As Antonio held onto me, his face close to mine, trying to make out what I was howling at him, Sissie appeared on deck. She was still in her blue jeans and frilly shirt, soaked through, with her ginger hair now dark and hanging like rats’ tails over her eyes, which frowned with worry, as well they might have. She shouted at me from the companion-way. In the roar of the wind I couldn’t hear a word she said. I handed over the helm to Antonio, half-conscious at the time that this would tend to steady him up a bit. I grabbed the gin bottle from his hand and scrambled up onto the weatherdeck to shove my ear in front of Sissie’s face.
“Oh, deah—Ai’m terribly afraid for her, Skippah!”
I rammed the gin bottle into her damp, cold hand. Señora Puig’s howls had reached a crescendo, defeating even the blasts of the wind and the crashes of the seas as Cresswell smashed into them. “Here,” I shouted, “shove this into her! It’s all we’ve got, lass!”
Sissie started to move down the ladder. I reached down and grabbed her shoulder. I was not surprised to see that she was crying. “Listen, girl, I’ve got to start pumping. We’re taking water in badly! Get the Reed’s Nautical Almanac off the navigation-book shelf. It’s an old one, but there’s instructions for emergency childbirth in it. Look it up in the index. Have you ever midwifed before?”
Sissie blinked through her tears and half-smiled. She looked like a half-drowned spaniel, but a brave one. “Oh, deah, thet’s what worries me so, dahling!” she hollered. Then her face brightened a touch. “But I did set Toby’s ankle thet time he broke it on the slopes of the Matterhorn!” As she said this her lips pressed firmly together. Britannia, I knew, would cope. The awful spell of ignorance, fear, and panic was broken.
“Don’t you fret, skippah, we shell jolly-well manage somehow!” She started to head for Señora Puig, who had just let rip an excruciating bellow. “Oh, deah, poor dahling Señora Puig!” Sissie wagged her dank head. She stared at the other berth for a second. “And poor deah Miss Pomeroy!”
I stared at the incredible scene in Cresswell’s cabin for a moment. It was truly horrifying. Over Cresswell’s smashing, jerking, crashing deck I headed back for the bilge pump and desperately heaved away at the great brass handle until the pump got a suction. From then on it was “Armstrong’s Patent”—pump, pump, and more pump. Half the night Antonio and I spelled each other at the heavy pump and the heaving wheel, as the wind rose to full storm force and piled up frenetic seas in their millions over the mile-wide, shallow bank under the strait.
We’d left the harbor at about ten o’clock at night. By eleven we were to the west of the strait. By twelve we were about a mile farther east. By one o’clock Cresswell, after zigzagging furiously against the blind eye of the wind, had moved a mere hundred yards or so against the raging blasts. Still we persisted. If we could drag ourselves only one more mile east, to clear the southernmost cape of Ibiza, then we could lay Cresswell off the wind and shoot up to Ibiza harbor on a broad reach. That was my intention—to get to Ibiza town direct, and get Señora Puig to a hospital as fast as we could.
After I’d pumped out about a ton of seawater which had sluiced onboard, I checked out the cabin again. The scene topsides was bad enough, but below, in the ghostly light of the oil lamp, purposely kept dim so as to preserve our night vision, it was a view of horror. By now Sissie had managed to get about a quarter of the gin down the heaving, lashing señora, so at least her screams were a little less terrifying. It looked as if Sissie had had a slug, too—there was a gleam of determination in her eyes now that brought to mind Karsh’s portrait of Churchill glowering.
“Deah Skippah!” she crowed, “what a topping ideah of yours! Ai’ve managed to give dahling Miss Pomeroy a teeny drop, too! The poor deah is in a frightful fret. I think Señora Puig is feeling a weeny bit better, now!”
“Good,” I shouted back at her, as Nelson gazed damply up from under the table in abject misery. “I’m not letting her husband down here. I don’t want any panic. It’s obvious he loves her far too much to help her a great deal. You stay with her. Try to get a little bit more gin into her—not too much. And for God’s sake, make some cocoa or something! We need cheering up, lass—death’s abroad! There’s only us and the gin to stove its bloody face in!”
Then I recovered myself and subdued my Welshness. It’s not much help when the English are determined. “Did you read that thing about a-borning in Reed’s?” I asked her.
“Ai’m trying to. It’s jolly difficult in this light. Can we turn the lamp up a little?”
“No, take the book over to the stove when you boil the water—and for Chrissake, be careful!” Then I staggered back on deck to relieve Antonio after another fifteen minutes of wild pumping. All heavy work.
By two o’clock we had smashed our way another fifty yards or so to the east against the bitter wind. At two-fifteen Sissie appeared on deck and leaped down into the cockpit beside me. “Oh, deah, she’s in heavy labor!” The water streamed off Sissie’s thin, frilly blouse, and the tears streamed from her eyes.
I was too astounded to say anything for a moment. I stared at Sissie, squinting against the flailing rain and lashing spray, and gritted my teeth. Then I made up my mind. I would have to stop this almost hopeless fray with the storm and head with the wind. Our argument with the Fates was far too futile. They would never accede to our powerful demands and our puny strength. We were being too big for our boots.
“I’m wearing her around, Sissie. It’ll take all night and tomorrow forenoon to buck this bloody strait!”
I started to move the wheel around to pass Cresswell’s bow away from the raging wind. Slowly the boat obeyed me. Antonio nodded his head as he eased the mainsheet. He had already figured out my intentions. Sissie stood by the jib sheet, ready to pay it out a touch. Then, as the noise of the wind and sea lessened while Cresswell disdainfully turned her back on them, there was a particularly dreadful howl from down below. I half-pushed Sissie toward the cabin, and concentrated on the helm. It’s not an easy maneuver, wearing off in a full storm.
“I’m making for the west coast of Ibiza, Antonio. I’m going to seek shelter in the lee, or get her around to San Antonio!” This was a small port and holiday resort on the northwest side of Ibiza island. “We can get her to a doctor there!”
The weather, now that we were running away from it, was far less violent. Cresswell retreated to the west into the black nothingness of the night. Antonio leaned his streaming wet head close to me. “Yes, she will be safe if we do that. Saint Anthony is my patron saint!”
I grinned at him, despite the hell we were undergoing. “Mine’s Charlie Chaplin,” I shouted.
He actually laughed as I handed him the wheel and relieved him at the pump.
From the strait to Es Vedra, on the southwest tip of Ibiza, was about fourteen miles. Off the wind, on a dead run, still with all sail up, Cresswell flew, her stern yawing this way and that, more or less on an even keel now, but rearing and pitching like a maddened steer. Antonio and I still fought the stiff pump and struggling helm.
By five o’clock, in the murky light of a rain-ripped gray sky, weary by now, only kept ataut by Sissie’s cocoa and the screams of Señora Puig, we sighted, about a quarter of a mile away, the great conical rock of Es Vedra, almost a thousand feet high, huge and ghostly as it reared up to the low black clouds, straight from the seabed. Then we knew there might be hope for us in this insane night.
I managed to get a peep down below again. Sissie and now Miss Pomeroy were both bending over the squirming shape of Señora Puig. I called down, “OK, Sissie?”
She turned to me sternly. “Go away!” she shouted abruptly. Then she seemed to gather herself together. She braced herself against the midship sponson in the wildly pitching cabin. “Oh, deah Skippah!” she howled, back to normal now, “it reahlly, honestly is not the place for a chep down heah! Ai’m sure that Señora Puig will be dreadfully embarrassed .
. . and with you being British and everything!” As she hollered she moved toward the steaming kettle on the stove. Behind her, hanging onto the berth-side for dear life, La Pomeroy, her battered face the color of some ghastly painter’s palette, tried to see me through her almost-closed eyes. A glimmer of a smile flitted across the slab of beaten beef.
“Cocoa?” I said hopefully to Sissie. “We’ll soon be in the lee of Es Vedra.” Another almighty scream of pain broke loose from Señora Puig.
“No more cocoa, dahling Skippah!” shouted Sissie. “This is for us . . . Ai’ll make you some as soon as the boat steadies up. Oh, you poor souls—you and Antonio must be simply . . .”
I didn’t hear the rest of Sissie’s comment. Antonio was now steering directly for a point about ten yards off Es Vedra rock.
“Plenty of depth?” I asked him.
“Sure, the rock drops down, almost vertical, to the . . .”
Even as he said it, Cresswell, with an almighty crash, yammered and stammered over something. Aghast, I glanced over the side. She was sliding over a rock only two or three feet below the surface!
All hell let itself loose. As we held on, Antonio and I, stupefied, the seas lifted Cresswell’s hull and crashed it down on the flat-topped rock. With a roar terrible to a sailor’s ear—horrible to anyone’s ear—Cresswell scraped over the rock for twenty yards or so, lift and scrape, lift and scrape, with a noise like a steam train flying in and out of a short, dark tunnel. But the boat took it—right to the very last moment.
Then it happened.
I somehow knew it was going to happen. It wasn’t a case of calculating the likelihood. It was more an instant prescience. The stern smashed down on the far edge of the rock just as we were about to clear the danger, miraculously, so we had thought, scot-free. The rudder hit the rock, the shock broke the rudder cable bottle-screws, and the rudder, being removable, jumped off its pintles.
The rudder was secured to the hull by a rope lanyard about six feet long, so we didn’t lose it; but we were, in effect, rudderless. It would be extremely hazardous, even foolish, with the boat bouncing around as she was, to try to lean over the whaleback stern and recover the rudder. There were more pressing demands, to say the least.
It isn’t often, thank all the gods, that a sailor finds himself out in a raging gale, with a possibly damaged keel, and rudderless, with an agonized, hysterical pregnant woman below, screaming blue murder, another one so badly beaten up that she can hardly see, and another who has never had any midwifery training.
I didn’t need to tell Antonio. He pulled me to the wheel, cast off all the sheets, levitated himself somehow to the foot of the wildly swinging mainmast, and let go the jib, the gaff, and the main halyard. The mainsail came down with a clatter as Antonio scrabbled at the terylene and dragged the flailing sail down onto the coachroof. It was a performance which would have made a Chinese acrobat look like an undertaker.
With the boat now almost stopped in the crazily heaving seas, I could now leave the wheel and rescue the rudder. Soon, after panting and moaning for ten minutes, stretched right over the bouncing, narrow whaleback stern, I somehow managed to wangle the gudgeons of the eighty-pound rudder over the pintles on the pounding and lunging sternpost, re-screw the steering cables, and regain command of the boat.
Within minutes of getting underway again, Cresswell had zoomed beyond Es Vedra rock. Quite suddenly, as the rock loomed over us, very close, there was no more wind, no more panicky seas. It was as though the storm had never been. Cresswell was one minute yawing, pounding, rising, and falling like a started stag; the next minute upright, sedate, and slowing. Now almost the only noises were the loud groans and sobs of Señora Puig below.
I turned to Antonio. He looked exhausted and very glum indeed. “We’ll stay in the lee here until we get things straightened up a bit below. It’s like a pig-sty down there. You get the bilges pumped out and I’ll check the keel. Then we’ll high-tail it for San Antonio. We can be there in two hours or so.”
We lowered the main and jib again, and left the mizzen up to cock her bow against any stray gust of wind which might find Cresswell’s hiding place. Then, both exhausted, Antonio and I collapsed to smoke a dry cigarette for once. A mite of comfort.
The groans now coming from down below were heartrending, nerve-shattering—almost soul-destroying. It was horrible. I could not think of anything that sounded more terrifying since the ’berg had almost capsized onto Cresswell in the Arctic five years before. The screams were truly dreadful to hear. Now Antonio broke down. He bent his head forward and burst out sobbing.
I leaned over and clutched his shoulder. “Come on, Antonio, we’ll leave the mess below. Let’s get underway again. We can be in San Antonio by eight.” It was now dawn. Idleness is no cure for grief.
No sooner had Antonio dragged himself to his feet again, still sobbing, when another sound came from down below. It was not a high-pitched scream now; not a low, agonized moan; not a bellow of pain. It was thin but quite loud—loud enough to echo back from the almost vertical sides of the great rock only a few yards away from the bedraggled Cresswell. This voice yelled and gurgled. It screamed protest, it demanded justice, it hollered violent indignation. For a moment Antonio and I stood, quite close to one another, staring in disbelief into each other’s eyes.
“No lo creo! I don’t believe it . . .” murmured Antonio. Then he grabbed the mainsheet horse-rail and swung himself over it. “Un chiquito? A boy?” he shouted.
Sissie’s voice sounded as if she were in a transport of delight. Of course she didn’t understand Antonio’s bellowed question. I translated for him as I came out of my shock. “Is it a lad or a lass, Sissie?”
“Oh, deah Skippah! Antonio, dahling,” she wheezed, “it’s a lovely little cheppie—oh, so tiny and cuddly and ebsolutely cozy and warm and charming . . . Oh, I could simply ooze oodles and oodles . . .”
By this time Antonio and I were crowding the companionway hatch, both excited. All our bone-weariness was now completely forgotten. I peered down at the mess below. Sissie was standing, still wet through, her breasts heaving under the now dirty and bedraggled frilly blouse. In her arms she held a bundle wrapped in one of my shirts. Her faced beamed.
La Pomeroy somehow squeezed past us, a bucket in hand. Antonio rushed down the ladder and tried to grab the bundle from Sissie, but she wouldn’t let go. “Skippah, tell him to be careful!”
I didn’t need to. Antonio sensed that he was not in order, and poked one of his calloused fingers into the bundle. Now he was cooing, too. Behind him again now, Miss Pomeroy, all bashed and battered, took the hands of a weakly smiling, silent Señora Puig. Then Antonio looked down at his wife, reached for her, and broke into great, deep sobs.
By this time I had managed to drag myself down the ladder and take a peek at the tiny face. It wasn’t very handsome. It looked a bit like a walnut, all creases and little wrinkles—rather like a miniature version of Miss Pomeroy’s. The tiny lad’s eyes were open. Sissie told me later that he couldn’t see yet, but he looked at me and I could swear he winked. Then he stared at me for a few seconds longer, wondering just what kind of a world he had entered. He gazed into my salt-begrimed, sleep-begging, filthy, bearded face, curled his little mouth up, frowned, and let out a bellow which I told Sissie would be heard in Gibraltar.
“He’s going to be a big, strong fisherman,” cooed Sissie. “Aren’t you, oh you adorable little cheppie.”
“More like a bloody cattle-boat skipper, with a voice like that,” said I.
Now Antonio was on his knees, praying. In his hands he held his wife’s rosary. As I turned and started up the ladder to get the sails up and head for San Antonio with our new passenger, I noticed Sissie’s hands. Both were scalded and blistered by hot water from the fallen kettle.
That’s how Antonio Cecilio Tristan Vedra Pomeroy Cresswell Puig of Formentera received his name.
>
We got into San Antonio at about nine a.m. Señora Puig was collected by a hastily called doctor, who also examined Sissie and Miss Pomeroy before Antonio and I carried the baby’s mother ashore. Sissie, despite her bandaged hands, insisted on carrying the baby to the car, clucking and cooing at it all the way down the jetty, with La Pomeroy at her side, holding blindly to Sissie’s hem. It was like a refugee arrival.
Sissie paid for Miss Pomeroy’s treatment, of course, and in another few days they were both their old selves again, La Pomeroy even down to moaning about the turn her late love affair had taken. “OhpoorpoorSven! Idon’tknowwhathe’lldonowwithnoonetolookafterhim!”
“Serve the bugger right,” I told her. “I can’t understand you, Miss P. There he’s been knocking seven bells out of you, and now you’re worrying about him . . .”
Sissie, still bandaged but healing fast, sat at Miss Pomeroy’s side. She said nothing, but from her look I knew she thought me hard.
Miss Pomeroy burst into silent tears and bent her gray-rooted, blue-rinsed hair over her twelve strings of pearls and her now-washed blue silk dress. The silver shoes looked very much out of place in Cresswell’s cabin.
It had been decided that Miss Pomeroy would stay with Sissie and me until her “guardian” in Leeds (whoever he was) sent her the fare home to England in reply to a hastily written letter from Sissie. It is not often that a sailor finds himself trapped with a bishop’s sister and a star of the 1919 Follies. I realized that I had been singled out by the Fates for a singular honor. I resigned myself to acceptance. The fare wouldn’t be too long arriving; then Miss P. would disappear over the horizon in the general direction of some obscure Yorkshire suburb, and I would again be able to look the small, dark fishermen of Ibiza straight in the eye.
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