Mariner's Ark

by Peter Tonkin

  Hernan pulled the beacon and the first float aboard, dextrously freed the beacon and switched it off before throwing it to Miguel-Angel. ‘Stow that safely away,’ he shouted over the rumble of falling water. ‘If this keeps on we’ll need all the emergency gear we can get. When you’ve done that, make yourself useful by checking all the scuppers are clear and stay clear no matter what comes aboard with the net in the way of weed and rubbish. Pilar’s scuppers were designed to keep a long liner’s decks clear, remember, not a trawler’s. They will clog up very quickly if we aren’t careful, especially the starboard side ones, for that is the side the nets come on to. I want this water off the deck as fast as it comes aboard, because once the net comes in it will block up the opening in the transom as well as bringing in a great deal more water, along with the fish we want and the rubbish we do not want. And, boy!’ he called as Miguel-Angel turned to go, ‘get yourself some heavy-duty gloves. And a jacket. Jeans and a T-shirt will not be anywhere near enough protection.’

  Then he and one of the others staggered up to the winch and wound the float line round it while Miguel-Angel ran obediently below, thinking in his innocence that Hernan just wanted him protected against the freezing downpour and the icy outwash from the nets. In the meantime, Hernan took charge of the winch, though Captain Carlos came and stood on the top step, nominally in charge of the deck now that he could no longer risk using the propellers, and therefore had nothing immediate to do on the bridge, which was, for the moment, unmanned. Hernan engaged the mechanism. The barrel spun wildly for a moment, then the rope caught. Pilar eased backwards as more line came aboard. ‘Go!’ shouted Hernan, and the others went to the opening on the transom. One of them took the long boathook and two others took the shorter two-metre ones with strong metal shafts. Together the three of them manoeuvred the first section of the net aboard, snagging the weighted footrope and pulling that on to the deck. The crewman with the long boathook ran it back towards the winch, then stowed his hook and opened the hatch cover, which tilted up to an angle of forty-five degrees, leaving space for the crew to throw fish in from the starboard side while still covering the hatchway itself and letting the rainwater run down on to the port side of the well deck and out through the scuppers there.

  Down below, Miguel-Angel discovered Pablo the engineer and his team waiting to pack the fish in the freezer compartments now that the propellers had stopped and the motor was only running to power the winch. Pablo told him where there was a spare jacket and some gloves – both of which were far too big for him – and hurried him back aloft, knowing that Hernan was likely to need him as soon as the haul started coming aboard. Halfway back, he realized he was still holding the emergency beacon. In his excitement he had forgotten to stow it. He put it in the inside pocket of the jacket and ran on aloft, forgetting all about it.

  As the net began to come in through the open transom, Miguel-Angel arrived back on deck, fully dressed and breathless. As he watched from the top of the steps beside his capitan, Pilar’s stern sank until the lip of the deck was almost level with the fizzing sea surface and the battered little vessel settled further backwards as the winch took the first section of the net itself and began to haul the rest aboard. The crewmen with the short boathooks stood either side of the transom’s open section, heaving the net slowly upwards and inboard. The rest of the crew formed a long line along the starboard gunwale and fell to work as though they had been trawlermen all their lives. And they were soon hard at it, for, after a short length of empty net, there were suddenly plenty of fish. Most of them were tuna, as compact and heavy as cannon shells. Most of them were alive and flapping. Blue-fin, yellowfish, albacore and bonita – they all went into the hold. As did anything else of commercial value – dolphin fish, tilapia, snappers. But the commercially valuable fish were by no means everything that came aboard. There were barracuda and sharks – thankfully small at first. Then, after a while, there were suddenly more dangerous fish coming through the open transom in among the treasure trove of tuna: sailfish, marlin, the first of several turtles, the first big bull shark.

  The men with the boathooks pulled them aboard carefully, checking as best they could that those which looked dangerous were dead before passing them on up the line as everybody else heaved and sorted and the winch span and rested. But it was simply impossible either to be certain that the big predators were as lifeless as they seemed to be, or to disentangle them from the net and separate them from the fish that the crew so desperately needed to throw into the fast-filling freezer holds. But fish were only part of what was coming on to Pilar’s streaming after deck. The nets dragged in great lengths of seaweed. Sheets of polystyrene. Disposable bottles. Plastic bags. Crisp packets. Styrofoam cups. Cut fishing tackle. Tangles of mooring rope and cordage. Rubbish of all sorts – much of it indestructible polymers. Suddenly Miguel-Angel was in business. As the smallest crew member there, it was he who crouched down behind the line of men freeing the fish from the net and either throwing them down the hatch or hurling them over their shoulders and back into the foaming sea. As soon as he got down he saw that the scuppers were partially blocked. He slid full length on to the deck beneath the seat, fighting to keep them clear. Behind him stood a wall of legs. In front, beneath a narrow bench seat scarcely more than a foot wide, lay the line of scupper holes at deck level designed to let water flow off the deck as fast as it came aboard. But the rubbish – flora, flotsam, jetsam and the rest – was blocking these even more rapidly than Hernan had feared. All the water coming aboard from the sky and the sea built up rapidly. Miguel-Angel slithered along the deck as lithe as any of the fish going into the hold. He used his thick-gloved hands to ease the mess of weed and rubbish back out into the ocean, glad of the jacket as the water washed past him increasingly forcefully.

  But then he learned – the hard way – that Hernan’s suggestion of jacket and gloves was to protect him from more than just the cold. He had fallen into a rhythm of sliding up and down the deck on his right shoulder, pushing and pulling the rubbish until he could shove it overboard. As he tired, he grew slower, until the surface of the outwash was up against his right ear and, occasionally, his right cheek. Suddenly his cheek was aflame and he felt as though he had been slapped very hard indeed. He jerked his head up fast enough to bang it hard on the underside of the seat. And as he did so, something large and slimy slid past. Its body was clear and glassily lucid. Its heart was a delicate tracery of purple. The whole of its bulk was more than a metre wide. It dragged a tangle of tentacles behind it that started as thick as string and ended as fine as thread. What sort of jellyfish it was, the boy never knew, but that one fiery lash across his tender cheek was more than enough warning to keep his head up and his senses alert. But the pain in his cheek was real and hard to bear. So he struggled out from beneath the seat once more and complained to Hernan, who was understanding. ‘The pain will pass,’ he said. ‘We have nothing aboard that will ease it.’

  ‘But there might be more,’ said Miguel-Angel. ‘And I cannot keep the scuppers clear if I am worried about keeping my face free of jellyfish.’

  ‘A fair point,’ allowed Hernan. He reached behind him and pulled a bright yellow bundle free of a fitting beside the winch. ‘I tell you what. Here’s one of the lifejackets. Put it on but do not inflate it. That will help keep your face up out of the water and away from jellyfish.’

  So Miguel-Angel pulled the lifejacket on over the too-big oilskin, and found that it did indeed go round his neck tightly enough to keep his face above the water. Even uninflated, it was like a cushion. He went back beneath the long seat with more enthusiasm and stayed alert. Which was as well, for the next crisis arrived scarcely more than a minute after he went to work once more. In the distance, beyond the thunder of the rain, the sloshing of the boots, the flapping of the desperate fish and the relentless cascade of rubbish and water through the scuppers, he heard someone call, ‘Tenes cuidado todos! It’s a big one. Muy grande! Muy peligroso!’ Of course, he squi
rmed over to get a good look at the very big, very dangerous creature that was coming aboard. Through the gaps in the stockade of legs he saw the body of a shark come sliding up the deck. What sort of shark it was he had no idea. Nor at that stage did he particularly care. For, big though it was, and dangerous though it looked, it was clearly dead.

  Until shockingly – terrifyingly – it wasn’t.

  The shark suddenly came to life. More than five metres of rock-hard muscle, sandpaper skin, white-tipped flippers, fins and tail were suddenly thrashing wildly about among the scattering crew. A head at least a metre wide slammed this way and that, its mouth, just as wide, snapping open and closed, the razor-sharp hooks of its numberless teeth coming out past the vivid pink edges of its lipless maw, scything this way and that, bouncing off the wall of the raised hatchway to come slithering through the suddenly empty air between the hatch and the scuppers, face-to-face with Miguel-Angel. The boy saw the flat yellow coin of its black-centred eye and realized that it was fastened on him. There was a shiver of communication. A flash of feral intelligence and deadly purpose that made him freeze with utter horror. He understood that the next lunge would bring that huge mouth, bristling with teeth, up against his head and chest. But he simply couldn’t move. He gasped in a breath to scream, but chocked to silence with his stomach wrenching. He was overwhelmed by the stench of the thing – worse than any of the stinks that had accompanied the rubbish he had been pushing through the scuppers. And he knew that he would soon be dead.

  But as the monster tensed itself for that fatal lunge, Pilar’s stern slammed round to port. The winch gave a protesting scream. The deck tilted as the port side sank beneath the strain. The net was jerked back out through the hole in the transom, as though another set of whales had run into it. And the shark was yanked back with it. For a moment, the great sleek body was jammed sideways across the opening in the transom, but then the relentless pressure of the net simply snapped the shark in half, and it was gone.

  Pilar, powerless and drifting, answered the imperative of that sudden new tension on the float line and sluggishly swung round until her stern was pointing along the curve of the net towards something, perhaps half a kilometre distant, indistinct in the relentless downpour, that looked like a fairytale floating palace of light.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  ‘What is it, Captain?’ asked Nic a couple of minutes after the summons over Maxima’s tannoy.

  ‘My ghost contact has reappeared,’ answered Toro. ‘It suddenly came out of nowhere dead ahead and well inside the five-mile line. One second there was nothing, then there was a firm contact. It is the same vessel, I am sure, because it is in exactly the same place as the earlier insubstantial contact was, only this time it looks more solid. It is very disturbing. And there is another, much less substantial contact, too, perhaps a quarter of a mile north-east of it.’

  ‘What do you think, Captain?’

  ‘Obviously my first action was to contact the first by radio. It is not a large signal, you understand. It is most likely to be a fishing vessel of some sort. But all the legitimate fishermen down here should have a VMS system aboard and switched on at all times when they are at sea so the fisheries protection service can monitor where they are and what they are doing. This vessel has no such signal. When I radioed her I used all the usual bands, and they must have known I was addressing them as I gave their precise location. But, whoever they are, they aren’t answering.’

  ‘I see. So what do you suggest?’

  ‘With your permission, señor, I will alter course to port. That will take us on a slightly more easterly heading. If we find nothing, we will be ready to run on along that course before swinging due east to Puerto Banderas – if you still wish to go there, though from the sound of things you may not wish to stay after we have caught up with Señorita Liberty and her crew. But in the meantime, such a move will ensure we do not collide with our silent ghost. And it will also take us between that and whatever is giving the fainter reading.’

  ‘That sounds fine,’ said Nic, nodding. ‘Robin, have you any thoughts?’

  ‘No.’ Robin shook her head, frowning. ‘I don’t like the look of that ghost boat, though. In all sorts of ways.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Obviously the fact that it has no VMS and won’t answer the radio makes me wonder what it’s up to out here in all this.’ A wide gesture of her hand encompassed the weather outside. ‘But it’s also worrying that it’s coming and going on the radar. That means you either have a fault in the system or the range is being interfered with by the downpour. Neither of which is particularly healthy under the circumstances.’

  ‘So,’ said Nic, ‘do you advise that we do something different to what Captain Toro plans to do?’

  ‘No. Captain Toro’s plan is the best we can do under the circumstances. Though I was just wondering: do you have an electrical engineer aboard who could check your sonar? It’s crucial to know whether it’s the conditions or some sort of malfunction that’s affecting your readouts.’

  ‘In this?’ said Toro. ‘You want me to send someone aloft in this?’

  ‘We can wait for conditions to ease, I suppose, but I’d be happy to go with him,’ said Robin. ‘I’ve never seen the inside of one of those golf balls of yours and if someone’s going up to check things out, I’d love to get the chance …’

  Twenty minutes later, a flaw in the wind and rain gave them a realistic chance of going outside. Robin was following a less-than-happy electrical engineer up on to the top deck, immediately above the command bridge. The rain was much lighter and the wind had eased for the moment. Robin’s vision was no longer blocked by streaming windows. After the interior of the bridge house, she felt she could see for miles. The engineer had told her his name was Manuel. He was easy enough to follow, however, as he sloshed forwards.

  They were both carrying two-way radios and wearing safety harnesses. As soon as Manuel arrived at the bottom of the ladder up to the golf ball housing the radar, he stopped to clip his safety line on to the banister running up on the right. The wind and rain might have eased but Maxima was still pitching and rolling. Manuel’s careful actions gave Robin a chance to look around. There was no doubt that in the easier conditions the view was better than the view from the bridge. As Manuel toiled up the steps to the big white sphere of the radar cover, Robin found herself walking forward until her hands were gripping the yacht-varnished teak of the safety rail. Pressing against the curved wood like an elevated figurehead, she strained to see forward. In spite of all her comforting words, she was worried about Katapult8. Even with her most competitive game face on, Liberty should have radioed in to assure her father that all was well. The only positive reason that she hadn’t done so which Robin could think of was that she still had the good wind behind her and was sailing through the last of the calm weather, racing the ARkStorm down to Puerto Banderas. Every alternative to that scenario involved danger, disaster and perhaps death.

  Straddling her legs and pressing herself hard up against the rail, Robin lifted both her hands to make a makeshift peak above her eyes, hoping to see a little further ahead. And, as she did so, the downpour hesitated in unexpected cooperation. Robin’s view leaped forward and out to the sides. Like Richard with the lightning strike, the picture was there and gone so fast that it was only after her sight was snatched away that she was able to make sense of that instantaneous glimpse of what lay ahead of Maxima. Away on her right, perhaps half a kilometre distant, there was a fishing boat. It was facing away from Maxima so all she could see was the stern, over which draped a tangle of netting. Away on her right, low in the water, and so unexpected that she had trouble defining what it was she saw, there was the black wing of a jumbo jet, floating high on the waves, with a clump of figures on it almost as bright at Manuel’s daffodil yellow. And, joining the two, a chain of bright orange basketballs.

  ‘Oh, shit!’ she said. She slammed the walkie-talkie to her mouth so fast she almost split her lip.
‘Captain Toro! There’s a net dead ahead!’

  But she was too late. Maxima’s bow powered into the space between two of the orange floats. Her keel drove the fish-laden netting down, but the tension between Katapult8’s sail and Pilar’s winch pulled it up again, so that when the twin screws of the super yacht thrashed at full speed into the tangle of webbing, it wrapped itself around them.

  Maxima was fitted with every modern essential. And this included a state-of-the-art Spurs Marine line-and-net-cutting system. But that was the system which the crew, distracted by Katapult8’s crew swimming like mermaids in the glass-sided pool, had not had a chance to check. And it wasn’t working. The net wrapped itself round the racing propellers and jammed them in an instant. Like Katapult8 before her, Maxima went from full speed to dead stop in a heartbeat. Even so, she jerked the net with far more power than even the pod of humpbacks had unleashed. The water in the pool ruptured the cover and broke through the inner wall, cascading into the living areas, pouring down into the engine areas, doing untold damage to much of the equipment and circuitry down there. Robin was very fortunate not to be pitched over the rail and down on to the foredeck. Manuel, up in the radar equipment, was not so lucky. He was thrown sideways and fell, still holding on to a good deal of the delicate equipment he was up here to check. It came away in his fists, effectively blinding the vessel altogether and doing a fair amount of damage to several other systems into the bargain. His life was saved by his safety line, which brought his tumbling body up with such a shock that he cracked several ribs. As though the whole disaster was part of a cunning plan devised by the weather gods, the rain returned, heavier than ever.

  Under the circumstances, Manuel had to be Robin’s first concern. She freed him from his harness and helped him down on to the bridge, where there was a kind of ordered chaos. Captain Toro, very much in charge, was issuing terse orders in a mixture of English and Spanish both face-to-face and over his walkie-talkie. Maxima needed checking from stem to stern at once. All damage was to be assessed and reported to him. The chief engineer was to update him as soon as possible on the state of the Caterpillar engines and the main drive shafts. If possible, he should assess and report on the state of the propellers. Anyone in need of medical assistance was to report to the medical facility. Robin registered all of this as she brought the wounded engineer into the dry. Then she to dispatched him to the ship’s medical centre and caught Nic’s eye.