Night Sky (75 page)

Ignore the sickness. Wake up!

Course? WNW: West North-west. Still off-course – too far to the west. She frowned then grasped at an idea – perhaps it was a
good
thing. By heading too far west she’d probably miss the land altogether. Then she wouldn’t have to worry about hitting it during the night. Once it was light again,
then
she could head the boat back towards the land.

It would solve a lot of problems.

Yes
. She’d let the boat go where it wanted. Then – no land, no fighting with the sails, no worries. She felt a little more cheerful.

She looked at her watch. Five-thirty. God, was that all? She’d only slept for a couple of hours. No wonder she felt so terrible. Still, without any sleep at all she might have felt even worse.

She shivered again. So cold … And the headache, still hammering away …

She sat on the helmsman’s seat and looked ahead into the greyness, watching the bow rise and fall against the pattern of the waves. It stopped her feeling sick. After a while she dozed, waking only when the boat lurched and threatened to slide her off her seat. Then she came to with a jerk and, getting back onto the seat, stared forward again, concentrating on the grey smudge of the horizon, which seemed increasingly distant.

She should take a good look round and search for ships, but she couldn’t be bothered.

She thought: I don’t care any more, I really don’t. I just want this to
end
… To get somewhere,
anywhere
… I just want it to
end
. That’s all.

I don’t care any more, I really don’t.

Later she dozed again and woke with a jump when spray pattered against her face. The spray had never come this far back before.

Disorientated, she looked around. The boat was tilting further over, the downhill side of the deck awash with running water. The bow was digging deeper into the waves, pushing up solid sheets of water which, caught by the wind, flew diagonally back over the boat and fell down the deck in heavy cascades to the scuppers on the lower side. As the boat met each wave it gave a great shudder, pausing in its tracks for a second to throw off the weight of the water before picking itself up and leaping forward to meet the next wave rushing towards it. The mast was leaning over at a sharp angle, and the big sail bellied out, taut and strained, except for the back edge which vibrated violently. Suddenly, the boat rolled and almost dipped her rail in the rushing water. Julie gasped. The boat came back a little and the water receded.

The boat rolled again, then again. Julie watched with terrible fascination as the rail came ever closer to the rushing water. She thought: What’s to stop us rolling right over? Perhaps she needed to do this reefing business, perhaps that would slow the boat down …

Miserably, she regarded the enormous bulging sail and knew that it was hopeless: she wouldn’t know where to start. It was impossible to do anything while the boat was like this, careering along like a mad thing.

The scene frightened her. After a while she realised what made it so terrifying.

The world was getting greyer, the outlines less distinct, the dark colours blacker.

The horizon was a blur, a featureless grey blending into the grey of the sea and the sky. The shape of the bows was beginning to fade …

Julie thought: I
might
have done something, I really
might
.

But not in the dark, not
ever
in the dark …

As night fell, and the greys faded into blackness, the fear gripped her even tighter, until it held her firmly, mindlessly, on her seat by the tiller.

Two hundred miles out in the Atlantic the Liberator swept high over the darkening sea, searching.

The patrol had been going on for four hours now, with another three to go. The plane was flying one leg of a gentle zigzag designed to take it over the likely path of U-boats heading north to their hunting grounds.

Then, suddenly, the wireless operator received a signal.

A few minutes later the plane abandoned her search pattern and, banking steeply, headed east.

At first the plane headed for the position given in the signal – the last known position of the U-boat – which was thirty miles south-south-east of Land’s End.

Then, later, when the pilot had done some thinking and the navigator some calculations, the course was changed to take the plane towards the English coast.

The U-boat must have been submerged all day, the pilot reckoned, which meant her speed would have been no more than seven knots. If, as he’d been told, she was heading north, then he would intercept her near the coast.

Where on the coast was another matter. The U-boat was shadowing a small fishing boat, apparently, but its destination was unknown. Falmouth? Ireland? Could be anywhere.

He would have to make a single sweep along the coast at a distance of five miles off. The channel between the Scillies and Land’s End must be covered, also the Lizard, and the approaches to Falmouth.

He wouldn’t have time for much more, not with the freshening headwind.

Only one thing was certain. At some point during the night the U-boat would have to surface, to get air and to recharge her batteries. And for quite a long time, at that.

There was just a chance they might catch her …

But where should they start from? How far west might the U-boat have gone?

He decided, and said to the navigator, ‘Course to the Scillies, please. We’re going to start from there and work our way eastwards.’

They lie at the end of the world, the isles of Scilly: far beyond the land; a nest of rocks and islets cut off from the mainstream of British life. On a chart they are mere pinpricks situated twenty-one nautical miles west-southwest of Land’s End: a cluster of small dots on the wide immensity of the sea – the last fragment of land for three thousand miles. Being so remote and isolated, they remain, for the most part, unnoticed.

But sailors know and mark them well.

Sailing inward, towards the major European ports, ships must find their way into the beckoning but treacherous arms of the English Channel, between the rugged north coast of Brittany on the one hand, and the Scillies, harbinger of the English mainland, on the other. For many vessels this will be their first landfall for thousands of miles. Even in good conditions navigation can be the most uncertain of sciences, but after long periods of bad weather, or in fog or storm, the chances of error increase dramatically. When the weather is thick the navigator can do little but make his calculations, check the distance run – and then resort to hope, optimism and prayer.

He has reason to pray. The Scillies lie in wait for the unwary, eager to ensnare and reluctant to release.

The islands are unusually low – barely a hundred and sixty feet at their highest point – and therefore difficult to see from any real distance. In bad weather you can find yourself very close, even hear the surf on the rocks, before you realise you are on top of them.

Ships are led to their doom by the wind, which, for a greater part of the time, blows from the west, pushing ships speedily homeward, hastening the ship on her way, so that sailors have reason to be grateful to it. That is, unless the navigator is mistaken in his calculations. Then the wind blows the ship towards the crouching islands and the low teeth of the hidden reefs. A jagged grey mass of rocks is suddenly spotted close ahead, someone hears the thunder of surf on the ledges and the ship tries to turn, too late. All too late. Escape is impossible. The wind drives the vessel further and further onto the rocks, until she pounds heavily, and the teeth bite through, and the guts are torn out of her, and she is gone …

There are so many wrecks around the islands that even the inhabitants cannot count them. Hardly a year goes by without one, two – or in a bad year maybe a dozen – vessels meeting a lonely end on one of the outlying rocks.

The men who live here have a realistic, practical attitude towards shipwrecks. The Lord taketh away, the Lord giveth … There is money in salvage, there are sometimes rich pickings to be found on the long white beaches … Who would not take advantage of that which is given?

But they save the people first. Bravely, sometimes in gale-force winds, they set out in their open gigs and row to the dying ship to save whosoever they can …

Five islands are inhabited, four of them forming a circle round a shallow sound which was itself part of the land more than two thousand years ago. Most of the people live on St Mary’s, the largest of the islands, which is just three miles wide. Across the sound to the north lie Bryher and Tresco, separated by an inlet which is the secret harbour of New Grimsby, where boats may hide …

Each of these islands has two distinct sides to it, like a coin. There is the windward side, bare and treeless, raked by the remorseless wind and salt spray, where only heather, hardy gorse, and a few stalwart flowers grow in the peaty soil. However, over the slight hills, in the lee of the land, it is possible to find shelter, and here, screened from the wind by tall hedges, of Pittosporum, Veronica and Tamarisk, there is a surprising fertility, with an abundance of early spring flowers, grain crops and grazing for domestic animals.

The fifth and smallest inhabited island, St Agnes, which lies to the south-west of St Mary’s, is similar to the others – and yet somehow different. Lying outside the circle formed by the other four, it is surrounded by deep water, and has a feeling of isolation about it. Its western shore, craggy and strewn with massive red and silver granite boulders, marks what ancient men believed to be the end of the world.

Or very nearly … Because the land has not ended – not quite. Though few would call it land …

Strewn over the sea to the south-west for a distance of four nautical miles are numerous islets, rocks and half-hidden ledges. Some say that there are fifty islets around the main islands, some say a hundred. Many of them are here, to the south-west. No-one has tried to count the rocks.

Some of the larger rocks and islets support colonies of sea birds – puffins, shearwaters, petrels and gulls. Other rocks are coloured grey-green with lichen and coarse vegetation.

But many are quite bare. Washed by a hundred thousand Atlantic storms, the silver granite is unvisited, save for the seals who lie resting in the clefts before diving back into the restless rolling waves.

The most westerly of the rocks are so low that only the leaping, cascading surf reveals their position. In storms the angry white curtains of spray shoot high, high into the air – a terrible warning if you should be lucky enough to see it. The local people call these rocks ledges, though reefs might be a better name. They have ripped many a hull apart. Some vessels sank immediately; others pounded slowly and painfully to death, spilling cargo and people into the water for several days.

Once, a long time ago, the Royal Navy lost fifteen ships-of-the-line on the Western Rocks – the pride of the British fleet. Two thousand men drowned. Just over a hundred years ago during the height of the steamship era, a crack passenger ship died an agonised death on the Retarrier Ledges with the loss of three hundred lives.

The carnage had to be stopped. They decided to build a lighthouse. They chose the Bishop Rock, the last rock before the Atlantic, the final jagged point before the safe depths of the open sea. It is, unfortunately, a small rock, being only a few yards square. But they had no choice: there was nothing bigger.

They made three attempts. The first time the sea swept the structure away before the light was even lit. The second time the structure stayed up, but, pounded by winter storms, started to shake itself to death. Finally they built a third one around the second because it was easier that way – though nothing achieved in that wild, windswept desolation could ever be called easy. It took years of superhuman effort to build the third mighty tower – but it stayed up.

Now it stands proud and tall above the sea, unmoved even by the waves that sweep up and over its one hundred and sixty foot height – the tallest lighthouse in Britain. And the loneliest.

To navigators the light is a veritable godsend; in good conditions its powerful beam is visible eighteen nautical miles away. Even in poor conditions you are likely to see it before you are too close. In fog the loud blare of its foghorn will warn you away from the rocks. Sailors love the light: they have taken to asking how far out from the Bishop they have sailed, or how far back to the Bishop it might be, or how long it will take to reach the Bishop. To the sailor the Bishop means home.

The light is a veritable godsend.

… When it’s lit, of course.

Tonight, like most nights during this war, it is not.

Only when a convoy is passing does the light flash twice every fifteen seconds, and then only dimly.

Tonight, like most nights, there is no convoy. The light is unlit, the revolving lens still.

The Western Rocks lie in total darkness, just as they always used to, before men dared to build the light.

D
AMN
! D
AMN
!