Hammond Innes - Dead and Alive

I watched the surf seethe back, judged the depth to break my fall, and jumped. I caught the chain as the backwash whipped my legs from under me. Stuart landed beside me a second later and we strained like madmen at the pulley chains. The next wave swept us up the beach, wrenching at our arms. We worked frantically in the second of slack water at the height of the wave and then hung on as it surged back. Each time the ship lifted we gained a bit until at length the hawser was taut.

Battered and breathless, we made a dash through the surf and gained the rocks. We were bruised, but that was all. We climbed up by the broken chain of the bow door. The worst was over now. The wave that had parted the long hawser was the top of the tide. The ship held steady.

She no longer yawed. There was only the metallic crash as she hit the rocks in the backwash of each wave and soon that was muffled as sand shifted and held beneath her flat bottom.

As the tide receded we set to work to re-rig the hawser that had parted. Dugan, who insisted upon staying, fixed up a big spotlight and got the auxiliary going. By midnight the ship was firmly held again and we settled down to cold meat washed down with hot coffee laced with rum.

‘Is she going to hold, do you think?’ Stuart asked. His face was tired and strained and his beard caked with salt. I suppose I looked as tired, but I was more accustomed to this sort of thing.

I said, ‘If the wind doesn’t drop she won’t.’

‘I see.’

He said nothing after that and the three of us ate in silence. I was thinking of the way the ship had lifted to each wave.

By the end of the meal my mind was made up. ‘If the wind does drop,’ I said, ‘we could work her quite twenty yards down the cove on the pulleys.’

He glared at me. ‘Aren’t the elements bad” enough without you trying to make it worse?’ His voice was almost a snarl.

I said, ‘Listen. She’s holed just below the stern. You know that. After the pasting she’s just taken, she’s probably holed in other places as well. She’ll float on her double bottom, but the space between is probably full of sand just now and I doubt whether we’ll be able to lift the extra weight on those girders.’

‘All right,’ he said. ‘You go ahead. Do what you like.

I don’t care any more. Throw the lines off and let her smash herself to bits on the rocks.’

Dugan and I went up into the gale again and set to work rigging pulleys to the ties that held the bows to the beach. Stuart joined us shortly afterwards, working like a man possessed, but saying nothing. The turn of the tide came shortly after midnight. Dugan straightened up and sniffed the air. ‘Wind’s going to drop,’ he shouted.

I gazed down the cove, darkly mysterious in the light of the spotlight which was flung back by the cliffs. Out by the entrance the seas thundered in a vague blur of white surf. But there was a new softness in the air. ‘Rain,’ I said.

He nodded.

Within an hour the wind had died completely and it was raining, a steady drenching rain. By then we had rigged pulleys to all hawsers so that they could be operated from the deck. We had barely fixed the last pulley when lights showed like dancing glow-worms on the cliff-top above the cove. We watched them as they descended towards us.

It was Garth and Bill and about half-a-dozen Boscastle fishermen.

‘We heard thee were off the rocks,’ said Garth. ‘An’ we thought maybe you’d be in difficulties.’

‘We’ve got a lorry up on the cliff-top loaded with ropes,’ Bill added.

I looked out towards the incoming tide. ‘I think she’ll hold,’ I said.

‘Aye,’ Garth nodded. ‘At the high there’ll be a big swell running — no more. You’ll hold all right. We just thought maybe — ‘ He nodded his head again. ‘A right seamanlike job ye’ve done, Mr Cunningham.’

L

I thanked him for coming. ‘It was touch and go at one time,’ I said. ‘And I’d still be glad of your help when the tide is in.’ And I told him how I planned to use the tide to ease the ship down the cove.

We broached the firkin of beer that Bill had brought back from Camelford. And we crowded the little wheel-house, drinking till the crash of the waves and the lift of the stern told us the tide was in again.

Outside it was daylight, grey and wet. The seas were still big and they thundered in, to roll crashing in great roars of surf on either side of the ship. But they had lost their power and no longer broke right over the stern.

With two of us to each pulley we began to work the ship out at the flood of each wave. Those on the two long hawsers’ pulleys reeled the chains in, bit by bit, whilst those on the bow and short hawser pulleys eased off as required.

An hour’s work and the ship was nearly twenty yards down the cove, the limit of the pulley chains, and still held fast on all sides.

Stuart cooked us a terrific breakfast. The strained lines had disappeared from his face. He was in great spirits. Only his bloodshot eyes told the story of the night. He wouldn’t allow them to leave until the firkin was empty and then played them up the cliff-path, singing until they were all singing. Their voices died away in the murmur of the receding surf. Dugan had gone with them. And we were alone. I felt very elated and very tired. We went to bed.

I woke in the sweat of a nightmare. I had dreamed that we were afloat in the cove without ties and the ship was slowly being broken up. I opened my eyes to find the sun streaming in through the open port and Stuart shaking my shoulder and offering me a cup of tea. The noise of the sea filled the stuffiness of the cabin and now and then the ship lifted and then settled gently back on to the sand of the cove.

‘Afloat?’ I asked.

He nodded.

I put a pair of slacks on and went up on deck. The sea — a quiet, complacent, gentle sea — was reaching up the cove beyond the bows. There was still a swell running, but in that warm dancing sunlit scene it was difficult to recollect the wicked thundering breakers of the night.

Tomorrow,’ he said, and there was relief in his voice. And I agreed.

Right away we begun to re-rig the pulleys so that we could ease her farther out. The long hawsers we ran direct to the capstan. We rigged ropes to the short hawsers to give them extra length. And we fixed a temporary wheel. At low tide we went round the ship to see what damage had been done. A blade of the port screw was broken and the other blades bent. That was all.

Bill and Anne came over with Dugan very early the following morning. The sea was almost flat calm. ‘Mr Garth says, sir, if we’re in difficulties you’re to send to Boscastle,’ Dugan told me. ‘He says there’ll be four boats at call if you need ‘em around midday.’

The tide was full at a little before nine. And just after eight-thirty we felt the first jar as the stern lifted and settled back on the sand. Dugan got the engines going. I cast off the bow lines. Bill and Boo manned the short hawsers which we had lengthened by adding ropes.

It was with a feeling of some pride that I ordered, ‘let go, for’ard,’ and started the capstan. Stuart operated the port hawser and I handled the starboard and so we guided the ship stern first out to the entrance of the cove. It was as easy as that. In fact the whole operation took no more than ten minutes.

I dashed up to the bridge. ‘Let go for’ard, I called. Then ‘Let go, aft.’ The splash of the long hawsers going overboard told me that we were on our own. Stuart went to the wheel-house as arranged. ‘Slow astern both,’ I called down the voice-pipe that connected direct to the engine-room. I felt the bite of the screws as they began to turn. ‘Port ten,’ I ordered Stuart.

The Elephant Rock slid by, peering down at us over the starboard rail. ‘Half-astern both.’ Then to Stuart, ‘Steady as you go.’