Half-dazzled by the flare, I saw the flashing lights tilt slightly as- the Buccaneer began to bank to port. Alistair, having located and identified Walvis Bay, was about to make a wide circle and come round for a second beat-up of the ship. My danger message had got across!
How long were the plane's lights visible at its speed and our reduced range of vision-five seconds? Ten seconds? Less?
We could still see them winking.
Then they went out, as if they had been switched off.
CHAPTER SIX
Feldman, looking strangely large in the unreal light, turned to me, gesturing and grinning that the incident was over. At least he seemed to have snapped out of his previous attitude. He made a wide sweep of his free arm, hanging on with the other, as if to indicate that he had expected Alistair to have completed his circuit and come back over Walvis Bay. Then he grinned again and shrugged his shoulders, surprised that he had not done so.
I still faced the direction in which the Buccaneer had disappeared. The flare burned lower.
With the same sort of slow shock that one feels in the presence of an inescapable, evil reality-I felt now as I did once when I came face-to-face with a black mamba rearing man-high on a forest path in Natal-I knew I would never see Alistair alive again.
The Buccaneer's lights had winked his last farewell to me; I had watched him go to his death. How or why, I did not know, but the instinctive realization was there, as surely as the moment Tafline stepped under the photograph of the Waratah, she became part of its tragedy. In the numbness of that moment on the icy sea-and-rain-drenched deck, I turned to the recollection of her in my cabin. I, in reconstructing the Waratah's night of doom, had brought doom to my brother, and added yet another victim to her charnel-house. The power of the seas was puny alongside that other force, which stood with its headman's axe dripping and bloody in the night
Feldman was shaking me and shouting. I could not hear what he was saying. A whole hill of water had fallen on top of the gallant little weather ship as I stood numb. The flare was out. Even on the upper deck, I was waist-deep in water, and the lifeline dragged at my oilskins. The floodlight still threw its bright clinical white light over the scene: even high up the ship seemed deep in water, scarcely with the strength to ride above the waves. The screws had a newer, higher note when next they broke clear-soon they would tear themselves out of their bearings. One more wave like that at present speed and Walvis Bay would dive down and never come up again.
I yelled back at Feldman and indicated the bridge. His schoolboy grin was gone; he was grey, afraid again. I, too, was afraid. My earlier cool, detached assessment of force and counter-force was gone: all at once I was fighting something bigger. I could not put a name to the sinister force. I must throw everything into saving the whaler. Her speed was madness. I had held on to it for too long.
We groped and scrambled our way along the lifelines to regain the bridge.
Jubela was quicksilvered in sweat. He gave one quick look at my face. He did not speak.
I grabbed the engine-room telegraph.
'Half speed ahead!'
Feldman's relief was overwhelming.
If I was to save Walvis Bay, I must break off the Waratah’s course. The very strength of the sea and the gale forced the logic of a south-westerly course upon me. That course common to all the tragedies - south-west I It drummed through and through my mind. That is the way death lay, whatever the other dictates might be, however telling they might sound.
I must break for the open sea.
The risk of turning away from meeting the seas head-on was great, but the whaler's low freeboard and streamlined superstructure gave her a sporting chance. She had, moreover, that splendid flared bow designed specially to cope with the huge Antarctic seas.
For one moment I hung on my decision.
Bashee!
What did it imply? Waratah had vanished - south of the Bashee. Walvis Bay's position, although highly uncertain, was certain in one respect only-she was south of the Bashee. Death had come to my father and brother - south of the Bashee. What did it mean?
I rejected the doubt sabotaging the precious moments.
'Bring her round! Gently, Jubela, if you value your life! Course - south, if you can. Watch it, for God's sake and ours! Choose your moment!'
Jubela nodded helplessly at the bridge windows. Through them, one could not see even the foredeck.
A racing driver, they say, steers by the seat of his pants. Yachting is like racing, but one steers by the soles of one's feet. The master helmsmen of Captain Ilbery's day of sail preferred to stand barefooted at the wheel - without a sou'wester if they could-so that they could feel the motion of the ship under their feet and the way of the wind on the nape of their necks. When a yacht is being hard pushed, one can detect the slight movement of the deck seams; these things are still more meaningful than all the instruments invented.
Walvis Bay was riding easier now that the way was off her, but I felt sure that we were being pushed backwards by the storm.
'Now!'
But Jubela shook his head, poised slightly on the balls of his feet.
The radio warning buzzed. Before Feldman could go, it buzzed peremptorily a second time. I jerked my head for him to go. All my attention was on the ship.
The sea poured over the bow and sluiced down the deck. As she rose, the wind threw it bodily against the bridge structure and the rain added its quota of icy wetness.
She sank in the trough and started to roll to starboard. Jubela flicked the wheel to port, eased it back, and flicked it again to meet it head-on as the next roller hit her. Water poured over the ship again, but this time the direction was slightly more on the bow.
Walvis Bay had gained a few precious points of the compass towards safety. Again, Jubela waited.
I went forward to the compass. South-south-west. That was better I Walvis Bay seemed to be regaining her resilience too. There was a faint improvement in her motion, although she rolled more heavily now that her bow was away from the eye of the gale.
Feldman came back.
'Urgent signal to you from Weather Bureau, sir.'
I took the paper and turned from the compass. I started towards the port bridge windows, the way I was trying to edge her seawards. My attention was on the ship. I tried to penetrate the driving water. My eyes dropped to the signal.
Urgent. Weather Bureau to Walvis Bay. Report your position immediately ... The deck canted forward.
Walvis Bay dropped her bows like a stone.
Until now, she had been a ship labouring and fighting. Now she was out of control.
I was thrown off my feet into the corner of the bridge. I had been too late in my turn-away! The name burned in my brain – Waratah!
Walvis Bay was making her final dive to her death.
As I sprawled, I had a momentary glimpse of Jubela throwing up his right hand to protect his face, as if warding off a blow. With the other, he still held the wheel. There was an awful sensation of the ship falling literally forward and downward.
There was a tremendous crash, and the bridge windows splintered in, as if by bomb-blast. The lights went. I heard a heavy thud inside the bridge itself, and Feldman screamed as if in pain. Water - hundreds of tons of sea-came pouring into the shattered bridge.
Still the ship nose-dived at that impossible angle.
Waratah.
I was picked up by the wall of water and carried headlong aft as it swept through the open door at the rear of the bridge, down the companionway into my cabin. I clutched at something metal and hung on against the rush of water. As the rudder lost its power to control her, so the seas took command. Now, as Walvis Bay dived, I could feel a frightening loss of control; she was, also slewing sideways as she dived. With the weight of water pressing her down thundering into her, she would be on her side soon.
I hauled myself into a crouching position and threw my body forward to where I knew the wheel must be. The steep forward angle h
elped me, but the water catapulting through the broken windows hit me in the chest like a blow.
The jar of the spinning wheel which I grabbed was almost as great as the water crashing in. Mine were instinctive movements; there was no time to think or reason. All I knew was that I must hold her, try and bring her head round.
The deck levelled under my feet.
Still the water poured in.
For one irrational moment I thought the whaler was floating level under water, and that she would quickly fill and go to the bottom on an even keel. Strange, too, the wild motion of the past hours had eased. She rode, not easily, but dead . . .
Feldman screamed from the other side of the bridge. I started to turn a split second from my fight with the wheel.
I stopped, transfixed.
Dead ahead, through the gaping windows, loomed something big and black, right in the whaler's path.
I spun the wheel to port, giving her the full weight of water and all the strength of the gale to try and bring her head clear.
Then I saw nothing.
Water burst through the bridge openings and the ship lay over again, tiredly, heavily. The sea tried to pluck my hands from the wheel. Yet I sensed that her head had fallen off the wind and the bow seemed to be sheering away from the danger - whatever it was-quicker than I could have hoped.
I felt, but did not see, the next sea. This time, would the game little ship roll over on her side? Or would there be a sickening crash and rending of metal which meant that she had gone bows-on into the obstacle in her path? I felt the roll begin to port -1 detected that easier motion somewhere -and I waited, cowering, for the next hill of water to crown that which now pinned her down.
Walvis Bay rolled farther.
The sea held back its fatal punch.
Hundreds of tons of water cleared themselves off the decks in that life-giving roll; somewhere aft I heard, above the gale, the tearing of metal.
Feldman screamed again in agony behind me, and some
heavy object rolled, bumped and thumped. Walvis Bay ca upright. Still the sea did not strike. Why?
I was flabbergasted at the relative calmness of the sea. The gale still brought the icy rain and spray in bucketfuls through the gaps and Walvis Bay rose tiredly at first-as if herself cringing from that final crushing weight of water-and then more optimistically. Then she was on an even keel, sharp, back on her feet, fighting. She completed that long purgative roll to starboard and I caught the glimmer of clear deck below me.
Where was that thing in our path? Whatever it was there was no sign of it now.
Walvis Bay rose confidently to the next wave.
She had won through.
The bridge was a shambles. It was still a foot deep in water, which I could hear thundering into the bowels of the ship. There was broken glass everywhere. I tried to see our course, but the compass had been stove in.
Something heavy bumped behind me. I risked a glance to see what it was. The barrel of the heavy winch below the bridge, which in her whaling days had been used to secure whales after harpooning, had been torn free by that crazed dive of hers and pitched bodily through the front of the bridge. Had I not moved away from the compass when I did, it might have killed me. Feldman had not been so lucky: the flying winch had struck him a glancing blow, breaking his left shoulder and pinning him against the deck until Walvis Bay's life-giving roll had freed him. He was lying amidst the glass and water, groaning, his right hand at his damaged left shoulder. Jubela, spitting seawater, was half on his feet, cut and bleeding about the head.
The engine-room voice-pipe shrilled incessantly. At least something was working! Scannel was not a man to get rattled easily, but there was an overtone of fear in his voice.
'What are you trying to do to us, skipper? I thought this was a whaler, not a submarine .. .’
I explained quickly, at the same time leaning forward to try and assess the damage on the deck below me.
'Get four men on to the foredeck, quickly!' I told him. 'Lash a tarpaulin over the deck where the winch was . ..'
'Was?'
'It looped the loop and left a hole in the deck you could drive a car through. Caught Feldman up here,' I got out hastily. 'Get the men up quick, before another sea puts paid to us.'
'There's enough of the ocean down here already,' growled Scannel. 'She's half full of water.' 'Pumps .. . ?'
'I've got them going full blast. I don't know for sure, but perhaps we're holding our own. Lot still coming down from your part of the world.'
I quickly sketched what had happened to the bridge. My cabin and the ward-room were probably flooded too.
'What's that noise?' I asked.
There seemed to be a jarring thumping coming from outside the hull. The whole ship reverberated with it. I had new anxieties forward of the hole in the deck.
'The foremast has come adrift,' I told Scannel further. 'Get another team up and frap the stays before it goes over the side altogether. Seems to have a couple of feet of play from here.'
Amidst the stream of orders, I still had room for puzzlement. There remained that curious lack of punch about the sea. The waves looked the same, the wind looked the same, but nonetheless they seemed to lack the power to break and destroy.
'It's not the mast making that racket,' Scannel retorted grimly. 'Something's hammering the hull from the outside.'
His voice was drowned by a vibrating crash which I felt on the bridge. The enclosed space of the engine-room magnified it like a sounding-board.
I heard Scannel shouting orders below, above the crash and bump of something heavy against the port quarter. At the same time, Walvis Bay started to slew against the power of the rudder. I corrected her quickly. I guessed what had happened. For some reason or other, one screw was out of action.
'Port screw,' Scannel confirmed. 'Bit into something solid. Either badly chipped or smashed. Can't tell.' 'Rock . . . ?'
'No, something's beating the hell out of the hull. Reckon it's one of those fancy crane things we took aboard in Durban.'
The Van Veen grab with its chain-controlled bucket-like a small steam shovel, Alistair had said-was housed on the port rail.
'Can you be spared from the engine-room for five minutes?' I whipped out. 'I'll get aft there to the grab. See you there.' 4Aye aye.'
Smit was gaping at the wreck of the bridge. 'She's chasing her tail - one prop's out,' I told him. Jubela, on his feet now, still looked stunned.
'Try and hold her steady,' I went on. 'No course. Anything-just keep the water out of her while we make some jury repairs.'
'Came past the gyro gear on my way here,' replied Smit. 'It's gone for a Burton
'It'll keep,' I snapped back. 'It's the ship now above anything.'
I knelt and examined Feldman cursorily. His face was strained, white, terrified. He looked fearfully at the heavy winch barrel on the gratings.
'Don't let it come at me again,' he mouthed. 'Keep it away, for Christ's sake. Not again.'
I waited until it rolled towards us, then I guided it with my foot towards the doorway. It skidded and jammed itself across the lintel.
Scannel was waiting for me at the stern with a torch. Walvis Bay still rolled heavily in the seas, but nothing like the previous quantity of water was coming aboard. Scanners light showed what was left of the Van Veen grab. It had been welded as a triangle of steel bars: one upright from the rail, one at the top jutting out horizontally, and a double support running upward and outward to form the third leg of the triangle. There were big block-and-pulleys at the top and at the extremity from which the bucket grab was suspended on chains. The two projecting bars had been twisted and buckled out of recognition by the sea and now trailed in the water. These had fouled the screw.
Walvis Bay dipped for a lee roll and then started to come back.
'Nick! Duck! Watch out!'
A shower of sparks arced round towards us from the direction of the stern. The bucket grab, snapping and gaping with the ship's m
ovement, swung round, from the remnants of its support, crashing and banging the steel deck straight towards the engineer. If those clamping jaws fastened on an arm, they would bite it off like a mechanical shark.
Scannel threw himself on the deck and the torch went out. There was a crash and a clatter, another shower of sparks, and then the wild thing was past.
I leapt to Scannel's side. The grab revolved out over the stern again; in a moment it would crash back in a malicious, deadly circle.
My grip slipped on his wet leather lumber-jacket which he had thrown over his dungarees, but I scrabbled and snatched him to the safety of the lifelines, out of reach of the swinging grab. Scannel was shaking from cold and fright.
'We've got to get that thing secured before we can attempt anything else,' I said quickly.
'Aye,' replied Scannel. 'It could have taken my head ott-thanks.'
Again the whaler rolled. We cowered back, waiting for the clatter and the sparks to go past. 'Now!'
We raced for the rail. I reached out with a securing rope for the chains at the top of the grab, but the ship heeled and it slipped from my grasp.
'Get back!'
We dodged to safety while the grab made another spark-trailing orbit.
'Next round, hang on to my legs - it's just out of reach,' I told Scannel.
We waited our moment and sprinted to the rail. Had the supporting bars been in place, I could have used them to hold on and secure the grab with my free hand, but they were adrift, crashing and banging against the ship's stern-plates.
Scannel took me round the waist as if in a rugby tackle. At the top of the pendulum swing of the bucket, I whipped the rope's end through the chains at the top. I tugged it fast. It took only a moment then to bring the grab itself inboard and lash it firmly to the shattered remains of its base structure.
Scend of the Sea Page 9