by Peter Tonkin
‘It’s her speed that’s your best bet,’ Doc observed again, turning to Tom for support, as if he needed it.
‘Doc’s right,’ agreed the Captain. ‘Fast in and fast away. Safe in harbour before the worst hits. Penzance is only ten miles or so beyond the Wolf Rock Light. We could do that in fifteen minutes, everything being equal.’
‘Timing will be tight, though,’ warned Robin, able to join in the conversations because Goodman Richard’s radio was all but dead; the last of its power being preserved for the vital moments of rescue. ‘It’s taking the better part of an hour to get back. That’ll leave another hour before the worst of it hits. Fifteen minutes into Mount’s Bay at full speed maybe - but not from a standing start. We’ll have to stop to pick up survivors. Then we’ll have to go round the reef, of course. That will add a good few minutes. Even with everyone safe and sound aboard, there’ll still be half an hour and more to safe haven...’
‘And therefore only half an hour to get one hundred people off a sinking wreck,’ said Richard, nodding. He had seen this coming long ago. Hence his meticulous planning. Meticulous perhaps - but planning for the unknown, even so. ‘But we have an edge of sorts.’
‘What is that?’ demanded Robin.
‘Wind and tide. Even if it isn’t a particularly high tide, it’s on the ebb and flowing out westwards. The laws of physics...’
‘Oh, come on, Richard...’
‘Think it through. Goodman Richard is dismasted and drifting down on to the shoals at Wolf Rock. Agreed?’
‘Agreed,’ said Robin, frowning with concentration as the others nodded in agreement too. ‘Then she is up-wind of the reef.’
‘Yes...’ More nods.
‘A reef that juts out south-west of the light itself. Therefore...’
‘Therefore what, Richard? Jesus, it’s like talking to Hercule Poirot!’
‘Therefore she’s on our side of the reef! Upwind; to the west of the danger. A good deal closer to us!’
‘No shit, Sherlock!’ said Doc with a laugh. He leaned across to the collision alarm radio and stabbed a finger down at a target dead ahead that had just flashed from amber to red for ‘Dangerously Close’. ‘Then that’ll be her now. You think?’
He flicked a switch with his thumb and the edges of the radar scan jumped back to wider view. The Wolf Rock Light shone dead ahead as well, perhaps twice as far again as the bright-red target. And there was nothing in between, except for the eerie scimitar of cloudy green denoting the reefs and shallows all too close at hand.
‘How far away?’ demanded Richard, crossing to the bridge wing and pressing his night-vision binoculars to his eyes.
‘Maybe five miles.’
‘We’ll be down on her in ten minutes at this speed,’ called Tom Bartlett. ‘Even if I begin to throttle back.’
‘Can’t see her as yet,’ said Richard. ‘Sparks, can you update them please?’
‘Done!’ sang out Robin.
And even as she spoke a distress flare soared up into the scudding overcast dead ahead. It looked for all the world like a rocket launched six months early for Guy Fawkes Night. Except that it was red. It was a red ball of brightness - cherry at its heart - and it trailed red fire behind it as it rose above the roiling wilderness of white water that the Channel had become. As it mounted, so it began immediately to flicker, its urgent trail pulled to pieces by the black-clawed wind; its bright heart guttering in the low skirts of scudding overcast, snuffed abruptly by the huge maw of the storm clouds above.
And, as if in mocking answer, a shaft of lightning pounced down, seemingly exactly along its trail; apparently directly on to the helpless, crippled ship. ‘Ach!’ Sparks gave half a snarl and half a shout as he ripped his headphones from his ears.
‘God!’ said Robin, starting back. ‘What on earth was that?’
‘The sound of a radio dying,’ answered Sparks.
‘Well, it certainly didn’t die quietly!’ she observed, shaking her head.
‘As long as it died alone,’ he observed darkly. And that observation was enough to reduce them all to slightly sickened silence.
The silence lasted another minute, maybe more, until Richard sang out, ‘There she is!’
Robin, no longer needed at the useless radio, was on the opposite bridge wing and at Richard’s call she pressed her own binoculars back to her eyes. ‘Yes!’ she confirmed. ‘Dead ahead.’
‘Her mainmast is down and so is her foremast by the looks of things. Her mizzen and jigger are bare, thank God, or I think she’d have blown right over. Lord! Did you see that, Robin? That wave nearly broached her. But at least it showed us a little more. The wreckage of her masts and sails is this side, Tom. You’ll have to watch out for it as you close with her. Her hull’s the main thing for the wind to take, I expect, so that’ll be moving fastest and dragging everything on behind; all of it caught in the counter-pull of the ebbing tide. And it’s all over her starboard side, dragging like a sea-anchor. Keeping her beam on to the weather and the water. Gracious! That was another big one. Though perhaps it looks worse than it is. What do you think, Robin? It looks to me as though all that mess in the water is taking some of the sting out of that storm swell...’
‘Yes. Maybe...’
‘Can’t see anyone on deck, though. Robin? Your eyes are better than mine...’
‘Nothing. But there’s someone aboard all right. The flare. The radio. They haven’t abandoned.’
‘They’d be mad to do so. What’s the rule? Step up into your lifeboat...’
‘As the water closes over your command. She’s still well afloat. They must be still aboard.’ ‘Afloat until she hits the reef at any rate. And look! That wreckage over her starboard side has taken half her lifeboats. Do you see what’s left of them tangled in the rigging there?’
‘Oh Lord, yes. You’re right. Tom, how much longer?’
‘You’ll need to speed up again, Captain,’ called Doc over Robin’s question. ‘I’ve a tanker coming up on our beam and he’s not going to slow for the likes of us.’
‘Right, Doc. Thanks. A couple of minutes, Robin. Richard. Now is the time to start telling me what you want me to do!’
Lionheart surged forward again, helped by the heave of a following sea. ‘How close is she to the reef, Doc?’ Richard demanded.
‘Couple of miles.’
‘Can we estimate the speed of her drift?’
‘Couple of knots. Wind’s gone over fifty and will pick up pretty quickly.’
‘An hour until she strikes then.’
‘An hour tops.’
‘But a good deal less than that before she starts to break up. There’s a wilderness of white water around the reef and the outwash must reach back nearly half a mile. That alone will tear her to pieces.’
As Richard spoke, bellowing to overcome the rage of the storm outside, the brunt wind faltered. Richard swung through 180 degrees, looking back at the massive tanker that was crossing their wake, cutting off the wind with her high sides.
‘Tom. Can you take Lionheart round the back into the lee of her hull? Put her at the clean side, between the sip and the shoals?’
‘I can get there but I wouldn’t be happy to wait there for any length of time.’
‘Get in there and drop me off aboard. Me and a radio and maybe a volunteer or two. See us safely on to the deck, then back off until I call you in again. Her hull will give you a bit of protection. She’s leaning down that side - but she won’t roll over with all that mess in the water upwind. She should be pretty steady, all things considered and with any luck at all. And you’ll still have the power to blast your way out even if things go wrong and we run out of room or time.’
‘Yes, I can do all that,’ said Tom.
‘Then let’s get on with it.’
‘But just let me get one thing clear in my mind, would you?’ asked Tom, a little shakily.
‘What?’ demanded Richard, suddenly impatient.
‘You did say you were goi
ng aboard her yourself?’
‘Of course he did,’ answered Robin, her voice also shaking with ill-suppressed emotion. It might have been pride or it might have been fury. She couldn’t really decide which one it was herself. ‘Whatever made you think he could possibly miss out on a hare-brained adventure like that?’
‘Well,’ said Richard shortly. ‘I’ll be happy to stay where I am if anyone else has a better idea... Come on. Anyone at all... Don’t be shy. Speak up…’
Chapter 3: The Howl
As Tom Bartlett carried out Richard’s instructions and began to position his sleek command between the wreck and the reef, Richard himself went below and completed the preparations he had been planning for the last half hour or so.
No sooner had Richard left than Doc too rose and drifted off. Robin sat in the warmth of the big man’s seat and strapped herself in tight, at Tom’s shoulder. She rested her hands lightly on the familiar levers and handles as she divided her acute attention between the instruments and the view. The Goodman Richard seemed almost shapeless as they swung down around her, for the leaning curve of her starboard side was all but concealed in the great mess of shattered masts and spars, woven into a huge cloak of rigging and sailcloth. There was no sense of deck or deck-furniture - merely the helpless swell of her heaving under the dictates of the great combers that crashed relentlessly and regularly over her.
And, beyond, terrifyingly close at hand, the scene was repeated on an infinitely larger scale. But instead of four hundred feet of hull there was a couple of miles of reef stretching away on either hand, swelling in two great foam-washed heaves with the narrowest of channels in between. In place of pathetic masts nodding under the dictates of the thick, wet wind, the great solid thrust of the lighthouse standing sure against the worst the Atlantic could throw at it, casting the golden arm of its light-beam relentlessly through the murky air. And even as Robin focused on the huge solidity of the thing, on the steady turning of that apparently solid beam of light, her ears were assaulted by the deafening power of the Wolf’s howl. It took a moment for her to realize that the air was, in fact, thick enough to have started the fog-horn.
Richard too looked up, alerted by the piercing howl and pulled out of a brown study by its urgent summons. He was standing alone in the Chief Steward’s cabin, mindlessly sorting through the pile of clothing and equipment he needed to pull on before he ventured out into the night. As he did so, his mind skipped once again over the simple plans he had made - and then, for the most part, discarded. The orders he had given and whether, like this one, they had been faithfully and efficiently obeyed.
At first he had considered wedging Lionheart’s stern against Goodman Richard’s side, holding the SuperCat in place with her bow thrusters while he opened the rear upward-sliding doors into the great caverns designed to hold her passengers’ cars. That way there was a fighting chance of getting one hundred people off one vessel and on to the other in double-quick time. He could even get Tom to raise the hinged bow-section and open the front of the car-deck. But that seemed more dangerous still. Either way, there were simply too many risks. Both bow and stern access to the car decks were designed for safe havens, calm waters and vessels securely lashed to specially designed docking facilities. It would be sheer madness to attempt anything on that scale in these circumstances. And the spectre of the Herald of Free Enterprise had risen unbidden to warn him of the danger he was running.
It would have to be the slower but safer route across the fore deck, therefore. But that too would require great care - and detailed preparations aboard the wrecked vessel herself. It was at this point in his planning that he had ordered the wet-weather gear to be brought in here. And other, more vital work to be done on the fore deck. Even so, once Lionheart came close-in to Goodman Richard, pushing the slim point of her needle-bow against the wreck’s sloping side, the real danger would begin - in spite of all his careful preparations. For then the slightest vagary of storm or swell could lift the dismasted hulk with sufficient force to tear the whole front of the SuperCat wide, and send her down like a stone. Then there really would be grounds for a Corporate Killing case; but nobody left alive to answer it.
These grim thoughts were enough to see Richard through the donning of his wet-weather gear, his life jacket and his safety harness. They filled his head, but not to the exclusion of everything. As his mind raced and his fingers dealt decisively with familiar straps, buckles and zips, his seafarer’s senses told him of his SuperCat turning across the wind - briefly taking the tumbling sea on her beam - and settling back into her preferred position with the weather on her slim, strong bow. He tightened the wrists and ankles of the suit, suspecting that this would be little more than a waste of time. He picked up the gloves and looked down at them. Looked at his huge, powerful, sensitive hands. Put down the gloves again. Listened to the Wolf’s howl. Uncharacteristically, hesitated.
But at last there was nothing to do but to place his shoes neatly beside the neatly folded suit that lay on the Chief Steward’s desk and sit in his creaking chair to pull on the massive orange boots - then pick himself up and get on with it.
As he turned to climb back up to the bridge on his way out on to the deck, he sensed a movement in the shadows. At once he thought it must be Robin come to wish him well and give him a kiss for luck. But no. At once disappointed and relieved, he recognized Doc. The big Australian fell in beside him. Waterproof sleeve whispered against waterproof sleeve. As they came into the light Richard saw that Doc was dressed exactly as he was himself - except that, in his gloved right hand, he held a waterproof walkie-talkie and in place of a sou’wester he had a hard hat on his head.
Doc had been shot in the head as a young soldier during his one tour in Vietnam. Only a miracle had saved his life - and only a fortune in surgery had rebuilt his brain so that his memory began to work properly again. Clearly he was not going to put any of this at risk. No matter what other risks he was willing to take at Richard’s side.
‘Robin has the second chair,’ he said conversationally, his tone light and cheerful at the prospect of action and danger. ‘She’ll be a better back-up to Tom. She’s had the training. She’s got the touch. They don’t really want a horny-handed old matelot like me in among all their high-tech super-spec stuff. So I thought you might like a hand aboard Goodman Richard. I’m the only actual sailor you’ve got. The only man who has sailed with sails, after all.’
‘Certainly the only man who’s actually captained a four-masted, square-rigged, sailing ship like Goodman Richard,’ acknowledged Richard. ‘Probably the only man aboard apart from me that knows the significance of her name.’
‘Oh, come on. Someone else aboard this tub must have heard of John Paul Jones and the Bonhomme Richard. Even if they’ve just been to Annapolis and seen his tomb there. Mind, that’s the way I’d want to go. Entombed in marble; preserved in alcohol.’
‘That’s as may be,’ acknowledged Richard lightly. ‘But I’d just rather be rescuing a ship that has not been named after a vessel famous for sinking English shipping.’
‘Built in New England, named in New England. Though the original was French and a rotten tub by all accounts. Nothing sinister in that.’
‘That’s what Charles Lee told me when he talked me into going on to the committee of the charity that runs her.’
‘Well there you are then. No one knows more about the Luck Dragon than Hong Kong Chinese businessmen. Even if their offices are in the Heritage Mariner building on Leadenhall in London. And Charles is another proper sailor too. You know he’s the only bloke at H.M. who’s crewed all of the Katapult series? Didn’t he buy his own Katapult IV and race her himself?’
‘Yes,’ said Richard feelingly. ‘He named her Robin after my Robin and then pitchpoled her at nearly forty knots off Cowes. He was lucky to survive. He’s stayed with yachts since as far as I know, even if he’s worked Katapult V and VI with you in his spare time. Still, all in all I really do wish he was here.’
‘Charles Lee.’
‘Ah.’ Robin did not entirely approve of Charles, his extravagant bachelor lifestyle, his girlfriends and his gambling, his very secret spying in Hong Kong and China itself - and his ruinously expensive sailing. But he was an outstanding businessman and Heritage Mariner owed more than a little of its fortune to him. And his place beside Richard on the board of the charity that ran the Goodman Richard as a character-building adventure for disadvantaged and anti-social youngsters had seemed like the first step of his reclamation to her.
But in the end it had only been the first step on the long road to this situation. This danger. Here and now.
She might have said more, but the Wolf howled again. Long and loud - and so she held her peace. She looked out through the clearview ahead of her with dry and icy eyes. From side to side her entire vision was taken up by the tilting cliff of the wrecked sailing ship. And from this side, with the reef still well astern, she actually looked like a ship. She must have been four hundred feet long and would have sat too high in the water for Lionheart’s bow to come anywhere near her weather deck - even with her four masts standing and her full suit of sails aloft. But she was all but awash now, her two remaining masts waving like the minute hands on a clock-face uncertain whether the time was ten past the hour or a quarter past. Her mainmast and her foremast shattered stumps, thrusting through the sprung boards of her decking like the stumps of rotten teeth.
