So we got on with it. Geordie estimated that we’d have to pass within a mile of Minerva in order to see it. That meant we’d have to cover about 100 miles in order to search a 200 square mile area. We used the engine as sparingly as possible, confined our speed to about five knots and less, and that way a daylight search would take about two days.
The first leg of the search gave us nothing and in the evening we hove-to, knowing that it would be the devil of a job to assess our actual position the next morning because of the rate of drift in this area, and an uncertainty factor of at least one knot. Geordie pointed this out to Campbell to make him realize that this wasn’t like searching a given area of land which, at least, stays put. Campbell hated it.
That evening, relaxing on deck, I was bombarded with questions by the crew as we ate our evening meal. They were all curious and I thought that this was not a satisfactory way to deal with them – they’d be more use and have more enthusiasm if they were in the know, of one piece of the story at least. And I was also curious myself as to Kane’s reaction, and he happened to be among the off-watch members.
‘What is all this, Mike?’ Ian Lewis asked.
‘Yes, what are we poking about here for?’
I glanced at Geordie, caught his eye and nodded very slightly. ‘All right, chaps, we’re looking for something a bit offbeat here.’
They were intent, and I knew I was right to share this with them.
‘Ever hear of Minerva?’ I asked.
It brought no reaction but murmurings and headshakes from all but one. Kane raised his head sharply. ‘Récife de Minerve!’ he said in a barbarous French accent. Everyone turned to look at him now. ‘Are you looking for that? My word, I wish us all luck then.’ He chuckled, enjoying his moment of superiority.
‘What is it?’
I told them briefly what we were after, and its tantalising history.
‘What’s the idea anyhow?’ Danny Williams wanted to know.
I said, ‘Well, this is an oceanological expedition and chaps like me are always interested in mysteries – that’s how we make our living. The waters round a newly-forming island are fascinating, you know.’
They accepted this, though I did hear Danny saying softly to his nearest companion, ‘I’ve always thought there was something crazy about these scientific types, and this isn’t making me change my mind.’
Presently everyone fell silent, if a little more alert to the night sea around them, and it was then that Kane came over to join me, dropping his voice very slightly to address me alone.
‘Er – this got anything to do with your brother, Mr Trevelyan?’ he asked as though idly.
I was wary. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘Well, he was in the same line of business, wasn’t he? And he died not very far from here. Wasn’t he looking for something with another bloke?’
I looked into the darkness towards the north-east where the Tuamotus lay a hundred miles on the other side of the invisible horizon. ‘Yes, he died near here, but I don’t think that he had anything to do with this. I’m not the boss, you know. This is Mr Campbell’s party.’
Kane chuckled derisively. ‘Looking for Minerva! That’s like looking for a nigger in a coal-black cellar – the little man who wasn’t there.’ He stayed on for a bit but, getting nothing more from me, he moved away and I could hear him chuckle again in the darkness. I realized that my fists had been clenched at my sides.
Next day we were up before the sun, waiting to take a sight and hoping there would be no clouds. Taking a dawn sight is tricky and a bit uncertain, but we had to know if possible how far we had drifted during the night, or the search would be futile.
I was with Geordie, holding the stopwatch, as I told him about Kane’s query. ‘Becoming inquisitive, isn’t he?’ he commented.
‘I don’t know, it was a natural question.’
‘I’m not sorry you told the lads, by the way. Otherwise they’d be getting edgy. If you were on board a ship that suddenly started to go in circles in the middle of the Pacific you’d like to know why, wouldn’t you? But I wonder about Kane – he tied it up with Mark pretty fast.’
‘He tied it up in a natural way. Damn him, he makes a good case for himself as an innocent, doesn’t he?’ I heard the bitterness in my voice and was glad to be distracted. ‘Ah, here’s the sun.’
Geordie shot the sun and then said, ‘Well, let’s find out where we are.’ We went into the chart room and he worked out our position which he then transferred to the chart. ’We’ve drifted about seven miles in the night. There’s a set of just over half a knot to the south-east. Right, now that we know where we are we can figure out where we’re going.’
We started on the search. Geordie had the man up the foremast relieved every hour because the glare from the sea could cause eyestrain. He stationed another man in the bows with strict instructions to keep a watch dead ahead – he didn’t want Minerva to find us. That might be catastrophic.
The day was a dead loss. It had its excitements as when Minerva was sighted only to turn out to be dolphins playing over the waves, to the delight of Clare and the other landsmen. Otherwise there was nothing. We hove-to again and waited out another night.
And the next day was largely a repetition. The last leg of the search took us directly over both reported positions, and we were anxious about it because the wind had veered northerly and the waves were confused, showing white caps. In the evening we held a conference in the chart room.
‘What do you think?’ asked Campbell. He was at his most brusque and edgy.
‘We could have missed it in the last three or four hours. Those white horses didn’t make things any easier.’
Campbell thumped the table. ‘Then we do it again. Not all of it – the last bit.’ He was very dogged about it.
Geordie looked at me. ‘Tell me something; when you find Minerva what are you going to do with her?’
‘Damn it, that’s a silly question,’ I said, then immediately had second thoughts as I saw what he was getting at.
‘We’re probably within five miles of Minerva right now. You said that the conditions that created our prize nodules were local, in your estimation. What exactly did you mean by “local”?’
‘I won’t know until I find it. It could be an area of ten square miles – or it could be fifty thousand.’
‘I think you should drop your dredge around here and see what you can find. We could be right on top of your “locality”.’
I felt very foolish. In the mixture of anticipation and boredom that had gone into our two-day search so far I had actually forgotten what we were really here for – and I’d made plans for action earlier in the trip. ‘You’re right, Geordie. We’ve wasted some time and it’s my fault. Of course we can dredge and keep a lookout for Minerva at the same time.’
Campbell and Clare cheered up visibly. The prospect of doing something other than cruise gently back and forwards was enticing, and I wondered how long it would be before their fresh interest waned once again. I didn’t have any hopes of a great find.
So I started to get the winch ready for operations. The seas were choppy and flecked with white and Esmerelda was lurching a bit as the dredge went over the side. As we’d done the drills before things went fairly smoothly, though I’d had to take the Campbells aside with a strong suggestion that they should not appear too eager – to the others this was to be a standard research procedure. The recording echometer was registering a little under 15,000 feet.
We dredged two sites that day and five the next. On two occasions operations were interrupted when something was sighted that looked very much like a coral reef, lying some twenty feet under the water, but on both occasions this turned out to be masses of a greenish algae floating on the surface, and we had our share of false alarms when fish shoals were seen. I was kept very busy in the lab analysing the stuff we had brought up, which often included volcanic particles amongst the other material – this pleased me as it bore out som
e of the theories I was turning over in my mind. We recovered many nodules but test results were poor and disappointing to the others, if not to me. I hadn’t expected anything.
I showed a sheaf of papers to Campbell at breakfast, away from the crew. ‘Just the stuff you might expect from round here. High manganese, low cobalt. In fact the cobalt is lower than usual – only .2 per cent.’
Geordie said, ‘We’ve only been dredging west of where we think Minerva is – how about a stab at the eastern side?’
I agreed and he said, ‘Right, we’ll go there today.’
There wasn’t much point in pulling the winch down and making sail for such a short trip so we motored across the few miles, starting immediately after breakfast. The sea was calm again with just the trade wind swells and no whitecaps, which would make the search easier.
It was Ian Lewis’s watch and he had given me a spell at the wheel. I wasn’t much of a practical seaman and I wanted to learn while I could, during periods of calm weather, under the watchful eyes of Ian or Geordie.
Clare was sitting talking to me. ‘Isn’t this the life,’ she said. ‘I had flying fish for breakfast this morning. Taffy saved them for me – I think he’s falling for me.’
‘Your dad isn’t enjoying it,’ I observed.
‘Poor Pop, he’s so disappointed. He’s like this on every new project though, Mike. As long as it’s going well he’s on top of the world, and when it isn’t he’s down in the dumps. I keep telling him he’ll get ulcers.’
‘Like gout, it’s supposed to be the rich man’s ailment. That should cheer him up,’ I said. ‘It’s only –‘
Danny Williams’s voice soared up from the bows, cracking with excitement.
‘Go left! Go left! Go to port!’
Someone else started shouting.
I spun the wheel desperately and Esmerelda heeled violently as she came round. Hanging on, I had only time to see a jumble of white waters in the sunshine, and then to my intense relief Ian was with me, taking over at the wheel. I fell away from him, cannoning into Clare who was also off balance. Shouts and the thud of bare feet told me that the whole crew was tumbling up on deck to see what was happening. I noticed the echo sounder and in one incredible second I saw the indicator light spin round the dial. It looked as though the bottom was coming up to hit us.
Ian let Esmerelda continue to go about until the foaming area in the sea was well behind us, then straightened her out and the indicator light of the echo sounder spun the other way just as fast. He throttled the engine down and I took a deep breath to steady myself. Geordie came running along the deck.
‘What the hell was that?’ he shouted.
‘I think we damn near speared ourselves on a reef – I think we’ve found her,’ I gasped, still winded. Everyone was crowding to look astern at the jumble of white waters, but from where we were it was already impossible to see anything underneath it. ‘Unless it’s more fish –‘
Ian said, ‘No, it was a reef. I saw it – about a foot sticking out. And we shoaled bloody fast just then too.’
Campbell came up from below, looking startled and groggy. He may have been asleep. ‘What’s happened?’
‘I think we’ve found Minerva.’
He looked aft and saw what we were all trying to get a better glimpse of. ‘What, that?’ he asked incredulously.
‘Is that all?’ Clare asked. Some of the crew, the non-sailors, looked equally baffled.
‘What did you all expect – the Statue of Liberty?’ I asked.
‘We’ve got it, boys, wherever it is we’re there!’ Geordie was exultant and relieved, and more nervous for the safety of his ship than ever.
Danny Williams came aft to a little storm of back-patting. ‘Good job you kept your eyes open,’ I told him, and he looked very pleased.
‘God, I was never so scared in my life,’ he said. ‘It came out of nowhere – now you see it, now you don’t. I thought the bloody boat was going to ride up on it. You were pretty handy with that wheel.’
There was another murmur of assent and it was my turn to look pleased.
Geordie said to Ian, ‘I want you to keep her just where she is. I’ll bet that if we lay off a couple of miles we’ll never find it again. Christ, it’s lucky it’s almost low water, it wouldn’t show at all otherwise. It’ll only dry out to about three feet at this rate.’
‘There’ll be coral clusters all round,’ I said, reinforcing Geordie’s warning. ‘And deep water between them and the actual reef. There’ll be a lagoon beyond that. An atoll is forming.’
I saw that they were all taking an interest, apart from Ian and the on-watch lookouts, so I expanded a little. ‘This rock spear that was underneath us can’t have been there very long, or it would have been higher – you’d have an island here. But this coral has only just started to form.’
Geordie said suspiciously, ‘What do you mean by “only just”?’
‘Within the last five or ten thousand years – I’ll know better when I can take a closer look at it.’
‘I thought you’d say that. But you’re not going to look at it. Do you think we could get to the middle of that little lot?’
We all looked back towards Minerva, if Minerva it was. ‘No,’ I said dubiously. ‘No, perhaps not.’
Campbell had a question on his lips that he was dying to ask, but not in public. Headshakes and heavy gestures indicated his desire for a private word, so I extricated myself from the still excited crew and followed him below together with Clare.
Campbell said, ‘I’m sorry to interrupt the course of pure science, but how does this tie in with the nodules? Do you think we’re going to be luckier now?’
I said soberly, ‘That’s just the trouble; I don’t see how we can. Most nodules are very old, but Mark’s was comparatively young. He had a theory which I’m beginning to grasp, to do with them forming very fast as a result of volcanic action. Now there’s been volcanic action here all right but much too long ago for my taste. There’s been time for a long slow coral growth and it doesn’t quite tie in.’
‘So this is another goddam false alarm,’ said Campbell gloomily.
‘Maybe not. I could be wrong. We can only find out by dredging.’
III
So we dredged.
As soon as he could Geordie had taken careful sightings of the reef. ‘I’m going to nail this thing down once and for all,’ he said. ‘Then we’ll cruise around it carefully and not too closely, keeping an eye on the depth, and take soundings and chart everything we can see. And then we’ll decide what to do next.’
After we had satisfied him we got started. Geordie took Esmerelda in as close as he dared and the dredge went over the side. I could imagine it going down like a huge steel spider at the end of its line, dropping past the incredible cliffs of Minerva, plunging deeper and deeper into the abyss.
The operation was negative – there were no nodules at all.
I was unperturbed. ‘I was expecting that. Let’s go round and try the other side again.’ So we skirted the shoal and tried again, with the same result – no nodules.
I thought that there probably had been nodules in the area, but the upthrust of our friendly reef had queered the pitch. We were all calling it Minerva by now, although Geordie and I were aware that it might be a different reef altogether – the seas hereabouts were notorious for vigias. I decided to try further out, away from the disturbance.
This time we began to find nodules again, coming in like sacks of potatoes. I was busy in the lab once more but becoming depressed. ‘This is standard stuff,’ I told my small audience. ‘High manganese – low cobalt, just as before. And it’s too deep for commercial dredging. But we’ll do it thoroughly.’ And day after day the dredging and the shifting of position went on, with the results of my assays continuing to be unfruitful.
Then one evening Geordie and I consulted with one another and decided to call it off. We had been out from Panama for over two weeks, nearly three, and I was anxi
ous to carry on to Tahiti to be there before the Eastern Sun arrived. Geordie wasn’t anxious over stores or even water – thanks to his careful planning we could stay at sea for up to six weeks if we needed to – but he felt that the activity, or lack of it, would begin to irk a crew which was after all partly made up of people to whom he’d virtually promised action and excitement. Campbell was quite ready to chuck the whole thing in – on a land search he would be more tenacious, but then he was seldom out there himself during the early exploratory days, usually only coming in at the kill, so to speak. And so we decided to call a halt to the proceedings and to turn towards Tahiti the next morning. The news was greeted with relief by everyone, the excitement of finding the reef we were searching for having palled. Campbell walked heavily across the deck towards the companionway, his shoulders stooped. I realized for the first time that he wasn’t a young man.
‘It’s hit him hard,’ I said.
‘Aye,’ said Geordie. ‘What do we do now – after Papeete?’
‘I’ve been thinking a lot about that. If it hadn’t been for that damned diary then Minerva Reef would be the last place I’d go looking for high-cobalt nodules, but Mark’s scribbling has hypnotized us.’
‘We don’t even know if he meant Minerva. Do you think he was on the wrong track?’
‘I don’t know what track he was on – that’s the devil of it. I only leafed through those notebooks of his before they were stolen, and I couldn’t absorb anything much in that time. But one thing did keep cropping up, and that was the question of vulcanism.’
‘You mentioned that before,’ said Geordie. ‘Are you going to put me in the picture?’
‘I think another little lecture is in order – and I’ll deliver it to Campbell and Clare as well. It’ll give him something else to think about. Get the three of you together in here after dinner, Geordie, and put a lad on watch, to keep Kane away. They’ll be expecting a council of war anyway.’
And so later that same evening I faced my small class, with a physical map of the seabeds of the world unrolled on the chart table.
The Snow Tiger / Night of Error Page 41