The Salt-Stained Book (Strong Winds Trilogy 1)

by Julia Jones

  What would Gregory Palmer – or ‘Captain John’ Walker or Joshua Ribiero – do now? Look at the blue book, maybe? That was so carefully packed. It’d take him half the morning to unearth and unwrap. He hadn’t got that sort of time.

  He could find the photocopied pages. They’d tell him what noises he should make to avoid being run down in this fog.

  He dragged them out of his rucksack. Scanned them avidly.

  No help at all. Apparently he was supposed to blow horns or ring bells every two minutes. He hadn’t even got a watch – never mind bells and horns!

  Donny’s eye fell on the first paragraph of the next chapter, which had been included in the photocopying almost by accident: “As soon as the amateur leaves the bay or river with whose features he is well acquainted and ventures to take his vessel along a coast unknown to him, he must provide himself with the necessary instruments for finding his way ...”

  Oh, ha, ha! thought Donny.

  To rub salt in his own wounds he took a look at the list of ‘necessary instruments’: a chart – he’d printed an Internet map of the harbour so he’d sort of got that; a compass – that’s what he really needed ...

  They’d done something at school about compasses ... an experiment ... They’d rubbed needles against magnets to get all their atoms facing the right way or something. Then they’d taken the magnets away and pushed the needles through small sections of cork so they floated in saucers of water.

  Donny vividly remembered his feeling of delight, almost awe, when his needle, together with most of the others, had wavered for a while then settled, pointing surely to the magnetic North. He could repeat that experiment, right now, he realised. For real. He had all that he needed. The sailmaker’s needle in Joshua’s bosun’s bag was stuck into a cork for safety; there was no shortage of water; he could use a bucket instead of a saucer and he’d brought blessed little Liam’s Euro 2004 fridge magnet with him!

  Donny’s hands shook as he began stroking the needle against Liam’s piece of treasure. He scarcely dared breathe as he pushed it through the cork, floated it in a few centimetres of water in the bottom of the bucket and waited.

  It swung, it dithered, it swung back again, it settled.

  It was miraculous!

  The harbour map told him that he’d need to head due south to reach the Harwich side. So, he had to be perfectly clear which end of the needle showed North and which South. Or he’d be hitting Shotley. There was a bit quite near called Bloody Point. Exactly where Flint would expect to find him!

  This was Monday September 25th. This was the day.

  The tide sluicing past the schooner knew where it was going – down the river and out to sea. Would that be East? South East? Maybe he should do the opposite; start by rowing as hard as he could in a westerly direction, dead against the tide, heading further up the River Stour before he swung south to cross the harbour.

  Donny remembered stories where you turned to stone if you were caught above ground when the sun came up. He’d got to get hidden. Soon. One more look at his makeshift compass, bobbing in its centimetres of salt water; then he untied Lively Lady’s painter, set to his oars again and rowed with all his strength.

  It hurt.

  The white walls of fog closed around him. Disorientating. The water in the bucket rippled: the compass needle shook. But if he paused to let it settle, Lively Lady was swept backwards, fast. He learned to row by feel. Couldn’t stop for a moment. Mustn’t let his attention wander. Had to sense the line of most resistance. Had to carry on forcing the dinghy to move – painfully slowly – directly against the rushing ebb tide.

  Hours passed. Or it seemed as if they did. Every fibre in Donny’s arms and back felt separately strained to breaking point. Was Lively Lady travelling anywhere at all or was he busting himself to hold her on the spot? Was there some new and cruel enchantment keeping him trapped inside this cage of fog, rowing against the tide for ever.

  Except that he couldn’t row much longer. His bruised hand was throbbing and fiery-hot, his lungs hurt and his strained muscles were beginning to seize.

  Then the dinghy hit something. Donny un-shipped his oars and hurled himself forward, grabbing the painter as he went.

  Lively Lady had collided with a metal pillar. It reared up above them into the mist, festooned with bladder wrack, encrusted with barnacles. He hung on with the strength of desperation until he finally managed to use the painter to make the dinghy fast.

  Now the Ribieros’ dinghy had a prang on her bows to match the scrape on her stern but no real damage had been done. And he’d gained a few moments’ rest.

  Donny dipped his stinging palms into the river. Where was he? Still nothing but wispy whiteness to be seen.

  The little compass was going crazy. He realised that the metal pillar had de-magnetised it. The ebb of the tide was all the directional information that he had. Donny pulled out his Harwich Harbour map and worked out the course he should have been following if he had been rowing successfully. He’d have passed the entrance to Shotley Marina and then ...?

  He looked upwards. Wow, there it was! A green, starboard- hand triangle on the top of the pillar. He’d hit one of the entry marks.

  It was a bit depressing really. He’d only travelled about two or three hundred metres from the Hispaniola and it had taken him how long? Half, three-quarters of an hour? More? The good thing: he could allow himself to begin his crossing to the other side.

  Donny ate a banana. He didn’t want to let go: he didn’t want this respite moment to end.

  He ate two bananas. Maybe Gerald had his good points.

  Then he forced himself to untie Lively Lady’s painter. The tide pushed her backwards at once. Out with his oars again. Tried to keep the pillar on his starboard quarter but he’d not taken more than twenty strokes before it was gone into the ghost world.

  Afterwards, he realised that the green triangle had been sending an extra message. The fact that he’d been able to make out its colour should have been his first hint that the early morning fog was lifting.

  Soon little cat’s-paws of wind were ruffling the grey surface of the water and it wasn’t long before there was a definite gap between the river and the mist. Then there were whole empty patches. Suddenly the sun was up, an easterly breeze was blowing and his view ahead was clear.

  Lively Lady had already reached the further shore. He’d completely over-estimated the angle at which he’d needed to point the dinghy and had therefore been rowing up the river as well as across. Maybe the waking wind had pushed him that way as well. The closest thing to Donny now was a gigantic high-speed catamaran, still moored, but with its engine purring silkily. He could have rowed straight underneath. He shivered at the thought.

  Donny lost no time in turning sharply into the wind. Up with Lively Lady’s sails and he was away, beating briskly down the river. Monday, September 25th. This was the day that would decide his future.

  It was also his fourteenth birthday.

  He looked across to the Hispaniola. Her flags were flying bravely now. They’d surely attract Polly Lee’s attention as soon as she glanced towards Shotley.

  The schooner slipped out of sight as he rounded the point. He eased his sheets and reached for the scatter of small boat moorings he’d noticed on the previous day. Lively Lady wouldn’t look out of place here and he’d have a direct view of the foot ferry route.

  “Keep sharp lookout,” Gold Dragon had ordered.

  Xanthe had included binoculars in the survival bag.

  Donny chose a small, rather sea-weedy mooring buoy that probably hadn’t been used for some time. He made the dinghy fast then fixed Xanthe’s groundsheet over the boom like a tent. This, he figured, would make Lady look as if her owner was away. He’d hide underneath and stay completely still, so as not to rock a supposedly empty boat.

  This, it turned out, wasn’t such a problem. Once the business of the harbour got underway, there was so much wash from passing motor vessels, even tho
se that seemed to be away on the far side, that all the small boats in Donny’s area were repeatedly set lurching wildly. He was glad to discover that he didn’t get seasick.

  He’d brought Xanthe’s tidetable as well as his Internet list of ship arrivals and ferry times. Even without a watch he could work out what time it was when the tide turned once more and Lively Lady swung to the incoming flood.

  The first of the four container ships that could have come from Shanghai should already have arrived. The last wouldn’t dock until late that night. Donny was pinning his hopes on Great Aunt Ellen being forced to use the foot ferry to Shotley. The ferry was open, easy to see everyone on board and Donny could also watch the patch of beach where travellers from the Felixstowe side waited to embark.

  The hours crawled by and Donny had ticked off three of his four possible container ships; two of his three possible ferry crossings. The ferry hadn’t had many passengers. There’d been four or five cyclists, an elderly couple who Donny actually saw locking up their parked car before walking to the beach and a small man in overalls with something heavy in a wheelbarrow. He sort of looked familiar, but he couldn’t be Gold Dragon.

  It got worse. On the second running of the ferry, the shark- boat came nosing down the river, circling suspiciously. Donny scarcely dared peep from under his groundsheet.

  Evidently Flint too was disappointed. He turned away and moored against the far end of the container terminal, where there were those steps giving direct access to the quay. Donny managed to make out some odd-looking marks around the shark-boat’s bows but whatever the vandalism had been, it had evidently failed to put it out of action. Donny wished now that he had been the perpetrator: he’d have wreaked some proper damage.

  The only passengers waiting for the last scheduled ferry were a young woman with a double buggy and a man in some sort of uniform. No Gold Dragon.

  What to do next?

  Sail back to Shotley Marina in the slim hope that somehow it would be Great Aunt Ellen that he’d find there – not Gerald and Wendy or Toxic Tune? Or should he put out to sea? Around the coast to Essex and then via inland waterways to Chelmsford. To Skye?

  He knew he did not have permission and his friends would feel badly let down. He’d have properly gone AWOL.

  His mother was the person who truly loved him. Had loved him all his life. If he believed he could help her by going he’d be out to sea like a hungry gull.

  Lively Lady swung again. Another six hours had passed.

  But she didn’t swing round completely. The wind had freshened during the day and shifted towards the south. For a moment she was broadside on to the harbour entrance, held indecisive between wind and tide. Time to go? Donny wondered, lifting the edge of his waterproof sheet and gazing towards the wide horizon.

  Then he saw her. Running before the wind with her extraordinary sails spread either side, wing and wing, catching the gold of the afternoon sun.

  Strong Winds!

  She wasn’t arriving as an item of deck cargo to be heaved up by a crane and dumped on the concrete quay. She was arriving as a living thing, waves gurgling beneath her and a flurry of white water being sliced aside by her gilded bow.

  The shock of her beauty and the glorious relief of knowing that Great Aunt Ellen was almost here! It made Donny want to leap up, punch the air and shout his heart out.

  Instead he tore off the waterproof cover, bundled it up and stuffed it for’ard. Pushed the rest of the day’s clutter higgledy- piggledy under the centre thwart. His hands were trembling as he set the jib and he couldn’t undo the knot to slip the painter. Oh never mind, he’d cut it.

  Donny rummaged for the knife Xanthe had lent him. Was it in the bosun’s bag? Had he left it on the Hispaniola? No, he’d used its marlinspike when he was fixing the cover.

  Muttered swear words. Grew sweaty with frustration.

  Then he remembered. This wasn’t how sailors behaved. Great Aunt Ellen – the famous Polly Lee – the person at this very moment coming over the horizon towards him – didn’t want a landlubber for her great nephew. She’d said so. He had to make a good impression.

  Donny took a deep breath, deliberately willing ‘Captain John’ Walker, Gregory Palmer and all his siblings, the entire Ribiero family – every old salt since the Norsemen crossed the Atlantic to America – to come to his assistance now.

  Perhaps they did.

  Juddering with suppressed haste, he folded the waterproof cover so that it didn’t impede access to the anchor, stowed everything else quickly and neatly – and found Xanthe’s knife.

  Then he understood something extra. You didn’t do things right in order to make a good impression: you did them because that was the right thing to do.

  So Donny didn’t use the knife to cut the painter. He opened its other end, the end with the marlinspike and worked methodically to loosen the knot. It almost fell apart.

  Up with the mainsail and he was away.

  It was lucky for his moment of level-headedness that he hadn’t noticed the black powerboat cruising smoothly down river to check the last running of the foot ferry.

  Strong Winds was coming closer every moment.

  Donny didn’t glance behind at all as he headed arrow- straight towards her, sailing as close to the wind as Lively Lady could be persuaded to go.

  The shark-boat turned away. Then back. A momentary hesitation, as if its owner’s brain had been slow to register the Chinese-ness of the approaching vessel and to make the obvious connection to Shanghai.

  Now the powerboat was rearing up, hurtling towards the junk, full throttle, engines roaring.

  Donny heard the noise and looked round. Flint’s vessel was travelling so fast that its white underbelly was almost completely out of the water as it balanced on the thrust of its twin propellers. There was a gaping red mouth painted on its bows but Donny had no time to stare. All his effort was focussed on racing towards Great Aunt Ellen.

  Lively Lady couldn’t sail any closer to the wind. The junk was too far away for him to shout or wave and her billowing sails prevented him seeing the helmsman. Donny made his decision. He eased the dinghy’s sheets and bore away just a few degrees. Now Lady was sailing more easily, picking herself up and leaping over the waves.

  “Ready about...” muttered Donny to himself when he was close enough to see the gilded scrollwork on Strong Winds’s port bow. He tacked to bring his little dinghy onto a collision course with ten or twelve tons of antique boat.

  “Please, Gold Dragon, please see me! Please know what you’ve got to do!”

  The wind was on Lively Lady’s starboard side: Strong Winds was goose-winged.

  Lady was close hauled; Strong Winds was running free.

  By all the laws of the sea the junk must give way to the dinghy. Instantly. It was outrageous of him to have put her in such a position.

  She did it, of course – Polly Lee, the round-the-world yachtswoman. The junk’s foresail and mizzen were gybed across with the same distinctive crack that he’d heard in his dream. Strong Winds altered course away from him.

  And away from the on-rushing powerboat.

  Donny was ready to tack again. He was amidships of her now and could see a small figure shaking her fist from the high poop. It didn’t matter if she was angry. He’d made space to reach her first and warn her.

  But Flint was already there. He roared recklessly between the sailing boats and swirled round behind Strong Winds with a cascade of turbulence. The powerboat’s wash caught Lively Lady broadside just as she was coming about. She capsized.

  There was nothing Donny could do.

  The shock left him stunned. He’d jumped out to avoid being trapped as the dinghy went over, but now he wasn’t quite sure what was meant to happen.

  She’d gone right over: upside down, turtle. He knew he mustn’t leave her – he felt no temptation to do so – but he had no idea how to right her. So he pulled himself onto the up- turned hull and sat watching the confrontation as if on a grand
stand.

  It was pretty one-sided.

  Flint had evidently tried to come alongside Strong Winds and had been rebuffed. He’d circled away and was approaching again at a more normal speed. He was standing up, wearing his official cap and shouting through a megaphone.

  Polly Lee was unimpressed. She let him come close then Donny saw her arm come up and over as she threw something. There was a small rattle of explosive and a distinct burst of smoke on the powerboat’s foredeck. Donny hoped it had done some damage.

  Flint wheeled away once more. Then turned. His threat was unmistakable: “If you won’t let me board you, I’m going after the boy ...”

  The shark-boat reared up again, engines roaring, hurtling towards the upturned dinghy.

  Donny couldn’t afterwards believe that the fat policeman had fully intended to run him down. The threat was a means of asserting himself; increasing the pressure on an elderly lady; putting the frighteners on an intractable child. Flint was foul but he wasn’t totally stupid. Or a murderer. Was he?

  At the time Donny didn’t feel rational. He felt terrified.

  Polly Lee wasn’t taking any chances either. As Flint surged past, she stepped quickly to her ship’s side and hurled another missile after him.

  It wasn’t a firecracker this time: it was a simple heaving line, a ball with a long trail of strong thin rope.

  It landed beautifully between the shark-boat’s whirling propellers, got caught round first one, then the other and, as Gold Dragon gleefully paid out metre after metre of increasingly weighty cable, the powerboat’s engines spluttered, choked and died.

  She threw the last of the coil in after him. Then, without bothering to look at Flint again, she trimmed Strong Winds’s sails until she hove to gracefully beside the drifting dinghy.

  “Should I call you Sinbad?” asked Great Aunt Ellen.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO