by Peter Tonkin
‘I wasn’t,’ she answered. ‘It’s not my place to do so. I’m a passenger. You’re in command and Mr Greenbaum is the owner. I’m not about to second guess either of you. I just want to reach my husband if I can.’
‘Very well. But please understand I am not questioning your experience or your competence to take such decisions. My priority, too, is the safety of the passengers and crew. But it is also my duty to try and retrieve this situation without handing Maxima over to salvage under Lloyds Open Form, which is what will happen if we call for help because we cannot sail to safe haven ourselves.’
‘I’m aware of that. But on the other hand, I suspect that if your weather predictors were working they would warn you that what we are experiencing is only the first stage of one of the worst storms to hit the West Coast of America in more than a century. Unless we can arrange for some sort of Plan B to be in place we will simply be another set of statistics on the missing, presumed drowned list in the aftermath of whatever this thing turns out to be.’
‘I understand your concern. Do you wish me to summon the radio operator? He is, of course, with the other electrical specialists and the engineers fighting the fire.’
‘No. I know how the radio works and I know the wavelength and call sign of the man I want to speak to.’
Just as she said this, Captain Toro’s walkie-talkie buzzed and he answered it. ‘You’re wanted below,’ he said after a moment. ‘Miss Liberty and her friends need a check-up and are reluctant to let our medic do it because he’s a man.’
‘OK,’ answered Robin. ‘But I’ll be back to try to use the radio as soon as I’ve finished. If I can’t get through then no one can. If I do get through then I think we have a good chance. If I can’t for any reason, then I suggest that everyone aboard starts praying for a miracle.’
TWENTY-SEVEN
‘It was a miracle,’ gasped Miguel-Angel. ‘I have thanked San Andreas, who must have been watching over me; and when we return home I will light a candle in the cathedral to his name. I was never so frightened in all my life. When that tiburon looked me in the eye and I could see he had decided to kill me, Madre de Dios!’
Some of the crew were impatient with the boy, for while he stood there on top of the net, gabbling out his terror, they could not retrieve the length they had lost and proceed with loading their fabulous catch. Hernan and the captain, however, were more indulgent.
‘Yes, indeed,’ said Hernan gently. ‘It was a galano. Galanos are the worst. Everyone knows this. San Andreas was smiling down on you today, Miguel-Angel. And so was San Telmo.’
‘But you showed no fear,’ added the captain from the top step by the bridge-house door, staring down the rest of the crew as they grew restless. ‘I know many men who would have cried out in fear at such a time. But not you. You looked the galano straight in the eye and dared him to do his worst, eh?’
The boy was not so innocent that he would risk the respect of such men by admitting that he had actually been too terrified to scream. But the little deception broke the moment. He stopped jabbering and stepped off the net. The crew went back to work. This time, when the shark came back aboard there was no doubt that it was dead, for it was folded in half and its belly had burst. Miguel-Angel made a point of spitting on the broad grey shovel of its head before he slid back under the seat and continued keeping the scuppers clear as the broken body rolled overboard and splashed into the sea beside Pilar.
As time passed, the rain began to ease. The men in general conversation agreed that this was a thoroughly good thing. Without the downpour to distract them, they began to work faster, forcing Miguel-Angel to work faster too as the volume of weed and rubbish that came aboard with the nets grew in proportion to the speed with which Hernan winched them in. The increasing drag, however, pulled the stern down further so that, although the rain eased, the larger waves began breaking in over the open transom, spewing across the deck and draining out through the scuppers. Miguel-Angel didn’t get much benefit from the fact that the rain clouds were relenting, therefore. But the others did, and soon felt confident enough to open the hatch cover altogether, which in turn made it easier for them to throw the fish in, which allowed them to work faster, which made Hernan winch the nets in more rapidly still.
Miguel-Angel soon lost track of time, but he was certain that several hours must have passed. His work became a series of flashes that punctuated a dream of near exhaustion like the jellyfish and the shark had done. But the seat above, the side in front with the openings of the scuppers at its base, and the restless legs behind kept the boy cocooned. The others, hard at work, fiercely focused on making the most of this one last chance to mend their fortunes, did not really notice the slow changes in the weather around them, other than those which continued to make their work easier.
When, a good deal later, Miguel-Angel was at last given the chance of a toilet break and a cup of coffee, he noticed the changes as soon as he pulled himself out from under the seat. The rain had fallen light, though there was still no hint of blue sky above the clouds, and in place of the blinding downpour was an impenetrable mist of drizzle. The wind had shifted and strengthened. The set of the sea had swung round too – the rollers seemed bigger. They were coming from the north-east now and they were breaking in through the gap in the transom more regularly, sometimes heaving lengths of net in with them before Hernan winched them aboard. Miguel-Angel did not like the look of the new weather. But the exhausted men all around him raised no concerns. So the boy who had looked a galano in the eye and not screamed could hardly say he was worried by improving conditions. Not even to his capitan.
Captain Carlos was on the bridge when the boy found him. ‘I am going below for coffee, Capitan. Would you like some? There is no food left, though of course we can eat some of the catch, if you like. There are several tuna that we cannot put in the freezer because they have been half-eaten by sharks or barracudas, but they are still fat and would be tasty enough.’
‘No,’ said the capitan, preoccupied. Then he changed the subject altogether. ‘Your eyes are better than mine. Can you see something to the north of us? Another vessel?’
Miguel-Angel crossed to the rear-facing window and rubbed the foggy glass with his sleeve. He peered into the drizzling mist to the north, but he could see nothing distinct. ‘If there is anything there I cannot make it out,’ he said after a while.
‘I am concerned that it might be a fisheries protection vessel sneaking up on us,’ said Carlos. ‘Take the prismaticos and go aloft. Take a good long look from up there.’ As he spoke, the old man handed over the battered binoculars. Although the boy was bursting to use the toilet, he took the binoculars and obeyed. He slung them round his neck and swarmed up the ladder to the cluttered little deck on top of the bridge house. He stood tall, straddling his legs against Pilar’s rhythmic pitching. The change in the weather was even more obvious up here. But he disregarded this. He put one arm round the slim communications mast which fed the radio Capitan Carlos kept switched off because he wanted no contact with anyone at the moment. He steadied himself and brought the binoculars to his eyes. He looked back down the length of Pilar, over the open hatch, over the line of exhausted men sitting on the portside bench on his left, past the open transom and the net still spewing apparently endlessly out of it. And he looked into the drizzling mist to the north.
There was nothing distinct. Just a fog of grey, as though the air was filled with dusty spiders’ webs. Then he began to notice that the dullness was occasionally lit by flickers of brightness. Not the sort of brightness that might come from a nearby vessel, but something brighter, vaster, more distant. Miguel-Angel held his breath, willed his thumping heart to quieten. He disregarded the creaking of the pitching boat and the hissing whisper of the passing waves. Far away, there was a continuous rumbling. It was like thunder, he thought. No, it was thunder. He frowned, and suddenly his heart seemed to be making even more noise than before. Almost as much, in fact, as when the shark’s
yellow eye had met his. But he had no idea why he should suddenly be so terrified.
And yet, he was.
TWENTY-EIGHT
‘Hello, Sulu Queen, this is Robin Mariner aboard Maxima. Is Captain Mariner available? Hello, Sulu Queen?’
‘Any luck?’ asked Captain Toro.
‘Nothing yet. I have the right wavelength and Sulu Queen’s call sign. She should be able to hear me as long as there’s someone on radio duty. And I can’t imagine that there isn’t, not with Richard in charge. Not under these conditions. And it’s less than a thousand miles. She’s not on the moon! God, I got through on my cell phone a little while ago! Signal’s gone on that now too!’
It was the better part of an hour since Robin and Nic had brought Liberty and her crew aboard. At Nic’s request, Robin, first-aid trained and careful to keep her certificates up to date, had checked them all over one at a time in preference to Maxima’s perfectly capable but masculine medic. After a thorough examination, she declared them surprisingly fit under the circumstances but battered, bruised, exhausted and suffering from mild exposure. She prescribed a stiff drink and eight hours’ sleep. Then she tucked them into bed. Nic was in the lounge immediately outside their accommodation in case they needed anything. The lounge was no longer so glorious, though. The TV had fallen off the wall and the carpets were soaking with water from the damaged pool. There was, as yet, no power, light or heat. Robin left him to his vigil and came up to try to contact Richard – so far with a spectacular lack of success. After a while, Toro had returned from the engine room with the news that the fire was safely out and repairs were well in hand. Robin could not meet his good news with good news of her own. The only positive she had to offer was that the weather immediately around them was moderating once again. But the clearer air did not mean a stronger radio signal.
‘Perhaps Manuel did more damage than we thought when he fell,’ suggested the captain.
‘Possibly. I’ve been thinking, though. If I can’t get through I’ll have to borrow another electrical engineer, if you have one, and go back aloft. The weather’s eased enough to make it fairly safe even if we still have high seas running. See if we can make some repairs.’
Toro shook his head. ‘Only Manuel. Electrical officer and radio officer. What you would call “Sparks”, I believe …’
‘Well, he’ll have to do, no matter what state his ribs are in. And the quicker the better. It’s all hands to the pump.’
‘Literally, if we aren’t careful,’ said Toro grimly. ‘I’m going back below to get an assessment as to when we can restore power. Will you hold the bridge? I’ll be on the end of a walkie-talkie if you need to call me back.’
‘Fine. I’ll keep trying for a bit longer then; if I can’t raise Sulu Queen I’ll ask you to send Manuel back up and we’ll take it from there.’
‘OK.’ Toro went through the rear door of the bridge and vanished into the shadowy, smoke-smelling corridor.
Robin looked down at the recalcitrant radio with a frown. ‘I don’t know,’ she told it. ‘If you can’t reach Sulu Queen then you probably aren’t going to reach the emergency services either when Captain Toro or Nic decides the situation is bad enough to start calling for help – no matter what it’s going to cost. We really need you fixed as the next priority after putting the fire out and restoring power. I truly do not want to find us just relying on the emergency beacons.’
The radio did not answer. She made herself comfortable in the radio officer’s seat and put on the headphones. She pulled the stick microphone towards her, checked the digital readout and started again. ‘Sulu Queen? Hello, Sulu Queen, this is yacht Maxima …’
Half an hour later she admitted defeat. She threw herself back in the chair and pulled the headphones off. She picked up the walkie-talkie, which was lying on the table beside the useless radio, and put it to her bruised lip. ‘Captain Toro,’ she said, ‘could you please send up Manuel with whatever equipment he needs to test the communications system?’ She looked out of the bridge windows and raised her eyebrows in pleased surprise. ‘It looks like the rain’s moderating even further. If we shake a leg we should be able to do some good before things close in again.’
Manuel came up ten minutes later looking less than happy. And Robin could see why. In spite of his sore ribs he was carrying a case on a shoulder strap that looked pretty big and heavy. ‘Give that to me,’ she ordered abruptly, and he did so without hesitation. Then the pair of them returned to the topmost deck. They stood for a moment at the bottom of the ladder leading up to the damaged communications equipment. ‘The main priority has to be the radio,’ Robin said, putting the heavy shoulder bag down. ‘Sonar, radar and so forth would be important if we were going anywhere. But we aren’t. Next, after the radio, we need the weather predictor back online.’ She looked around. The rain had eased back to a clinging grey mist. Something seemed to flash in the corner of her eye and she wondered whether she should get her sight checked when she got home. But then, in the furthest distance, just audible above the waves, she heard a whisper of thunder. ‘Yes,’ she said decisively. ‘The weather predictor could be very useful indeed.’
‘That’ll all be through the satellite feed,’ said Manuel. ‘It’s what I was holding when I fell. But I’ll go back up and see what I can do.’
He opened the case and started rummaging around in it. Robin watched him for a moment then drifted away, her senses expanding as she began to take stock of the changes in the weather since she’d brought Katapult8’s crew back aboard. Even though the drizzling mist remained disturbingly thick, it was just possible to see a broad black line in the distance, which she assumed was the northern horizon. And even as she established this in her mind, the flickering in the corner of her eye was repeated. She held her breath, counting. Until, once again, that almost subliminal rumbling was repeated, seeming to come from the sky, the sea – everywhere around. And, seemingly born of that disturbing rumble, a wind sprang up. One minute there was a chilly dead calm, the next there was a wind that Liberty might have been able to make Katapult8 run across fast enough to make her sail start singing. Her thoughts were interrupted by the walkie-talkie. ‘How are things going?’ asked the captain.
Robin looked up at the communications mast. Manuel was up there connecting a couple of wires that led back down to his box to something deep inside the golf ball. ‘Hard to say,’ she answered. ‘How are things down there?’
‘The fire’s burned out, as you know. But so are the bearings, the engineer informs me. There was a colossal engine overload when we hit the net. I’ve got a couple of divers kitted up ready to go over and cut us free as the weather seems to have moderated, as you say. Then we’ll take it from there. But even if we can’t move, at least we’ll be able to restore power to the lighting and heating.’
‘Fine. Better hurry with those divers, though. I don’t like the look of things up here. We seem to be fine at the moment but I think our friend Noah is just about to arrive with his ark.’
‘What?’
‘The storm Richard flew through on his way back with Biddy. I think it’s just about to catch up with us.’
‘OK. I’ll tell them to hurry. Out.’
‘Señora?’ called Manuel as Robin broke contact with Toro.
‘Yes?’
‘I have made a connection. Please contact your husband. The portable in the shoulder bag should get the best signal – I have wired it in directly.’
Robin crossed to the foot of the ladder and found that half of the bulk of the shoulder bag was taken up with what looked like a radio-telephone. There was a handset and a touchscreen with a series of icons that adjusted the wavelength, call identification, volume and so forth with a simple tap. Squatting beside it, Robin pulled the handset free and pushed it to her ear, listening to the whisper of the open channel. Then she tapped in the wavelength that Sulu Queen was on and followed it with her call sign. ‘Hello, Sulu Queen, this is Robin Mariner aboard Maxima. Is Captain Marin
er available? Hello, Sulu Queen?’
There was a hissing whisper in reply.
‘Hello, Sulu Queen, this is Robin Mariner aboard Maxima,’ she repeated. ‘Is Captain Mariner available? Hello, Sulu Queen?’
Then, as though from the bottom of a very distant tomb, she heard, ‘Hello, Maxima? This is Sulu Queen. You are very faint. No, I am very sorry. Captain Mariner is not aboard. I repeat, not aboard this afternoon …’ There was more, but she couldn’t make it out. Desperately, as though the action would improve the signal, she stood up. Her concentration on what she was hearing was so fierce that she did not at first register what she was seeing.
A sudden gust of wind just managed to part the clouds of grey mist for an instant. Robin found herself looking up a grey hill of water. Wave seemed to be piled upon wave. Long before she registered what was happening, her unconscious was in action, listing things she had seen and experienced that could explain this new phenomenon: what she had seen on the video of the Indian Ocean in 2004 and Japan in 2011. What she had experienced herself on Tiger Island. But this couldn’t be a tsunami, she thought numbly. Her hand fell to her side, still gripping the handset, unaware that the channel to Sulu Queen was still open. ‘Manuel!’ she shouted. ‘Get down here now!’
She felt in her pocket for the walkie-talkie and jammed it, left-handed, to her mouth. ‘Captain Toro! There’s a series of large waves approaching. The biggest rogue waves I’ve ever seen. You’d better tell your men to brace. And pray. There’s nothing else to do.’
As she finished speaking, Manuel stumbled off the bottom rung and staggered to her side. Maxima’s stern swooped down into the trough in front of the first waves. ‘Get down,’ Robin advised, following her own advice at once. ‘Get down and lie flat. This is going to be a rollercoaster ride …’