Tim Severin - King's Man

All this time the cog was heaving up and down as each wave rolled under her hull, the anchor ropes went taut and then grew slack as the vessel worked her tethers, and the motion tugged the anchors treacherously across the soft sea floor.

There was nothing we could do but wait and hope that one or more anchors might take a firmer grip and halt our slithering progress. But we were disappointed. There came the deeper trough of a large wave, and we felt the keel of the cog thump down on the sand. Several moments passed, and then the vessel shuddered again, though the wave trough had been less obvious. Even the most inexperienced novice on our crew knew that our ship was being pushed farther into the shallows. Inexorably the gale drove the cog onward, and soon the shocks of the hull striking sea floor became a steady pounding. The cog was a credit to her shipwrights. Her stout hull stayed watertight, but no vessel could withstand such a battering for ever. The gale was showing no sign of easing, and each wave carried our ship a few inches farther towards her tomb.

Before long she was tilting over, the deck at so steep an angle that we had to cling to the rigging to prevent ourselves slipping into the sea. The cog was halfway towards her death. Even if her hull stayed intact, she would be mired in the shifting sands until she was buried and her timbers rotted. Her skipper, whose livelihood depended on his vessel, finally recognised that the sand would never let her escape.

'Abandon ship,' he called despondently, shouting to make himself heard above the grumbling of the waves which tumbled all around us.

When the gale had first hit us, our vessel's main tender - a ten-oared rowing boat — had been towing astern on a heavy cable, but when the cog struck the sands, the lighter boat had been carried ahead by the waves, the cable had parted, and our tender

had been swept away. The remaining boat was a square-ended skiff, clumsy and heavy, suitable only for sheltered waters. The crew took axes and hacked away the low bulwarks to open a gap through which they pushed her into the seas. Even as the skiff slid overboard and hit the water, the breaking crest of a wave rose up and half filled her. The sailors shoved and jostled as they began to climb over the rail.

The skipper held back; probably he could not bear to abandon his ship. He saw me hesitating at the spot I had chosen. I was clinging to a shroud at the highest point on the vessel so that I did not tumble down the sloping deck. He must have thought that I was too frightened to move, and was hanging there, frozen with in terror.

'Come on, father,' he shouted, beckoning me. 'The boat is your only hope.'

I took a second look at the squabbling boat crew and doubted what he said. Gathering up the hem of my brown priest's gown, I tucked the material into the rope belt around my waist, waited for the next wave to crest, and the last the skipper saw of me was my flailing arms and naked legs as I launched myself out into the air and flung myself into the sea.

The water was surprisingly warm. I felt myself plunging down, then rolled and turned by the waves. I gasped for air and gulped down seawater, gritty to the taste. I spat out a mouthful as I came to the surface, looked around to locate the shoreline, and began to swim towards it. Waves broke over my head again and thrust me downward so that I was swimming underwater. I struggled to keep my direction. Another wave tumbled me head over heels, and I lost my bearings. As I came back to the surface, I squeezed my eyelids together to clear my vision, and my eyes stung with the salt. Once more I looked around, trying to realign myself with the shore, and caught a glimpse of the ship's small boat and its desperate crew. Four of the sailors were rowing raggedly, while the others bailed frantically, but their craft was dangerously low in the water. Even as I watched, a breaking wave lifted up the skiff, held the little boat there for a moment, and then casually overturned it, stern over bow, and flung the crew into the water. Most of them, I was sure, did not know how to swim.

Grimly I battled on, remembering my days in Iceland when I had taken part in the water games when the young men competed at wrestling as they swam, the winner attempting to hold his opponent underwater until he gasped for mercy. I recalled how to hold my breath, and so I kept my nerve as the waves crashed over me, trying to smother me, but also washing me closer to the shore. I was an old man, I cautioned myself, and I should dole out my last remaining strength like a miser. If I could stay afloat, the sea might deliver me to land. Had Niord and his handmaidens, the waves, wanted to drown me, they would have done so long ago.

I was on the point of abandoning the struggle when suddenly a pair of hands gripped me painfully under the shoulders and I found myself being hauled ashore, up the sloping beach. Then the hands abruptly released their grip, and I flopped face down on wet sand, while my rescuer, speaking in thickly accented Frankish, said, "What shitty luck. All I've got is a useless priest.' At that moment I closed my eyes and passed into a haze of exhaustion.

A kinder voice awoke me. Someone was turning me on my back, and I could feel the clinging wetness of my monk's gown against my skin. 'We must find some dry clothing for you, brother. The good Lord did not spare you from the sea just to let you die of ague.'

I was looking up into the anxious face of a small, wiry man kneeling beside me. He wore a monk's habit of black cloth over a white gown, and was tonsured. Even in my exhausted condition I wondered to which monastic order he belonged, and how he came to be on a windswept beach, the scene of a shipwreck.

'Here, try to stand,' he was saying. 'Someone nearby will provide shelter.'

He slipped one arm under me and helped me rise to a sitting position. Then he coaxed me to my feet. I stood there, swaying.

My body felt as though it had been thrashed with a thick leather strap. I looked around. Behind me the waves still rumbled and crashed upon the sand, and some distance away I could see the wreck of our cog. She was well and truly aground now, lying askew. Her single mast had snapped and fallen overboard. Closer, in the shallows, the upturned hull of the ship's skiff was washing back and forth in the surge and return of the breakers. Occasionally, a large crest half rolled the little boat, and she gyrated helplessly. A group of about a dozen men was standing knee-deep in the sea, their backs turned towards me. Some were staring intently at the little skiff, others were watching the waves as they came sweeping towards the shore.

'No use asking them for help,' said my companion.

Then I noticed the two bodies lying on the sand, just a few yards away from the watchers. I guessed they were corpses of sailors from the cog who had drowned when the skiff capsized. When last I saw them, they were fully dressed. Now they were stripped naked.

'Wreckers and scavengers. Heartless men,' lamented my companion. 'This is a dangerous part of the coast. Yours is not the first ship to have come to grief here.' Gently he turned me around, and helped me stumble towards the distant line of cliffs.

A fisherman took pity on us. He had a small lean-to against the foot of the cliffs, where he kept his nets and other fishing gear. Over a small charcoal fire he heated a broth of half-cured fish and onions, which he gave us to eat while I sat shivering on a pile of sacks. A cart would be coming shortly, he said. The driver was his cousin, who passed by at the same time each day, and he would carry us into town. There the church priest would assist us. Listening to him, I found I was able to follow his words as they were mainly of the Frankish tongue, though mixed with a few words I recognised from my own Norse, as well as phrases I had heard when I lived in England. With my companion, I conversed in Latin.