Geoffrey Jenkins - Scend of the Sea

‘I’ll try,' I said, going to the eye-bolt. The odds are that the hatch is rusted solid with the hull by now. The metal round here in continual contact with the white-hot ash would deteriorate far quicker than the rest of the hull.’

I gripped the eye-bolt.

She stopped me. 'Open that, and perhaps you open a Pandora's Box. Remember Alistair's words: maybe a lot of skeletons only!'

It was so tantalizingly near.

'If it's no go, it's back to the yacht,' I replied.

I tugged. The hatch cover moved.

'It's quite loose! Give me a hand!'

She hung back, tense, uneasy.

'We needn't go in. We can shine the torch and see if we can spot anything.'

Together we lifted the metal cover about eighteen inches, but there was no way of keeping it open. I unscrewed the metal top of the boathook. We tugged the hatch open again. I jammed it with the boathook top.

The gale, ventilating the passageway, swept up to us a deep-sea smell of water and decay, a curious musty odour of rotting metal. The chute, we saw, widened slightly a little further in. It ended about fifteen feet down against a round watertight bulkhead door, clamped shut.

The torch beam also showed a narrow metal ladder, red-brown with rust, clamped against the side of the chute.

I played the beam to the bottom.

At the end of the ladder, against the floor formed by the bulkhead, hung two uniform jackets. One was white, the other blue.

She gripped my arm, and gave a sharp intake of breath, half-sigh, half-exclamation.

One of the jackets, on whose shoulders the green mould showed against the white material, was an old-fashioned naval uniform with a high upright collar. The once-gold epaulettes were also green with mould, and the brass buttons were as dim as the ship's name on the stern.

The other jacket was fresh blue. Its goldwork on the shoulders and sleeves was dimmed, but not completely tarnished.

I flicked the beam on to the insignia on the sleeve. It was a captain's jacket of the South African Airways.

My hand was shaking so much I could not direct the light. I gave it to her. She brought it back to the white jacket.

The collar was embossed with two blue anchors. The sleeves had the insignia of a merchant marine first officer.

She played the light over it inch by inch. I don't think either of us breathed.

She held it steady.

'There's something sticking out of the top pocket!' I craned forward as far as I dared. It was a black-covered notebook with a pencil in the spine. I found my voice.

'My father and my grandfather's jackets! ‘

'Your father must have scratched the panel down here! He wasn't blind or hurt — he was down there in darkness, next to his own father's jacket!'

'It must have got stuck on something — it only floated free when Walvis Bay's storm finally loosened it!'

The question seared both our minds. Would the probing flashlight next reveal two ragged heaps of bones which were my kith and kin?

It would be my duty to see them first. I took the torch from her.

Holding it at arm's-length down the shaft, I explored the corners below the jackets.

An old-fashioned miner's safety lamp with a gauze screen was in one corner. There was a scatter of matches round it.

'They used that sort of lamp in the old coal-burners' bunkers,' I said in a whisper, as if in the presence of the dead. 'Same as in the coal mines. It's a Davy lamp-couldn't cause a coal-gas explosion …'

'Ian! We must have those two jackets! Try and reach them with the boathook! ‘

I snatched up the long pole. Without its metal claw on top I could not unhook the jackets.

'I'll go down.'

'No! No!’ She held me tight. 'No! Don't! Let me! That rusted ladder won't take your weight…'

We argued; we lost life-ebbing minutes; she won.

I ran a bight of rope under her arms and eased her down. The first step held, but the second gave even under her slight weight. My heart was in my mouth. Step by step she edged her way to the jackets.

Then she was there.

She looked up and called. This old one is so fragile, I'm almost frightened to lift it.'

Before I could stop her, she unhitched the rope from under ' her arms and tied the notebook securely with it. I yanked it up. I pocketed it without looking.

My anxiety to get her out of that fate-filled tunnel and my haste made me fluff the rope on its return. The loop which I had hastily remade for her shoulders caught on the rusted rung which had snapped under her weight.

I jerked the rope.

The noose narrowed. It stuck tighter.

My hands started to sweat. I redirected the flashlight beam. I saw her upturned face above the polo collar of her sweater. For a moment, her eyes looked into mine.

I gave the rope a savage jerk.

It gave.

My arm shot wildly sideways, free of tension. It swept away the boathook prop. The hatch cover crashed shut.

All I knew was a stunning blow on the head, a crash, and a clatter.

How long did I lie there sprawled among the barnacles-five, ten minutes?

My first consciousness was of that inescapable deep-sea smell-my face was among the sea-things; second, of blood streaming into my eyes and salt on my lips; third, the stunning, overwhelming agony of mind which drove away the mists from my brain-she was trapped in the Waratah tunnel where the other Fairlies had died!

I grabbed the eye-bolt and yanked with all my strength.

It did not move.

I looked round for a lever. The boathook top and torch were missing-that had been the clatter into the chute I had heard as the hatch cover knocked me senseless.

The long wooden shaft of the boathook was there, however, and I thrust it through the eye-bolt to lift it. The effort brought a wave of nausea and a blinding stream of blood into my eyes.

I pried it. The shaft opened.

In frantic desperation I knelt down and shouted her name. There was no answer. I cupped my hands and shouted again, trying to penetrate the slab of rusty metal.

Then I saw. The jamb which had been weakened by white-hot ash in Waratah's lifetime and by over a half century of corrosion after her death had given way under the slamming weight of the hatch cover. The slab had sunk an inch or two into the rotten metal, jamming it tight.

A cold horror which had nothing to do with my stunned state came over me. I grabbed and tore at the eye-bolt until the ragged metal ripped my hands.

Still the hatch stuck fast.

I knew what I had to do. But first she must know that I had not forsaken her. I beat a rat-tat with the broken boathook shaft on the hatch cover. Had I not been so engrossed, I would have noticed that the wind had eased-that is why I heard.

Her signal came back faintly-a muted rat-tat.

I gave one final despairing tug at the unyielding eye-bolt.

Jubela! I must have his strength, an axe, some sort of lever to prise open that hatch.

I turned and got down on all fours, crawling back along the keel towards the stern. Now I realized the wind no longer plucked the way it had done. I got half to my feet and made a shambling run towards the rudder. The dinghy bobbed at its foot.

I hung back.

I hadn't the rope or the boathook now. How was I to bridge the nine-foot gaps between the giant rudder pintles? I climbed clear of the hull proper along one propeller-shaft tunnel. I let go, holding on by my hands alone. My feet groped for a foothold on the lower pintle. It was out of reach.

I glanced down in desperation. Forty or fifty feet below was the dinghy and the sea. Three or four feet from me was the slime-covered pintle.

I let go. I came down half-sideways. I fought for balance. I snatched at the thick blade of the end-on rudder, and held on. I steadied myself. I was safe.