west wind, will the agony never end? She said, while the Waratah mystery is unsolved, I cannot be yours. Now it is resolved, and very soon she shall have me.
I dragged myself on deck to die.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The persistent slatting, rattling of the sail reached down into my coma.
My last spark of consciousness cursed the south-west wind. Could it not leave me to die even in peace? The roaring in my ears told me that the end could not be far off. My fading sea-instincts told me it was not the wind which was roaring — maybe I noted subconsciously that it had fallen. Perhaps that is what caused me to force open my eyes and wonder why, then, a sail should slat, when there was no wind?
The downrush of air forced oxygen into my unwilling lungs and I tried to get to my feet to cut loose that maddening slatting sail. As I grabbed one of the cockpit handles, the roaring increased, the wind increased.
A man hung in space over the socket of the mast.
The big Super Frelon helicopter hovered over Touleier, its rotors slatting and banging. All round the yacht the sea boiled in minor imitation of the gale. I tried to focus on the helicopter-one of the big long-range French-built craft the South African Air Force uses for troop-carrying-but all I could distinguish before a fit of giddiness swept me off my feet was the five-pointed roundel representing the Castle of Good Hope.
When I drifted back to half-consciousness, I was aware that an airman was fixing a 'horse-collar’ device under my arms preparatory to signalling the helicopter to winch me up. It was the thought of her, those priceless Waratah documents which were now all the living things I had left of her, that made me seize the grab-handle and hang on fast.
Take it easy, chum!' exclaimed the airman. 'We're here to help you. You'll be all right once we get you aboard.'
I heard a megaphone shouting above the racket of the rotors, but I was too far gone to know what was being said.
'Waratahl' I mouthed. 'In the galley. Top locker. I don't go without them!'
The pain in my hands jerked me to full consciousness. I could see the horror and pity in the airman's eyes as his glance went from the cut in my blood-matted hair to my hands.
I pulled myself together. 'Down there-a lot of documents,' I managed to get out. 'Bring them, and I'll come. Don't. . don't. . for Christ's sake don't leave her to sink; She's all I. . I. .' I couldn't formulate the words. 'Waratah!’ I articulated carefully. 'Waratah, man!'
He cupped his hands and shouted something to the hovering craft, and then signalled. He went below and came up with the documents she had wrapped in oilskin. Some of them were blotched and stained with blood and lymph from my hands.
This it?' he asked, as if speaking to a child.
I nodded. That one with all the blood — is that a little black notebook?' He unwrapped it quickly. It was.
A fresh wave of nausea overtook me. I could not uncurl my fingers from the grab-handle.
The airman made another hand signal to the Super Frelon.
He said, 'We're putting an automatic Sonar buoy on board — continuous homing signals, and then we can pick her up later-okay?'
I wasn't aware of being winched up into the helicopter. My first recollection was of lying among what appeared to be innumerable big fuel drums in the padded interior of the craft. The airman was pouring something down my throat.
Major Bates knelt next to me. He grinned when he saw me conscious. 'Our flight paths seem to cross a lot.' He saw my hands. 'You should stick to steamers.'
It was the mention of steamer that brought me sitting half upright — Waratah!
Bates said tersely, 'Can you sit up? Can you talk?'
I nodded.
He told the men who supported me, 'Carry him up forward and put him in the co-pilot's seat next to me. Give him something to eat. Coffee — put a shot of brandy into it.'
Bates was at the controls when they brought me to him, a man helping me on either side. Already I could feel a touch of warmth coming back into my body.
'Get this off — urgent — priority,' Bates dictated to the radio operator. ' "I've got Fairlie, alive, also yacht Touleier." Give the position.' He spoke over his shoulder to the man who had rescued me. 'Did you put that automatic buoy aboard her?' He nodded and Bates went on. 'It's not only your sponsors who would not forgive me for abandoning that little beauty in mid-ocean.'
'Mid-ocean?'._
Bates waved through the Perspex canopy. 'See any land? Four hundred and thirty miles out to sea.'
I started to get my thoughts straight as the food and drink had their effect.
‘I didn't realize anyone knew we were missing.'
Bates gave a short, mirthless laugh. 'Maybe people are getting wise to Fairlies popping up and then vanishing. I got a stand-by alert the day after the gale began. The papers were full of you-again. You gave them just the cream on the coffee that they love. Fairlie lost in search for lost father. All the rest of it. The whole works. The whole country's buzzing with you.'
He looked at me penetratingly, kindly. I sensed a difference of attitude from my frigid reception before by the authorities.
'Can you answer some questions? Some of them will be tough.'
He looked away and issued a string of orders.
Tafline. That is what he meant. I cringed.
'Give me a moment,' I replied uncertainly. 'Tell me more from your side first.'
'That man Jubela of yours should have a gold medal,' went on Bates, not looking at me. The Super Frelon was moving ahead, fast. 'Everyone wants to give him one.'
‘I saw him swept away and drowned,' I said weakly.
'A British tanker picked up Jubela barely a couple of hours after that,' resumed Bates. 'He'd got himself a rubber dinghy-the yacht's, I suppose? The tanker radioed that Touleier was lost — the hunt was on. We knew almost exactly where to go.'
'South of the Bashee.' My words were almost involuntary. 'It wasn't the yacht only,' Bates added grimly. 'Your man said you'd found the Waratah’ The cold agony of it flooded back. ‘I did.'
Bates glanced sharply at me. 'What he had to say so electrified HQ that I took a chopper that same afternoon and risked my neck to bring Jubela ashore from the tanker to tell us what he knew.' He smiled. 'I've learned to fly some since meeting the Fairlies. What Jubela said galvanized us still further, when we got him ashore. Apparently he'd been shouting his head off aboard the tanker for them to do something.'
I could hardly frame the words. 'About-what?' Bates said levelly. 'Jubela saw you come back alone, without…'
I could not say her name.
'He knew that something terrible had happened to her, but he didn't know what. He guessed she was trapped somehow when you came yelling for an axe. He'd also seen the name Waratah and said you'd told him about her.'
‘I explained to him about my father and grandfather,' I interjected.
'It was nothing to what he gave the papers,' Bates went on. 'I felt really sorry for your police pals trying to cope.'
Then he resumed rapidly, refusing to let me speak. 'The tanker picked up Jubela drifting in his dinghy miles away to the south-west of where he last saw you. The search was easy, after that. A couple of frigates went first, and they worked back from where Jubela was found. One of them got a sounding which looked good. By that time Jubela had told us about the seamount, but it was outside the scope of ordinary sounding equipment. Next day we got the survey ship Africana with her special equipment down from Durban. It was a piece of cake. She found the seamount, spot on.'
I broke into a flow of words. 'And the WaratahV
'That submerged seamount confused the echoes from the metal hull of the Waratah' replied Bates. 'The survey ship reported that it was, in fact, an isolated, narrow, needle-like pinnacle jutting up hundreds of feet sheer from the ocean floor, so narrow. .'
'It was just wide enough for Waratah to lie on top of it,' I said. 'Her beam was only fifty-nine feet.'
'In the wide ocean, you'd have to run slap into a tiny thing like that before you'd locate it,' remarked Bates. 'We also established that the seamount lies between the usual northbound and southbound routes the ships use; a sort of n
o-man's-water.'
I remembered how Douglas Fairlie had written that Waratah had yawed off course when the rudder jammed.
'Jubela's story about your lady friend being trapped aboard the hulk had the whole world by the ears,' Bates said. I did not like the way he would not look me in the eyes when he spoke about her.
They sent down divers and frogmen. They found the wreck, upside down, sixty feet below the surface.'
I waited. I could not ask.
They tapped the hull. They got an answer near an old hatch.'
I sagged forward in my seat and Bates shouted for assistance, but I waved them away. 'She's alive?'
This morning, five hours ago, when I took off, she was alive,' Bates answered tersely. 'Just. Immediately they found the hulk they got an air line down to her — fired it through the hatch with an explosive bolt. Water, too, fortified with this and that to keep her going.'
I thumped my hands, which they had bandaged while Bates talked, unfeelingly on the armrest of my seat. I did not even feel the pain. 'Why don't they get her out?’
Bates stopped me. 'There is only one man who can tell them how to get her out. We had to find you at any cost.'
I choked and turned away. I held up my shattered hands to Bates. I could not speak.
But he went on. 'They found Touleier's mainsail the day after she was missing — like Jubela, it had drifted away southeast, away from the seamount. Some rigging wreckage, too.'
'We cut away the mast.'
'The experts argued that where the wreckage had drifted, there also would the disabled yacht drift. That's the way Jubela went in his dinghy. But I had read what you told the C-in-C about the search for the Waratah and how the cruisers followed the current and looked south-east. I argued. I reasoned. When I quoted you they were dubious. I tried to tell them their search was making the same mistake as for the Waratah. I was out over the sea every day. I wanted to fly north-east, away-from the search area which they had plotted. I remembered your telling the C-in-C about two old steamers which had been disabled near the Bashee and didn't drift south-east at all, but north-east?'
Scend of the Sea Page 21