Geoffrey Jenkins - Southtrap

'Linn! Wake up!'

She was lying on her side, coughing and shaking.

I crawled to her, tugged off her boots and started to massage the circulation back into her feet.

She sat up, tried to smile, but a spasm of cold rocked her.

Then she managed to say, 'We made it, darling.'

'Yes,' I answered. 'We made it. Just.'

'Where are we?'

I had taken Prince Edward so for granted from the moment I had sighted Ship Rock that I found it hard to realize she did not know.

'You don't know? Prince Edward Island.'

She gave a gasp of surprise and glanced at Wegger, who had not opened his eyes.

The words acted on him like a shot of adrenalin. He sat up and shook himself like a dog. His clothes were soaking and his face was stained with salt and fatigue. But he vibrated at the sound of the name.

'Ship Rock — that's what she struck, wasn't it, Shotton?'

'Yes. We're ashore almost at the northernmost point of the island. I'd guess Vaalkop is right at the back of us now.'

Wegger turned the name over on to his tongue, almost affectionately. 'Vaalkop! I know every inch of it.'

'What is Vaalkop?' asked Linn.

'It's an extinct volcano. These cliffs are part of its lava which once flowed into the sea. Ship Rock is the submerged heart of the crater.'

Wegger sprang up.

'Shotton! The launch! We've got to get it higher out of reach of the waves!'

I ignored him and continued massaging Linn's feet. 'That boat will never float again — didn't you hear the bottom go?'

He pulled out his Luger and held it on me. 'Shotton! You'll do as I say!'

'Forget that bloody gun!' I snapped. The boat's holed — don't you understand?'

'We'll fix her, we'll patch her, you and me, Shotton. We'll make it yet.'

I reached for my boots. 'We've made it, Wegger. We're ashore on Prince Edward Island — your destination. At the cost of how many lives?'

Linn moved and I noticed the tell-tale sag of the transmitter inside her wet parka. I put my hand on her knee to keep her still. I looked hard at her, trying to pass on my warning.

'Rest a bit, Linn. You've been through quite something. Get your breath back — do you understand?'

Then she did, and sank down again.

Wegger stood over us like a grey ghost in the half-light. His words competed against the roar of the breakers.

'We will fix the launch, do you hear? Then we'll lift the gold — some of it, at any rate. We'll still take it to Mauritius. It'll buy a ship, I'll return for the rest…'

'Wegger,' I replied, trying not to provoke him, 'we're roughly three thousand and seven hundred kilometres from Mauritius. To begin with, where will the fuel for the motor-launch come from? That distance in an open launch!'

'Don't try and thwart me, Shotton,' he blazed back. 'It's been done before. In the old days men used to come down here in small boats from Mauritius to hunt seal. It's an easy ride once you're clear of the Westerlies. We don't need fuel — she's got a sail and a mast. She isn't an open boat either — she's decked in for'ard and astern. She'll make it, I say.'

Linn put her icy hand on mine. Perhaps, like me, she was thinking of her good-luck coin in the step of the mast. Sailing to Mauritius after our escape from Ship Rock would certainly be over-stretching our luck.

'How do you intend to repair the launch with its bottom stove in without tools, a fire, a proper slip or anything else?' I asked.

'Shut up!' he retorted. 'Shut up! We'll make a plan! You will, Shotton! Now get down to the boat!'

We dodged from behind the shelter of the cliff. The wind was indeed less. The launch was half-awash among the rocks. One look at it convinced me that we could never repair it at Prince Edward. It had a gaping hole about two metres long in the bottom. Two planks were completely stove in.

Wegger's plan seemed to lend him an energy which my exhausted muscles did not possess. He did most of the work in hauling up the dead boat clear of the waves and making it secure.

Afterwards we scrambled back to Linn across the razor-edged rocks. She was standing against the cliff out of reach of the spray, stamping her feet and banging her arms to keep her circulation going. Her face was pinched and blue.

I noted immediately that the transmitter's tell-tale bulge was missing from her parka.

I was not to know then what the fateful consequences of her action were to be.

'Wegger,' I said. 'We've got to get ourselves warm. We won't see the day out otherwise.'

Although his teeth were chattering also, he seemed in high spirits. He was swinging his head this way and that, like a dog sniffing home after a long spell in kennels.

I found a sodden box of matches in a pocket.

'Maybe we'll get a little sun later,' he said. The wind's on its way out.'

'Difficult to say — we're sheltered here,' I replied cautiously, but I felt nevertheless that his forecast was right.

We had come ashore on the tip of the flat western coastal plain, at the foot of the extinct volcano appropriately named Vaalkop (Greyhead). The island's western shore was guarded by a row of stupendous and precipitous sea-cliffs, backed inland by a kingly ridge called the Great Western Escarpment. The wind which had been deflected off Vaalkop's sinister pallid slopes had caught Botany Bay aback and brought about her final destruction. I had often seen this coast, with its iron-bound cliffs and black and cinnamon-tipped volcano cones, from the sea. I had never thought to know them more closely.

'As soon as it's proper light we'll get moving,' said Wegger.

My soggy mind missed the significance of his remark at the time. I presumed the move would be further from the gully to higher, safer ground.

'I'll try and get these matches dry,' I said to Linn. 'There's a way of doing it, when there's no sun.'

I went to her and stroked the matches individually through her hair. It was wet at the ends but drier towards the roots. The novelty of the operation took her mind off herself. As I went on, she looked deep into my eyes. I wanted to kiss away the grim marks round them, get rid of the sootiness which had accumulated on her face from the constant tending of the fire aboard Botany Bay.

'I never thought my hair would be used for fire,' she remarked.

This is only stage one,' I told her. 'The second is to find something to strike them on.'

When I had a dozen or so dry I said to Wegger, 'I'm going to try the launch for something to burn.'

'Don't touch the planks,' he warned. 'I'm coming too.'

We returned to the wreck. I found some half-dry cotton waste in the decked-in bow section. I also discovered a tin of instant coffee. Most of its contents had spilled — the lid was missing — but the glutinous mess was still good enough to provide something warm and stimulating. There was also a packet of biscuits, mashed to a dough-like pulp.

Then I tapped a little fuel out of the tank, wetting the cotton waste with it. I shorted the battery and got a feeble spark. When I held a match to it, it ignited, and I set the cotton waste smouldering.

Back where Linn was waiting, I found fresh water filtering down the cliff. I blew up the cotton waste and in the end we each had some pulpy biscuit and a mouthful of lukewarm coffee. But coffee it was.

I was still drinking from the tin when Linn exclaimed, pointing seawards, 'John! There's a man out there!'

I missed him at first because my attention was on the black fins of the killer whales racing like a U-boat pack through the floating masts, spars and timbers of the wreck.

'There — up on Ship Rock!' Linn said.

It was lighter over the sea than below our cliffs. Then I spotted the figure high up — Heaven knows how he had got there — clinging to the face of the massive pillar.