It took me all of twenty minutes to discover the machine-pistol where Reynaud had hidden it, below the mattress in the owner’s cabin. By the time I found it I had turned the cabins and lockers of Aries into a shambles. I returned to Tony triumphant.
“How does this bugger work?” I asked him in a whisper as I handed the weapon over.
“Let’s have a look—I did a weapons course in the R.A.F. when I was . . .”
“Well, figure it out,” I hissed. Then, in a louder voice I said, “If Reynaud doesn’t put the engines in running order, we’ll shoot the sod.”
I called to Reynaud through the hatch: “You should have found a better hiding place for the gun! I have it now. If you don’t have those engines going within five minutes I’ll come down there and put you into a hospital for the rest of your days!”
“Merde!” was the muffled reply.
“You’ve got five minutes,” I said.
I sped aft again to the workshop and checked the outboard engine I had seen stowed there. It was an Evinrude twenty-five-horsepower, almost brand new. Two gasoline tanks under the bench were almost full. I was on my way back to the wheelhouse when Reynaud’s muffled voice, in a croak, told us that we could start the engines again.
By the time Aries was about ten miles off Cabrera Island, Tony had rigged the outboard motor on the ship’s launch. I hove Aries to and helped Tony lower the launch over the stern. We threw our seabags down into the bobbing boat.
“We can’t leave him down there,” said Tony. “The boat might drift onto the shore . . . onto the rocks.”
“He’s not staying down there. Here, see that other dinghy over on the port side?”
Tony stared toward it.
“Get a chisel and a hammer and knock a big hole in it,” I said.
As Tony went around to the workshop I headed for the roof of the wheelhouse, where a self-inflating life-raft was stowed in a fiberglass container. I pulled the rip-cord. The round box opened immediately. Compressed air was automatically pumped into the life-raft. I took out my clasp knife and slashed it right through all four compartments. The air from the bottle gushed out into the early morning. I gazed around, toward Cabrera Island, which stood, stark and black, against the blue-gray background of the Major-can mountains.
I went below again. “Reynaud!”
His muffled voice arose from below the engine hatch. “Quoi?”
“I’m going to open the hatch. If you come on deck before ten minutes are up you will be shot! After that you can do what you like!”
I could almost see the hatred rising up through the hatch. He did not reply.
“Did you hear me?” I insisted.
“Oui,” came the mumble.
I shouted to Tony to start the outboard engine. He disappeared over the stern. I untied the lanyard line on the hatch handles and, aiming the machine-pistol at the hatch, I knocked out the fid. It was only then that I realized that Tony had not shown me how to operate the gun . . .
On my way through the wheelhouse I grabbed the two engine-room fire-extinguisher levers and yanked them down. There was a sudden hiss and a muted yell from down below. I did not wait for Reynaud. Clutching the machine-pistol I raced aft, handed the gun down to Tony, and jumped into the launch. Quickly, without saying a word, we cast off the launch from its bridles and headed toward Cabrera Island.
As the distance between the bouncing launch and the wallowing Aries increased to fifty . . . eighty . . . one hundred yards, Tony shouted, “Are you sure he can’t run us down?”
“No chance,” I shouted back. “It’ll take at least an hour for the carbon-tetrachloride to clear the engine room; the gas sniffers won’t release the starting solenoids until it’s all gone.”
I turned and stared at Aries. She was wallowing away. Reynaud was out on deck, holding the guard-rails, staring back at us. Suddenly he started for the wrecked dinghy on the port side. As I watched him, and as the launch mounted the tops of the swells, I spied a low gray shape, far away on the southern edge of the sea. It was making toward Aries.
We rounded the southeastern point of Cabrera Island, close inshore, so we could run in if Aries should start to move toward us. I saw the low gunboat—for that is what she was—heave-to close to Aries. I slowed down for a few minutes and watched as the gunboat lowered a launch and sent it toward Aries, all the while describing the scene to Tony, whose eyesight was very restricted.
“Well, whatever that gunboat is, that’s that!” I said, as I increased speed and headed for the port of Palma, twenty miles or so away.
“What shall we say in Palma?” asked Tony.
“Sweet bugger-all,” I said, as I threw the machine-pistol into the sea. “If anyone asks, we’ve been out fishing and lost our fishing gear.”
We arrived in the harbor mid-afternoon and motored into the Palma Yacht Club, where we tied up the launch. Toting our seabags we strolled into the club buildings as if we had been lifelong members. We showered in the yacht club, then, on the strength of Tony’s money, we had a very tasty fish lunch in the small upstairs restaurant just outside the club gates. We visited a couple of bars, and by evening we were safely onboard the steamer ferry to Ibiza, where we arrived, safe and almost sound, the next morning.
Soon we were on the town quay in the early-morning sunshine, and there was dear old Cresswell, sitting as pretty as a picture next to her ugly-duckling friend Bellerophon.
As we approached Cresswell Nelson must have heard my voice, even though Tony and I were conversing in conspiratorial tones. Nelson had hobbled up the companionway ladder and was now on the poop, wagging his old tail and barking gruffly. Then, as I grabbed the top of the rudder to clamber onboard, Sissie’s frizzy hair and apple-red cheeks appeared over the hatch coaming.
“Yoo-hoo, dahling! Have your brekky ready in a jiffy. Say, you do look as if you’ve had a simply spiffing time!”
“I’ve just earned the easiest fifty dollars I’ve ever earned,” I said, as I dumped my bag on my berth.
“How naice!”
Tony and I had agreed to keep quiet about the events which had ended so fortunately for us. I told Sissie the version of the story we had decided upon—that Aries had been sailing for Marseilles, and that it had been arranged that we would leave her in Majorca, as we didn’t get on too well with the owner!
“Oh, deah,” she said, placing a china plate of hot bacon in front of me. “Well, nevah mind; we still have those awf’ly supah people next door in Bellerophon . . . they’ll be heah for a few days.”
“That’s another thing, Sissie,” I mumbled in between chewing the bacon. “You know, in ancient Greek mythology, Bellerophon was given the seemingly impossible task, by Zeus, the head bloke, of killing the Chimera . . .”
“The Chimera? Ai say, how awf’ly exciting!” Sissie exclaimed, setting a mug of steaming tea before me. “What on earth was thet?”
“It was a sort of beast—one third lion, one third goat, and one third dragon.”
Sissie sat down opposite me, on the starboard berth. “Ai say, how did he manage?”
“He got the flying horse, Pegasus, to give him a hand, and between them they knocked off the old Chimera. They sort of wore the monster out. But then old Bellerophon got too big for his boots and tried to ride Pegasus to the throne of the gods on Mount Olympus. The chief bloke, Zeus, in anger, caused Pegasus to throw Bellerophon to the ground, and after that Bellerophon wandered alone, crippled, blind, and humiliated.”
I lit a cigarette while Sissie looked at me in puzzlement, obviously wondering what my wild Welsh mind was getting at. “So come on, girl, after breakfast we’ll get ready to sail to Formentera.”
“What . . . and leave these awf’ly naice people behind?”
“Leave Bellerophon behind,” I replied.
“Why, who do you think you are, Pegasus?”
“
No, I’m the Chimera. One third lion—that’s for the Royal Navy; one third goat—that’s for me; and one third dragon—that’s for Wales . . . the old draig a goch. D’you see? I’m the beast that Bellerophon wore out so it died. Now let’s get away from Bellerophon so that she doesn’t have to wander around crippled, blind, and humiliated!”
By two o’clock Cresswell was all set to sail, and we made our farewells to Tony the Specs and his charming sister Billie.
“’Bye, Sissie! ’Bye, Tristan—and thanks again for the side trip,” shouted Tony as we pulled away from the jetty. “I haven’t enjoyed myself so much in years!”
“Yes,” I called back. “We must do it again sometime!”
By evening Cresswell was nestled cozily in the tiny, pretty little port on the north side of the island of Formentera. I knew that Bellerophon was sailing for Malta in a few days, and so if any of Reynaud’s friends spotted her, it wouldn’t be in Ibiza or anywhere near Cresswell, and that made me feel more easy.
Over the course of the next few years, in places as far apart as New York and Cape Town, from people as widely different as fishermen, artists, newsmen, yachtsmen, and bartenders, I pieced together what I think were some of the events which followed the episode described in this chapter.
The gunboat which approached Aries was Algerian. Reynaud was arrested and the boat was seized and taken back to Algiers. What happened to Reynaud during the next two years is not quite clear; no one I met seemed to know. But in 1967 he was rumored to have been one of the men involved in the kidnapping of Moise Tshombe, the exiled Katangan leader from the Congo, when Tshombe’s plane, which had left a Spanish airfield, was hijacked and diverted to Algiers.
I was also told that his real name was not Reynaud, and that he had been quite prominent in the O.A.S., the French secret anti-Algerian-independence organization, at least until I knew him. I have never figured out why he should have changed sides, which evidently he did, to have been involved in the Tshombe affair.
Tshombe was first jailed, then kept incommunicado until his death in Algeria in 1969. He was living on borrowed time in any case; he had already been sentenced to death in his own country, in absentia.
“What about Aries,” asked Sissie that evening.
“Named after a ram,” I replied.
“What did Aries do?”
“He got fleeced,” I said, as I prepared to write a note to Shiner Wright. It was the first letter in an exchange of correspondence to and from all parts of the globe, which continues to this day.
But I, Ulysses,
Sitting on the warm steps,
Looking over the valley,
All day long, have seen,
Without pain, without labour,
Sometimes a wild-hair’d Maenad;
Sometimes a Faun with torches;
And sometimes, for a moment,
Passing through the dark stems,
Flowing rob’d—the belov’d,
The desir’d, the divine,
Belov’d Iacchus
Ah, cool night-wind, tremulous stars!
Ah, glimmering water—
Fitful earth-murmur—
Dreaming woods!
Ah, golden-hair’d, strangely smiling Goddess,
And thou, prov’d, much enduring,
Wave-toss’d Wanderer!
Who can stand still?
Ye fade, ye swim, ye waver before me.
The cup again!
Faster, faster,
O Circe, Goddess,
Let the wild, thronging train,
The bright procession
Of eddying forms,
Sweep through my soul!
“The Strayed Reveller to Ulysses”
—Matthew Arnold
5. Strayed Revellers
Apart from a pair of tiny, open fishing boats, and the ferry which arrived from Ibiza thrice daily, Cresswell was the only vessel in Formentera harbor. Apart from the chores on the boat, being talked at by Sissie, writing long-overdue letters, and shopping at the dim little store in the tiny hamlet by the port, the only thing to do was sit and look at the scenery.
Formentera harbor had two rather short, low moles. Onboard the boat, gazing over the cockpit coaming, it was almost the same as being at sea in dead calm water, only the water there was so shallow and clear and clean that we could watch shoals of angelfish and mullet swimming around over the rocky bottom, and see our anchor—set out broadside to hold the boat off the wall in case of a westerly blow—plainly, even though it was under twenty feet of diaphanous, glassy seawater.
The early-morning ferry arrived at about dawn. Her rumbling, as her propellers churned up the harbor, and the excited voices of passengers, greeters, and crew woke Sissie and me, but the noises were all good-natured, and so were we. Formentera harbor was so remote and quiet that the three daily arrivals and departures of little knots of humanity were casual comforts, and we did not resent them one bit. By the time Sissie had the tea brewed, and the bacon and eggs on a hot plate, I was usually on deck to watch the black-clad peasant women with their gravely courteous husbands and their broods of children, all spic-and-span; and their baskets and boxes, cartons and sacks, bundles and buckets, all to-ing and fro-ing and chatting away in their peculiar brand of the Catalan language.
The Formenterans appeared to be among the healthiest folk I have ever seen, and it’s a fact that at the far southern end of the island there was a small hamlet, near Cape Berberia, where there were, out of a population of around 200, thirty-odd persons over the age of 100 years. It was not a rare thing to see one of the ancient men, small and sunburned, dressed all in black, scrambling up the 500-foot-high cliffs of the cape as sure-footed and agile as a goat—with a full-sized turtle, weighing 100 pounds or more, slung over his shoulders.
I have seen several places like this where people live long and die happy. I have often thought about the reason for this. Is it diet? Is it something in the water? Is it something inherited? After having observed these folk in places as far apart as Turkey and Bolivia, I conclude that there are a few traits these ancients have in common: They live without haste. They have just enough for their own needs, and they want no more. They are usually jealous of what they have, but they do not covet. Neither do they seem to resent growing old. In the main they accept it as part of life, but not with sorrow, because another thing the long-lived simple folk have in common the world over is a strong faith in the hereafter. I know there are atheists who live to a ripe old age, but I suspect that’s because, naturally, they’re scared of a void. Anyway, you should be rich to be an atheist. Demonstrative lack of real faith usually assuages a tremendous guilt for unearned blessings.
Formentera harbor, once the peasant families and the one or two bead-bedecked hippies, lugging their worry-bags over their shoulders, had cleared out of the way, and Sissie had clomped off to buy some eggs or to swim off the nearby beach, was a haven of peace. All across the northern horizon the hills and mountains of Ibiza swept from east to west, a vast panorama of altering shades above the continually changing grays and greens and blues of the sea.
The dawns broke, sending fiery red splashes over a nickel, leaden sea. Then the black smudges to the north turned to hills, golden toward the east; and as the sun revealed its splendor and rose along God’s arc, the black shadows on the western slopes were rendered to the diminishing stars. By noon the colors of the hills across the horizon were stark smudges of variegated hues, from gold to purple to vermilion, as if some celestial painter were using Ibiza as a palette. As the afternoon passed, the undulating uplands changed to iridescent emerald, to cyan blue, to aquamarine, turquoise, and lapis lazuli; and as the sun sank below the diamond-colored sea in the west, the island became a line of indigo humps, decorated with twinkling necklaces of light. Fifteen miles away, at the western end of Ibiza, the starkly sharp 1000-foot-
high rock of Es Vedra transformed its color from black to brown to beige to gold, until the sun had taken its leave, on its way to greet smoking cities and coral islands. Then, as suddenly as if it had disappeared behind a curtain, Es Vedra was gone, leaving behind only the stabbing beam of its lighthouse.
During the day, the whole time that Cresswell was in Formentera, Nelson stayed on the seawall, either hobbling to and fro, or lying on a fishing net in the shade. The only times he came onboard was when he saw Sissie going ashore. Then he limped around, sniffing, checking that she had performed her duties well and true, until she returned, when he took off again. His only other activities were when he accompanied me to the small, dark bar of the tiny hotel near the port for a beer or two with the small, dark fishermen. Whenever Sissie and I went ashore together (which was very rarely) Nelson stayed onboard to guard the boat. He was very jealous of this privilege—even more than he was jealous of Sissie.
For the first three days in Formentera I busied myself touching up the paintwork topsides and cleaning out the engine compartment for the first time in two years or so. The neglect hadn’t been a matter of slackness on my part. It was simply that I had been on the move continuously since the engine had been installed; either in Cresswell or delivering other people’s boats—or the weather had been far too hot for working in a close, confined space. Now, in November, it was fairly cool and ideal for working below. By the time I had finished putting two coats of white gloss paint in the bilge, it looked so clean that I was tempted to leave the hatches open, in case anyone came onboard, so I could show off. But the problem with cleaning and painting one compartment is that it makes the rest of the boat look shabby, so I diverted Sissie away from the beach in the afternoons to the main cabin, where I persuaded her to slap two coats of white gloss on those bilges, too. So after a week in Formentera Cresswell, while she could never pretend to be a showboat, looked fairly presentable. To my satisfaction and Sissie’s utter disgust, the last pieces of seal blubber from the Arctic were routed out from below the galley stove and thrown to the angelfish, while Nelson looked on and wagged his tail.
Seagulls in My Soup Page 7