The Golden Keel / The Vivero Letter

by Desmond Bagley

  I went over to him. ‘Are you all right?’

  He held his shoulder again and got to his feet. ‘I’m O.K.’ He looked at Torloni sourly. ‘I’ve got a bone to pick with you.’

  ‘Later,’ I said. ‘Let’s deal with the crowd at the bottom of the yard.’

  We were being reinforced rapidly by men climbing over the wall. This was our mobile force which had taken Torloni’s men in the rear and had whipped them. In a compact mass we marched down the yard towards Sanford, Torloni being frog-marched in front.

  As we came near Sanford I poked the pistol muzzle into Torloni’s fleshy neck. ‘Tell them,’ I commanded.

  He shouted, ‘Leave the boat. Go away. Torloni says that.’

  The men around Sanford looked at us expressionlessly and made no move. Piero squeezed Torloni’s shoulder again. ‘Aaah. Leave the boat, I tell you,’ he yelled.

  They raised their eyes to the crowd behind us, realized they were outnumbered, and slowly began to drift towards the hard where their boats were drawn up. Piero said quietly, ‘These are the men from La Spezia. That man in the blue jersey is their leader; Morlaix; he is a Frenchman from Marseilles.’ He looked speculatively at their boats. ‘You may have trouble with him yet. He does not care if Torloni lives or dies.’

  I watched Morlaix’s crowd push their boats into the water. ‘We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,’ I said. ‘We’ve got to get out of here. Somebody might have notified the police about the brawl—we made enough noise, and there was a gunshot. Did we have many casualties?’

  ‘I don’t know; I will find out.’

  Palmerini came pushing through the crowd with Francesca at his side. ‘The boat is not harmed,’ he said. ‘We can put her into the water at any time.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said. I looked at Francesca and made a quick decision. ‘Still want to come?’

  ‘Yes, I’m coming.’

  ‘O.K. You won’t have time to pack, though. We’re leaving within the hour.’

  She smiled. ‘I have a small suitcase already packed. It has been ready for a week.’

  Coertze was standing guard over Torloni. ‘What do we do with this one?’ he asked.

  I said, ‘We take him with us a little way. We may need him yet. Francesca, Kobus was shot; will you strap him up?’

  ‘Oh, I didn’t know,’ she said. ‘Where is the wound?’

  ‘In the shoulder,’ said Coertze absently. He was watching Walker on the deck of Sanford. ‘Where was that kêrel when the trouble started?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I never saw him from start to finish.’

  IV

  We put Sanford into the water very easily; there were plenty of willing hands. I felt better with a living, moving deck under my feet than I had for a long time. Before I went aboard for the last time I took Piero on one side.

  ‘Tell the Count I’ve taken Francesca away,’ I said. ‘I think it’s better this way—Torloni might look for revenge. You men can look after yourselves, but I wouldn’t like to leave her here.’

  ‘That is the best thing,’ he said.

  ‘If Torloni wants to start any more funny tricks you know what to do now. Don’t go for his men—go for Torloni. He cracks easily under direct pressure. I’ll make it clear to him that if he starts any of his nonsense he’ll wind up floating somewhere in the bay. What did you find out about casualties?’

  ‘Nothing serious,’ said Piero. ‘One broken arm, three stab wounds, three or four concussions.’

  ‘I’m glad to see no one was killed,’ I said. ‘I wouldn’t have liked that. I think Francesca would like to speak to you, so I’ll leave you to it.’

  We shook hands warmly and I went aboard. Piero was a fine man—a good man to have beside you in a fight.

  He and Francesca talked together for a while and then she came on board. She was crying a little and I put my arms about her to comfort her. It’s not very pleasant to leave one’s native land at the best of times, and leaving in these circumstances the unpleasantness was doubled. I sat in the cockpit with my hand on the tiller and Walker started the engine. As soon as I heard it throb I threw it into gear and we moved away slowly.

  For a long time we could see the little patch of light in front of the shed speckled with the waving Italians. They waved although they could not see us in the darkness and I felt sad at leaving them. ‘We’ll come back sometime,’ I said to Francesca.

  ‘No,’ she said quietly. ‘We’ll never be back.’

  V

  We pressed on into the darkness at a steady six knots making our way due south to clear the Portovento headland. I looked up at the mast dimly outlined against the stars and wondered how long it would take to fix the running rigging. The deck was a mess, making nonsense of the term ‘shipshape,’ but we couldn’t do anything about that until it was light. Walker was below and Coertze was on the foredeck keeping guard on Torloni. Francesca and I conversed in low tones in the cockpit, talking of when we would be able to get married.

  Coertze called out suddenly, ‘When are we going to get rid of this garbage? He wants to know. He thinks we’re going to put him over the side and he says he can’t swim.’

  ‘We’ll slip inshore close to Portovento,’ I said. ‘We’ll put him ashore in the dinghy.’

  Coertze grumbled something about it being better to get rid of Torloni there and then, and relapsed into silence. Francesca said, ‘Is there something wrong with the engine? It seems to be making a strange noise.’

  I listened and there was a strange noise—but it wasn’t our engine. I throttled back and heard the puttering of an outboard motor quite close to starboard.

  ‘Get below quickly,’ I said, and called to Coertze in a low voice, ‘We’ve got visitors.’

  He came aft swiftly. I pointed to starboard and, in the faint light of the newly risen moon, we could see the white feather of a bow wave coming closer. A voice came across the water. ‘Monsieur Englishman, can you hear me?’

  ‘It’s Morlaix,’ I said, and raised my voice. ‘Yes, I can hear you.’

  ‘We are coming aboard,’ he shouted. ‘It is useless to resist.’

  ‘You stay clear,’ I called. ‘Haven’t you had enough?’

  Coertze got up with a grunt and went forward. I pulled Torloni’s gun from my pocket and cocked it.

  ‘There are only four of you,’ shouted Morlaix. ‘And many more of us.’

  The bow wave of his boat was suddenly much closer and I could see the boat more clearly. It was full of men. Then it was alongside and, as it came close enough to bump gunwales, Morlaix jumped to the deck of Sanford. He was only four feet away from me so I shot him in the leg and he gave a shout and fell overboard.

  Simultaneously Coertze rose, lifting in one hand the struggling figure of Torloni. ‘Take this rubbish,’ he shouted and hurled Torloni at the rush of men coming on deck. Torloni wailed and the flying body bowled them over and they fell back into their boat.

  I took advantage of the confusion by suddenly bearing to port and the gap between the boats widened rapidly. Their boat seemed to be out of control—I imagine that the steersman had been knocked down.

  They didn’t bother us again. We could hear them shouting in the distance as they fished Morlaix from the water, but they made no further attack. They had no stomach for guns.

  Our wake broadened in the moonlight as we headed for the open sea. We had a deadline to meet in Tangier and time was short.

  BOOK THREE

  The Sea

  EIGHT: CALM AND STORM

  We had fair winds at first and Sanford made good time. As I had suspected, the greater concentration of weight in the keel made her crotchety. In a following sea she rolled abominably, going through a complete cycle in two minutes. With the wind on the quarter, usually Sanford’s best point of sailing, every leeward roll was followed by a lurch in the opposite direction and her mast described wide arcs against the sky.

  There was nothing to be done about it so it had to be
suffered. The only cure was to have the ballast spread out more and that was the one thing we couldn’t do. The violent motion affected Coertze most of all; he wasn’t a good sailor at the best of times and the wound in his shoulder didn’t help.

  With the coming of dawn after that momentous and violent night we lay hove-to just out of sight of land and set to work on the running rigging. It didn’t take long—Palmerini had done more in that direction than I’d expected—and soon we were on our way under sail. It was then that the crankiness of Sanford made itself evident, and I experimented for a while to see what I could do, but the cure was beyond me so I stopped wasting time and we pressed on.

  We soon fell into our normal watchkeeping routine, modified by the presence of Francesca, who took over the cooking from Coertze. During small boat voyages one sees very little of the other members of the crew apart from the times when the watch is changed, but Walker was keeping more to himself than ever. Sometimes I caught him watching me and he would start and roll his eyes like a frightened horse and look away quickly. He was obviously terrified that I would tell Coertze about the cigarette case. I had no such intention—I needed Walker to help run Sanford—but I didn’t tell him so. Let him sweat, I thought callously.

  Coertze’s shoulder was not so bad; it was a clean flesh wound and Francesca kept it well tended. I insisted that he sleep in the quarter berth where the motion was least violent, and this led to a general post. I moved to the port pilot berth in the main cabin while Francesca had the starboard pilot berth. She rigged up a sailcloth curtain in front of it to give her a modicum of privacy.

  This meant that Walker was banished to the forecastle to sleep on the hitherto unused pipe berth. This was intended for a guest in port and not for use at sea; it was uncomfortable and right in the bows where the motion is most felt. Serve him damn’ well right, I thought uncharitably. But it meant that we saw even less of him.

  We made good time for the first five days, logging over a hundred miles a day crossing the Ligurian Sea. Every day I shot the sun and contentedly admired the course line on the chart as it stretched even farther towards the Balearics. I derived great pleasure from teaching Francesca how to handle Sanford; she was an apt pupil and made no more than the usual beginner’s mistakes.

  I observed with some amusement that Coertze seemed to have lost his antipathy towards her. He was a changed man, not as prickly as before. The gold was safe under his feet and I think the fight in the boatyard had worked some of the violence out of him. At any rate, he and Francesca got on well together at last, and had long conversations about South Africa.

  Once she asked him what he was going to do with his share of the spoil. He smiled. ‘I’m going to buy a plaas,’ he said complacently.

  ‘A what?’

  ‘A farm,’ I translated. ‘All Afrikaners are farmers at heart; they even call themselves farmers—boers—at least they used to.’

  I think that those first five days after leaving Italy were the best sea days of the whole voyage. We never had better days before and we certainly didn’t have any afterwards.

  On the evening of the fifth day the wind dropped and the next day it kept fluctuating as though it didn’t know what to do next. The strength varied between force three and dead calm and we had a lot of sail work to do. That day we only logged seventy miles.

  At dawn the next day there was a dead calm. The sea was slick and oily and coming in long even swells. Our tempers tended to fray during the afternoon when there was nothing to do but watch the mast making lazy circles against the sky, while the precious hours passed and we made no way towards Tangier. I got tired of hearing the squeak of the boom in the gooseneck so I put up the crutch and we lashed down the boom. Then I went below to do some figuring at the chart table.

  We had logged twenty miles, noon to noon, and at that rate we would reach Tangier about three months too late. I checked the fuel tank and found we had fifteen gallons left—that would take us 150 miles in thirty hours at our most economical speed. It would be better than sitting still and listening to the halyards slatting against the mast, so I started the engine and we were on our way again.

  I chafed at the use of fuel—it was something we might need in an emergency—but this was an emergency, anyway, so I might as well use it; it was six of one and a half dozen of the other. We ploughed through the still sea at a steady five knots and I laid a course to the south of the Balearics, running in close to Majorca. If for some reason we had to put into port I wanted a port to be handy, and Palma was the nearest.

  All that night and all the next morning we ran under power. There was no wind nor was there any sign that there was ever going to be any wind ever again. The sky was an immaculate blue echoing the waveless sea and I felt like hell. With no wind a sailing boat is helpless, and what would we do when the fuel ran out?

  I discussed it with Coertze. ‘I’m inclined to put in to Palma,’ I said. ‘We can fill up there.’

  He threw a cigarette stub over the side. ‘It’s a damn’ waste of time. We’d be going off course, and what if they keep us waiting round there?’

  I said, ‘It’ll be a bigger waste of time if we’re left without power. This calm could go on for days.’

  ‘I’ve been looking at the Mediterranean Pilot,’ he said. ‘It says the percentage of calms at this time of year isn’t high.’

  ‘You can’t depend on that—those figures are just averages. This could go on for a week.’

  He sighed. ‘You’re the skipper,’ he said. ‘Do the best you can.’

  So I altered course to the north and we ran for Palma. I checked on the fuel remaining and doubted if we’d make it—but we did. We motored into the yacht harbour at Palma with the engine coughing on the last of the fuel. As we approached the mooring jetty the engine expired and we drifted the rest of the way by momentum.

  It was then I looked up and saw Metcalfe.

  II

  We cut the Customs formalities short by saying that we weren’t going ashore and that we had only come in for fuel. The Customs officer commiserated with us on the bad sailing weather and said he would telephone for a chandler to come down and see to our needs.

  That left us free to discuss Metcalfe. He hadn’t said anything—he had just regarded us with a gentle smile on his lips and then had turned on his heel and walked away.

  Coertze said, ‘He’s cooking something up.’

  ‘Nothing could be more certain,’ I said bitterly. ‘Will we never get these bastards off our backs?’

  ‘Not while we’ve got four tons of gold under our feet,’ said Coertze. ‘It’s like a bloody magnet.’

  I looked forward at Walker sitting alone on the foredeck. There was the fool who, by his loose tongue and his stupidities, had brought the vultures down on us. Or perhaps not—men like Metcalfe and Torloni have keen noses for gold. But Walker hadn’t helped.

  Francesca said, ‘What do you think he will do?’

  ‘My guess is a simple act of piracy,’ I said. ‘It’ll appeal to his warped sense of humour to do some Spanish Main stuff.’

  I lay on my back and looked at the sky. The club burgee at the masthead was lifting and fluttering in a light breeze. ‘And look at that,’ I said. ‘We’ve got a wind, dammit.’

  ‘I said we shouldn’t have come in here,’ grumbled Coertze. ‘We’d have had the wind anyway, and Metcalfe wouldn’t have spotted us.’

  I considered Metcalfe’s boat and his radar—especially the radar. ‘No,’ I said. ‘It wouldn’t have made any difference. He’s probably known just where to put his hand on us ever since we left Italy.’ I made a quick calculation on the basis of a 15-mile radar range. ‘He can cover 700 square miles of sea with one pass of his radar. That Fairmile has probably been hovering hull-down on the horizon keeping an eye on us. We’d never spot it.’

  ‘Well, what do we do now?’ asked Francesca.

  ‘We carry on as usual,’ I said. ‘There’s not much else we can do. But I’m certainly not g
oing to hand the gold to Mr Bloody Metcalfe simply because he shows up and throws a scare into us. We carry on and hope for the best.’

  We refuelled and topped up the water tanks and were on our way again before nightfall. The sun was setting as we passed Cabo Figuera and I left the helm to Francesca and went below to study the chart. I had a plan to fox Metcalfe—it probably wouldn’t work but it was worth trying.

  As soon as it was properly dark I said to Francesca, ‘Steer course 180 degrees.’

  ‘South?’ she said in surprise.

  ‘That’s right—south.’ To Coertze I said, ‘Do you know what that square gadget half-way up the mast is for?’

  ‘Nee, man, I’ve never worried about it.’

  ‘It’s a radar reflector,’ I said. ‘A wooden boat gives a bad radar reflection so we use a special reflector for safety—it gives a nice big blip on a screen. If Metcalfe has been following us he must have got used to that blip by now—he can probably identify us sight unseen, just from the trace on the screen. So we’re going to take the reflector away. He’ll still get an echo but it’ll be different, much fainter.’

  I fastened a small spanner on a loop round my wrist and clipped a lifeline on to my safety belt and began to climb the mast. The reflector was bolted on to the lower spreaders and it was an uneasy job getting it down. Sanford was doing her new style dot-and-carry-one, and following the old-time sailor maxim of ‘one hand for yourself and one hand for the ship’ it was not easy to unfasten those two bolts. The trouble was that the bolts started to turn as well as the nuts, so I was getting nowhere fast. I was up the mast for over forty-five minutes before the reflector came free.

  I got down to the deck, collapsed the reflector for stowage and said to Coertze, ‘Where’s Walker?’

  ‘Dossing down; it’s his watch at midnight.’

  ‘I’d forgotten. Now we change the lights.’ I went below to the chart table. I had a white light at the masthead visible all round which was coupled to a Morse key for signalling. I tied the key down so that the light stayed on all the time.