Song of the Sound

by Jeff Gulvin

  Alex was on the telephone to Bluff Harbour. She too had heard the Moeraki’s distress call and Tom responding to it. Ever since then she had been trying to raise the Korimako, had got nothing and was asking if Bluff had picked up anything she had missed. They hadn’t but told her they would come back when they heard any more. There were no other boats within the immediate vicinity; the closest was beyond the Pukaki Rise, three hundred kilometres north-east of Port Ross. Alex went back to the inner office and sat down. She glanced at her watch: it would soon be time for Bree to come home and she wondered what to tell her. Bree would want to talk to her mother as usual and would worry if she couldn’t. She looked out of the window, a little knot of fear in the pit of her stomach: storm clouds were gathering over the mountains.

  John-Cody dropped anchor in Port Ross and Libby listened to the terrible metallic clanking that resounded through the boat. The bilge pumps were working overtime and the water level was down to their knees below decks. On the bridge everything was saturated, weed and debris from the sea pasting everything in a green and brown sludge; it was freezing and there was no chance of any heat with the diesel stove knocked out. Libby suggested lighting the oven to try to warm things up but John-Cody wanted the gas conserved. He was staring at his dashboard and his face was thin and grey and pensive. Libby looked where he looked. Already she had noticed the compass was wrecked, but she saw him working at the radar and the twin GPS consoles where all the screens were blank. Tom came alongside her, hair plastered against his head, clothes wringing wet. He stood there shivering. All the cabins had been swamped and there was not a stitch of dry clothing anywhere.

  John-Cody was twisting knobs and pressing buttons on the GPS, but still the screens were blank. He eased the monitor forward and looked at the back, then cursed lightly under his breath.

  ‘Is it dead?’ Libby voiced everyone’s fear.

  John-Cody looked over at her. ‘Dead as: both of them.’ He slapped the top of the monitor with the flat of his palm. ‘Tom, keep the pumps working, I’m going to try and raise somebody.’ He slid down the steps and splashed into freezing water up to his knees. ‘Libby,’ he called, ‘put on a wetsuit. It’s the only way you’re going to stay warm. Jonah, as soon as the pumps are clear, make us something to eat.’ He lifted the handset on the first radio, twisted the dials to 4417 and heard the buzz of interference.

  ‘Kori-base, Kori-base, this is the Korimako. Do you copy, Alex?’

  Nothing.

  ‘Kori-base, Kori-base, Kori-base, this is the Korimako. Do you copy?’

  Still nothing: not so much as a change in the tone of interference.

  John-Cody put the handset down and tried the second radio but still he got no answer. He swung back up the steps and went on deck. The wind was dropping, which was something, as the storm blew itself around the North East Cape. He looked at his watch: five o’clock and almost fully dark. He went astern and checked the aerial masts for the radios. One was gone, the other buckled halfway up. The third, the spare high on the mizzen, looked intact. He wondered what had become of the Moeraki and a chill ran through him. Amazingly he found a dry cigarette in his pouch and lit it, letting the smoke escape his lips as a whale breached further down the harbour. He could have kicked himself for not getting the hand-held compass fixed.

  Tom came astern and they looked at each other for a long quiet moment.

  ‘We’ve got no navigation,’ John-Cody told him.

  ‘We can still make it.’

  John-Cody looked at a sky heavy with cloud. ‘Yes, but we need that lot to shift first.’

  Tom leaned on the rail: he had a soggy blanket round his shoulders.

  ‘Put a wetsuit on,’ John-Cody told him.

  ‘Can’t get one to fit.’ Tom patted his stomach. ‘I’ll be all right.’ He looked longingly at John-Cody’s cigarette. He offered it to him but Tom refused. ‘I mean to give it up, Gib. If I can get through this kind of stress, I reckon I’ve got it beaten.’

  ‘We need to fix boards over the holes in the windows,’ John-Cody said. ‘Let’s get on with it and then we’ll see if we can’t get that heater working.’

  The three of them went below while Libby took over making soup. Ripping the mattresses from bunks, they lifted the plywood boards and carried them upstairs. The three central windows had been fully breached and there were cracks in the others where the perspex had given and raked across the glass. John-Cody fetched a saw from the engine room and they began to cut the boards to size. They had to be fixed to the wooden struts on the inside because the housings on deck were fully moulded with no fixing point available. Tom shaped them as best he could and Jonah screwed them in place. First, though, they cut a small hole in each so they had some forward vision. When they were finished John-Cody wiped sweat from his brow, drier and warmer now. Tom’s clothes too were drying. Libby had already been up for’ard and laid some of the sodden blankets over the line in the engine room. The diesel heater was still soaking, however, and they could not get it to light.

  John-Cody looked at the wooden windows and sipped the soup Libby passed him. ‘These will have to do,’ he said. ‘We’ll leave the side shields off so we can see.’

  ‘Won’t that be dangerous?’ Libby looked startled.

  He moved his shoulders. ‘I guess if we were really unlucky we could take another wave, but we’ve got no compass or GPS or anything, bonny lass. We need to see so we don’t hit anything.’ He looked at her over the rim of his mug. ‘We’ve also got no autopilot so we’ll have to get home with the wheel.’ He paused and glanced at the others. ‘That’ll mean lots of watches, spelling one another in short bursts. It’s the best way to stay alert and try to maintain some kind of course.’

  ‘But how can we set a course?’ Libby asked him. ‘You make it sound like we can.’

  ‘We don’t have a choice, Libby. We need to get home.’

  ‘Why can’t we just sit and wait for a rescue?’

  ‘Because the boat’s seaworthy apart from navigation: I’ve been on fishing boats that put out every day in a much worse state than this. Floating coffins, some of them.’ He touched her on the shoulder. ‘Listen, it takes twenty-four hours to reach the Snares from here. That’s if the weather’s being kind. Right now the wind’s blowing from the north. The squall is probably localized to the area round the North East Cape. We can sail round it and then head north. When the wind changes it’ll blow nor’west then westerly and sou’west, all of which we can use.’

  ‘Sails?’ Jonah said.

  ‘Jib only. The Kori’s wounded, Jonah. I’m not going to risk both sails.’

  All at once John-Cody felt alive: he had passed his point of no return; whether it was making love in the wheelhouse or the birth of the whale or Mahina’s final departure he didn’t know, but he was alive and the energy pulsed in his veins. Whatever was coming he would face and he had promised Bree he would get her mother home safely.

  ‘Have we got enough fuel?’ Libby asked him.

  ‘We’ve stayed longer than I wanted to and used more, given our little excursion today, but so long as we get a few breaks now we’ll be fine.’

  ‘But how do we navigate?’

  ‘Dead reckoning.’

  Libby arched one eyebrow and he crooked his index finger at her. She followed him on deck and he stood with his arm about her shoulders and pointed at the cloud-wrecked sky above them. ‘Somewhere up there is the Southern Cross. I showed you, remember? If I can see the Southern Cross I can find due south between the pointers and the stem. If I know where south is I can guide the boat north. And that’s the way home.’

  The word home echoed in his head as he said it. Libby heard it too, like a bell tolling between them, and she looked into his face then reached out a hand to calm the hair where it flew in his eyes. He held her for a moment and then bent his head and kissed her, face chill in the wind, smelling of the sea. He looked in her eyes and saw the questions rising. He brushed her lips with his fingers.


  ‘We need to get some sleep now. We leave at eight o’clock in the morning.’

  ‘Not earlier?’

  He shook his head. ‘I want to get to the Snares in daylight. God help us if we come across them in the dark with no compass or radar. We leave here at eight. I reckon twenty-six hours to get there, given we’ll have to skirt the squall. That means ten a.m. when we hit.’

  The night was very cold and they all stayed in the wheelhouse, Libby and Tom draped round the C-shaped bench at the table, John-Cody stretched out on the floor along the bridge and Jonah lengthways between the aft and for’ard steps. They had managed to get the diesel heater going and it burned with a flickering orange flame. The water had been pumped out but the boat was sodden and dank and cold, dark below deck with moisture into everything. Libby lay in the half-darkness with a damp blanket over her, listening to Tom’s laboured breathing and thinking about Bree. She hadn’t been able to talk to her today; there was still no radio contact. She wondered what Bree was doing, what she was thinking, whether she was worried or whether Alex would have told her it was quite normal to have difficulty contacting a boat in the Sub-Antarctic. Atmospherics. Since she had been here Bree had learned a lot about atmospherics.

  She looked at her watch: only nine o’clock and yet she felt the weariness of the day envelop her. Sleep would not be long in coming despite the discomfort. She thought about John-Cody then, how much she loved him now and the fact that she would have him for only a few days longer. God only knew how long it would take them to get back to the South Island. That was if they got back at all. He had talked about the Southern Cross, but stars didn’t come out in the daytime: nobody had told her how they would navigate in the daytime. Those thoughts chilled her and she closed her eyes and tried to think of happier times.

  Her mind drifted and she thought about the calf they had seen being born, and prayed her video equipment had withstood the battering from the standing wave. She had locked it in the aluminium cases as soon as they got back on board so it ought to be all right. She saw the calf again in her mind’s eye, heard the voice in her head willing it to live when it seemed it would surely die. She remembered the mother’s attention, her fevered attempts to lift it to the surface so it could draw breath for the first time. The instinct of millions of years of evolution had been summed up in a moment between life and death. For a while the outcome was balanced on a knife edge, then all at once there was life: and within minutes of that victory Jonah was telling them that men might be lost north of Enderby Island.

  Opening her eyes, she looked at the shadows cast on the ceiling by the reflected light from outside. One thing she had learned about the sea: it was never pitch black. You could always see the horizon, unlike the darkness on land. The sea was darker than the sky and you could pick things out in the gloom. That would aid their passage north; they ought to be able to see any other boats before they hit them. Maybe in the morning the radios would work.

  Bree held Hunter’s hand, the two of them sitting in the house in Manapouri. They had got off the bus and gone to the office to call her mother on the radio, but hadn’t been able to get through. Alex had tried hard to hide her fears, but Bree saw through her. She asked and Alex told her the truth: a boat called the Moeraki was missing and the Korimako had answered her distress call. Bree had heard that distress call before, watching a film on television. Mayday. Mayday. Mayday. It sent a shiver through her now and she tightened her grip on Hunter’s hand. Alex was sitting in the other chair with Bree and Hunter squashed into one, listening to the conversations between the boat skippers on fisherman’s radio. Nobody had been able to raise either the Moeraki or the Korimako.

  Bree could hear the distress in the depth of the men’s voices: comrades possibly lost in the Southern Ocean, it was what they all feared the most. She looked at Hunter and he squeezed her hand more tightly. Sierra, sensing the mood, sat with her chin resting on Bree’s thigh, her dark brown eyes gazing up. Bree heard the rumble of a diesel truck outside and then the sound of a door slamming. There were footsteps on the path and Sierra gave a low growl and someone rapped on the door: Bree jumped up to open it and saw Ned Pole, tall and lean in the porch light.

  ‘G’day, Bree.’

  ‘Mr Pole. Come in.’ Bree turned to Alex. ‘It’s Mr Pole, Alex.’

  Pole came inside and Sierra lay down again. Pole held his hat in his hands, working the brim between his fingers. He nodded to Hunter and looked at Alex. ‘Just thought I’d pop by, Alex. The weather reports reckon the storm’ll blow itself out north of Port Ross. They’re sending a plane in the morning.’

  Alex got up to put the kettle on. Pole sat in the chair she had vacated and stretched out his legs. ‘Have you still not heard from the Korimako?’

  Alex shook her head. ‘I heard them answer the Mayday and that was it.’

  ‘It’ll be the storm. Don’t worry. They’re probably jammed up with static rain. It’ll be right in the morning, you’ll see.’ He looked at Bree then. ‘Don’t you worry about anything, Bree. Gib’s a good skipper and he’s got Tom with him. I don’t know a better seaman in New Zealand than old Tom Blanch.’

  ‘Tom hasn’t been to sea in years,’ Alex said to him.

  ‘That doesn’t matter. He can’t unlearn what experience has already taught him.’ Again he looked at Bree. ‘Don’t worry: they’ll get your mother home. They’re probably just sheltering out the storm.’

  Hunter looked at him then. ‘Do you think they reached the other boat in time, Mr Pole?’

  Pole’s face was grave, his eyes narrow and dark. ‘I don’t know, Hunter. I hope so.’ He looked at Alex then. ‘The Moeraki’s out of Dunedin: I know the skipper pretty well.’

  ‘They’d reported some engine trouble,’ Alex said.

  Pole nodded slowly and stood up again. ‘Thanks for the coffee, Alex, but I have to be going. I just thought I’d check on the young folks.’ He twirled his hat again. ‘If you need anything you know where to find me.’

  Libby woke to the sun on her face and sat up, almost banging her head on the table. The others were already awake and within seconds she heard the auxiliary fire and the familiar comforting rattle of the diesel engine sent vibrations through the deck. John-Cody and Jonah went outside and began to haul on the anchor wheel. Libby frowned and then she realized the standing wave had knocked out virtually all the electronics. Tom came up from the engine room still dressed in his normal clothes. Jonah was wearing a wetsuit but John-Cody wore the jeans and sweater that Libby had half dried out for him. She went on deck and asked if she should cook breakfast. Jonah called that there were bacon and eggs in the cold store. Libby caught John-Cody’s eye and a glance passed between them. He worked with sweat on his brow, the muscles standing out on his arms and veins bulging at his neck.

  Ten minutes after eight they were steaming south of Ewing Island to put some distance between the boat and the storm, which was still blowing for all it was worth around the North East Cape. As they entered the open sea on the eastern side of the island Libby watched the spray licking up the walls of the cliffs with such ferocity the high tops foamed in white. Tom moved at her shoulder. ‘Hard to believe we were in the middle of that yesterday.’

  Libby shivered. ‘Maybe we should’ve gone round.’

  Tom shook his head. ‘A Mayday’s a Mayday, Libby: grave and imminent danger. We had to try and get there as fast as we could.’

  John-Cody was at the wheel with Jonah down below. The boat stank now, with soaking mattresses and carpets and bedclothes, weed and kelp draped across the lockers in front of the windows. Jonah turned on the deck hose to wash it down. Libby watched him, standing across the bridge from John-Cody at the starboard door. It was dark in the wheelhouse, the windows blocked with wood, holes cut in the middle to see by. The holes let the wind whistle through and the chill was ever present. John-Cody had the heater working full blast below but it was nowhere near enough to dry the boat out. The seats they had slept on last night wer
e damp and rancid and already mould was setting in. Libby’s wetsuit squelched and was very constricting: she considered taking it off.

  ‘Take your choice between freedom of movement and warmth,’ John-Cody told her.

  ‘You’re not wearing one. Tom’s not either.’

  ‘Jonah’s got mine and Tom reckons he can’t find one to fit.’ John-Cody cracked a smile. ‘Don’t worry about us, Lib. Just keep yourself warm.’

  ‘If my drysuit inner wasn’t soaked I’d wear that. I’m going to try the radio again,’ she told him.

  ‘Be my guest.’

  She went aft and sat on the plastic stool at the chart table: she tried both radios in vain for nearly twenty minutes then came up to the saloon once again. John-Cody stood square at the wheel, feeding it back and forth through his hands to right the course in the current, which he could feel shifting under his feet. He glanced over his shoulder.

  ‘Try again later, when we get round the squall. It’s probably blocking the signal. We’ve still got one good aerial left so it ought to work.’

  Libby came alongside him and peered at the sea through the hole in front of her face. The wooden boards were crudely cut but securely screwed down in case the boat took another wave. Jonah stepped inside, his hair tied back in a ponytail.

  ‘Deck’s clean, boss.’

  John-Cody nodded. ‘Give Tom a hand, will you, Jonah? The dinghy’s got a loose shackle on the transom. I don’t want that coming away if we hit some more weather.’

  Jonah disappeared on deck once again and John-Cody glanced at Libby. ‘Take the helm, Lib, and keep her as she goes.’

  Libby took the wheel and brushed her hand over his. He gripped her fingers for a moment then eased a loose strand of hair behind her ear. ‘Your boat,’ he told her.

  He stepped on deck and she watched him by the mizzen through the hole in the wooden board. He stood with his back to her and shaded his eyes from the sun, which peeped now and again through sucker holes in the clouds. He lifted his left hand and glanced at his watch, then he looked across the port bow towards the storm. He came back inside and took the wheel again.