I heard the engines stop. There was an eerie silence, broken only by the whistling wind and the slap of waves punching against the hull. Rick joined us and looked down at the tightening chain.
“Is she holding okay?” he asked.
“Yes,” I replied. “I think so. Long enough for us to get the storm anchor out in any case.”
It was down in the storage hold, all one thousand pounds of the monster. There were lines to be shifted, and old fishing gear, and all the other bits and pieces that hardly ever got used. The storm anchor hadn’t seen the light of day since I had been on board. The two bad gales I had weathered in the Sally May had been up in the Gulf of Carpentaria, where there was plenty of sea-room; but the South Pacific’s waters were different from those of the Gulf.
It was over an hour before we had the big anchor free, with sweat pouring off us by the bucket. I should have been down in the storage hold getting it ready while we raced away from Wakaya, but my mind had been on other things.
“Bloody hell, it’s sticky!” Rick cursed. “I think I might even be glad when this bitch Bebe strikes. At least it’ll blow some of the warm air away.”
“Stop moaning and get on with it,” I growled. “Is there enough room to swing the stock around yet?”
The huge Danforth anchor broke down into two pieces: the flukes being the heaviest part, and the stock the most awkward, needing a fair area of open space before it could be turned around. Rick climbed up on deck and set the hydraulic winch moving. Henry and I waited as he lowered the swinging gantry into position, shackling the stock to the wire rope when it came down through the hatchway.
“Okay!” I yelled. “Take her up!”
The winch started to grind away as Henry and I guided the stock up through the hatch. Ten minutes later we had both sections on deck and assembled together, with the large swivel-pin tied off with lock-wire.
The one-inch chain was already on deck. It had been on top of the Danforth. I shackled one end to the anchor stock, and used a bow-line to tie the other end to the two hundred and fifty foot coil of polypropylene rope, binding the loose end with cord to stop any possibility of the knot coming undone.
“Okay, Henry!” Rick yelled against the rising wind. “Get up on the bow and wind the anchor in until she’s just holding. We need to drop this big bastard as near to the other one as we can. Give us a yell when the chain’s nearly perpendicular.”
“Here goes,” Rick said with a wan smile as he took up the tension on the winch, raising the stock until only the flukes touched the deck.
There was a cry from Henry. We were over the top of the bow anchor.
Rick moved the levers again and the Danforth lifted clear of the deck, then up and level with the top of the bulwark. I swung the gantry boom out over the side as the entire trawler took an unnatural list to port. He let it slip slowly into the water as I lifted lengths of the heavy rusted chain up from the deck and let it slide over the gunwale, scraping more paint from the hull as it suddenly accelerated and sped down, the chain leaping and crashing off the deck.
The winch wire went slack. The Danforth was on the bottom.
“Henry!” I yelled. “Let out some more chain!”
It took us another half hour before we had the Danforth free from the winch and both anchors streaming ahead: the small bow anchor right at the end of its chain; the Danforth on sixty feet of stud-link and two hundred feet of the polypropylene.
******
Three o’clock.
Two miles to the north-west, out through the open mouth of our place of refuge, the top end of the banana, the white-caps were whipping and tossing their plumes high in the air. I put the binoculars down and poked my head into the fo’c’sle. Rick had his head in through the chain-locker inspection hatch, the unbolted plate lying at his feet.
“How’s it look?” I asked.
“Looks good. The bloody chain’ll break before the weld tears itself free from the bulkhead.”
The thick rope leading from the Danforth was wound round the forward bollard, and tied down hard to the bow-roller to stop it tearing sideways through the rails. There was nothing else we could do to stop the Sally May being pushed back by the wind. We had done all there was to be done.
The dinghy came next, and everything else that wasn’t firmly fixed to the deck. We lashed the dinghy under the wheelhouse overhang, and stowed the rest of the gear down in the storage hold. The drums of diesel at the stern were still tied down tight after the trip up from Cairns. The weight of our full load of fuel pulled the trawler deeper into the water, cutting down our sail area, leaving less of the hull for the wind to push against.
“What do you reckon the wind speed is?” Henry asked.
“Hard to tell, really,” Rick answered. “She’s blowing up a storm, that’s for bloody sure. I’m damn glad we didn’t try to run for Suva.” He turned back to me. “What’s the latest on the radio?”
“Still much the same. Gale-force winds around the western side of Viti Levu gusting up to eighty knots. I reckon we’ve probably got thirty out here now.”
We double-checked the emergency life-raft, making certain nothing would stop it coming free in a hurry if the anchors dragged and we hit one of the shore reefs. The box of flares was placed under the dining table with the life-jackets, well within easy reach.
There was nothing to do but sit, and wait.
“How about some food, Henry?” I asked.
“Sandwiches?”
“No, how about cooking something while the boat’s still on an even keel.” At least it would give him something to do.
We sat down to a tin of sausages and vegetables, the last of the potatoes, and a tin of peaches. Somehow they all seemed to taste the same.
For the next fourteen hours the wind-speed steadily increased, the hurricane reports putting Bebe closer as every hour crept past. Fiji was out of luck this time and unless a miracle occurred it was going to get the full brunt of one of the worst hurricanes for many years.
We sat through the night sipping coffee, listening to the wind-speed rise still further; two on watch and one resting below, eyes wide open. It was impossible to sleep knowing of the fury that was creeping down on us.
The sky remained in grey obscurity the next morning, great black clouds ballooning and boiling and darkening the day; rain falling continuously, pushed sideways by gale-force winds; the humidity rising to an unbearable level in the closeness of the closed-up vessel.
At six that evening we heard the worst. The centre was expected to reach Suva by ten that night. It would hit us perhaps an hour after that. Funafuti had already been blasted and hardly a house was standing. A tidal wave had swept three people away. Rotuma hadn’t escaped, with houses down and crops destroyed, but no fatalities known as yet. Lautoka had been hit with wind speeds of up to one hundred and eighty miles per hour!
If we were hit with that force, not even the two bulks of Ovalau and Moturiki could save us from explosive destruction.
Night fell and with it the wind began to blow its hardest, screaming its vicious oaths. Visibility had gone. I couldn’t see more than fifty feet into the rain-saturated gloom. By ten o’clock it was up to its full fury, the rain no longer falling at an angle, but streaming parallel with the waves, not seeming to wish to drop into the sea, going onwards to the very edge of this swirling mass, this demon born of the earth’s violence, fleeing until it could fall and find rest.
The radar turned through its sweep, the two blurred shapes that were the islands sometimes appearing through the confusing images of blinding rain and wave-spray. Ovalau and Moturiki were doing their best to shield us from the full force of the wind, their masses a buttress against enormous seas sucked up by the hurricane and sent racing across the ocean, smashing everything in her godless path.
Five minutes later there was a splintering crack and a thud as something fell from the top of the wheelhouse and went crashing over the side, hammering frantically against the hull for an
urgent minute until it finally broke free and was swept away: the radio mast. There would be no more static to interfere with the weather bulletins. We were on our own now, cut off from the world.
“I hope to Christ it didn’t hit the radar,” Rick said quietly, recklessly daring the fates.
But the sweep was still moving through its arc, the fuzzy picture the same as before.
“She’s all right,” I said, and hoped I could say the same in a few hours’ time. Without the radar we would be blind. It was the only way we could tell whether the two anchors were holding, the only way we could tell whether we were still stationary between the two islands. Half a mile from the nearest shore reef seemed all of a sudden to be a tiny distance – eight hundred and eighty yards.
An hour later and we knew the worst.
“She’s dragging!” Rick yelled.
Sixteen
“Quick!” Rick bellowed. “Get the bloody engines going! We’ll have to drive her into it!”
He leapt across to the engine console and pressed the starter-button, watching anxiously as the dials came to life. Without giving them more than a single second to warm up, he thrust the levers to full-ahead.
We couldn’t hear the engines above the scream of the wind, nor feel the propeller shafts vibrating through the hull as the blades bit into the water and strained to push the Sally May against the full force of the tempest.
The sea pounded into the bow, sending water crashing up and over the deck, smashing into the three-quarter-inch-thick glass portholes at the front of the saloon, rolling up and over the top of the wheelhouse to crash down on to the back deck. It was pitch-black outside. We couldn’t see a thing, could only feel the heart-stopping thudding as the trawler was lifted high up at the bow and then slammed down again, each of us grabbing hold of whatever was nearest, scared we might not rise again. The fifty-six-foot hull rolled and pitched like a log caught in a maelstrom, bouncing and tossing from side to side, thrown down into the sea again and again.
But the console lights still flickered in the darkened wheelhouse, the rev-counters showing us that the two huge Gardners were doing their best, which was all we could ask. The engine-room hatch was bolted down and I prayed that the waves pounding over our heads on to the back deck wouldn’t find entry. If the engines stopped now there wasn’t a thing we could do. We could never get to the hatch across that vicious open deck; and even if we did manage the impossible, we wouldn’t have time to unbolt it before the trawler was swept up on to the reef.
For the next two hours the three of us were by the wheel: watching the radar; reading the dials that showed engine temperature, oil pressure, and engine revolutions. The bow pointed towards where the two anchors lay buried and digging a slowly lengthening furrow through the sand. The Gardners made no headway against that relentless force. No engines could have pushed a boat against the power borne of that hurricane; but they slowed the dragging anchors, gave them a chance to bite into the sand and coral on the sea bed.
For two hours we had watched and had held our breaths.
“She’s holding again,” Rick whispered, and we crowded the radar and hoped he was right.
The stern drift towards the shore reef had stopped, for the moment, but we kept the engines straining at maximum revolutions, knowing that at any moment one anchor might break free of its grasp, sending us dragging back again.
There was hardly a word said during those two hours as we stood in the wheelhouse, our tiny refuge lit only by the lights of the engine console. Henry scrounged a packet of biscuits from somewhere; sweet and coated with powdered sugar. I think he had given up being scared, knowing that whatever would happen, would happen. Maybe he felt confident that Rick and I knew what we were doing. It was a confidence I didn’t necessarily share.
The shore reef on the eastern side of Moturiki might crush the hull; but at least we weren’t made of timber and wouldn’t be splintered up on the rocks like some fragile match-box. We might still survive if she got swept high enough, and didn’t turn turtle, or fill with water with us still trapped inside.
I thought of Rod, and Judy. If she were here now, she would be screaming her head off, cursing Rod, and cursing me, and cursing anyone she could get her hands on. They would both be listening to the news-flashes in Brisbane, and thanking their lucky stars that they had refused our offer. If only we had thought to get some message off to Rod, telling him that we had found the chest, that it was still sound, and giving him the location. He could have taken over the search if we succumbed to the hurricane; but we had been too busy looking out for ourselves, and the Sea Devil had won again.
“She’s still holding,” Rick murmured, more for the sake of something to say than for anything else.
“Yes,” I said.
“What are you thinking about?” he asked.
“Judy and Rod.”
“Lucky buggers.”
“Maybe,” I replied.
“Why maybe?”
“If we get out of this alive,” I said. “I’ll be glad I hadn’t missed it.”
“Stupid bugger,” he laughed, smiling for the first time since he had gone out to dive with Henry. I crunched into another biscuit and stared out into the blackness.
There was a sudden blur in the darkness and a crash as something smashed into the rail and then into the side of the saloon, bounced, thumped into the side again, and then went hurtling off into the night.
“Shit!” Rick yelled, his face turning ghostly white as the blood rained to his feet. “What the hell was that?”
“Coconut palm, I think.”
“Bloody hell!” he gasped. “From Ovalau? That’s almost three-quarters of a mile away!”
“Right,” I replied.
I wasn’t as calm as I appeared. I knew that if we had been hit a couple of feet higher, the tree-trunk might have ripped through the thinner steel plate of the wheelhouse, smashing us out into the fury.
Henry sat quietly, not saying a word, his eyes glazed.
******
It was an hour or two after midnight. We had lost all track of time and space. For us, the whole world was the four walls of the wheelhouse. We leaned against the console, holding on to the wheel; or staggered from side to side, life-jacketed and bulging; trying to peer out through the darkness and blinding rain; or watched our radar screen; everything done in silence; holding our breaths; trying by force of mind to stop the huge bulk of Moturiki from edging its way across the radar screen.
The engine controls were hard up against the stops. They could do no more. We watched and prayed while the wind screamed outside and another hundred yards was lost, but that hundred had taken half an hour, far longer than the hundred yards that had gone before it; and slowly the crawl dwindled until at last we were holding our own again.
Then I felt the trawler begin to move forward again, moving up on the anchors. The unbelievable had happened.
“Ease her off a hundred revs, Rick,” I called above the howling wind. “Listen, I think she’s died off a bit.”
“You’re dreaming,” he said, but he listened.
Half an hour later the wind had dropped completely. We shut down the engines, giving them a well-earned rest, and stepped outside into a deathly stillness.
“What’s happened?” Rick asked, unable to believe the quietness. “There’s no air.”
There was air enough to breathe, but we seemed to be inhaling consciously, conserving what we had, as though diving on a single tank of air, knowing that there was only sixty pounds left and still another hundred and fifty feet to the surface.
“It’s the eye of the hurricane,” Henry murmured.
“The what?” I exclaimed.
“The eye,” he repeated. “We’re right in the centre of the storm. The wind’s going around us in a huge circle.”
“Christ!” Rick gasped. “He’s bloody right. The bitch is going to start blowing from the other direction as soon as she starts moving away from us.”
�
��How long have we got, do you think?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he replied. “Got any idea, Henry?”
“Not really, but ten minutes, maybe fifteen.”
We raced around like madmen, our exhaustion forgotten for the moment. Henry and Rick grabbed spanners and began tearing into the hatch leading down into the engine room. The engines had been roaring at full emergency speed for far longer than the designers had allowed. Rick would check his beloved engines while Henry topped up the oil levels and greased everything he could find the time for. It wouldn’t be much, but it might just prevent one of the Gardners from seizing up and letting us be blown on to the rocks when the next assault started.
The familiar sound of the bilge pump starting up broke into the silence. I raced across to the engine-room hatch, fearing the worst: that the engine compartment was half full of water.
“How bad is it?” I yelled through the hatchway.
“There’s not much at all, considering,” Henry called back. “But at least it’ll give us a chance to get rid of some of the oily mess that’s been accumulating down here for the last few months.”
I left them to it and did a quick tour of the deck, tightening several lashings where they had become slack. One of the ropes around the dinghy had frayed through. Another hour and that powerful wind would have sucked it out from under the wheelhouse overhang and tossed it, like some insignificant trifle, far out into the sea.
Fourteen minutes.
Already the wind was starting to bite again as I raced across to the engine-room hatch.
“Come on, you two!” I yelled down into the noise of machinery ticking away. “It’s coming up again!”
“Just five more minutes!” Rick called over his shoulder.
“Five minutes nothing, my friend,” I called back. “I’m slamming this bloody lid down in thirty seconds flat, whether you two are out of there or not!”
I lifted the heavy steel lid up from the deck and held it upright against the wind as a head appeared in the square black hole.
The Stone Dog Page 21
