The Golden Keel / The Vivero Letter

by Desmond Bagley

  After a while I said to Coertze, ‘I could do with some coffee.’

  ‘That’s not a bad idea,’ he said, and went below. An Afrikaner will never refuse the offer of coffee; their livers are tanned with it. In five minutes he was back with two steaming mugs, and said, ‘Francesca wants to come up.’

  I looked back at the Fairmile. ‘No,’ I said briefly.

  We drank the coffee, spilling half of it as Sanford shuddered to a particularly heavy sea, and when we had finished the Fairmile was within a quarter of a mile and I could see Metcalfe quite clearly standing outside the wheelhouse.

  I said, ‘I wonder how he’s going to go about it. He can’t board us in this sea, there’s too much danger of ramming us. How would you go about it, Kobus?’

  ‘I’d lay off and knock us off with a rifle,’ he grunted. ‘Just like at a shooting gallery. Then when the sea goes down he can board us without a fight.’

  That seemed reasonable but it wouldn’t be as easy as in a shooting gallery—metal ducks don’t shoot back. I handed the tiller to Coertze. ‘We may have to do a bit of fancy manoeuvring,’ I said. ‘But you’ll handle her well enough without sail. When I tell you to do something, you do it damn’ quick.’ I picked up the Schmeisser and held it on my knee. ‘How many rounds are there in that pistol?’

  ‘Not enough,’ he said. ‘Five.’

  At last the Fairmile was only a hundred yards away on the starboard quarter and Metcalfe came out of the wheelhouse carrying a Tannoy loud-hailer. His voice boomed across the water. ‘What are you running away for? Don’t you want a tow?’

  I cupped my hands around my mouth. ‘Are you claiming salvage?’ I asked sardonically.

  He laughed. ‘Did the storm do any damage?’

  ‘None at all,’ I shouted. ‘We can get to port ourselves.’ If he wanted to play the innocent I was prepared to go along with him. I had nothing to lose.

  The Fairmile was throttled back to keep pace with us. Metcalfe fiddled with the amplification of the loud-hailer and it whistled eerily. ‘Hal,’ he shouted, ‘I want your boat—and your cargo.’

  There it was—out in the open as bluntly as that.

  The loud-hailer boomed, ‘If you act peaceable about it I’ll accept half, if you don’t I’ll take the lot, anyway.’

  ‘Torloni made the same offer and look what happened to him.’

  ‘He was at a disadvantage,’ called Metcalfe. ‘He couldn’t use guns—I can.’

  Krupke moved into sight—carrying a rifle. He climbed on top of the deck saloon and lay down just behind the wheelhouse. I said to Coertze, ‘It looks as though you called that one.’

  It was bad, but not as bad as all that. Krupke had been in the army; he was accustomed to firing from a steady position even though his target might move. I didn’t think he could fire at all accurately from a bouncing platform like the Fairmile.

  I saw the Fairmile edging in closer and said to Coertze, ‘Keep the distance.’

  Metcalfe shouted, ‘What about it?’

  ‘Go to hell!’

  He nodded to Krupke, who fired immediately, I didn’t see where the bullet went—I don’t think it hit us at all. He fired again and this time he hit something forward. It must have been metal because I heard a ‘spaang’ as the bullet ricochetted away.

  Coertze dug me in the ribs. ‘Don’t look back so that Metcalfe notices you, but I think we’re in for some heavy weather.’

  I changed position on the seat so that I could look astern from the corner of my eye. The horizon was black with a vicious squall—and it was coming our way. I hoped to God it would hurry.

  I said, ‘We’ll have to play for time now.’

  Krupke fired again and there was a slam astern. I looked over the side and saw a hole punched into the side of the counter. His aim was getting better.

  I shouted, ‘Tell Krupke not to hole us below the waterline. We might sink, and you wouldn’t like that.’

  That held him for a while. I saw him talking to Krupke, making gestures with his hand to indicate a higher elevation. I called urgently for Francesca to come on deck. Those nickeljacketed bullets would go through Sanford’s thin planking as though it was tissue paper. She came up just as Krupke fired his next shot. It went high and didn’t hit anything.

  As soon as Metcalfe saw her he held up his hand and Krupke stopped firing. ‘Hal, be reasonable,’ he called. ‘You’ve got a woman aboard.’

  I looked at Francesca and she shook her head. I shouted, ‘You’re doing the shooting.’

  ‘I don’t want to hurt anybody,’ pleaded Metcalfe.

  ‘Then go away.’

  He shrugged and said something to Krupke, who fired again. The bullet hit the gooseneck with a clang. I grinned mirthlessly at Metcalfe’s curious morality—according to him it would be my fault if anyone was killed.

  I looked astern. The squall was appreciably nearer and coming up fast. It was the last dying kick of the storm and wouldn’t last long—just long enough to give Metcalfe the slip, I hoped. I didn’t think that Metcalfe had seen it yet; he was too busy with us.

  Krupke fired again. There was a thud forward and I knew the bullet must have gone through the main cabin. I had brought Francesca up just in time.

  I was beginning to worry about Krupke. In spite of the difficulties of aiming, his shooting was getting better, and even if it didn’t, then sooner or later he would get in a lucky shot. I wondered how much ammunition he had.

  ‘Metcalfe,’ I called.

  He held up his hand but not soon enough to prevent Krupke pulling the trigger. The cockpit disintegrated into matchwood just by my elbow. We all ducked low into the cockpit and I looked incredulously at the back of my hand—a two-inch splinter of mahogany was sticking in it.

  I pulled it out and shouted, ‘Hey, hold it! That was a bit too close.’

  ‘What do you want?’

  I noticed that the Fairmile was crowding us again so I told Coertze to pull out.

  ‘Well?’ Metcalfe’s voice was impatient.

  ‘I want to make a deal,’ I shouted.

  ‘You know my terms.’

  ‘How do we know we can trust you?’

  Metcalfe was uncompromising. ‘You don’t.’

  I pretended to confer with Coertze. ‘How’s that squall coming up?’

  ‘If you keep stringing him along we might make it.’

  I turned to the Fairmile. ‘I’ll make a counter-proposition. We’ll give you a third—Walker won’t be needing his share.’

  Metcalfe laughed. ‘Oh, you’ve found him out at last, have you?’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘Nothing doing—half or all of it. Make your choice; you’re in no position to bargain.’

  I turned to Coertze. ‘What do you think, Kobus?’

  He rubbed his chin. ‘I’ll go along with anything you say.’

  ‘Francesca?’

  She sighed. ‘Do you think this other storm coming up will help?’

  ‘It’s not a storm, but it’ll help. I think we can lose Metcalfe if we can hold him off for another ten minutes.’

  ‘Can we?’

  ‘I think so, but it might be dangerous.’

  Her lips tightened. ‘Then fight him.’

  I looked across at Metcalfe. He was standing by the door of the wheelhouse looking at Krupke who was pointing astern.

  He had seen the squall!

  I shouted, ‘We’ve been having a conference and the general consensus of opinion is that you can still go to hell.’

  He jerked his hand irritably and Krupke fired again—another miss.

  I said to Coertze, ‘We’ll give him another two shots. Immediately after the second, starboard your helm as though you are going to ram him, but for God’s sake don’t ram him. Get as close as you can and come back on course parallel to him. Understand?’

  As he nodded there was another shot from Krupke. That one hit Sanford just under the cockpit—Krupke was getting too good.

  M
etcalfe couldn’t know that we had a machine-gun. Sanford had been searched many times and machine-guns—even small ones—aren’t to be picked up on every street corner in Italy. There was the chance we could give him a fright. I said to Francesca, ‘When we start to turn get down in the bottom of the cockpit.’

  Krupke fired again, missed, and Coertze swung the tiller over. It caught Metcalfe by surprise—this was like a rabbit attacking a weasel. We had something like twenty seconds to complete the manoeuvre and it worked. By the time he had recovered enough to shout to the helmsman and for the helmsman to respond, we were alongside.

  Krupke fired again when he saw us coming but the bullet went wild. I saw him aim at me and looked right into the muzzle of his gun. Then I cut loose with the Schmeisser.

  I had only time to fire two bursts. The first one was for Krupke—I must get him before he got me. Two or three rounds broke the saloon windows of the Fairmile and I let the recoil lift the gun. Bullets smashed into the edge of the decking and I saw Krupke reel back with both hands clasped to his face and heard a thin scream.

  Then I switched to the wheelhouse and hosed it. Glass flew but I was too late to catch Metcalfe who was already out of sight. The Schmeisser jammed on a defective round and I yelled at Coertze, ‘Let’s get out of here,’ and he swung the helm over again.

  ‘Where to?’ he asked.

  ‘Back to where we came from—into the squall.’

  I looked back at the Fairmile. Metcalfe was on top of the deck saloon bending over Krupke and the Fairmile was still continuing on her original course. But her bows were swinging from side to side as though there was nobody at the helm. ‘This might just work,’ I said.

  But after two or three minutes she started to turn and was soon plunging after us. I looked ahead and prayed we could get into the squall in time. I had never before prayed for dirty weather.

  II

  It was nip and tuck but we made it. The first gusts hit us when the Fairmile was barely two hundred yards behind, and ten seconds later she was invisible, lost in spearing rain and sea spume.

  I throttled back the engine until it was merely ticking over; it would be suicide to try to butt our way through this. It was an angry bit of weather, all right, but it didn’t have the sustained ferocity of the earlier storm and I knew it would be over in an hour or so.

  In that short time we had to lose Metcalfe.

  I left the tiller to Coertze and stumbled forward to the mast and hoisted the trysail. That would give us leeway and we could pick a course of sorts. I chose to beat to windward; that was the last thing Metcalfe would expect me to do in heavy weather, and I hoped that when the squall had blown out he would be searching to leeward.

  Sanford didn’t like it. She bucked and pitched more than ever and I cursed the crankiness caused by the golden keel, the cause of all our troubles. I said to Francesca, ‘You and Kobus had better go below; there’s no point in all of us getting soaked to the skin.’

  I wondered what Metcalfe was doing. If he had any sense he would have the Fairmile lying head to wind with her engines turning just enough to keep position. But he wanted the gold and had guts enough to try anything weird as long as the boat didn’t show signs of falling apart under him. He had shown his seamanship by coming through the big storm undamaged—this squall wouldn’t hurt him.

  Just then Sanford lurched violently and I thought for a moment that she was falling apart under me. There was a curious feel to the helm which I couldn’t analyse—it was like nothing I had felt on a boat before. She lurched again and seemed to sideslip in the water and she swayed alarmingly even when she hadn’t been pushed. I leaned on the helm tentatively and she came round with a rush.

  Hastily I pulled the other way and she came back fast, overshooting. It was like riding a horse with a loose saddle and I couldn’t understand it.

  I had a sudden and dreadful thought and looked over the side. It was difficult to make out in the swirl of water but her boot-topping seemed to be much higher out of the water than it should have been, and I knew what had happened.

  It was her keel—that goddamned golden keel.

  Coertze had warned us about it. He had said that it would be full of flaws and cracks and that it would be structurally weak. Sanford had taken a hell of a hammering in the last couple of days and this last squall was the straw that broke the camel’s back—or broke the ship’s keel.

  I looked over the side again, trying to estimate how much higher she was in the water. As near as I could judge three parts of the keel were gone. Sanford had lost three tons of ballast and she was in danger of capsizing at any moment.

  I hammered on the cabin hatch and yelled at the top of my voice. Coertze popped his head out. ‘What’s wrong?’ he shouted.

  ‘Get on deck fast—Francesca, too. The bloody keel’s gone. We’re going to capsize.’

  He looked at me blankly. ‘What the hell do you mean?’ His face flushed red as the meaning sank in. ‘You mean the gold’s gone?’ he said incredulously.

  ‘For Christ’s sake, don’t just stand there gaping,’ I shouted. ‘Get the hell up here—and get Francesca out of there. I don’t know if I can hold her much longer.’

  He whitened and his head vanished. Francesca came scrambling out of the cabin with Coertze on her heels. Sanford was behaving like a crazy thing and I shouted to Coertze, ‘Get that bloody sail down quick or she’ll be over.’

  He lunged forward along the deck and wasted no time in unfastening the fall of the halyard from the cleat—instead he pulled the knife from his belt and cut it with one clean slice. As soon as the sail came down Sanford began to behave a little better, but not much. She slithered about on the surface of the water and it was by luck, not judgement, that I managed to keep her upright, because I had never had that experience before—few people have.

  Coertze came back and I yelled, ‘It’s the mast that’ll have us over if we’re not careful.’

  He looked up at the mast towering overhead and gave a quick nod. I wondered if he remembered what he had said the first time I questioned him about yachts in Cape Town. He had looked up at the mast of Estralita and said, ‘She’ll need to be deep to counterbalance that lot.’

  The keel, our counterbalance, had gone and the fifty-five foot mast was the key to Sanford’s survival.

  I pointed to the hatchet clipped to the side of the cockpit. ‘Cut the shrouds,’ I shouted.

  He seized the hatchet and went forward again and swung at the after starboard shroud. It bounced off the stainless steel wire and I cursed myself for having built Sanford so stoutly. He swung again and again and finally the wire parted.

  He went on to the forward shroud and I said, ‘Francesca, I’ll have to help him or it may be too late. Can you take the helm?’

  ‘What must I do?’

  ‘I think I’ve got the hang of it,’ I said. ‘She’s very tender and you mustn’t move the tiller violently. She swings very easily so you must be very gentle in your movements—otherwise it’s the same as before.’

  I couldn’t stay with her long before I had to leave the cockpit and release both the backstay runners so that the stays hung loose. The mast now had no support from aft.

  I went forward to the bows, clinging on for dear life, and crouched in the bow pulpit, using the marline-spike of my knife on the rigging screw of the forestay. The spike was not designed for the job and kept slipping out of the holes of the body, but I managed to loosen the screws appreciably in spite of being drenched every time Sanford dipped her bows. When I looked up I saw a definite curve in the stay to leeward which meant that it was slack.

  I looked round and saw Coertze attacking the port shrouds before I bent to loosen the fore topmast stay. When I looked up again the mast was whipping like a fishing rod—but still the damn’ thing wouldn’t break.

  It was only when I tripped over the fore hatch that I remembered Walker. I hammered on the hatch and shouted, ‘Walker, come out; we’re sinking.’ But I heard nothi
ng from below.

  Damning his minuscule soul to hell, I went aft and clattered down the companionway and into the main cabin. I staggered forward, unable to keep my balance in Sanford’s new and uneasy motion and tried the door to the fo’c’sle. It was locked from the inside. I hammered on it with my fist, and shouted, ‘Walker, come out; we’re going to capsize.’

  I heard a faint sound and shouted again. Then he called, ‘I’m not coming out.’

  ‘Don’t be a damned fool,’ I yelled. ‘We’re liable to sink at any minute.’

  ‘It’s a trick to get me out. I know Coertze’s waiting for me.’

  ‘You bloody idiot,’ I screamed and hammered on the door again, but it was no use; he refused to answer so I left him there.

  As I turned to go, Sanford groaned in every timber and I made a dash for the companionway, getting into the cockpit just in time to see the mast go. It cracked and split ten feet above the deck and toppled into the raging sea, still tethered by the back and fore stays.

  I took the tiller from Francesca and tentatively moved it. Sanford’s motion was not much better—she still slid about unpredictably—but I felt easier with the top hamper gone. I kicked at a cockpit locker and shouted to Francesca, ‘Life jackets—get them out.’

  The solving of one problem led directly to another—the mast in the water was still held fore and aft and it banged rhythmically into Sanford’s side. Much of that treatment and she would be stove in and we would go down like a stone. Coertze was in the bows and I could see the glint of the hatchet as he raised it for another blow at the forestay. He was very much alive to the danger inherent in the mast.

  I struggled into a life jacket while Francesca took the helm, then I grabbed the boathook from the coach roof and leaned over the side to prod the mast away when it swung in again for another battering charge. Coertze came aft and started to cut away the backstays; it was easier to cut them on the deck and within five minutes he had done it, and the mast drifted away and was lost to sight amid the sea spray.