The Wreck of the Mary Deare (5 page)

Mike eased the sheets and the boat roared off down-wind. Hanging there, soaked with sea water thrown up from the wave tops breaking against the ship's side, I felt the weight of the wind pressing me in towards the rusty hull. At each roll I had to brace myself to meet the shock of my body being flung against her. Gradually I realised what had happened. The wind was swinging the
Mary Deare
broadside on; and I was on the windward side, exposed to the full force of the rising gale.

Sea Witch
went about again and I wanted to shout to Hal not to be a fool, that it was no good. Now that the
Mary Deare
had swung, it was dangerous to come alongside with the wind pressing the yacht down on to the ship. But all I did was pray that he'd make it, for I knew I couldn't hang there much longer. The ropes were getting slippery with water and it was bitterly cold.

I don't know how Hal managed it, but despite the lack of headsails to bring her bow round, he got her about with almost no way on her a short stone's throw from where I was clinging. Then he let her drift down-wind. It was a superb piece of seamanship. There was a moment when her stern was almost within my reach. I think I might have made it, but at that moment the roll of the
Mary Deare
swung me against her sides and I was held fast against the wet chill of her hull, whilst the familiar counter of my boat slid away as Hal got her moving again to prevent her from being battered to pieces against the ship. ‘No good . . . daren't . . . too dangerous . . . Peter Port.' The ragged snatches of Hal's shouts reached me through the wind as I was freed from the ship's side and swung out over the water, right over the spot where
Sea Witch
's stern had been only a few seconds before. I wanted to shout to him to try again, just once more. But I knew it was risking the boat and their lives as well. ‘Okay,' I yelled. ‘Make Peter Port. Good luck!'

He shouted something back, but I couldn't hear what it was.
Sea Witch
was already disappearing beyond the steamer's bows going fast with all her sheets eased and the wind driving at the great spread of her mainsail. I glanced up quickly at the towering wall of iron above my head and then I began to climb whilst I still had some strength left.

But each time the ship rolled I was flung against the side. It gave me extra purchase, flattened hard against the rusty plates, but it battered me, knocking the wind out of me. And each time I was swung clear the loss of purchase almost flung me off, for my fingers were numbed with cold and my arms and knees trembled with the strain of clinging there too long. The waves broke, engulfing me in ice-cold spray, and sometimes green water sloshed up the side of the ship and gripped me about the waist, plucking at me as it subsided.

I made only a few feet, and then I was finally halted. I could climb no farther. Flattened against the ship's side, I gripped the rope with my shaking legs and, letting go with one hand, hauled up the free end, pulling it up between my legs and wrapping it over my shoulder. It took the strain off my arms. But it didn't get me back on to the ship's deck. I began to shout then, but the sound of my voice was whipped away by the wind. I knew the man couldn't possibly hear me, but I still went on shouting, praying that he'd come. He was my only hope. And then I stopped shouting, for I had no breath left—jarred and bruised, swung one moment out over the tumbled waters, the next slammed against the ship's side, it came to me slowly that this was the end.

It is difficult to be scared of something that is inevitable. You accept it, and that is that. But I remember thinking how ironical it was; the sea was to me a liquid, quiet, unruffled world through which to glide down green corridors to the darker depths, down tall reef walls with the fish, all brilliant colours in the surface dazzle, down to the shadowy shapes of barnacle-crusted wrecks. Now it was a raging fury of a giant, rearing up towards me, clutching at me, foaming and angry.

And then hope came suddenly in the graze of my hand against the rusty plates. Blood oozed in droplets from my knuckles, to be washed away by a blinding sheet of spray, and I stared, fascinated, as a flake of rust was peeled off by the upward scrape of my body. I didn't look up. I didn't move for fear I had imagined that I was being hauled up. But when the sea no longer reached me as it burst against the ship's side, I knew it was true. I looked up then and saw that the davits had been hauled in-board, saw the ropes move, taut, across the rail-capping.

Slowly, a foot at a time, I was hauled up, until at last my head came level with the deck and I looked into the haggard face and the wild, dark eyes of the
Mary Deare
's captain. He dragged me over the side and I collapsed on to the deck. I never knew till then how comfortable iron deck plates could be. ‘Better get some dry clothes,' he said.

He pulled me to my feet and I stood there, trying to thank him. But I was too exhausted, too numbed with cold. My teeth chattered. He got my arm round his neck and half dragged me along the deck and down to one of the officers' cabins. ‘Help yourself to what you want,' he said as he lowered me on to the bunk. ‘Rice was about your height.' He stood over me for a moment, frowning at me as though I were some sort of a problem that had to be worked out. Then he left me.

I lay back, exhaustion weighting my eyelids, drowning consciousness. But my body had no warmth left in it and the cold cling of sodden clothes dragged me up off the bunk, to strip and towel myself down. I found dry clothes in a drawer and put them on; woollen underwear, a shirt, a pair of trousers and a sweater. A glow spread through me and my teeth stopped chattering. I took a cigarette from a packet on the desk and lit it, lying back again on the bunk, my eyes closed, drawing on it luxuriously. I felt better then—not worried about myself, only about
Sea Witch
. I hoped to God she'd get safe to Peter Port.

I was drowsy with the sudden warmth; the cabin was airless and smelt of stale sweat. The cigarette kept slipping from my fingers. And then a voice from a great distance off was saying: ‘Sit up and drink this.' I opened my eyes and he was standing over me again with a steaming mug in his hand. It was tea laced with rum. I started to thank him, but he cut me short with a quick, angry movement of his hand. He didn't say anything; just stood there, watching me drink it, his face in shadow. There was a strange hostility in his silence.

The ship was rolling heavily now and through the open door came the sound of the wind howling along the deck. The
Mary Deare
would be a difficult tow if it blew a gale. They might not even be able to get a tow-line across to us. I was remembering what Hal had said about the Channel Islands as a lee shore. The warmth of the drink was putting new life into me; enough for me to consider what faced me, now that I was marooned on board the
Mary Deare
.

I looked up at the man, standing over me, wondering why he had refused to leave the ship. ‘How long before you expect help to reach us?' I asked him.

‘There won't be any help. No call went out.' He leaned suddenly down towards me, his hands clenched and his jaw, thrust into the grey light coming in through the porthole, showing hard and knotted. ‘Why the hell didn't you stay on your yacht?' And then he turned abruptly and made for the door.

He was halfway through it when I called after him. ‘Taggart!' I swung my legs off the bunk.

He spun round on his heels as though I'd punched him in the back. ‘I'm not Taggart.' He came back through the doorway. ‘What made you think I was Taggart?'

‘You said you were the captain.'

‘So I am. But my name's Patch.' He was standing over me again, a dark shadow against the light. ‘How did you know about Taggart? Are you something to do with the owners? Is that why you were out there . . .' The wildness went out of his voice and he wiped his hand across the coal dust grime of his face. ‘No. It couldn't be that.' He stared at me for a moment and then he shrugged his shoulders. ‘We'll talk about it later. We've plenty of time. All the time in the world. Better get some sleep now.' He turned then and went quickly out.

Sleep! Five minutes ago that was what I'd wanted most in the world. But now I was wide awake. I won't say I was scared; not then. Just uneasy. That the man should behave oddly was not surprising. He had been twelve hours alone on the ship. He'd put out a fire single-handed and he'd stoked furnaces till he was on the brink of exhaustion. Twelve hours of hell; enough to unbalance any man. But if he was the captain, why wasn't he Taggart? And why hadn't the ship radioed for assistance?

I got up stiffly off the bunk, pulled on a pair of sea boots that were lying under the desk and staggered out into the corridor. There was a lot of movement on the ship now. Lying broadside to the seas, she was rolling heavily. A rush of cold air brought with it the battering noise of the wind. I went straight up to the bridge. It was raining and visibility was down to less than a mile; the whole sea was a dirty white of breaking water with the spray smoking from the crests and streaming away before the wind. It was already blowing gale force in the gusts.

The compass showed the ship lying with her bows to the north. The wind had backed into the west then; almost a dead run to Peter Port. I stood there working it out, listening to the thundering of the gale, staring out at that bleak waste of tumbled water. If Hal made it—if he got under the lee of Guernsey and made Peter Port . . . But it would take him several hours and he wouldn't realise at first that no distress signal had been sent out. Even when he did, the lifeboat would have to fight the gale to reach us; it would take them six hours at least, and by then it would be dark. They'd never find us in the dark in this sort of weather.

I turned abruptly and went through into the chartroom. A new position had been marked on the chart; a small cross two miles north-east of the Roches Douvres with 11.06 pencilled against it. It was now eleven-fifteen. I laid off the line of our drift with the parallel rule. If the wind held westerly we should drive straight on to the Plateau des Minquiers. He had discovered that, too, for a faint pencil line had been drawn in and there was a smudge of dirt across the area of the reefs where his fingers had rested.

Well, at least he was sane enough to appreciate the danger! I stood, staring at the chart, thinking about what it meant. It wasn't a pleasant thought. To be driven ashore on the rocky cliffs of Jersey would have been bad enough, but the Plateau des Minquiers . . .

I reached out to the bookshelf above the chart table, searching for Part II of the Channel Pilot. But it wasn't there. Not that it mattered. I knew them by reputation: a fearful area of rocks and reefs that we call The Minkies.

I was thinking about the Minkies and how it would feel to be on board a ship being pounded to pieces in such a maelstrom of submerged rocks when I noticed the door at the back of the chartroom with W/T stencilled on it. There was a steep ladder with no door at the top and as soon as I entered the radio shack I knew why no distress call had been sent out. The place had been gutted by fire.

The shock of it halted me in the doorway. The fire in the hold, and now this! But this was an old fire. There was no smell of burning, and planks of new wood had been nailed over the charred gaps that the fire had burned in roof and walls. No attempt had been made to clear the debris. The emergency accumulators had come through the burned-out roof and lay on the floor where they had fallen; one had smashed down on to the fire-blackened table and had crushed the half-melted remains of the transmitter. Bunk and chair were scarcely recognisable, skeletons of blackened wood, and the radio equipment fixed to the walls was distorted beyond recognition and festooned with metal stalactites where solder had dripped and congealed; more equipment lay on the floor, black, twisted pieces of metal in the debris of charred wood. Whatever had caused the fire, it had burned with extraordinary ferocity. Water had seeped in through the gaps in the walls, streaking the blackened wood. The wind stirred the sodden ashes, shaking the rotten structure as it howled round the bridge.

I went slowly back down the ladder to the chartroom. Maybe the log book would tell me something. But it was no longer open on the table. I went through to the wheelhouse and was halted momentarily by the sight of a shaggy comber rearing up out of the murk on the port bow, spindrift streaming from its crest. It crashed down on to the iron bulwarks, and then the whole fore part of the ship, all except the mast and derricks, disappeared beneath a welter of white water. It seemed an age before the shape of the bows appeared again, a faint outline of bulwarks rising sluggishly, reluctantly out of the sea.

I hurried down the companion-way and made straight for the captain's cabin. But he wasn't there. I tried the saloon and the galley, and then I knew he must be down in the stoke-hold again. There was no doubt in my mind what had to be done. The pumps had to be got going. But there was no light in the engine-room, no sound of coal being shovelled into the furnaces. I shouted from the catwalk, but there was no answer; only the echo of my voice, a small sound lost in the pounding of the waves against the outside of the hull and the swirl of water in the bilges.

I felt a sudden sense of loss, a quite childish sense of loneliness. I didn't want to be alone in that empty ship. I hurried back to his cabin, the need to find him becoming more and more urgent. It was empty, as it had been before. A clang of metal aft sent me pushing through the door to the boat deck, and then I saw him. He was coming towards me, staggering with exhaustion, his eyes staring and his face dead white where he had wiped it clean of sweat and coal dust. All his clothes were black with coal and behind him a shovel slid across the deck. ‘Where have you been?' I cried. ‘I couldn't find you. What have you been doing all this time?'

‘That's my business,' he muttered, his voice slurred with fatigue, and he pushed past me and went into his cabin.