Geoffrey Jenkins - Scend of the Sea

'That man Jubela of yours should have a gold medal,' went on Bates, not looking at me. The Super Frelon was moving ahead, fast. 'Everyone wants to give him one.'

‘I saw him swept away and drowned,' I said weakly.

'A British tanker picked up Jubela barely a couple of hours after that,' resumed Bates. 'He'd got himself a rubber dinghy-the yacht's, I suppose? The tanker radioed that Touleier was lost — the hunt was on. We knew almost exactly where to go.'

'South of the Bashee.' My words were almost involuntary. 'It wasn't the yacht only,' Bates added grimly. 'Your man said you'd found the Waratah’ The cold agony of it flooded back. ‘I did.'

Bates glanced sharply at me. 'What he had to say so electrified HQ that I took a chopper that same afternoon and risked my neck to bring Jubela ashore from the tanker to tell us what he knew.' He smiled. 'I've learned to fly some since meeting the Fairlies. What Jubela said galvanized us still further, when we got him ashore. Apparently he'd been shouting his head off aboard the tanker for them to do something.'

I could hardly frame the words. 'About-what?' Bates said levelly. 'Jubela saw you come back alone, without…'

I could not say her name.

'He knew that something terrible had happened to her, but he didn't know what. He guessed she was trapped somehow when you came yelling for an axe. He'd also seen the name Waratah and said you'd told him about her.'

‘I explained to him about my father and grandfather,' I interjected.

'It was nothing to what he gave the papers,' Bates went on. 'I felt really sorry for your police pals trying to cope.'

Then he resumed rapidly, refusing to let me speak. 'The tanker picked up Jubela drifting in his dinghy miles away to the south-west of where he last saw you. The search was easy, after that. A couple of frigates went first, and they worked back from where Jubela was found. One of them got a sounding which looked good. By that time Jubela had told us about the seamount, but it was outside the scope of ordinary sounding equipment. Next day we got the survey ship Africana with her special equipment down from Durban. It was a piece of cake. She found the seamount, spot on.'

I broke into a flow of words. 'And the WaratahV

'That submerged seamount confused the echoes from the metal hull of the Waratah' replied Bates. 'The survey ship reported that it was, in fact, an isolated, narrow, needle-like pinnacle jutting up hundreds of feet sheer from the ocean floor, so narrow. .'

'It was just wide enough for Waratah to lie on top of it,' I said. 'Her beam was only fifty-nine feet.'

'In the wide ocean, you'd have to run slap into a tiny thing like that before you'd locate it,' remarked Bates. 'We also established that the seamount lies between the usual northbound and southbound routes the ships use; a sort of no-man's-water.'

I remembered how Douglas Fairlie had written that Waratah had yawed off course when the rudder jammed.

'Jubela's story about your lady friend being trapped aboard the hulk had the whole world by the ears,' Bates said. I did not like the way he would not look me in the eyes when he spoke about her.

They sent down divers and frogmen. They found the wreck, upside down, sixty feet below the surface.'

I waited. I could not ask.

They tapped the hull. They got an answer near an old hatch.'

I sagged forward in my seat and Bates shouted for assistance, but I waved them away. 'She's alive?'

This morning, five hours ago, when I took off, she was alive,' Bates answered tersely. 'Just. Immediately they found the hulk they got an air line down to her — fired it through the hatch with an explosive bolt. Water, too, fortified with this and that to keep her going.'

I thumped my hands, which they had bandaged while Bates talked, unfeelingly on the armrest of my seat. I did not even feel the pain. 'Why don't they get her out?’

Bates stopped me. 'There is only one man who can tell them how to get her out. We had to find you at any cost.'

I choked and turned away. I held up my shattered hands to Bates. I could not speak.

But he went on. 'They found Touleier's mainsail the day after she was missing — like Jubela, it had drifted away southeast, away from the seamount. Some rigging wreckage, too.'

'We cut away the mast.'

'The experts argued that where the wreckage had drifted, there also would the disabled yacht drift. That's the way Jubela went in his dinghy. But I had read what you told the C-in-C about the search for the Waratah and how the cruisers followed the current and looked south-east. I argued. I reasoned. When I quoted you they were dubious. I tried to tell them their search was making the same mistake as for the Waratah. I was out over the sea every day. I wanted to fly north-east, away-from the search area which they had plotted. I remembered your telling the C-in-C about two old steamers which had been disabled near the Bashee and didn't drift south-east at all, but north-east?'

I nodded. 'Tekoa and Carnarvon. Tekoa landed up near Mauritius after six months.'

Bates went on. 'The search drew a blank, of course. They called it off officially yesterday. I put my big oar in, for the hundredth time. At last they agreed to let me take this old bag and search north-east. The gale blew itself out on the coast a couple of days ago. See those fuel drums in the rear? The Super Frelon can take a company of troops but I loaded her up with fuel instead to get maximum range. I spent half last night estimating your probable drift to the north-east — if you were still afloat.'

The big machine, the calming sea below, and the broken rearguard of storm cloud hurrying away seemed as unreal as the two uniformed jackets under our torchlight.

I started to explain about the ash chute. 'When will we land?'

'About mid-afternoon.’

'Then tomorrow we can get her out.’

Bates swung away from the controls and his eyes locked with mine. 'Fairlie, there is no tomorrow.'

I was stunned, confused, still unable properly to grasp the fact that she was not dead,

'But she's alive and she's got air and water-you said so yourself.'

Bates's voice was edged. ‘I had to find you today. There is a new south-westerly gale due in the Waratah area tonight. I don't have to say any more, do I?'

I sagged in my seat. 'Surely they can keep the air and water lines going until it is past!'

'You'll see for yourself when we come over the spot,' said Bates, his voice gentle. 'There's a whole flotilla of ships at the wreck. Frigates, survey ship, salvage pontoons. They can't keep salvage pontoons at sea in a gale. To start with, they haven't got engines. The lifelines would snap in a seaway anyway. Unless we can get her out this afternoon, they'll have to cut the lines …'

'That's impossible!' I shouted.

The radio operator came behind us, handing Bates a signal. The pilot ignored my outburst.

He said sharply, 'If you want to save her, talk, and talk fast, man! Tell the salvage boys the set-up, the layout, the technicalities. Only you know them. Put in every tiny thing you can remember — it may be important for the boffins. Dan here will transmit in relays what you have to say. I'm pushing this old flying hencoop as hard as I can. Talk!'

While Bates flew, Dan knelt by my seat, taking notes to radio ahead to the salvage teams. I explained how the ash chute led into the interior of the Waratah, the hatch and its mechanism, how it had jammed shut, how the watertight bulkhead sealed the tunnel from the engine-room.

The Super Frelon roared on.

I dared not look at the south-western horizon. I dreaded that purple-blue smudge whose arrival would mean the end of the salvage operation. I tried to put from my mind the horror of her being trapped in that chute for five whole days, not knowing whether it was day or night, haunted by those two ghosts, one in a white jacket and the other in a blue. I banished the awful nightmare from my mind which was part of my frenzy aboard Ton/ier — that she would put an end to it all as they had done.