We loaded the gear into the dinghy and climbed in.
Rick found the buoy again without any trouble and they both went over the side without my needing to drop the anchor. The only tools they took down were two fresh chisels, both blades sharpened to a fine edge.
I motored back to the trawler and made myself comfortable on an aluminium chair up on the bow and settled down to listen for the yell that would tell me to pick them up. The binoculars were by my side and every now and then I ran them along the top of the jagged cliff face, but the reflection I had glimpsed the previous day was nowhere to be seen. I would try later in the day when the sun was higher.
Where the previous day there had at least been a ripple on the water, it was now calm, as calm as the proverbial mill-pond. The air was still, more still than it had been since the day we had arrived in Fiji; a mugginess, a heavy humidity; and yet there hadn’t been any rain for days, not since the second last night of our first week in Leleuvia. It had poured all night then, coming down in buckets-full, and in the morning the sea had been brown from mud washed down by the rivers on Viti Levu, slowly spreading around the inshore reef, clouding the water.
There was a strangeness in the air, a strangeness that I couldn’t explain; and it was that fact which worried me more than anything else.
I looked at my watch. It was twenty minutes since they had gone down, and still another ten or fifteen until they would come up again. Perhaps Rick would know what it was about the sky that troubled me: why the white clouds seemed so high, why they were moving so fast, and yet down on the sea there was hardly a breath of wind.
I climbed into the wheelhouse to peer at the barometer; an instrument that had been neglected over the past few days with thoughts fixed on treasure and riches. There was no need to give it the usual gentle tap. I felt my eyes widen. Never had I seen it so low, never in all my days on the trawler; not even the time we’d had to seek shelter up in the Gulf.
I switched the radio on, turning the dial to the marine frequency, and sat waiting for traffic to clear so that I could call Suva Radio and get a weather report.
Two minutes later the voice signed off, but before I could press the transmit button an official voice broke through, crackling into the stillness of that quiet sea:
“Warning to all shipping. Warning to all shipping. At five a.m. this morning, tropical hurricane Bebe was centred at a position......”
I raced down to the saloon and grabbed the chart of the Fiji Group. I wasn’t worried about missing the hurricane’s present position, knowing that they would repeat it. Spreading the chart out over the control console, I listened again.
“......moving in a southerly direction at a speed of eight knots. Wind speed at the centre is expected to exceed one hundred and fifty knots, with speeds of up to one hundred knots within fifty miles of the centre. If the hurricane follows its present path, it is expected to reach the Yasawas some time in the early hours of tomorrow morning. Gale-force winds are expected to hit the north-west coast of Viti Levu some time this evening .... Warning to all shipping.....”
******
The chart drifted off the engine console as I realised that the breeze was already beginning to stir.
Fifteen
With a raging tropical hurricane bearing down on us we had no time to lose, and none whatsoever to waste. Even if they had managed to break the chest free from the grasping coral we would have to let it lie there.
I reached across and pressed the start-button, letting both engines warm up for a few long anxious seconds. Then, making certain the controls were in neutral, I pushed the throttle levers right up and back twice, the roar of the two Gardners vibrating and shaking the hull; then raced to the stern and leapt down into the dinghy.
The two heads were already bobbing on the water as I skimmed across the two hundred and fifty yards from the trawler. I skidded alongside and threw the outboard into neutral.
“What’s up?” Rick asked anxiously, looking around for trouble and not seeing a thing.
“There’s a bloody hurricane on its way here, that’s what’s up!”
“How much time have we got?”
“Bloody none!” I snapped. “Shit! Look at the sky! Look at the clouds!”
He didn’t need to; neither of them did. They both knew I didn’t scare easily.
“What about the tools?” Henry asked.
“Leave the bloody tools!” I yelled. “Just get in the blasted dinghy, for Christ’s sake!”
Rick had his tank off and was pushing it over the gunwale. I snatched it and moved to the other side of the pitching craft as he hauled himself in.
“Come on, Henry!” he called. “Quick, give me your tank.” He looked back at me over his shoulder. “Where’s she coming from?”
“Suva Radio says somewhere north-west of here. She’s heading in a southerly direction. Wind speeds up to a hundred and fifty knots.”
“Jesus Christ!”
“Yeah.”
He leaned over and grabbed hold of Henry’s wet-suit as he struggled to pull himself over the side, yanking him into the bottom of the dinghy. I jumped back to the stern and turned the throttle. Flippers and masks were ripped off as we shot back to the trawler.
“Come on!” I yelled, leaping up on deck. “Toss that bloody gear up here and let’s get the dinghy on board. I want to be out of here in the next five minutes!”
The wind was already blowing a couple of knots faster than it had been ten minutes previously.
“What about stowing all this stuff away?” Henry asked, pointing to the outboard motor and the diving gear.
“It can wait until we get under way,” I replied. “Now grab hold of the bloody dinghy and pull!”
It came over the side with a crash that must have shaken at least half a dozen rivets loose, but by this time no-one was worried about the fate of one small aluminium dinghy.
“Okay, Henry!” Rick yelled. “Get the anchor chain up while Andy and I try to figure out where we can head for shelter.” He turned to where I was staring out towards the north-west, wondering how long it would be before the bitch would tear down on us. “Got any ideas?” he asked.
“No,” I replied. “I’m just going to hope she veers away and heads south-west, but hoping isn’t going to help us.”
The engine was still running. I hadn’t bothered to shut it down after those few warning bursts on the throttle.
“Well,” he said, unzipping his wet-suit and wiping the perspiration from his forehead. “We can’t stay here, and that’s for bloody sure; and that bloody harbour up around the corner wouldn’t save us even in a moderate blow. It’s too open to the wind. You reckon we can outrun it?”
“No way.”
“Where then?”
“Back to Viti Levu?” I ventured.
“Looks like it.”
He stuck his head out of the wheelhouse window and yelled at Henry. “Get a bloody move on with the anchor!”
“I’ve got it on full speed!” he yelled back. “It won’t go any faster!”
Rick pushed the trawler to slow ahead to bring her directly over the anchor. We waited, grinding our teeth as the oval steel links seemed to clunk over the bow roller in slow motion.
Henry raised his thumb. The anchor was in sight. Rick spun the wheel to port to take us away from the island. Fifteen seconds later the anchor stock rose up over the roller and clunked down on to the deck. Henry stopped the winch, locked the chain off and came shuffling back along the deck.
As I stepped down into the saloon to fetch the chart the wind had blown from the wheelhouse, Henry leaned in through the doorway, his face a blankness of confusion and worry. I was certain that he didn’t appreciate the seriousness of the situation, but the look on my face, and the stridency of Rick’s urgent yells would have been enough to scare anyone.
“Looks bad, eh, Andy?” he asked in a small voice.
“Real bad, Henry. Ever been in a hurricane before?”
“No
.”
“Me neither,” I replied, bending down to pick up the chart. “I’ve been in some fairly bad storms; but they were nothing like this bastard’s going to be.”
“What do you want me to do?”
I thought for a moment. “Food. Make a couple of dozen sandwiches and stack them in the fridge. When this thing hits there’ll be no hope of cooking anything; and when you’ve done that, make certain that everything in the fo’c’sle and saloon is battened down tight. We don’t want anything rolling around. If any of the cupboards won’t stay closed then get a hammer, and nail the buggers shut. Take everything off the shelves and stow it somewhere out of the way. We don’t want to be tripping over anything if we have to move in a hurry. If there’s anything in the refrigerator that might spill if we roll more than forty-five degrees,” I saw his face go white at the angle, “then toss it overboard now; and get some rope around the fridge to keep that bastard closed as well. Okay?”
“Right, Andy.”
“And get the life-jackets out of the cupboard before you accidentally nail them up,” I added with a smile, trying to take some of the edge off the crisis.
It was right then I decided that treasure hunting wasn’t really my idea of fun.
He moved off sharply, scared stiff. I wasn’t going to let him know it, but he wasn’t the only one.
Rick had the trawler moving at half speed, taking us away from Wakaya, from the dog’s head, and the Sea Devil’s chest.
“Bloody hell, but that barometer’s taken a plunge,” he exclaimed through gritted teeth as I climbed back up into the wheelhouse carrying the opened chart. “I just heard the report on the radio. It’s going to be a real bastard all right.” He wiped his palms on a rag and gripped the wheel again. “Shit, I never thought of keeping an eye on the barometer. Everything seemed so calm and peaceful.”
“Yes,” I replied. “I know what you mean. We might have got a bit more warning if we’d gone around the point last night and anchored in the lagoon. I suppose somebody would have come out and warned us, given us more time to get somewhere safe; if there is such a place. Too late to worry about it now, though. What’s the latest?”
“Gale-force winds expected early evening over north-west Viti Levu.”
“She’s moving a bit faster then?”
“Looks like it.”
“Have we got time to get down around Viti Levu and into Suva harbour?”
“I don’t know. I don’t like the look of the sea.”
Where thirty minutes ago the sea had been a dead flat calm, it was now rippling as the wind caught it, tossing fine wisps of spray into the air.
“What speed can we make?” I asked.
“In this water, probably ten knots; but we don’t know how long it’s going to stay like this. In another couple of hours we might be battling against a heavy sea and a heavy wind. We could be down to four or five knots.”
“Yes,” I replied, “and Suva harbour is still about, what, seventy miles?”
“About that.”
“At five knots we’d never make it in time.”
“Right; and at four knots we’d be somewhere close to the coast in the middle of a thousand bloody reefs and shoals, at bloody midnight.”
“Okay, then?” I asked. “Where do you want to head? Out to sea?”
“Not in this bloody ocean,” he muttered. “Place is too damn full of islands for my liking. We could finish up high and dry on any one of a hundred of the little buggers.”
We were literally stuck between the devil and the deep blue sea. It had been the devil who had brought us to it, the Sea Devil, von Luckner himself. We didn’t have time to run for shelter and there seemed to be no place else to go.
“What about between Ovalau and that other island just north of Leleuvia?” I suggested.
“Which one? The small one?”
I grabbed the chart. “No, not Cagalai. Here,” I stabbed at the thick white paper with my finger. “This one, Moturiki.”
It was longer than Wakaya: about five miles from one end to the other and maybe four square miles in area; its maximum width being something under a mile and a quarter; round at the southern end and tapering towards the other: an elongated teardrop. Its advantage over Wakaya was two-fold. It had a high central ridge running almost its entire length; and, more importantly, was only a mile away from the largest island off the east coast of Viti Levu: Ovalau. The oval-shaped island of Ovalau, measuring eight miles by seven, was blessed with a ring of mountains a mile or so in from its coastline, with the largest, Mount Delai, rising to a shade over two thousand feet.
Moturiki was curled below the south-western corner of Ovalau like some half-straightened banana, with broad areas of reef stretching from its bulbous lower end right up to the larger island, separated only by a single narrow passage. The top end of the banana was bent away to the west from Ovalau, leaving a wide gap of a mile and a half completely free of land, reef and rock, where the wind and waves could roar in unimpeded – the Achilles heel.
It was the best we could do.
“What do you reckon?” I asked over the noise of Henry’s hammering down in the fo’c’sle.
“Looks like the best of a bad situation,” Rick replied. “How far off are we?”
I got the dividers out.
“From where we are now,” I said, swivelling the brass instrument across the stiff paper, “it’s about thirteen miles to the passage through the fringing reef. It’s about a quarter of a mile across, so that’s no problem. Then two miles on the other side of that we come to the sticky one, the passage through the shore reefs. She’s about half a mile long and less than two hundred yards wide.” I looked up from the chart and out the window. “It’s going to be a tight squeeze if the wind comes up before we get there.”
“Two hours from now, eh?” he muttered. “If we can keep moving at this speed, that is; but I reckon it’s going to be more like three or four. You want to see whether Henry agrees?” I shook my head. He would leave it up to us. “Okay then, Moturiki it is.”
“Right,” I said. “I’ll leave you to it and go help Henry batten down the hatches and get the storm gear out.”
“How’s it going, my friend?” I asked of Henry’s sweating back as I leant down into the fo’c’sle.
He spun around, startled, his face white.
“Don’t worry, Henry,” I added. “The Sally May was built to withstand some pretty tough conditions. We should be all right as long as we don’t get blown up onto a reef.”
He nodded, adding nothing further.
******
Three and a half hours later we entered the first of the two passages, the one through the fringing reef: Gava. This one was easy, with a good half mile between the two coral banks and over a hundred feet of water beneath the keel. Rick took her through at six knots, anxious to get to the second tighter passage before the wind increased. It was already gusting to twenty knots, enough to move us sideways if our forward speed dropped off more than one or two knots.
Half an hour later it was the turn of the narrow passage between Ovalau and the tiny island of Yanuca Lailai. Henry and I stood out in the wind, with him on the bow and me up on the cabin roof; Henry shouting directions and me relaying them to Rick.
Sally May was down to two knots; and being pushed to port towards Moturiki by the wind. Rick kicked her to starboard with a sudden burst of speed and dropped the revs again.
“Astern!” The scream burst from Henry’s lungs. There was no need for me to relay the message to Rick.
I saw him pull the throttles right back, and heard the screw screech into reverse as the trawler shuddered at full speed astern. There was a gentle thump as the bow hit the reef and bounced off. Rick threw the controls back into neutral, looked at me, and wiped his brow for the twentieth time in as many minutes and moved the levers to slow-ahead again.
There was no more drama in the narrow passage after that. If we had tried the run an hour later I doubt whether we cou
ld have made it at such a low cost. We came through the half-mile-long bottle-neck unscathed apart from a square foot of paint scraped from the hull. The last section was three times as wide and Rick put the speed up to four knots, cutting out the sideways drift.
I moved back to the wheelhouse, leaving Henry out on the bow with his polaroid sunglasses.
“Close,” I said.
“Yeah,” Rick muttered. “Too bloody close.”
“How much further?” I asked.
“There’s a couple of patches of coral out to starboard as we come out of this passage and then it seems to be pretty clear.” He moved aside so that I could see the chart. “If we drop the anchor where it reads twelve fathoms ....” He reached forward and pointed. “Right about there. We should have half a mile of clear water all round.”
“Looks good,” I replied. He looked at me doubtfully, echoing my thoughts.
The wind already seemed to have a little less force, the high ridges on Ovalau interfering with the hurricane’s path, but the Achilles heel to the north-west looked so wide-open and vulnerable.
“She’ll be getting a bit wild out there in the open sea by now,” Rick said. “I think we did the right thing. I wouldn’t like to try getting into Suva harbour in the middle of the bloody night; and I wouldn’t like to be hanging around outside waiting for the dawn before trying it in daylight either.”
******
“Well,” he offered, after an hour of manoeuvring. “This should do, eh?”
“I reckon it’ll do,” I replied.
“Want to drop the anchor while I hold her here?”
I nodded and went up to the bow.
“Time to drop the pick,” I said to Henry.
“How safe are we here?” he asked in a quiet voice.
“Not as safe as we would be back in the Bay of Islands, but a hell of a lot safer than being back in the harbour at Wakaya.” I unlatched the restraining hook and let the anchor run free. “I pity those poor bastards in that yacht.”
The chain rattled down the seventy feet to the bottom as I let out the rest of the first shackle and another one as well: thirty fathoms – one hundred and eighty feet.
The Stone Dog Page 20
