Rowing After the White Whale

by James Adair

  I rose on shaky legs and, with my hands outstretched in front of me, started trying to make my way to him like some kind of very badly injured, malnourished gorilla. Feeling the spines of a sea anemone pricking my ankle I quickly withdrew my foot and, losing balance, capsized painfully.

  ‘Ouch! Oh, for fuck’s sake!’

  ‘Alright, let’s stay put.’

  We sat silently for a bit.

  ‘We’re going to be okay now. Either we get rescued or we swim the rest,’ I said.

  ‘I think I can feel the tide coming in. If the water level rises then we can swim over the coral and keep going to land. I can see the lights on shore; it must be about two kilometres away.’

  ‘We can easily swim that. It’ll be calmer on that side of the reef; then we can walk out onto the beach and give some random tourists the fright of their life.’

  ‘We just need to wait for the tide to come in.’

  ‘But if the water level rises then the breaking waves are going to be on us again.’

  ‘How much coral do you reckon is left?’

  ‘I don’t know. Looking at the chart in my mind, I think there was quite a bit. I think it’s too painful to try and walk over it any further.’

  ‘I’ve got an idea,’ said Ben. He stood slowly and, using a hand to steady himself on the large piece of brain coral, he took off his cycling shorts.

  ‘I’m not sure where you’re going with this, but now really isn’t the time, mate.’

  ‘I’m going to wrap them round one foot so I can walk on the coral by putting my weight on that foot.’

  ‘Ah, okay. Good idea.’

  Having wrapped one foot in the shorts he set off, his wrapped foot edging forward searchingly, like a blind salamander. Having placed it, he then took his next step but landed on some razor-sharp coral. Wincing, he pulled his foot back sharply but then lost balance and fell on his naked backside.

  ‘Arrghh! My arse! Shit! Ouch, that was a really bad idea!’ he screamed.

  We sat for a bit in silence. The wind was blowing quite hard now and I suddenly felt cold. I noticed my teeth were chattering uncontrollably.

  ‘I can see a light on the horizon,’ I said.

  It grew larger, until a beam of light was clearly visible. A helicopter!

  The whirr of the blades roared as the helicopter approached. We waved and shouted as it flew towards the lighthouse. It started flying in a figure of eight, sweeping over the water where we had originally capsized. Then it started working its way towards where we were. It came close, but the light didn’t catch us.

  ‘It’s going to miss us,’ I said.

  It continued sweeping the sea for about ten minutes and then rounded, heading towards us again. Now the beam of light was coming our way.

  ‘It’s going to hit us,’ I yelled, frantic with excitement.

  As the corridor of light illuminated us we both jumped up and started madly waving our arms about our heads.

  ‘Yes! Yes!’ I shouted above the din of the helicopter. The light hit us bang on. All around us the water frothed and skidded away as the chopper passed over.

  But it didn’t pause or alter its path. Instead it continued, meandering back to where we guessed the boat had washed up. Here it dipped down and hovered close to the water. Then it climbed again and, banking, flew back whence it had come. The noise subsided and eventually the light disappeared over the black outline of the island. It had missed us.

  Now I felt really cold. I bent over, clutching my leg, allowing my teeth to clatter against each other as fast as they liked. Ben slumped against his coral silently.

  I thought of the sad sight of our boat, crippled by the impact of the first wave, lolling in the sea as all our kit and broken oars floated off. The camera was on deck, so it would have sunk. All that footage: the whales, the drill ship, the halfway party and our leaping dorado. All gone, along with everything else: journals, letters and the boat itself. Our saviour and companion smashed by a wave and then carried off by another to be dashed against the reef. Possessions gone, I thought to myself, but remain with best friend and own life.

  ‘We’ll be fine,’ I mumbled through my chattering teeth.

  ‘Yes, either the tide comes up and we swim or we have to sit here until tomorrow morning,’ Ben replied.

  ‘The main thing is we’re going to be okay now; we’re going to survive.’

  I said this and felt confident, but cold was spreading through my body like venom.

  Then the moon started coming up. It was around 7 p.m. and we had first capsized at about 5.15 p.m. It had been a busy day, to say the least, and we hadn’t eaten since breakfast. I didn’t notice any hunger or thirst, though; the only thing I felt was the cold. The moon was full and the soft light it gave off was reassuring.

  ‘Is it me or can you feel the warmth of the moon?’ I said.

  ‘That’s just you,’ replied Ben, sounding concerned.

  ‘Seriously, I can feel waves of warmth through my body. I think the moon is actually giving off heat. Do you get phantom moments of warmth in early stage hypothermia?’ I stuttered, my whole body shaking now.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Shit. I think it would be best if we swim, keep moving. If we get the chance to swim are you up for it?’

  ‘Definitely. The tide will come in and we’ll swim the last couple of clicks to land and then hitchhike to the nearest hospital, via a bar.’

  We sat in silence again for a while, closely monitoring the water level near our respective coral seats. It didn’t seem to be moving.

  ‘It’ll be my birthday in a couple of hours,’ said Ben, who was about to turn thirty-one. The same age as Herman Melville when he wrote Moby Dick; the same age Willoughby had been when he steered the Nereide into oblivion.

  ‘Oh, yeah. Sorry I haven’t got you anything, I mean I did, but it’s obviously gone down with the boat.’

  ‘What were you going to give me?’

  ‘I wasn’t really going to give you anything.’

  ‘This is going to be some birthday.’

  ‘Would you say this is the worst birthday you’ve ever had, or are about to have?’

  ‘Not sure. The one I spent by myself in the Sudan was pretty dark.’

  As the moon climbed through the sky, I could think of nothing but the cold and of Tory. Somewhere, a few miles away, she would be faced with the prospect of the helicopter returning empty handed. But I had promised her that if I found myself in a life-threatening situation I would fight. At the time I had said it thinking it was only to make her feel better. The past couple of hours had changed everything. I had to stay warm. I had to see her again.

  ‘Shall we sing?’ I suggested.

  ‘Good idea. How about a hymn?’

  ‘Okay, but none of your Catholic chanting and mumbling, Stenning. We need a solid Church of England hymn.’

  ‘Don’t know the words to any of those. If we sing something that’s not in Latin we’ll probably go to hell.’

  ‘Wait, a light! Can you see it? There again, a light!’

  ‘It’s searching.’

  ‘Okay, after three, let’s shout: HELP.’

  ‘On three or after three?’

  ‘One, two, three, help.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘One, two, three, HELP!

  ‘One, two, three, HELP!

  ‘One, two, three, HELP!’

  ‘Again!’

  ‘One, two, three, HELP!’

  The sweeping torchlight had now come to rest on us. It didn’t move from our direction. Then two torches were switched on, the lights of which flickered and waved about as they started to come towards us. Two people were walking over the reef towards us. We were saved.

  70 Rescue and Reunion

  ‘Come a stove boat and a stove body when they will, for stave my soul, Jove himself cannot.’

  Herman Melville, Moby Dick

  Being English I thought it best to get a quick apology in first.

  �
�Sorry for getting you out on a Sunday night,’ I said.

  As the two men neared us, their shaky torch beams lit the colourful coral in front of them.

  ‘It’s okay, we were watching the Premiership, Manchester United, when we heard two English guys had gone missing,’ said one of them with a slight French accent.

  ‘Ah, what was the score?’ said Ben, who sometimes pretends to support Man U if they’re doing well.

  ‘That, my friend, is not important right now,’ said the other guy, who was also French Mauritian.

  ‘Are you injured?’ asked the first man.

  ‘We’re okay, thanks; some cuts but we’re okay.’

  ‘Good, we have a boat this way but we need to get you over the coral.’

  ‘Can’t you get the helicopter back? The coral is too painful to walk on,’ I said, assuming that these men were the coastguards.

  ‘No, no, we are not the coastguard, they have given up. The helicopter will not come out again. We were watching the football when the man in charge of the yacht club told us two British guys had gone missing near here, so we came out looking.’

  The coastguards had given up on us and instead we were being saved by Thierry, a surveyor, and Eric, a textile manufacturer. Having thanked them, we addressed the immediate problem of getting over the reef. With their trainers on, they tried carrying us but the going was too uneven. So they picked their way back to the speedboat and got some boat cushions which they laid us on and floated us over the reef; Thierry dragging Ben, Eric dragging me. Holding onto the cushion as it scraped over the coral, as my head bumped occasionally into my rescuer’s backside, my feelings of relief were eclipsed by a deep sense of gratitude.

  ‘So, we heard you’ve come a long way to get here,’ said Eric as he dragged me along.

  ‘We left Australia one hundred and sixteen days ago and rowed here,’ I said, barely believing it myself, it seemed so unlikely.

  ‘Yes, we found one of your oars first, on the other side of the reef, then we heard your shouting. When we saw you with the torchlight, it was a great moment for us, to find you, we were cheering.’

  The French Mauritians were incredibly affable and uncomplaining despite being stabbed by anemone spines as the coral broke and fractured under them.

  ‘When the weather is calm we dive here. It’s beautiful, so normally we try to preserve the coral but we’ll make an exception for you,’ joked Eric.

  When we got to the boat they helped us in.

  ‘This is the man you should thank,’ said Eric, gesturing to a big bear of a man in the boat. ‘Fred was the one who asked us to come out looking. This is his boat, and these are my two sons.’ There stood two teenage boys gaping in grinning disbelief as if their father had just landed two strange fish or mermen. They gave me a sweatshirt and one of them wrapped a blanket around me.

  I watched the wake of the boat as we sped away. So fast, so easy. Fred slowed down as a coastguard rib came alongside. They exchanged a few sentences in French and one of the coastguard shone a torch in our faces. Then, without another word, the rib sped off. As they disappeared another speedboat came alongside. Hanging off the back, we saw Tony and Ben’s dad, who is also called Tony. Ben’s dad launched himself onto our boat.

  ‘Are you okay, son?’ He embraced Ben and then me and bundled us onto the other boat. We said some hurried goodbyes and more thanks to the French Mauritians, promising to get in touch in the next few days.

  Now we were on another boat speeding towards the hotel where everyone was waiting. Ben’s sister was on board and opened us a couple of Coca-Colas which we downed, savouring the syrupy sugar. Both Tonys were jubilant, grinning wildly and congratulating us on our survival. They told us how they had come out to meet us but got caught in the same weather and had feared for their own lives. As they rode the increasingly big waves they realised that they were only just hanging on and couldn’t stay out there without risking capsize. On returning through the gap in the reef, their boat had got stuck on the coral and they’d only just been able to free themselves.

  It would have been a long swim, I thought as we sped to land, but doable. Fifteen or so minutes later we pulled up to a pontoon and, as the engine cut out, a silence fell among the small group of people gathered. I stepped off the boat and onto the wooden pontoon, searching quickly with my eyes. ‘Where is she?’ A few meandering, drunken steps forward. ‘There!’ Then, with another shaky step, I was holding Tory in my arms. This was my best moment, better than the squid, the glassy seas, the lunar eclipse, surfing, whales, stars, better than anything I’ve ever felt or done before.

  Once I’d embraced Tory it became a whirlwind. I hugged my mum and assured her that at no time had we been in any danger. Then I spotted Ben Keith, a great university friend of ours, and his girlfriend, Jo, who had come out as a surprise. They were standing by a homemade banner that read: ‘You’ve only bloody gone and done it!’

  Well, just, I thought.

  They had their own story to tell. They told us how they had heard about our capsize and had heard from Tony that we’d been spotted in the water. They spent some time worrying before another of our friends, a silversmith called Forbes who was based in Mauritius, had called the coastguard to get an update. The coastguard had told them we were ‘safe and well’ but would give no further details. Everyone on land had celebrated only to be told, when Forbes called back for another update, that in fact we were still officially missing. They said the boat had been located and thus they’d considered the aerial search complete. Given the wind blowing the palm trees flat and the wildness of the sea, our party had feared the worse.

  Standing upright felt odd and I was finding it hard to get used to the lack of motion on dry land. As we stood chatting, various members of staff from the hotel kept coming out to look at us. We obviously cut wild figures with our bedraggled, overgrown hair and bushy beards. ‘Viking!’ a local guy shouted at me a few days later.

  It wasn’t long before I requested a Boost and Tory, good as her word, had them with her. Amazingly, as she unwrapped it, some six feet away, I could smell it. The rich milk chocolate scent filled my nostrils; I inhaled the nutty goodness and sweet caramel.

  ‘Oh God, I can actually smell that,’ I said.

  Ben Keith howled with laughter. ‘You’ve been on that boat far too long. Come on, let’s go for a beer.’

  ‘Good idea.’

  Afterword

  Mauritius

  ‘God keep me from completing anything.’

  Herman Melville, Moby Dick

  Mauritius was a whirlwind of activity. Most of this activity revolved around the hotel buffet, but we also celebrated Ben’s birthday and threw a party for our rescuers. With our four-month-old beards and coral wounds we cut crazed figures in the hotel dining area and a few children hid under the table as we hobbled past.

  On the first night, a local doctor came to the hotel to put some stitches in my leg. He couldn’t get his head around my story.

  ‘So, you were on a boat trip?’ he said, threading his needle through my wound.

  ‘Sort of. We came from Australia.’

  ‘You’re Australian tourists who went on a boat trip to the lighthouse.’

  ‘No, we’re British but we rowed from Australia.’

  He nodded his head dubiously. Giving me his card, he told me to call him if the stitches came out.

  But the next day he phoned up, most excited.

  ‘I read about you two in the paper, all the way from Australia! A long way to row! You tell them Dr Fakir stitched you up when they ask, okay?’

  The paper had carried news of our arrival, but also of the wrangling between the local French Mauritians who had done so much to save us and the coastguard who had given up so quickly. It turned out that the coastguards weren’t specialists; they were simply policemen who had to do occasional stints as coastguards and were therefore not well trained. The situation got worse when it emerged that our boat had been looted. The coastguard ha
d recovered her from the reef the following morning, and the boat had been in their custody since. Everything of value had gone, which included thousands of pounds of equipment as well as sentimental items such as the memory cards of film from the first month of the trip. Even the grab line had been cut from outside the boat. What made it worse was that the coastguard seemed to know where everything was. Above all, though, we wanted the memory cards and eventually one of the coastguards said he would make inquiries. The next day he called to say he had them and would give them to us if we gave a favourable press statement.

  Convinced they knew where all our other stuff was, I refused. In the end, however, we got the memory cards but nothing else turned up.

  Apart from our dealings with the coastguard, Mauritius was great fun. We ate and drank frightening amounts. We played golf and I went back to sea on a boat trip around the north of the island, the place where we were supposed to come in. It was unbelievably sweet to stand in the bow, surrounded by friends, with a gin and tonic, as we did ten knots in pursuit of some humpback whales that kept leaping ahead of us. But it all seemed too easy. It felt like the sea was giving everything up without a fight. Seeing the whales was exciting, and we’d never seen breaching humpbacks on our rowing trip, but it didn’t compare to our encounters in the middle of the ocean. They were made special by the contrast, the relief they brought to the fatigue and pain. In Mauritius there were other boats following, other people screaming and taking photos, and there were other islands and aircraft in sight. When we’d been rowing out at sea there was just us in our tiny boat, thousands of miles from land and from people. After the months of solitude, it felt surreal to be back in civilisation. I have to admit to a sense of emptiness, a sense of anti-climax. Although it was incredible to be reunited with Tory, with proper food and running water, I knew that something else, something very different, had ended. The adventure was over.

  Apologia