Geoffrey Jenkins - Scend of the Sea

'Gyro's getting hot,' said Miller.

'See Scannel and get on with it,' I said.

'Perhaps if I puke over it, it'll cool down,' coughed Taylor. He vanished hastily.

Feldman stood by during the conversation, silent, lips pursed. Was I, I asked myself quickly, succumbing to the mysterious forces of that soulless ship, dead for over sixty years in her grave, by pushing Walvis Bay down the same Pondoland coast, at the same season of the year, into the same sort of storms, on her same track, at her same speed? With that question, the cold thought swept over my mind, cold now as the sting of the cold rain mixed with bursting spray on my face: am I treading on Waratah’s grave at this moment? I made a quick calculation: no. Although I could not see the land well enough to be sure, Walvis Bay was still approaching, on a line out to sea, the mouth of the Bashee River. Waratah had been twelve miles out to sea; I held Walvis Bay twelve miles offshore likewise. Waratah had still been afloat at this point, and the Clan Macintyre, although eight or ten miles astern of her, had her still in sight. Waratah was by now on the port bow of the Clan Macintyre, having crossed shortly before from the landward side. Waratah had been doing thirteen knots, and the sea had been smashing into her, rising progressively on the southwesterly gale, as it was doing now.

Feldman said cautiously, 'If we reduced speed a little, sir, it might help the gyro.'

Everyone wanted speed reduced-the ship, the men, the gyro I

I controlled my reply and said evenly, 'She's making the best heading under the circumstances — she's taking the run of the sea dead ahead. If I reduced speed, it -would make the motion worse, not better.'

I knew what I was saying was merely a half-truth, begging the question.

Before he could start to argue, I followed it up. 'No further word from the Weather Bureau?'

'No, sir. Next forecast is not for another couple of hours.' 'Good. Then we can take it things are not really too bad, eh?'

I was using sophistry, not seamanship. Feldman was unconvinced. He gestured to starboard, landwards. Three flashes.

'Bashee Mouth,' he reported formally. He seemed to be wanting to say something more, but he went on, irrelevantly, as if to force conversation, 'Light's situated on the northeastern side of the river.'

We had opened the gate of the Waratah's tomb.

The enclosed bridge gave a sense of security compared with the exposed wildness of the upper deck.

I played along with Feldman. 'How's the wind?’

'Force 8, gusting harder than that, though. Over fifty knots.'

Force 8. The threshold of a real buster-with worse to come. It was still not the gale 'of exceptional violence' which had crippled other ships at sea the day the Waratah had disappeared. Had she not quite plainly rolled over and sunk? It was the complete answer — except that it begged one inescapable fact: not one body, not one shred of evidence of wreckage, had ever been found of the Waratah. If she had turned turtle, there was the Clan Macintyre to find wreckage coming from behind; steaming towards her was another liner, the Guelph. All the search ships had found not one plank.

I told Feldman, 'I'm going to my cabin for a moment.'

I wanted to check that chart in the actual presence of a big storm to see if I could not uncover some new factor, some practical aspect perhaps, which had escaped my academic investigations.

I did not go to the chart, however. I stood for a moment undecided at the same doorway she had stepped through. And it was she, Tafline, who occupied my thoughts at that moment of crucial decision for the ship. I went across and stared at the old photograph as she had done. It meant nothing. It was-simply a photograph. It was the thought of the slim, lovely presence that held me. Was her hair dark or light? Neither. It came to me now-it was the indefinable colour the fronds of kelp have on a clear day in the Southern Ocean as they grace an iceberg, neither dark nor light, yet with some unique quality of vibrancy they take from the refracted light which changes magically as the ice lifts and falls — three qualities of light, one from the sea, one from the ice, one from the sky.

I stood, and looked as she had, at the Viscount.

Bruce Fairlie the pilot had not been afraid of storms. Why should he be? His machine was powered by thousands of horsepower, it had every latest radio and radar device. His last signal to the land had shown no concern for the weather. He had reported simply that he was flying low over the sea in strong wind and rain and would be coming in to land in a few minutes at East London airport … I shrugged off my thoughts impatiently. I had worked all this out before. All it added up to was that the airliner had been over the sea, low, south of the Bashee Mouth.

Bruce Fairlie had also opened the graveyard gate.,

It had closed for ever behind him.

No wreckage, no bodies, had ever been found. Not a plank.

I went to the chart now. On it. Waratah's track ended a little to the south of where Walvis Bay pitched and rolled. The terminal point was approximate, since she may have vanished immediately the Clan Macintyre lost sight of her. Alistair intended to come in to attack East London on a course converging with mine — and the Waratah's. He said he would be so low that there would be no chance of the radar defences picking him up. His Buccaneer would be flying at more than twice the speed of the lost airliner. Would that insure his safety-would he fly tonight? It seemed that whatever had struck down the Waratah and the Gemsbok took no account of speed, if one considered the discrepancy between them.

Where lay the common factor?

I saw.

South-west.

The run of the sea was south-west. The gale was south-west. Waratah's course was south-west. Gemsbok's course was south-west. The Buccaneer's course was south-west. Walvis Bay's course was south-west. The course was death.

'It's the whip after the lurch,' protested Taylor. 'It's like a sjambok being cracked. It's shaking the guts out of all the equipment.'

'It's only a matter of time before the spindle of the radar antenna goes,' added Miller.

Feldman glanced nervously half-over his shoulder. 'One big sea will carry away the radiosonde hut.'

The two technicians were defiant; they were civilians and could say their say to me; Feldman, without usurping authority, could give them his backing. Fear has many faces, and Feldman's was ugly to me.

I tried to keep tempers smooth.

Take a look at the problem from my point of view,' I said. 'You want me to do something about it. If I turn the ship beam-on to the sea, what do you think will happen? It's bloody dangerous anyway, but how do you think she'll roll then? Twice what she's doing now. The best way to face a storm like this is bows-on. That's the way I'm doing it.'

The Bashee light was dropping out of sight astern. Grey and uneasy, the coast lay crouched in a haze of spray, the high shoulders of the black promontories braced against the storm. Very soon it would be completely dark.

Feldman said, 'We've seen a lot of rough weather in the Southern Ocean. But look at this sea-I've never seen anything like it. Down south they come as long rollers, and there's a breathing space in between. I've never seen Walvis Bay taking it green the way she is now.'

"The gyro would be quite happy like that,' Taylor went on. 'That's what it was designed for. It's in the specification. '.'

'Blast your specifications,' I retorted impatiently. 'I can't specify the sort of sea one gets.'