Geoffrey Jenkins - Scend of the Sea

I made a quick calculation. At her Waratah speed -1 could hear the quickened thump of the screws under my feet now — the Walvis Bay would be almost exactly at my rendezvous point with Alistair at seven o'clock.

‘I want you to make everything secure,' I ordered Smit. 'Lash down the radar sweep. I want a half-hourly report on the satellite gyro tracker. Rig lifelines along the foredeck and aft so that we can check the radiosonde hut. All unnecessary gear off the decks.'

'Aye, aye, sir!' Smit grinned. 'Coming up big, sir?'

'Mighty big, as I read the Indian signs,' I replied. I was a little anxious about the delicate satellite observing gear. It had never been used at sea before, and my two technicians aboard had undergone a special course on its intricacies. The basic principle was a platform which was stabilized by a master gyroscope, which held it pointed at a constant angle at the weather satellite as it made its daily pass between the heavens.

‘Double-lash the boats,' I went on. 'Also, bring up a couple of heavy tarpaulins from below in case of emergencies. Tell the cook to get a hand to help him, prepare hard-weather cold rations for the crew. I want hot soup and coffee for the night in the big vacuum flasks. Okay?'

I picked up the speaking-tube to the engine-room. 'Nick? Can you rig an emergency battery circuit to the gyro platform?'

I heard the engineer's whistle of surprise. 'What are you expecting, skipper — a visit from the Flying Dutchman!' I was to remember his remark, later.

'You and the boffins worked it out in Durban in case we ran into trouble in the Southern Ocean, remember?'

'This isn't the Southern Ocean,' he replied with a laugh. 'I'm still thinking of those bikinis on the beach yesterday.'

'You'll want more than a bikini before tonight's out,' I retorted. 'It's coming up rough. Real. .' I choked back the word Waratah '. . Cape of Storms stuff. From the southwest.’

'Will do,' replied the engineer cheerfully. 'But the big problem remains — battery acid, if she starts to buck about.'

I stopped Smit leaving the bridge. 'Take a special look at the Van Veen grab,' I told him. 'It's awkward to secure, hanging outboard like that. I don't want the chains flailing around in the darkness.'

'Aye, aye, sir. I'll get the bo'sun on to it first before the sea comes up.'

Mine was a tough, well-tried Southern Ocean crew. But the stay in Cape Town, and the soft-weather delights of Durban at the height of the winter season, had taken the edge off them. I always had a sneaking sympathy with Odysseus trying to drive his languor-laden crew. Waratah weather wouldn't be the rearing, mile-long swells of the Southern Ocean they were used to; it would be a brutal tossing of short, quick blows and forty-foot waves, a savage, give-no-quarter in fight. It had driven back the search tugs which had gone to look for the lost liner; it had hammered one of the 2200-ton cruisers for nine days until her hull was so strained that they had had to drydock her. Naval divers had had to work on the second cruiser for eight days before she dared put to sea again.

The string of orders and need for action to snug down the ship had taken my mind from the problem which now loomed. Smit brought it home like a dollop coming over the side.

‘Feldman will be coming on duty soon, sir. You'll be able to give him your signals for the Weather Bureau.'

Feldman telescoped the duties of radio operator with first officer. Smit could help out with incoming signals, but was incapable of transmitting.

My preoccupation with the Waratah had driven momentarily from my mind that other track which ended where hers did in a circled question-mark south of the Bashee- Gemsbok.

Gemsbok had flown on a Waratah night; tonight a Waratah night was lying in wait for the Buccaneer!

My next order froze. How could I stop Alistair flying tonight? Even the most guarded message would somehow betray that we had some sort of tryst-the pilot of a crack squadron using a crack plane for some private arrangement with the trusted skipper of an experimental weather ship whose success depended largely on his judgment and seamanship? Beating up shipping in Buccaneers is a court-martial offence: when I had reminded Alistair of it, he had laughed and said: ‘I don't see brother Ian peaching on me, do you? Who's to know anyway in the dark?' We had left it at that.

Send a slightly overstated on-the-spot weather report to the Bureau hoping that they would supply it to the Air Force who in turn would call off the manoeuvre? My mind jeered at me even as I composed it — how would you get away with that one? 'On the basis of my observations of a storm sixty years ago. .!' What else was I basing my assumptions on? Not the tight interwoven system of highly scientific observations from a score of professional stations in this year of grace, transmitted at the speed of light to the central Bureau in Pretoria, digested by computer, and fed by skilled professional weathermen every few hours to hundreds of ships round the coast, scores of jetliners over the land, and squadrons of faster-than-sound military aircraft at a dozen bases. I felt the first tingle of doubt when I turned the spotlight on myself. If I dressed up the message in professional code, someone might see through it and say, Fairlie's been too long in the Southern Ocean, he's losing his nerve. He's lived with these gales so long they're starting to get under his skin.

Signal the Air Force? Even if I knew their wavelength, such a by-passing my own people would invite a rocket which might mean my getting no nearer Antarctica than the next port…

Say even the Weather Bureau were to accept my assessment of the impending gale-against all the skill and advice of their other weather stations — what would their reaction be? Walvis Bay carried a load of scientific equipment whose delicacy had caused a hundred headaches ashore and afloat. The Weather Bureau would play it safe. Get out of the storm area, it would say with complete justification. If there's any risk to the equipment in making the nearest port, turn back to Durban. You can still be there, safe in port, ahead of the storm. If you can't risk that gear in a winter's gale off the Cape, then there's no point in trying it in the Roaring Forties. They would appreciate the finer points of difference between the ocean swells of deep waters and the sort of seas I knew spelled Waratah weather.

My glance at my watch was more instinctive than anything else. It may have even been subconscious, the rendezvous time.

It gave me reason to beg Smit's question. I needed time. I must not miss the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity which offered to try and solve the Waratah mystery.

'The shipping forecast is due in ten minutes,' I said. 'Bring me up one of the transistor portables from the ward-room. Come and hear yourself what the Weather Bureau thinks of it.'

'Good -1 mean, very well, sir.' I liked Smit's unquestioning enthusiasm which burst through his veneer of formality as soon as he came under pressure.

I took another long look at the south-west. That curious sky and blanched sea still told me — Waratah. If it was, or if it wasn't-like a martyr on a gridiron, whichever way I turned I would get myself burned.

The Weather Bureau turned the spit again with its lunch-time forecast.

Siriit came racing up the companionway just as the bland tones of the woman announcer, sitting in her soundproof box 600 miles away inland, said, 'There is a gale warning. We repeat, there is a gale warning.'

Smit grimaced derisively as she shifted the emphasis from one word to another with professional satisfaction.

‘A strong south-westerly wind between East London and Durban will reach thirty to forty knots in the south of the area.'