Tim Severin - Buccaneer

For an hour or more the two of them conned the ship from the foremast as Trinity swerved and sidled her way past one danger and then the next. Gradually the sky began to lighten and, very slowly, the extent of their predicament became clear.

Ahead stretched an iron-bound coast, a vista of grey and black cliffs and headlands which extended in both directions far into the distance. Behind the cliffs rose ridges of bare rock which became the slopes and screes of a coastal mountain range whose jagged crest was lightly dusted with snow. Nowhere was there anything to relieve the impression of monotonous desolation except an occasional clump of dark trees growing in sheltered folds of the austere landscape. Closer to hand were the small offshore islands and reefs which had so nearly destroyed the ship in the darkness and still menaced her. Here the surface of the sea sporadically exploded in warning spouts of spray or heaved and sank in sudden upwellings which warned of submerged rocks and shoals. Even the channels between the islands were forbidding. In them the water moved strangely, sometimes streaked with foam, at other times with the deep, blue-black slickness of a powerful current.

'Hang on!' said Dan. He had seen the telltale white flurry of a squall which had suddenly ripped up the surface of the sea and was now racing towards them. Hector braced himself. Trinity abruptly heeled under the force of the wind. From below them came the creaking sound of the foresail spar as it took the strain and then the sudden crack of something breaking. The squall was strong enough to lift a vaporous whirl of fine spray and send it over the ship, darkening her timbers and leaving a slick on the deck. Hector felt the moisture settle on his face and trickle down inside his collar.

A hail from the deck made him look down. Sharpe was beckoning to him, ordering him to return to near the helm. He made his way carefully down the shrouds, gripping tightly in case another squall struck, and reached the poop deck. Sharpe was no longer in a towering rage but seething with subdued anger. Beside him Sidias looked shamefaced, clearly ill at ease.

'Lynch, this idiot seems to have lost his command of English,' snarled Sharpe. 'Tell him that I want some sensible advice, not pretence and falsehood. Ask him in a language he understands what he recommends, which way we go.'

Speaking in Spanish, Hector repeated the question. But he knew already that the pilot had been feigning incomprehension.

'I don't know,' the Greek confessed, avoiding Hector's gaze. 'I have no knowledge of this part of the coast. It is strange to me. I have never been here before.'

'Is there nothing you recognise?'

'Nothing,' Sidias shook his head.

'What about the tides?'

Sidias nodded towards a nearby island. 'Judge for yourself. That line of the weeds indicates a rise and fall of at least ten or twelve feet and that would be normal for the parts of the coast I am familiar with.'

Hector relayed the information to Sharpe who glowered at the pilot. 'What about an anchorage or a harbour? Ask him that.'

Again the pilot could only speculate. He supposed there would be bays or inlets where a ship might find shelter, but anchoring was sure to be difficult. The drop-off from the land was usually so abrupt that an anchor seldom reached to the seabed before its cable ran out.

'We follow along the coast until we find shelter,' Sharpe decided. He had to raise his voice above the moan of the wind. 'God grant that we can scrape through.'

It was a wild, intimidating ride. Every member of Trinity s crew was now up on deck, either spread along the rails or in the shrouds. Even the drunkards had sobered up. They knew the danger, the strain showing on their faces as they watched the reefs slide by. Sometimes their vessel came so close to disaster that her hull brushed fronds of seaweed writhing in the backwash of the swells. Only the skill of the helmsmen, responding to every shift of the current or change in the strength and direction of the wind, kept their ship from being driven into the turmoil of waves which broke and thundered against the cliffs. Finally, after nearly an hour of this unnerving progress, they came level with an entrance to a narrow bay. 'Turn in! And stand by to lower the pinnace,' Sharpe ordered. He had noted the area of calm water behind a low promontory. Here a skilfully handled ship might find shelter and lie at rest. More crucially, a great solitary tree stood on the point of land, only a few paces from the water's edge. Trinity sidled in and the crew began to clew up the foresail. As the vessel slowed, the pinnace splashed down in the water, and a dozen men rowed furiously for the land, towing the main cable behind their boat. They scrambled up the beach, made fast the cable around the tree, and Trinity gathered sternway. She fell back until the heavy rope came taut, and the ship slowed to a halt, tethered to the land and safe.

A sense of relief spread throughout the ship. Men thumped one another on the back in celebration. Some climbed into the rigging and out along the foremast yard and began to furl the sails. Sharpe was halfway back to his cabin when a last great gust of wind came raging over the promontory and struck the ship. Under the impact Trinity reared back like a startled mare against her bridle. The main cable sprang from the surface, water spraying from the strands of rope as they took the strain, and when the full force of the wind drove upon her, there was a loud, rending crack. The great tree holding the ship came toppling down, the ancient roots giving up their hold. Trinity, her sails furled, was helpless. The gust drove her backwards across the small bay and, with an impact that shuddered the length of her keel, she struck stern first upon the shingle beach. Above the shriek of the wind, every man aboard heard the sound as her rudder sheered. The vessel was crippled.

For three weeks the wounded Trinity lay in the bay. A web of ropes fastened to boulders and posts driven into the shingle held her steady against the rise and fall of the tides while the carpenters worked to fashion and fit a new rudder. The great gust had been the gale's final stroke, and the wind was never again so fierce. Instead the weather was continually cold, damp and oppressive. Thick cloud clamped down, obscuring the mountains, so that the leaden sky blended with the slate-grey landscape. Those men who were not working on the repairs reverted to their endless games of cards and dice or prowled the beach and prised mussels off the rocks. They shot penguins to boil and roast. The flesh was quite palatable, being as dark as venison though oily. Dan volunteered to explore inland and came back to report no sign whatever of human life. The interior was too harsh and craggy to support settlement. He claimed to have come across unknown wild plants which might prove useful additions to the near-empty medicine chest, but this was only an excuse so that he and Hector could go ashore. They took with them the bamboo tube containing their copies of Captain Lopez's navigation notes.

Safely out of sight of the ship, they tried to make some sense of their notes, smoothing out the pages and putting them in order.

'I think this sheet shows the coast and the approaches to the Passage,' said Hector. He placed a page on the flat surface of a boulder and weighed the corners down with pebbles. 'But it has very little detail. The mountain range is shown as extending all along the coast, and there are at least two dozen islands marked. But they all look much the same. We could be anywhere.'

Dan ran his finger down the page. 'See here, the entrance to the Passage is clearly shown.'

Hector brightened. 'If our notes are accurate — and Captain Lopez's original is right - I'm confident that I could find the Passage. All we need to know is our latitude.'