Gordon Brown - 59 Minutes

Happy that I could slip in quickly, I exited the engine room, jumped off the boat and returned to the town.

It took me half an hour to find the men. They were sitting in a restaurant chatting quietly, water not booze stood on the table and it was obvious they were keeping a clear head for the morning.

At ten thirty they waved for the bill and I made my move. I walked quickly back to their boat, jumped on board and opened the engine room door. I dropped down and pulled it shut.

The place was pitch black and I cursed myself for not bringing a torch. I banged both shins getting to the cupboard, cut my thumb fiddling with the latch and settling in took longer than I had expected. I heard the sound of footsteps on the boat just as I pulled the cubby hole door shut.

There was a lot of clumping and chat as the men readied for bed. I soon discovered that my head was below the toilet, as one of the men dropped a log that sent a nightmare smell into my space.

After an hour the boat fell quiet and I realised that I should have stayed on the dock and snuck in later. It was already getting cramped and hot but I couldn’t risk moving around. If someone heard any noise it wouldn’t take long to find me.

I tried to make myself comfortable but I was on a loser. Twisting and turning, all in silent mode, I put my hand on the familiar tube of a torch. I pulled it to my body, covered the lens and threw the switch. At least I had light. I didn’t think it would be seen upstairs. I hoped it wouldn’t be seen upstairs.

So here I lie whispering into the recorder.

I have no idea what tomorrow might bring.

Wednesday August 6 th 2008

Hell. It is a simple as that. Hell. To say I am relieved to be on dry land and out of the boat is the understatement of my life.

Around seven o’clock this morning there were signs of life above. I was already in a bad place. Cramped and unable to go for a piss I had eventually emptied one of my bottles, mostly on the floor and re-filled it with urine. It was a not my finest moment but at least it was better than pissing in my trousers. Not than anyone would have noticed the smell if I had — every time any one used the toilet I got the full bhoona. I have no idea what the men were eating last night but it wasn’t a light salad.

The engine kicked into life just before seven thirty and I realised that what I thought was a crap idea took a shovel and dug deep. The noise from the engine, and it was still only on tick over, was deafening. The diesel power plant lay less than three feet from my head and the combination of the noise and vibration blocked out the world. When the engine note deepened there was a slight swaying, and I realised we were moving.

Ten minutes later the driver turned the engine up to eleven and my life became a maelstrom of noise and motion. The boat planed and I rolled towards the cubby hole door. The nose would dip to bite through a wave and I would roll to the front of the boat. Then the boat would lift clear and I would roll back — this process went on endlessly.

As we broke from the bay the current or the waves or some act of nature worked on the side of the boat and gave the up and down motion a side to side lilt. Every so often we would hit a larger than normal wave and my head would be slammed off the roof of the cubby hole.

I was forced to grab a rope coil and wrap it around my head like a Sikh’s turban. It was uncomfortable but gave me some protection against the wave movement. It also dulled the noise a little, but not much. I rearranged the angle I lay at and tried to wedge myself in a way that would reduce the rolling.

I realised that I lacked one vital piece of information that might have made the whole thing bearable. How long would this go on? I had no real idea of what the distance from Mallorca to Barcelona meant in terms of nautical time. The only information I had to go on was the discussion with the men when they said they wanted to get the trip done in daylight. Dusk was twelve hours away and I tried to settle down and ride it out.

Two hours into the journey and I was on the verge of giving up and handing myself in. It was unbearable. Even if they decided to turn back and drop me in Mallorca it had to be better than this.

The throbbing of the engine had hard-wired a headache of growing proportions into my skull. The rope around my head kept slipping off and was chafing my skin. The air was burning hot. The combination of the rising temperature outside and the heat of the engine had driven the atmosphere in the engine room to well beyond something I could survive long.

I opened the cubby hole door and rolled out into the engine room. The noise rose another notch and I crawled round to the hatchway. I was reaching up to push the hatch open when a breath of cool air brushed my wrist. Moving my arm around in the dark I picked up the draught and followed it back to its source. I felt a handle above me and the draught was coming from just beneath it. I crawled back to the cubby hole to get the torch.

Back at the handle I flipped on the light. No one would notice it up top in broad daylight. There was a small door about three feet by three feet in front of me. On my initial recce of the room I had missed it. I pulled on the handle and the door opened outwards and I was washed with cool air. I gulped it in like water to a man in the desert.

The space beyond was empty and, at the back there was another small hatch. Sunlight shone from beyond and it was through this gap that the air was coming.

I pulled myself up and into the small space, reached out and grasped the hatch. I pushed it and it started to fall away. I caught it before it fell open and crawled a bit further into the space, grateful for the cool air.

Beneath me was a metal walkway — ridged to prevent slipping and bordered with two small metal edges about an inch proud of the surface, running the length of both sides. It was a gangplank. I’d seen a few in the bigger boats at the marina. They slipped out of the rear of the boats like tongues to form a bridge between the marina pontoons and the boat.

The boat I was on had been side into the pontoon and the gangplank had been stored. I felt along the underside of the gangplank and realised that it was telescopic. My feet were hanging out into the engine room and my face was inches from the hatch.

The cool draft was being drawn in by the wake of the boat. As the boat progressed the rear caused a minor vacuum and air rushed in to fill it. The only down side was that occasionally the exhaust from the engines would get caught in the vacuum and pour into the space. But, compared to the hell-hole I had been in, this was sweet.

I wanted to pop the hatch to let more air in but anyone sitting at the back of the boat might see the door open and wonder why. I risked cracking it a little more and this increased the flow of fresh air.

If someone opened the engine room hatch my feet would be in plain sight, but there was fuck all I could do about this. I could curl up for a little while but the space was too small to stay that way for long. Anyway all I could hope was that the more miles we put between boat and Mallorca, the less likelihood that they would turn back if I was found.

I must have dozed off at some point because I was woken by the noise of the engine note dropping. The engine was kicked into idle and immediately the movement of the boat took on a much more unstable wobble. I wondered if we were at our destination but it seemed too soon.

There were voices above me but the engines had set up a ringing in my ears that made it impossible to make out what they were saying.

It reminded me of the time when I was twelve years old and had sneaked into the Apollo in Glasgow to watch Deep Purple. The ringing in my ears had lasted three days. I reckoned that by the time I got to Barcelona the ringing would still be going at Christmas.