Geoffrey Jenkins - Scend of the Sea

I took the black-covered notebook, embossed with two blue anchors of the famous line, wrapped it in oilskin, and buried it deep among the other Waratah things which Tafline had so carefully stowed in the waterproof galley locker.

The frenzy of the gale made it almost impossible to write Touleier's log. I resorted to a kind of cryptic telegraphese to try and rush down on paper, amid the violent kicking and jerking of the hull, something of what was happening. Often I had to wait five minutes or more between individual words because of the bucking. To try and fix the yacht's position was out of the question.

A flicker of hope came to me on the afternoon of the fourth day.

I saw my chance. There was a lull in the gale in the late afternoon. If I could get rid of the mainboom wreckage locked in the self-steering gear, I might still save the yacht.

Not until I chopped at the gear with an axe did I realize how weak I was. I had had no food since the last sandwiches nearly two days before. The salt-contaminated fresh water had made me vomit. My feeble strokes simply bounced off. I switched my attention to the stump of the mainmast, whose heel was starting to thrash. Somehow I managed to fix it, but it cost me a left hand stripped of flesh to the bone of the thumb and two fingers.

Before I could attempt more, the gale resumed in full fury.

That night I gave up hope.

In the morning, Touleier was still afloat.

I did not think it possible for her to take any more punishment, or that there was anything left to carry away. But at dawn I was jerked from my semi-coma by a crash and a gust which even in my sinking brain stood out as more violent than anything I had yet encountered. It took away the stump of mainmast and mainboom wreckage. The starboard cabin ports were blown in and water cascaded into the shambles of a cabin.

I did not want to die down there, cowed, beaten, alone. I wanted to die with a curse on my lips at the south-west wind, facing it, feeling its plucking challenge on my face at the end.

I tried to say goodbye to her at the bunk where we had had the magic of that other dawn off Pondoland, looking down on her lovelines, but a lurch crashed me to my knees, and as I sprawled I prayed, oh Christ put an end to my thoughts like the south-west wind, will the agony never end? She said, while the Waratah mystery is unsolved, I cannot be yours. Now it is resolved, and very soon she shall have me.

I dragged myself on deck to die.

The persistent slatting, rattling of the sail reached down into my coma.

My last spark of consciousness cursed the south-west wind. Could it not leave me to die even in peace? The roaring in my ears told me that the end could not be far off. My fading sea-instincts told me it was not the wind which was roaring — maybe I noted subconsciously that it had fallen. Perhaps that is what caused me to force open my eyes and wonder why, then, a sail should slat, when there was no wind?

The downrush of air forced oxygen into my unwilling lungs and I tried to get to my feet to cut loose that maddening slatting sail. As I grabbed one of the cockpit handles, the roaring increased, the wind increased.

A man hung in space over the socket of the mast.

The big Super Frelon helicopter hovered over Touleier, its rotors slatting and banging. All round the yacht the sea boiled in minor imitation of the gale. I tried to focus on the helicopter-one of the big long-range French-built craft the South African Air Force uses for troop-carrying-but all I could distinguish before a fit of giddiness swept me off my feet was the five-pointed roundel representing the Castle of Good Hope.

When I drifted back to half-consciousness, I was aware that an airman was fixing a 'horse-collar’ device under my arms preparatory to signalling the helicopter to winch me up. It was the thought of her, those priceless Waratah documents which were now all the living things I had left of her, that made me seize the grab-handle and hang on fast.

Take it easy, chum!' exclaimed the airman. 'We're here to help you. You'll be all right once we get you aboard.'

I heard a megaphone shouting above the racket of the rotors, but I was too far gone to know what was being said.

'Waratahl' I mouthed. 'In the galley. Top locker. I don't go without them!'

The pain in my hands jerked me to full consciousness. I could see the horror and pity in the airman's eyes as his glance went from the cut in my blood-matted hair to my hands.

I pulled myself together. 'Down there-a lot of documents,' I managed to get out. 'Bring them, and I'll come. Don't. . don't. . for Christ's sake don't leave her to sink; She's all I. . I. .' I couldn't formulate the words. 'Waratah!’ I articulated carefully. 'Waratah, man!'

He cupped his hands and shouted something to the hovering craft, and then signalled. He went below and came up with the documents she had wrapped in oilskin. Some of them were blotched and stained with blood and lymph from my hands.

This it?' he asked, as if speaking to a child.

I nodded. That one with all the blood — is that a little black notebook?' He unwrapped it quickly. It was.

A fresh wave of nausea overtook me. I could not uncurl my fingers from the grab-handle.

The airman made another hand signal to the Super Frelon.

He said, 'We're putting an automatic Sonar buoy on board — continuous homing signals, and then we can pick her up later-okay?'

I wasn't aware of being winched up into the helicopter. My first recollection was of lying among what appeared to be innumerable big fuel drums in the padded interior of the craft. The airman was pouring something down my throat.

Major Bates knelt next to me. He grinned when he saw me conscious. 'Our flight paths seem to cross a lot.' He saw my hands. 'You should stick to steamers.'

It was the mention of steamer that brought me sitting half upright — Waratah!

Bates said tersely, 'Can you sit up? Can you talk?'

I nodded.

He told the men who supported me, 'Carry him up forward and put him in the co-pilot's seat next to me. Give him something to eat. Coffee — put a shot of brandy into it.'

Bates was at the controls when they brought me to him, a man helping me on either side. Already I could feel a touch of warmth coming back into my body.

'Get this off — urgent — priority,' Bates dictated to the radio operator. ' "I've got Fairlie, alive, also yacht Touleier." Give the position.' He spoke over his shoulder to the man who had rescued me. 'Did you put that automatic buoy aboard her?' He nodded and Bates went on. 'It's not only your sponsors who would not forgive me for abandoning that little beauty in mid-ocean.'

'Mid-ocean?'._

Bates waved through the Perspex canopy. 'See any land? Four hundred and thirty miles out to sea.'

I started to get my thoughts straight as the food and drink had their effect.

‘I didn't realize anyone knew we were missing.'

Bates gave a short, mirthless laugh. 'Maybe people are getting wise to Fairlies popping up and then vanishing. I got a stand-by alert the day after the gale began. The papers were full of you-again. You gave them just the cream on the coffee that they love. Fairlie lost in search for lost father. All the rest of it. The whole works. The whole country's buzzing with you.'

He looked at me penetratingly, kindly. I sensed a difference of attitude from my frigid reception before by the authorities.

'Can you answer some questions? Some of them will be tough.'

He looked away and issued a string of orders.

Tafline. That is what he meant. I cringed.

'Give me a moment,' I replied uncertainly. 'Tell me more from your side first.'