I felt I needed her on my side for what lay ahead. 'Listen, Kay,' I said. 'I intend to wring every knot, every half knot, out of this ship every mile of the way - and it's a long way. I'm a rule-of-thumb sailor, you're the specialist. I want you at my elbow to give advice when I hell-drive Jetwind. Automatics aren't the answer as far as I'm concerned. It's the human flair which counts in my scheme of things.'
Her response was to draw up her knees to her chin, squatting on the tiny circle of steel. It made her look more sixteen than twenty-six. I looked down at her, gripping an overhead cat-walk which gave access to the yard and rollers.
'Then you've got to appreciate how different Jetwind is from any ship that has gone before,' she said. 'First, I don't like the term sails. I prefer aerofoils.'
'Sails mean - sails, to me.'
'I'll stick to sails, then. Take a scientific look at the shape of the sails of an old racing China clipper and you'll see the resemblance to an aircraft wing - a slender trapezoid or triangle with a curvature parallel to the longitudinal axis. Therefore those ships were fast...'
'Stick to one-syllable words and I'll follow you.'
'Those early clipper sails were efficient aerodynamically.
However, as soon as ships became bigger, the sails had to be split in order to be handled physically by their crews. That destroyed their aerodynamics. Later windjammers looked super but aerodynamically speaking they were a nightmare - hopelessly inefficient. And as for that spider's web of rigging!' She gave a shudder. 'It does awful things to one when you see them under test in a wind-tunnel.'
'They worked, Kay. They also put some of man's most beautiful creations on the face of the ocean.'
'You're wrong!' she retorted vehemently. 'It's Jetwind that's beautiful, more beautiful than the best of them! Don't you appreciate the beauty of this sail plan - an unbroken aerofoil from deck to truck? Not individual sails slopping about on their own but a single entity with all the grace and power of proved mathematics behind it! As for Jetwind's masts - there's never been anything seen before on the high seas like the Prolss mast!
'You have to regard them and the sails as one propulsive unit. We found by tests the optimum speed for a quite definite trim of the sails. We also had to determine the optimum curvature of the yards, by comparison with the sail force curves.'
'It's the end result that concerns me.'
Kay seemed to have more data stored in her mind than a computer memory bank. But however fascinating all this theory was, my first problem was a practical one, the logistics of Jetwind's break-out. I cut in on her rarefied theorizing. 'Kay, what's Jetwind's best point of sailing?'
She answered without hesitation. 'With the wind on the beam or slightly abaft the beam?'
'Best strength?'
'Gale. Force nine.'
'Reefed down?'
'Naturally.'
'Relative course angle?'
'One hundred and thirty-five degrees.'
'Speed?
'Twenty-two knots.' I said, 'On paper.'
She burst out passionately. If anyone can get that out of her, you're the man to do it! You thrashed Albatros across the face of the ocean as no man has ever thrashed a ship. We heard it on the radio’
I added., 'I intend to flog Jetwind until she makes Gough in a week or she falls apart at the seams.'
Provided you first manage to break out, a voice nagged at the back of my mind.
Kay's voice vibrated still. 'At her maximum, the aerofoil sail-plan delivers forty thousand horse-power. You've only got to have the nerve and the guts to use it!'
Twenty-two knots, under ideal conditions. The Almirante Storni could bullet along at thirty-five at full bore, depending on the state of the sea. She must never get the chance to use her speed advantage. That was my scheme.
Linked to my plan was the need to deploy all Jetwind's power rapidly. How fast could she accelerate from anchor to the ten knots I considered the minimum required? Could she work up to that speed in the mere kilometre and a half which separated her from where she lay now to The Narrows?
'Did you ever carry out any flying start tests in your wind-tunnel?' I asked. 'I don't follow you.'
'Say, for example, I wanted to accelerate Jetwind from a moored position to the maximum she could achieve under the wind conditions then prevailing, how would I set about it?'
'What wind velocity are we talking about?'
That was the kicker. At its worst, I must assume that the wind would be blowing only a moderate breeze of about sixteen knots by the early hours of the following morning. Anything above that would be a bonus in Jetwind's favour.
'Say, Force Three to Four.'
'And the sea?'
'If she was moored, it would be calm.'
Her eyes became abstracted, and she murmured something to herself about side and thrust forces and angles of wind inflow.
Then she asked incisively, 'She would naturally be carrying all sail?' 'You bet.'
'I make it eleven knots, at her best point of sailing.'
Eleven! I had hoped only for ten. If the wind were stronger than Force Three or Four, I'd have thrust in hand for my purpose.
Yet Kay still had not answered my question - how soon could I draw on that amount of Jetwind's speed? I couldn't be more specific without revealing my plan. I had no intention of doing so - to anyone.
'As for acceleration?'
'It's not the sort of thing we tested for.'
I changed the subject. 'Kay, what's this curious waxy smell in here - like furniture polish? Is it the hydraulic fluid?'
She indicated one of the giant 'rolling-pins'. 'Dacron doesn't smell.'
'It's not the sails themselves but what's on them,' she explained. 'To protect them against infra-red and ultraviolet ray sun damage, they have a special kind of plastic coating. You can imagine what a suit of sails like this costs. Mr Thomsen asked the Schiffbau Institut to find some substance to protect the sails so a new flexible plastic was specially developed.'
I looked about me. 'This is where- Captain Mortensen was killed, isn't it?'
The animation went from her face. 'Right here in this bay. He's supposed to have been trapped between those two rollers.'
'Supposed?'
'I can't understand how such a thing could have happened,' she said vehemently. 'First, the sail was supposed to have been jammed on its yard-arm runners. How? At the Schiffbau Institut we carried out thousands of preliminary reefing and sail-setting tests under every simulated condition of wind. Mr Grohman brought Captain Mortensen here to demonstrate a fault to him...'
My mind leapt ahead to my coming interview with the chief magistrate.
'You don't believe the account of the tragedy?'
'I didn't say that. All I do say is that, I can't understand how it could have happened. The ship was making time in a rising sea and gale and we were all thrilled with the way she was performing. Then this!' She jumped off her perch and came close to me. She indicated a switch on the mast wall. 'Apart from the bridge consoles, there's a fail-safe control right here. All Mr Grohman had to do was to press this button and the rollers would have stopped. And . . .' she indicated levers on the rollers themselves ' . . . here are hand cranks as another emergency measure. They operate the travelling runners manually in case of power failure. There was no power fault! What happened?'
'That's what Mr Thomsen keeps asking. Why did Grohman make for the Falklands when he could have carried on to the Cape?'
'God, oh God!' she exclaimed savagely. 'It was awful. Jetwind was like a funeral ship. He abandoned the record attempt and headed into the gale. Day after day! Forcing Jetwind to go that way! Into that same godawful gale which would have blown us all the way to the Cape!'
'I wish Mr Thomsen could hear you now,' I said. And I gave her the gist of Thomsen's plans to try and recoup Jetwind’s prestige.
She plucked at a loose thread at the bottom of the sail roller. Her big eyes were full of controlled fury.
&nbs
p; 'Fine, fine!' she exclaimed. 'But when are we sailing? Every time I ask you when, you dodge the question! What sort of jinx is bugging Jetwind!'
I lit a cigarette after offering her one, which she refused. I had decided to treat her as an ally; as an ally, she had to know what was in my mind.
'There is no jinx, Kay, but there's something equally serious,' I said. Then I outlined Grohman's remarks that
Jetwind would be detained, the imminent arrival of the Almirante Storni, the bureaucratic stalling port, and finally my forthcoming interview with the chief magistrate in half an hour or so.
When I had finished, she remained silent. Then she burst out, 'What has Jetwind to do with some obscure squabble between Argentina and Britain over the Falklands? She's a ship, not a pawn in a petty political game, She's my ship!'
'Mine too, Kay.'
'You're not going to let them do it, are you, skipper? Keep her boxed up here to rot! Why don't you up-anchor now - right now - and get the hell out of here before the destroyer can catch us ...'
'The Almirante Storni is capable of thirty-five knots,' I answered. 'She'd come after Jetwind if I did. She'd catch us before we'd gone a hundred miles.'
'What do you mean to do about it?' she demanded.
'I'll plan my strategy after I've seen the chief magistrate. Meanwhile, what I've told you is between the two of us.'
'Of course,' she said. 'There's something important I failed to mention, though - there's an important failsafe system built into the masts for the ultimate emergency.'
'The ultimate emergency?' I echoed.
She gestured upwards. 'Yes. In the unlikely event of Jetwind being knocked down on her beam-ends by a squall, self-destructing explosive ring charges are built into the junction of the top and top-gallant masts. The charges are designed to blast away the top-gallant masts, either individually or together, to enable the ship to right herself again.'
'That seems very drastic to me.'
'The masts can't be cut away because there's no rigging,' she went on. 'The charges operate on the same principle as the ejector seat of an aircraft.'
'Who fires the charges and from where?'
'You'll see the "chicken button" as it's called on the main bridge bulkhead. It's painted scarlet, and to get at it one has first to break a glass - like a fire-alarm.'
'Things would have to be pretty far gone before, one resorted to such extreme measures,' I said. 'Now - a final question: how does one get out on the yard itself from here?'
'There's this exit hatchway. It's held shut magnetically, like the ship's watertight bulkheads. Here's the switch. First, though, I have to obtain permission from the officer of the deck.'
She dialled 'O' on a red-painted phone on a mast bracket. I wondered why Grohman hadn't used the instrument at the time of Captain Mortensen's accident. The sail rollers could have been halted via the bridge controls.
Kay said, 'John? I'm opening the main tops'l yard-arm for the skipper to take a look-see - okay?'
The door slid open and we ducked through. The yard itself was wide enough for Kay to stand on. She balanced, without retorting to the safety grab-handles.
The vantage-point gave me a magnificent view of both ship and anchorage. The Narrows entrance seemed perilously close. Between Navy Point and Engineer Point, its twin land flanks, the grey-green water was coming in from the deep ocean beyond the outer anchorage. The sea had lost its brilliant cobalt of the morning. Neither headland was high; none of the hillocks running east and west of them was as high as Jetwind’s maintruck. Therefore a lookout in the crow's nest could see clean across the intervening land to what the Almirante Storni was up to.
Then I turned round, and looked astern. Stanley town with its brightly coloured tin roofs still reflected the sunlight which was now becoming increasingly hazy.
Next my eyes went deck-wards to admire Jetwind's long, lean hull. I stopped short. Two of Jetwind's big lifeboats were being swung out from the stern. There was a group of men at each. A third boat was already heading towards the main harbour jetty.
'What goes on down there?' I demanded.
Kay shook her head.
I ducked back through the hatchway, picked up the phone and dialled. Tideman answered.
'Who gave orders for the boats to be put out?'
I had half anticipated his answer. 'Mr Grohman, sir.'
'What are they supposed to be doing?'
I wasn't sure that I had heard his reply correctly. 'A picnic! Did you say a picnic?'
'Aye, aye, sir. A picnic - rather an outing, for the crew. Through The Narrows to Cape Pembroke on the open sea.'
'Recall those boats - at once, d'you hear? From now on, no boat or man is to leave this ship without my express permission - understand?'
Chapter 11
I banged down the phone. Kay was standing by uncertainly.
'I'm going down to sort this out,' I snapped. 'Thanks for the conducted tour. I have the picture now.'
I started down the ladder. Before I had gone a rung or two, she called 'Skipper!'
'Yes?'
'I'll be invoking Cape Horn good luck for your interview this afternoon.'
I was halfway out of the service bay, my head and shoulders still showing. I had a worm's eye view of Kay from the level of her ankles. From that angle she seemed all long legs and big eyes. There was something in those eyes that I needed, the way things were crowding me. Our eyes locked for a long moment.
I said, before I had consciously decided to involve her in the break-out, 'Kay, I'm holding a skull session in my cabin tonight. Tideman and Brockton will be there. I would like you, too.'
She was very acute. 'Do they know?' 'Not yet.'
Her expressive eyes became very thoughtful. 'After you know the results of your interview with the magistrate?' 'With or without, it makes no difference.' 'You're going to take the risk?'
'Yes. That's why I want the three of you. I need your help and know-how!'
'Apart from your own.' She leaned down impetuously and touched my forehead with the tips of her fingers. 'You'll have to take the rap - you know that.'
'I know that, Kay.'
She went on looking at me, then added, 'I'll troll for a blow tonight, Peter.' 'You do that, Kay.'
She waited, as if she expected me to say more. I was tongue-tied by all the cross currents. I said, 'Tentatively, ten tonight in my cabin with the others?' .
She nodded. I hurried down the ladder to the bridge.
Grohman was already there. His slick Jetwind uniform offset his aquiline Spanish features. I felt by comparison rather like a bum-boat skipper in the black cold-weather rig I had hastily bought in Cape Town. Tideman pretended to be consulting a switch panel; Brockton was in a neutral corner near the radio office door.
Grohman tried to defuse the situation, for he must have been aware of my orders.
'Lunch has been waiting, sir, if you'd care to come. I'm sure you would also like to meet other members of the crew.'
I decided to play it cool and not precipitate a crisis. 'You mean, those that haven't gone off on a picnic,' I retorted sarcastically. 'Lunch is off. There's to be no picnic. This isn't a bloody Sunday school party’
Grohman remained unruffled, a trifle supercilious. 'I understand you have already cancelled my orders about the boats.'
'Picnic!' I exploded. 'What does a fit young crew like Jetwind's want with a picnic, for crying out loud!'
I suspected why Grohman kept his control under my unequivocal stand. He was playing from strength - the strength of the destroyer's approach.
'I felt that the morale of the crew was being affected by being cooped up in port,' he replied evenly. 'They needed a diversion. I arranged an outing in the ship's boats to Cape Pembroke - there's a fine beach there where they can swim and camp overnight...'
Overnight! I saw his game. Half Jetwind’s crew would be absent next day when the Almirante Storni made port. It was a subtle method of immobilizing the ship. Not even auto
mated Jetwind could sail with only half her crew.
I cut his explanation short. 'As of now, the entire crew goes on regular sea watch. Four hours on, four hours off, plus the usual dog-watches. All shore-leave is cancelled. Is that clear?'
Fortuitously, Grohman had given me the opportunity to put the crew on full alert without raising suspicions of a break-out. It was a secrecy problem which had solved itself. Another - unsolved - was how to get a synoptic weather forecast from Weather Routing without revealing that I was preparing to put to sea. I urgently needed to know what was happening to the weather in the 400 sector of ocean between Cape Horn and the Falklands.
'But,' Grohman was protesting, 'the Ladies Circle has arranged a special movie show at the Upland Goose for those staying behind tonight and we shouldn't disappoint them...'
'The Ladies Circle can and bloody well will be disappointed,' I answered. 'What is the Upland Goose, anyhow?'
'It's the one and only local pub, Tideman interjected.
'Forget it,' I snapped. 'Put 'em to work. Sailoring, not cinemas, is what a crew needs. That's what they signed on for.'
'Circumstances have changed since then,' commented Grohman. His temper was beginning to rise. 'Thanks to you,I retaliated. I intend to have my crew sharp and seamanlike, in port as well as on the high seas.'
Grohman bit his Up; Tideman said in his best officer-of-the-watch tone, 'What are your orders about the boat that is already ashore, sir?'
'What is it supposed to be doing?'
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