by Julia Jones
“Not one bit. It’s not only that Spray’s a better dinghy that Kingfisher – which I have to admit that she is – it’s the way Xanth sails her. Full out all the time, even in a flat calm.”
“Which we don’t have tonight,” interrupted Xanthe. Donny’d noticed her give Spray an affectionate pat – like he might give Lively Lady if he didn’t think anyone was watching. It was a bit of a mystery why one of the Lasers should be so much better than the other; they looked identical to him.
The middle of the night was wild. No-one slept much – but no-one blew away. The wind was still directly on the shore, so their small dunes gave them some shelter and the dry sand tended to pile up on the seaward side, burying their guy ropes deeper than ever. Then, when it rained, it felt as if they were being hammered in.
Sometime between five and six it all went quiet. Everyone slept and then it was nearly eight before Donny crawled out of his tent to inspect the damage.
There wasn’t much: Vexilla had lain securely to her anchor and extra warp. Her tarpaulin had tried to break free but Maggi and Xanthe had grabbed on to it from inside and re-lashed it as often as necessary. They’d had the roughest night of anyone but seemed remarkably unbothered once they’d made sure that their dinghies were okay.
Spray and Kingfisher had been hauled right up to the top of the beach with anchors buried deep. They had both blown a bit sideways and were splattered with wet sand but they hadn’t lost any gear. Xanthe, Maggi, Donny and Anna pulled them back down to the water and began cleaning them off. They could hear Luke and Liam shouting long before they could make out the words.
“We went out on the magic sand, far as we could ...”
“There’s a big thing run aground ...”
“But we couldn’t get there.”
“And now Skye brought us back.”
“Because the tide’s turned. She says we can go in the boats.”
“Skye says? Says how?”
“By drawing, eejit – in the sand.”
“Us and you in the boats. Her and Vicky in the camp. Big circle with two dots in the middle and the rest outside. Wavy lines for water, canoes for boats. Easy.”
They grimaced at the stupidity of the older ones.
“It could be a wrecked ship and, if we board her, we could discover all the stores we need to never go home, like in Robinson Crusoe.”
“Not Robinson Crusoe. You mean that family, the ones who built houses and planted crops and always just happened to find whatever they needed. Rev. Wendy told me ... They were like Robinson 2.”
“You mean Lemony Snicket. It’s in the school library. It’s called The End. They have a Coastal Shelf and things get stuck on it.”
“No, they don’t. They get salvaged and dragged away.”
There was about to be a quarrel. Everyone knew the signs.
“Look,” said Donny. “This is us and we’re not in the vicarage or the library now so let’s go check it out. As long as Skye said it was okay.”
“She did, she did.”
They saw it as soon as they’d rounded the promontory. It had grounded where the strip of sand continued under the waters, stretching towards the distant Pye End buoy. It must have blown on in the early hours of the morning and been stranded ever since. But it wasn’t a wrecked ship: it was a container.
“I didn’t think those things ever fell off,” said Anna.
“Must do, sometimes,” said Donny. “You have to report them on the VHF as a navigational hazard. If Snow Goose or Strong Winds hit one of those out to sea, they’d probably sink.”
“We haven’t got a VHF so we can’t report it. And it doesn’t look much of a hazard stuck out there. Nobody’s not going to see that, are they?”
“Not in good visibility but what about in the dark? Or in fog? It must have struck at high water. It was probably submerged. And now the tide’s coming up again.”
“It might have broken open and be full of new computers.”
“Or bottles of whisky,” said Luke, rather surprisingly.
“We can’t take them, you know. That’s what wreckers do.”
“Then we’d best go hold back Xanthe and Maggi.”
The Ribieros were racing each other as usual, apparently not at all held back by the wind and tide against them.
“It’s not deep,” they shouted, as the others reached them.
“I felt the sand with my spinnaker pole. You could stand if you wanted.”
“Up to your neck.”
“But we don’t want, thanks all the same.”
“That’s probably why no-one’s come out to move it yet. Or even buoy it. Because it’s still too shallow.”
“They’ll be waiting until there’s more water.”
“Meanwhile it’s all ours: a stranded galleon. Do you dare me to climb on it?”
“No, we do not,” said Anna. “Calm down, Xanthe, you’re setting my brothers a bad example.”
“Anna,” said Donny, “look.”
He’d manoeuvred Vexilla until she was lying in the lee of the container.
“It’s that Welcome Mark. The one Dad was on about. We have it on our door at school.” Luke’s voice was strangely low and slow.
“There could be people in there.”
“NO! There just couldn’t!”
If Bill’s story had been true, spotting this container could have earned him £100 and a paid day off – thus ensuring that he wasn’t on site to know what happened to it next. If there had been people ... Bill would have had no idea how they had got in there or how they got out. Or where they went next.
They’d told Xanthe and Maggi Bill’s story last night. Now Donny showed them the Welcome Mark.
“Quick!” said Xanthe. “Phone someone. Harwich Harbour Authority or the coastguards. Damn! I left mine in the car. Mags? Anna?”
Maggi never took her mobile on Kingfisher and Anna’s had no battery.
“Come on! We can’t just sit here like stranded starfish waiting for the tide to come back. Those people in there ...”
“Are probably dead,” said Anna.
Donny felt sick. Tears instantly filled Maggi’s eyes and Liam began to bawl. Luke turned sheet white as if he were going to faint.
“Or they may not be.” Xanthe had come to a decision. “I’m going to sail for help. Harwich is closer but the wind and tide are wrong and I don’t know exactly who I’d ask. I’ll get the Walton coastguard. They’re just behind the beach. Mags, if you see any yachts or fishing boats, you could try to persuade them to send a VHF message. Donny, Anna, you stay here. Start tapping on the sides of this thing. You need to give the survivors hope.”
She sheeted in Spray’s mainsail and was reaching for the Naze like a low-flying bird.
“She didn’t wait to check,” said Anna.
“She believed our dad. Straight away.”
Liam stopped crying and looked at Luke.
“But will it be okay?” Luke asked Anna. “If she tells them it was our dad who told us. He said it was dangerous to be a grass, really dangerous. What if they find him?”
Donny didn’t give Anna time to answer.
“If you think about it, Lukey, there isn’t a choice. If there’s any possibility that there’s people in there – then we’ve gotta take the chance of helping. They can’t get out themselves and we don’t know how much air there is inside. Let’s do what Xanthe said and start tapping. We could work our way round this side and Maggi could start on the other.”
“There’s a thing called witness protection,” said Anna. “I read about it somewhere and I remembered it in the night. As soon as we get home I’m going to ask Edward if we can get it for Bill. This container – with this mark – could be exactly the proof he needs.”
“I don’t want there to be people,” said Liam. “Even if it does help Dad.”
“None of us want that,” said Donny. “So if we’ve made a mistake, or Bill did, we’ll probably get told off – Xanthe the worst – but we’ll b
e quite pleased all the same. What sort of tapping do you think we should do?”
He knew that he needed to help the younger boys stay calm and, if possible, not think too much. The container rose above them like a crag jutting from the seabed.
“Dunno.”
“I get bad feelings ... ”
“Does it matter?” Maggi sounded tense. “If there’s anyone in there – which I truly hope there isn’t – they need to know help’s on the way. We could tap God Save the Queen.”
“Gold Dragon made me learn the flag codes. F – foxtrot – means ‘I am disabled. Communicate with me.’ Why don’t we do that? In Morse. Short, short, long, short.”
“Anything,” said Anna, “As long as we remember to listen as well.”
Maggi had set her stopwatch when Xanthe left. It was almost an automatic reaction of the sisters to keep checking and comparing times and distances. How soon could someone come?
It took just over half an hour.
It was the longest half an hour they’d ever spent. What had sounded like a simple job – tapping and listening – turned out to be much harder than they’d thought. Although there wasn’t much of a sea running – nothing like last night – yet there were waves constantly breaking against the side of the container, and almost nothing to hold on to.
Donny remembered the first time he and Xanthe had run Lively Lady alongside the fake Hispaniola. There’d been a fresh breeze blowing on that day as well, but they’d been able to stay under the schooner’s lee and had been lucky enough to find a loose rope dangling down.
There was nothing like that here. Maggi, on her own in Kingfisher, found it impossible to cope. She’d taken her sail down but the dinghy was rolling so much that her mast kept hitting the metal. She didn’t have enough hands to hold steady, fend off, tap and listen.
Eventually she gave up, attached her painter to the metal bars on the container’s end, and perched in Kingfisher’s bows fending off, tapping with a paddle, looking at the complicated arrangement of seals and padlock and getting completely soaked.
If only her parents would arrive early. She and Xanthe had begged them yesterday not to hurry: to allow them their maximum time in camp. What wouldn’t she give today to see the sleek outline of Snow Goose slipping out over the Harwich shelf three or four hours ahead of schedule? She wouldn’t care how much of a bad mood they were in.
Donny kept Vexilla’s outboard motor running and set Anna to fend off while Liam tapped and Luke listened. They moved as slowly as they could, tapping and listening every few inches. But they heard nothing.
After a while they thought that they might not be tapping loud enough so Liam began banging against the container with the metal boat hook: Short, short, long, short. Short, short, long, short. Still there was nothing.
They knew that they didn’t want there to be anyone trapped inside the container but it was hard not be disappointed when there was no reply. And anxious. Because that might mean that there had been people but they were dead.
“On the other hand it could mean that they’re alive but physically can’t answer,” said Anna. “After all we don’t know what else is in there. There might be crates and things. It’d give better protection.”
“Only protection from some things,” said Donny, looking at the angle of the container. Perhaps there was a steep edge to the sandbank. He found he didn’t really want to think of heavy crates, sliding about inside. Would it have rolled over?
“Maybe Bill got it wrong.”
“In which case we’re mega-pleased but we’re also in deep doo-doo. And Bill won’t be all that impressed with us either.”
The inshore rescue boat, an orange RIB, arrived at speed with Xanthe on board as well. The four crewmen didn’t particularly want to talk to the children.
Which was sort of okay. They’d been worried that they’d have to answer difficult questions about the identification mark. Like who told them? And how did he know? But all the men asked was whether they’d heard any sounds from inside. They didn’t seem that surprised when the answer was no.
Donny had the impression that they’d found Xanthe’s story hard to believe and were struggling not to resent being called out by a teenager. They said that the grounded container had already been reported as a hazard to navigation. A salvage tug was booked to tow it off when there was more water to help float it.
Now they wanted the children to take their friend and go. She’d given them full contact details. They’d be in touch if they found that there was anything ... that there shouldn’t be.
Xanthe was trembling as she climbed carefully across to Vexilla. She looked as if she was in shock or something. Her pullups and sailing shoes were wet.
“Are you okay?”
She shook her head.
Donny peered at her.
She turned away and hid her face in her arms. Her shoulders heaved.
Maggi had been talking to one of the rescue crew. Talking and pointing. She looked persuasive and very like her mother. So he wasn’t totally surprised that the crewman was listening to whatever she said.
The inshore lifeboat was powerful and manoeuvrable. The man spoke to the steersman and they brought it right alongside. Then he stepped out of the RIB and onto the sloping metal. He laid his ear against it. Spoke to Maggi again. Urgently.
She pointed to the locking bar where she’d attached her dinghy’s painter. She seemed to be showing him how far the water level had risen.
He nodded. A bit agitated now. Clipped on his safety harness so he could brace himself and use both hands.
She freed her painter and pushed Kingfisher away.
“Xanthe,” Donny banged her on the shoulder. He didn’t mean to do it hard but Vexilla shifted to a wave and he lost his balance. “Maggi’s telling them something. They’re listening to her.”
She didn’t answer.
“Xanth, what the hell’s the matter?”
Liam took over Vexilla’s helm. He loved using the outboard and had done it lots of times before but never without being asked. Anna and Luke were sitting beside one another on the forward thwart. Almost in passing, Donny noticed that they were gripping each other’s hands.
One of the men in the RIB was talking on his radio: another cupped his hands round his mouth and shouted across to them.
“Kids! You’ve got to move away. We’re going to open the container. Move right away. Now! Back to your mum. We’re very grateful and we WILL contact you. Now Go!”
Liam opened the throttle at once and turned Vexilla away. Maggi had her sail up and was drifting alongside them.
“Xanthe!” he shook her again. “What is it?”
She lifted her head and turned to face him. Tears were pouring down her cheeks.
“It’s Spray,” she said. “I hit an unmarked breakwater and wrecked Spray. It was deep and she went straight down. I knew I had to get to the coastguard to save the people. So I swam and then I ran. I only looked back once. The top of her mast was showing. But, when we went past in the RIB, it had gone.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Point Horror
Walton Backwaters, Tuesday 29 May 2007
Donny thought of Spray when he’d last seen her, streaking across the morning waves. She had begun moving as soon as Xanthe had pulled in her sheet, she’d responded to every small shift of Xanthe’s weight as if the two of them were a single being.
He knew how he felt about Lively Lady – yet he also enjoyed sailing Vexilla or Strong Winds. He’d sailed Maggi’s Kingfisher once. They all had different qualities. But for Xanthe, Spray was everything. She was so focussed and intense. She and Spray were a winning team. Was it only last night Maggi’d told them about their possible selection for the Olympic squad? Would they ... would the selectors still want her?
That definitely wasn’t a question that he could ask right now.
“Did you ... um ... did you happen to throw out the anchor?” was all that he could think of.
“No.
We hit so hard that it was me that got thrown out. And when I surfaced, she was already going down. I don’t normally even carry an anchor. There was one, though, from last night. I supposed it’s possible it could have been tipped out by the impact ...” her body sort of sagged again. “It’s no good, Donnyman. Spray’s a GRP racing dinghy. You can’t mend her with a couple of new planks or bodge her together with layers of fibreglass. Once her hull’s been smashed like that, she’s finished.”
Everyone had been listening. No one could find anything to say. Maggi had brought Kingfisher right up to Vexilla’s lee side and had let her sheet go. She’d given Luke her painter and was hanging on the larger boat’s gunwale, so she could join the conversation as the outboard moved them both along.
“You can have ’Fisher, Xanth. You know you can. Any time you like.”
“Thanks.”
Would that keep her in the squad? Or could the Ribieros afford to buy a new top-quality Laser? That probably depended on Joshua having a job.
“Anyway. You haven’t told us what were you saying to those men back there. Why did they suddenly decide to try and open the container? Did you hear something?”
“Not exactly. Thing was, while I was hanging on there, I was looking at the way the container doors might open. I knew we couldn’t do it – there were metal seals on them – but I saw how it ought to work. They’d open outwards and, with the way the thing was lying, there would be time to open at least one of them if the rescuers got started straight away. Some water might go in but it wouldn’t be too bad. But as soon as the tide comes up any further, the water will be pressing against the outside. Or pouring in. There’ll be no chance. I really wanted the man to have a go. So I said I might have heard ... someone screaming.”
“But you didn’t ... hear anyone?”
“Mmmmm ... probably not.”
Donny was confused, “What do you mean, probably? Either you did hear someone or you didn’t, surely?”
“Okay. In that case, I didn’t. Not with my actual ears. But inside my head. I got to thinking and that made the screaming start. I was thinking what it must have been like for people inside one of those things. Feel the darkness pressing round you and the tiny space shutting you in and the ship moving, but you don’t know where. And then imagine what it must have been like when the container went over the side. Falling. Hitting the water. They could have been injured. Then tossing around and the thing slowly sinking and being certain that you were going to drown ...”
