Hammond Innes - The Black Tide

that I’d no real confidence in the conclusion we had reached. ‘I’m not even sure Choffel used the word salvage. It sounded like it, that’s all. If you remember, I made that quite clear.’

He nodded. ‘Understood. But Mike and I didn’t come to the same conclusion solely on the basis of what you had told me. We worked it out for ourselves. Unless they were going to operate independently, they’d want to rendezvous as near the target as possible.’

‘It doesn’t have to be an island,’ I said. ‘There’s all the mainland coast, or better still a fixed position out at sea.’

He shook his head. ‘The mainland would be too risky, but we did give a lot of thought to a sight-fixed rendezvous. It’s what you or I would choose. But we’re navigators. Terrorists tend to be urban creatures. They wouldn’t trust a rendezvous that was arrived at by using a sextant and tables stuffed with figures. They’d want a fixed point they could see.’ We were in the bows then and he had his hands in his pockets, balancing himself easily to the plunging movement of the ship. ‘You picked on the Selvagens, so did we, and the more we thought about it, the more ideal they appeared. And now I’ve seen them—’ He turned his head to port, staring westward to where the sound of the seas pounding Selvagem Pequena came to us as a continuous deep murmur. ‘No ship’s captain wants to tangle with that lot. They give this group a wide berth, and the silly idiot who ran his vessel on to the rocks there only goes to make the point that it’s a bloody

dangerous place.’ He turned then, walking slowly back towards the empty cockpit lit by the faint glow of the lights below. ‘Don’t worry about it,’ he said. ‘Our friend will turn up. I’m sure of it.’

‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘But probably not tomorrow or the next day or the next — just how long are you prepared to hang around here?’

‘For three weeks if necessary,’ he said. And when I asked him if we’d got enough food on board, he answered curtly, ‘If we have to stay that long, it’s water, not food, will be the problem.’

I thought it might be the humans, too, for the prospect of hanging around these godforsaken islands for three weeks appalled me. But, as his words indicated, we were committed now and no point in leaving until we were absolutely sure this wasn’t the meeting place.

That night it came on to blow. Even though we were hove-to there was a lot of movement and the noise of the wind in the rigging and waves breaking made it difficult to sleep. Saltley seemed to be up and about most of the night checking our position against the light on Selvagem Grande and some time in the early hours, at the change of the watch I think, the ship was put about with a great crashing of gear and slatting of sails, feet pounding on the deck and somebody shouting to run her off as the jib sheet was caught up on the winch. All this I heard as in a dream, clinging to my bunk, not wishing to be roused from the half-sleep in which I lay. A cold wind came down through the open hatch and when, after running for some

minutes, they turned about again, bows into the wind and hove-to, I distinctly heard Mark call out, ‘The light’s gone.’ And a moment later — ‘It’s raining. I can’t see a bloody thing.’ As I fell back into slumber again, I was thinking of the red painted slogans on the rocks and the waves breaking over the Pequena and Fora reefs, hoping to God Saltley knew his stuff as an inshore navigator.

The next thing I knew the first grey light of a dismal dawn was filtering into the saloon. Toni Bartello was shaking me violently. ‘We’re reefing. Get up please.’ And as I stirred he yelled in my ear — ‘Oilskins and seaboots. There’s a lot of water in the cockpit and it’s raining like hell.’

It was a foul morning, the wind near gale force and poor visibility. I have seen plenty of rough seas, but it’s one thing to observe them from high up in the closed-in comfort of a big ship’s wheelhouse, quite another to face steep breaking waves virtually from sea level. Saltley told me to take the wheel while the rest of them, all except Pamela who was still fast asleep, reefed the main and then changed down to storm jib, and all the time the crash of seas bursting against the hull, spray flying across the deck and everything banging and slatting as the boat bucked and rolled and the wind came in blustering gusts.

‘Where are the islands?’ I yelled to Saltley as he half fell into the cockpit. We were hove-to again and nothing visible except a bleak circle of storm-tossed water and grey scudding clouds.

‘Over there,’ he yelled, putting on his harness and making a vague gesture towards the porthand shrouds.

All that day we only saw them once, but that once was enough to scare us badly, for we suddenly saw heavy breaking seas quite close on the starb’d bow and as we put about, I caught a glimpse of that wrecked tanker’s superstructure, a dim ghost of a shape seen through a blur of rain and spray. After that Saltley took no chances and we ran south for a good hour before turning and heaving-to again.

Later the rain eased and the wind dropped, but we had been badly frightened and even when there were no more clouds and the stars paling to the brightness of the young moon, we still kept to two-man watches. Dawn broke with high peaks aflame in the east as the sun rose firing the edges of old storm clouds. No sign of the islands, no ship of any sort in sight, the sea gently heaving and empty to the horizon in every direction.

Fortunately we were able to get sun sights and fix our position. We were some twenty miles east southeast of Selvagem Pequena. We had already shaken out the reefs and now we set the lightweight genoa. The contrast was unbelievable, the ship slipping fast through the water, the sea almost flat calm and the decks dry, not a drop of spray coming aboard.

Saltley took the opportunity to check his camera. It was a good one with several lenses, including a 300 mm. telephoto lens. He also took from his briefcase some official GODCO pictures of both the Howdo Stranger and the Aurora B. He asked us to

study them carefully so that if our tankers turned up, however brief the sighting, we’d still be able to identify them. Later he put them in the top drawer of the chart table so that if we needed to check any detail they’d be ready to hand.

It was the middle of the afternoon before we raised Selvagem Grande. We sailed all round it and then down to Pequena and Fora. No tanker, nothing, the wind falling very light, the sea almost a flat calm with ripples that caught the slanting sun in reflected dazzles of blinding light. It was quite hot and towards dusk a haze developed. This thickened during the evening till it was more a sea fog, so that we had another worrying night with no sign of the light on Selvagem Grande and no stars and the moon no more than a ghostly glimmer of opaque light.

In the end we turned eastward, sailing for three hours on a course of 90°, going about and sailing a reciprocal three hours on 270°. We did that twice during the course of the night and when dawn came there was still the same thick clammy mist and nothing visible.

We were making towards Selvagem Grande then and by the time breakfast was over and everything washed up and stowed, the sun was beginning to burn up the mist and just visible as a golden disc hung in a golden glow. Water dripped in rainbow drops from the gold-painted metal of the main boom and the only sound on deck was the tinkling gurgle of water slipping past the hull.

Shortly after 10.00 I handed the wheel over to

Pamela. Saltley was dozing in his bunk, which was the starb’d quarter berth aft of the chart table, and Toni and Mark were up in the bows servicing the snap-shackle end of the masthead spinnaker hoist which was showing signs of chafe. I paid a visit to the heads, had a shave and then began checking Saltley’s DR position. I was just measuring off the distance run on each course during the night when Pamela called down to ask me how far off the island was supposed to be.