Bernard Cornwell - Wildtrack

I turned on to the starboard tack and hauled the sheets tight. I might have done this mainly for Angela, but there was a small part of me that was offended by what had happened. I’d been warned off by people who did not give a toss for the justice of their cause.

No one knew how Nadeznha Bannister had died, but that ignorance had not prevented them planning a callous revenge. So tonight, despite the warnings, I would sail out of bloody-mindedness. I remembered another night when I’d been told, ordered, not to do something. There’d been a sniper, I remembered, and two bunkers with bloody great .50 machine-guns.

The sniper was the real bastard, because he’d had a brand new American nightsight and had already hit a half-dozen of our men.

The boss had radioed that we were to bug off out of there, but to do that would have been to jeopardize…I jerked back to the present as Sycorax crashed her bows into a steeper wave and the spray rattled harsh along her decks. I shivered, pegged the tiller, and went below for sweater, boots and oilies.

As it fell dark I saw the vaporous loom of the Eddystone’s light sweeping its double flash through the pelting rain. Sycorax was holding her course beautifully as she pounded through a broken sea; she might not have slick self-tailing winches and roller-reefing, but her long deep keel made her a better sea boat than any of the modern plastic-fantastics that roamed the pleasure coasts of the world. I switched on my electric navigation lights and hoped the battery was properly charged. The engine smelt weird, so I just put the cover back on and hoped benign neglect would cure whatever had gone wrong. I tapped the barometer and found the glass was rising. I called the coastguard on the VHF and asked for a forecast.

Strong winds tonight, but falling off towards dawn, then another depression following quickly.

I went topsides briefly and checked that no merchant ship was about to turn me into matchwood. None was, so I went below again and emptied two tins of baked beans into a saucepan. It was all the food I had, and tasted good. I filled a Thermos with tea and carried it to the cockpit. Now it was simply a question of letting the wet hours pass. The rain slackened as the full darkness came, and I wondered if the wind was already falling off. The sea was softer now, though the swell which slid under Sycorax ’s counter was long and high. The waves had gone from silver-grey to grey to dark. Soon they would be jet black, but perhaps streaked with phosphorescence.

Clouds drowned the moonlight.

Sycorax sailed herself. Her tiller was pegged and her sheets cleated tight. Sometimes, as the swell dropped her hard into a trough, the mainsail would shiver, but she picked herself up and drove on. I still had no radar-reflector and hoped that the big ships which were bashing down from Amsterdam and Hamburg and Felixstowe were keeping a proper watch. I could see the bright confusion of their lights all about me.

Midnight passed and the wind dropped and veered. I let out the sheets and felt Sycorax ’s speed increase as she found herself on her favourite point of sail: a broad reach. I’d seen few other yachts, but just before one o’clock, and when I should still have been well north of Wildtrack ’s course, I saw the lights of a vessel under sail. She was travelling west and, to intercept her, I unpegged the tiller and hardened Sycorax into the wind again. The big swell sometimes dropped the other yacht out of my sight, all but for her masthead’s tri-coloured light which would flicker over the shredding wavetops.

I tried to judge her size, but could not. I took bearings on her which told me she was sailing fast.

I opened the locker where my flares were stored. Bannister would not stop if I radioed him on the VHF, and if I tried to sail across his bow I invited a collision that, though it would stop him, could also sink Sycorax . Instead I planned to cross his stern and loose red emergency flares into the sky, because even a racing boat would have to stop and help a boat in distress. That was the law. Mulder and Bannister might curse, but they would have to gybe on to the new course and come to my rescue. Once they had come alongside I would play what cards I had. They were not many, but they included a Colt .45 which I had fetched up from its hiding place. I knew that if I fired the rocket flares I would cause chaos in the Channel. There would be lifeboats, radios and other ships all contributing to a rescue that wasn’t needed, but I had promised Angela to stop her husband, and if that promise turned a busy sealane into chaos, then chaos it would be.

I saw I was heading the approaching yacht. He was on the port tack, I on a starboard, so it was his job to stay clear of me. He’d seen my lights, for he steered a point southerly to give me room. I hardened again, and he thought I had not seen him and shone a bright torch beam up on to his mainsail to make a splash of white light in the darkness. At the same time another of his crew called me on Channel 16; the VHF emergency channel. “Sailing boat approaching large yacht, do you read me, over.”

It was not Mulder’s voice, nor Bannister’s. I thought I detected a French accent in the crackling speaker. I was close enough to see the sail number in the torchlight and, because it was not Wildtrack , I fell off the wind to go astern of him. The torch was switched off. A voice shouted a protest that was made indistinct by the spray and wind.

The yacht’s stern light showed me the name Mariette on the white raked transom. The port of registry was Étaples. I waved as I passed, then the wind tore us apart as I headed south again.

By three o’clock I knew I must be well inside the rough circle I’d sketched on George’s chart. The night was black as pitch and the wind was still dropping. I turned westwards, heading against Wildtrack ’s course. I searched for an hour. I saw two more French-men, a Dutchman, but no Wildtrack . A bulk-carrier crashed past and Sycorax ’s sails slatted as we were tossed on the great wake. Apart from the big ship the sea was empty. I had failed.

I turned north. There was already a lightening to the east as the false wolf-light of dawn edged the clouds. I was bone tired, cold, and hungry. I had failed, but I had always known how narrow was my chance of success. From Sycorax ’s cockpit I could never see more than two miles and Wildtrack could have run past me at any time in the darkness. In truth I doubted whether I had ever sailed far enough south. Bannister was gone to the Lizard and death.

It began to rain again as I ran for home. The rain beaded the shrouds and dripped from the lacing on the boom. I made some more tea and found a wrinkled apple in the galley. I cut out the rotten bit and ate the rest.

Dawn showed the sea heaving in a greasy, slow swell. Patches of fog drifted above a sludge-like sea. If the fog lifted, it rained. The wind was west now, but negligible and sullen. The rudder, with no speed to give it bite, banged in its pintles. Another depression was meant to be racing towards the Channel, and Wildtrack would be praying for its arrival if she was to make a fast outwards run.

I was just praying to get home. Sailing isn’t always fun in the sun.

It isn’t always happy friends on sparkling decks in a perfect force four on a glinting ocean. It can be misery incarnate. It can be rain and fog and cold and hunger. It can be a sulky sea and a listless sky.

It can be failure, and then the only consolation is to remember that we volunteered for the misery.

So, in misery, I crawled north. I spent a quarter-hour working out the tidal currents to help my course, then tried to coax the engine into life. It was on strike, and the wind seemed to be in sympathy with its grudge. I stripped the fuel system, tried again, and still it wouldn’t start, so, instead, I tidied up the cabin and washed the decks. I told myself time and time again that I would not be disappointed if Angela had not returned to Devon. I told myself that the two of us had no future. I told myself over and over that I really did not care whether she was waiting for me at Bannister’s house or not.