Scend of the Sea

by Geoffery Jenkins

  I used the boathook to haul myself up on to the first pintle, reaching down and helping her up beside me on to the narrow iron shelf. From this higher position we were able to see for the first time something of the seamount behind the ship. The rock was covered in thick marine growths; she started momentarily at a movement, but it was only one of a colony of outside rock lobsters. How long would the seamount stay above water? - long enough to make it part of the air-element which was so alien to it and so kill off the teeming life of lobsters, mussels, barnacles and other rock-and-sea creatures?

  She gave a gasp at a movement above us. I whipped round, my nerves strung to breaking-point. A magnificent albatross, holding himself skilfully against the wind, came to rest above one of the propeller shafts and then plucked eagerly among the sea-creatures.

  We breathed again. We pushed on.

  I secured the boathook over the next pintle, and we climbed yet higher.

  My eyes went automatically to Touleier, so safe-for the moment-in the lee of this rock-and-metal hill of death and enigma. My sailor's heart skipped a beat at the sight of the seas which boiled behind her, and on either side of the seamount. We were held in a tight, ephemeral cell of safety. We could not see a defined line where the sea-valley began or ended. We were protected, where we stood, from the blowing spray and lash of wind, but I feared that when we got higher further exploration might be impossible because of it.

  How long could, or would, the phenomenon last? Precious minutes were racing by. We had to see the top of the hull!

  I bent to help Tafline. In doing so, my line of vision was through the gap between rudder and hull. ‘What is it, Ian?'

  I stopped transfixed. She could not see from where she was.

  A fuselage, one wing attached and the other piled upright against the side of the hull, lay in a crumpled, untidy heap on the far side of the wreck. The tail-section had snapped half off and the airliner lay broken-backed across a rock, as if a giant had begun to break it across his knee and then grown tired of the game and cast it from him.

  My hands were shaking as I hauled her up. I pointed.

  'Four engines!' she exclaimed.

  I found my voice. 'Airscrews! Alistair's was a jet!'

  Some of the propeller blades were broken off and others were wrapped round each other and the turbine casings.

  'Gemsbok’ she exclaimed. 'Gemsbok and the Waratah -crashed together!'

  I craned forward to try and see more. 'Those experts were right about her going in at' full power-look! They said she first touched something and then slewed round. Dad must have been sitting on this side, nearest to us, and the wing on his side came off in the final moments of the crash and landed up against the hull of the ship.'

  'How could he have come alive out of that?' she exclaimed. 'Ian, he must have had some time to have cut loose that panel!'

  'He crashed at night, remember. Maybe that would account for the peculiar writing.'

  'Do you see anyone, in the immediate shock of a crash, calmly setting about chopping off a piece of the aircraft? And then, of all things, deciding to make a testament out of it? He must have seen the name Waratah, and that would need daylight. That means the seamount must stay above water for a good few hours ..

  I agreed. We felt safer to go on.

  She took a firm grip of my hand and leant out to see as far beyond the hull as she could.

  ‘Ian! Ian-there are two tails! There's another against the side of the ship!'

  Cautiously, fearfully, I eased her back to safety on the slippery shelf to enable me to see. One slip would have been fatal; our precarious perch was twenty-five feet above the rocks.

  I extended my range of vision by using the boathook. I, too, peered out round the bulge of the stern. That high tail was unmistakable. The Buccaneer!

  It projected from the hull slightly forwards of where I judged the bridge must be and almost on a level with where we were standing. Only the tail was visible. There was no sign of the rest of the machine.

  I edged myself back on to our narrow place of safety.

  'It's Alistair's plane,' I said numbly. The tail sticks out of the hull up for'ard. The jet must have gone right through this rotten old hull like a bullet. Only twenty feet higher, and he'd have missed it!'

  We stood silent, shaken. The gale roared past and the sea probed at the base of the hulk. The earlier radiance in her face was gone. I was filled with a sick hatred for the wreck.

  'Let's go back, Ian! Haven't we come far enough to know all we want to know? Remember what Alistair himself said -what if you do find the Waratah! All there'll be is a lot of skeletons! Among those skeletons are your father and your brother . . .'

  I poised myself uncertainly on the slippery foothold. At that moment I held her life in my hand. I did not know it

  What made me go on?

  I could not answer that any more than what brought her that day to the dockside and Walvis Bay. In retrospect, however, I think it was that the blank, rotting hull provided no way into the Waratah mystery, not so much even as an open port. It was a shape, a thing, a hulk, and even in the moment of discovery, it shut itself fast.

  To the top-only,' I replied. 'From there we can see along the whole length of the keel. It won't take a couple of minutes.'

  The massive struts from the stern to the propeller shaft tunnels, which bulged unnaturally big once one was against them (normally they would be deep under water and not seen) gave us an easy passage to the keel. We were careful when we lifted our heads above the level of the hull and exposed ourselves to the gale. Another albatross appeared magically out of the spindrift and coasted down to settle near the remnants of the Viscount. This time she did not admire but shuddered - had the birds once feasted on human flesh as well as on the delicacies the seamount brought from the deeps?

  The long level of the keel stretched away; the salt and wind stung our eyes. Tafline pointed at what appeared to be a larger accretion of deep-sea things round a rusted stump of metal. It was the only projection along the ship's bottom.

  I pulled her down close to speak into her ears.

  'Engine-room ash chute. Burnt coal from her furnaces was dumped through it into the sea. It goes right through the ship, clean through the watertight compartments and into the engine-room itself.'

  ‘What is that supposed to be, then?' She indicated the metal stump.

  'It's a loosely-hinged metal cover to the chute. The mechanism is simple. When the weight of the ash discharged from her furnaces was greater than the sea pressure thirty feet below the waterline, the chute opened automatically. Experts thought it might have stuck open and allowed the sea to flood the ship from the engine-room.'

  She screwed up her eyes and looked along the spume-swept hull. 'Then why don't we open the hatch and look inside?'

  We had found entry to Waratah. It was as simple as the device itself.

  We inched along the keel at a crawl to the outlet, which faced sternwards to form a final outcurve of the interior passageway. This 'lip' of metal, now heavily encrusted and black with rust and immersion, was about two-and-a-half feet high, roughly curved with a kind of primitive streamline like a ship's ventilator. Where it met the hull there was a metal hatch cover, about three feet wide and four feet long, hinged at the forward end. The small half-cupola of the lip also acted as a brake to prevent the hatch cover from swinging open too wide. It would come to rest at an angle of about sixty degrees when fully extended, the speed of the ship providing a natural motion to sweep the spent ash clear. It was simple and ingenious.

  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 chu
te.

  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 foot
hold 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.