Sarah Caudwell - The Shortest Way to Hades

“I suppose,” said Camilla, “that they told you I was washed up on the shore wearing a black negligée. That’s what all those rotters in Parga are saying, and it’s an absolute lie — it was the top half of my black silk pajamas.”

“And if she hadn’t lost the bottom half somewhere in the Mediterranean,” said Lucian, “she’d have been perfectly respectable, wouldn’t you, Millie?”

In accordance with the established convention in sailing circles, they spoke off-handedly of their adventure, saying modestly that there really wasn’t much to tell. In accordance with the corresponding convention, I took no notice of this, but continued to press them for a full account.

On Thursday they had sailed down to Preveza in Camilla’s yacht, the Sycorax, for a dinner party with friends. The gathering, however, had been less convivial than they expected, and by eleven o’clock they were back on board. A south wind had sprung up, which Camilla and Leonidas thought it a pity to waste: they both enjoy night sailing, and it would have been annoying to wait at Preveza until morning and then find that the wind had dropped.

“And Lucian and I didn’t mind much either way,” said Lucinda. “There was plenty of booze on board, and as long as no one expected us to do anything energetic in the sailing line we didn’t care whether we drank it moving or standing still.”

The sky at this stage was clear, and it did not occur to anyone to listen to the weather forecast. Camilla took the first watch, having laid a course for Port Gaio on the island of Paxos and expecting to arrive there in the early hours of the morning. Leonidas took over at about two o’clock, with instructions to keep on a compass heading of 295 degrees. By this time it was very dark, the sky having clouded over, and the wind had freshened to something like a force five. There was some discussion about whether they should hoist the storm jib instead of the genoa. Leonidas thought he could handle the boat without any change of sail, and Camilla agreed in the end that it would be enough to take a reef in the mainsail.

“So I told Leon to give me a yell if he had any problems,” said Camilla, “and went off to the forecabin to get my beauty sleep. The twins, of course, were sprawled out all over the main cabin in a newt-like condition, snoring their heads off. And that’s when Leon decided, for reasons best known to himself, to point the boat north a bit.”

Well, Leonidas still maintains that he kept on a heading of 295 degrees, as Camilla had told him to; but from what happened afterwards it seems that he can’t have done. I wondered at first if it might be Camilla who had made a mistake, by not making the right adjustment for compass error. The rest of them, however, had all sailed often enough on the Sycorax to know pretty well by heart what adjustment would be needed on any particular heading, and they all agreed that 295 degrees would have been right for the course that Camilla meant to take. There seems no doubt, therefore, that Leonidas must somehow have misread the compass — perhaps by mistaking north-west for west-north-west. Whatever the reason, he was about fifteen degrees off course.

The wind rose steadily during the first hour of his watch, until it approached gale force. He realized that he was carrying far too much sail, but he also knew he could not reduce sail single-handed, and he was reluctant to rouse Camilla so soon after she had gone off watch. I think that his judgment may also have been affected by the absolute darkness all round him, which can be unsettling. The darkness of a night at sea with no moon and no stars isn’t like being in a room with the light shut out: the sea is black and the sky is black, so that there is no horizon, and the darkness has no limits to it. With the sea running high and the boat heeling over at an angle which brought her deck within inches of the water, he had the sense to reach for a line and lash himself to the stern rail. He did not, however, call out for anyone to help him, but stayed alone at the tiller while the Sycorax went careering through the night at a speed he had never sailed at before — God knows how none of the rigging snapped — with the black waves towering over her and the gale screaming into her canvas. It was like sailing, he said, “from nowhere into Hades.”

“It must have been very frightening,” I said.

“Oh no,” said Leonidas. “No, it was marvelous.”

One can see, of course, that it would have been.

The thing that at last made him call out to Camilla was seeing lights on the starboard bow — the first sign he had that the boat was not on her intended course. He had expected that eventually he would see the lights of Paxos on the port bow, but lights to starboard were inexplicable — he could think only that he had somehow sailed straight past Paxos without seeing the lights there and was now running up the west coast of Corfu.

“Actually,” said Camilla, “I was awake already, or I don’t think I’d have heard him over the racket the wind was making. But I’d woken up and noticed we were moving a bit smartly for a 32-footer in nil visibility, and I’d just decided to go up on deck to find out what was doing. So when I heard Leon calling out I nipped straight up through the forehatch. Well, it was pretty obvious we were carrying too much sail, so I yelled out to Leon to put her into the wind so I could get the genoa down. I wasn’t sure he’d heard me, so I was getting ready to yell again when put her into the wind he duly did. The rigging screamed like all the devils in hell and the Sycorax lurched like a drunken chorus girl and over I went. I was just thinking what a good thing it was I’d remembered to clip on my safety-harness as I climbed out of the forehatch when the damned shackle snapped. So I just had to swim for it.”

A conversation followed, of a sort common in sailing circles, about the relative merits of different kinds of safety-harness. Camilla, it seems, has always favored the sort which incorporates a life-jacket. The others all think this too cumbersome, but in spite of the defect in her particular harness she looks on the night’s events as confirming her view. She would never have taken the time, she said, to put on a separate life-jacket, and without one she would certainly have drowned.

“Even with it,” I said, “you must have had a fairly rough time.”

“Well,” said Camilla, “the swim itself wasn’t too bad — I could see lights, so I knew I was heading for land, though I hadn’t an earthly what it was or how far. The worst part was coming ashore — I thought I was going to get smashed to bits on the rocks. But eventually I managed it, and got collected up by a passing fisherman — all frightfully embarrassing, of course, what with having lost the bottom half of my pajamas. Anyway, he took me home to his mother and about six aunts — I bet they didn’t tell you that in Parga — and they put me straight to bed. When I came round again I found there’d been a tremendous tizzwozz and messages were flying about all over the place saying I’d been drowned. Actually, it sounds as if life was a jolly sight more dangerous back on board the poor old Sycorax.”

It took Leonidas two or three minutes to realize that his cousin had gone overboard: the lights of the boat were not enough for him to see clearly from the cockpit what was happening on the fore-deck, and he was struggling to regain control of the steering. When it became clear to him that Camilla was no longer on board, he shouted to his brother and sister for help, though with not much hope of waking them. He couldn’t reach the starting-handle of the engine; but he tried to go about under sail to return to the place where Camilla had last called out to him. This proved to be a mistake: struck amidships by the full force of the gale, the Sycorax was simply knocked flat; her mast-top dipped under the water and her cockpit was entirely submerged. After what seemed to Leonidas a very long time the boat righted herself, and rewarded his foresight in lashing himself to the rail by putting him back at the tiller only three-quarters drowned.