by Jeff Gulvin
‘Any sign?’ she yelled.
‘None.’ John-Cody moved back and forth across the quarters, leaning right over the rail, wondering whether he should get in the dinghy itself and look from there. But the sea was swollen to four metres and the dinghy was already half full and swinging.
‘Tom!’ he yelled. ‘Tom!’
Libby joined him and together they called and called. But there was no reply: the sea shifted mercilessly and gave up nothing of Tom. The lifebelt came in and out of vision and the light blinked on regardless. John-Cody pushed Libby out of the way and went back to the wheelhouse.
‘Take her full ahead, Jonah.’ He hesitated. ‘No, my boat. Go astern and help Libby.’
Jonah was out of the wheelhouse like a shot and John-Cody took over. He put the Korimako ahead again, hauling the wheel to port until he gauged sixty degrees. He was going to bring her about using a Williamson turn, which big ships performed to get them back on their exact course when a man went overboard. He steamed forward until he judged the distance to be right, then he brought the wheel four full turns to starboard and the Korimako leaned into the wind.
Astern Libby and Jonah held on as the boat heeled and dipped so the rail was washed in the swell. Libby kept staring at the sea. Now she thought she saw something and now she didn’t: a flash of white — Tom’s hair? — no, only the cresting white cap of a wave.
They came about, bows into the current so the boat listed badly till they were head on once more. Libby moved for’ard and gripped the rail on the starboard side of the wheelhouse, Jonah on the port, still desperately searching. But time was running out: Tom had no means of staying afloat and the sea was ice cold. Libby’s knuckles were red raw and she could no longer feel her hands where they gripped the metal rail. On the bridge John-Cody had the boat back on what he thought was their original course and he left the wheel for a moment to grab Jonah.
‘As she goes now, half revs: keep her steady, Jonah.’ He scrabbled in the locker beneath the dashboard for the torch. It was the most powerful one he had on board, with a wrist loop tied about the handle. He looked at Jonah again. ‘Keep her really steady, I’m going to get some height.’
On deck he slithered where the water flooded the scuppers and almost lost his footing, then he was at the jib and climbing hand over hand, thirty feet to the spreaders.
Libby watched him, swarming up the mast like a monkey despite the savage roll of the sea. She dare not let go of the rail for fear of disappearing over the side and there was John-Cody climbing the mast. At the spreaders he hauled himself through the metal loop of the crow’s nest and stood up. The boat rocked, the deck bellying from side to side below him as he shone the torch on the sea. The world was greyer up here and the sea less black. But it was vast, running to the horizon in all directions, and nothing moved except flecks of white like spittle on a giant’s jaw. He looked for’ard and aft, port and starboard, the torch casting a yellowed glow across the waves, but there was no sign of Tom. The panic lifted in his throat, burning him like bile. What could he do?
There was nothing he could do. Just as with Elijah Pole there was nothing at all he could do. He looked at the deck and saw Libby’s face in the torchlight, upturned to his, the same fear in her eyes. Jonah stepped out of the port door, hand cupped to his mouth.
John-Cody did not hear him, did not try to reply. He kept the torch on the water, the light spreading round the boat, but he saw nothing. There was nothing to see and in that moment he knew Tom Blanch was lost. And then, as if in acknowledgement that the fight was over, the current all at once felt weaker. He could tell from the swaying of the mast, and the wind was lighter in his face: it was westerly still but not as strong, and as he looked above his head he saw patches of sky through the cloud.
Back in the wheelhouse he hesitated for a moment, deliberating. Jonah was below, trying to raise any other vessels in the area. He received nothing but static and came up, face grey and shaking his head. Libby stood on deck still, holding the rail and staring into the sea with the shock seizing her body. She saw it again in her mind: the wave hitting, almost being lost then regaining her feet only to find that Tom was lost instead, as if the sea had looked for a sacrifice and been prepared to take just one. She didn’t know how long they had been searching: it was as if time had stood still. But Tom was fifty-seven years old and the sea was freezing: he had no life jacket and no wetsuit.
John-Cody appeared at her side. ‘He’s dead, isn’t he?’ Libby said, not really hearing the words, her voice half lost to the elements, but the wind had dropped and the tone echoed in her head like a bell.
John-Cody leaned on the rail and said nothing. He stared at the water and his heart didn’t believe what his head told him. For a long moment he was conscious of each individual breath, then he straightened up and stared at the grey horizon.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘He’s dead.’
Silence in the wheelhouse: John-Cody looked at the clock. They had been sailing for fourteen hours, but he had no idea how long they had been here and still he was turning the Korimako, trawling the empty sea for any sign of Tom. He knew there would be none: too much time had elapsed. They had to go on; he had to get Jonah and Libby home, but he didn’t want to leave. Libby moved next to him where he stood at the wheel.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘We took a wave. I almost went over. By the time I regained my feet he was gone.’
John-Cody bit his lip. ‘A man can go overboard very easily here. Tom should have put a life jacket on.’ The hypocrisy of the comment struck him: he had just climbed to the spreaders with no life jacket in a four-metre swell. But he was still right: Tom should have protected himself; both of them should.
‘Why don’t we stay till it gets light?’ Libby said.
‘Tom’s dead, Libby.’ John-Cody knew it in his heart: he knew it with the same certainty that he knew Mahina was dead and Eli Pole had been dead when he peered over the pulpit rail and saw him tangled up in the halyard. He bent to look through the holes cut in the boards. The wind had slackened right off now and the swell was much lower. He stared at the sky and saw stars against the blackness.
He took a bearing from the Southern Cross and steered them back onto a course of nor’nor’west. He had no real fix on where they were now: they had lost time and although he knew how long they had been sailing and at what speed, he had no idea how much the current had knocked them off course. All of which worried him.
Tom was gone and there would be time enough to mourn him later: right now he had two other lives in his care; they had lost radio contact again and he had no help. He had no handle on their position other than the bearing he had taken, and ahead of them lay the Snares and before the islands themselves the Western Chain, five major rocks spreading in a line some two miles into the sea. He stood at the wheel as the clock ticked beyond eleven and Libby dozed on the bench behind him. Jonah brought him a mug of black coffee and set it down.
‘See if you can find me a cigarette, Jonah, will you?’
Jonah hunted in Libby’s rucksack, stowed against the window to the glasshouse, and found a crumpled pack. John-Cody fished in his pocket for his lighter. The smoke was good in his lungs and it calmed him. Jonah sat down on the bench and laid his head in his hands. He closed his eyes and was still.
John-Cody guided the Korimako on into the night with the breeze freshening his face through the holes in the plywood board that made up the for’ard windows. It kept him awake and eased his mind as he realized the weather was getting better. That could only aid their passage north; it also meant they would be back in radio contact shortly and he twisted the volume wheel on the speakers to make sure anyone trying to get them would be heard. He thought of Bree and his promise to get her mother home: he thought of the wisdom in those twelve years, the wealth of experience tucked away already and trickling out now and again to surprise them.
Glancing behind him, he looked at Libby sleeping, sitting upright on the sodden bench with
her head thrown back and her eyes shut fast. She breathed silently through her nose, breasts rising and falling under the 7mm suit. Her hair looked very black against her face, which was pale and drawn, purple bags of flesh shadowing the skin under her eyes.
He looked for’ard again and pulled on the cigarette, holding the smoke in his lungs for as long as he could before exhaling. Jonah slept in little snores and John-Cody raised a smile, then he thought of Tom and the smile died on his lips. Opening the port door he flipped away the last of the cigarette and felt the wind on his face but much less strong than before. It was shifting sou’west as he had thought it would, but the fury was gone and he estimated the swell to be down to three metres and falling.
The world was grey and black in equal measure, the sky softer and less dense than the sea. A royal albatross drifted on currents of wind close to the boat, lifting over the bows and banking into the east. John-Cody watched its passing and for a moment he thought of how short his time was now and how the decisions he had made would place him back in custody and the chances of his ever seeing this place again were slim to nothing at all. So he stood by the wheel and watched the world through the side windows and took in the grey and black and silver of the sea when the moon washed over the waves as if to cast them in metal. He took in the scent of the sea, the tang in the air, the salt and the moisture on the wind. He took in the flecks of spray that crested the Korimako’s bows and the way the moonlight shimmered in the spreaders. He took in every shifting shape on the horizon and he closed his eyes and saw Moby Dick in the depths of Port Ross.
Jonah relieved John-Cody at 1 a.m. and then Libby relieved Jonah at four. John-Cody slept on the bench directly behind her, half slumped against the window with his arms folded, his age showing as grey lines in his face and his hair loose at his shoulders. His mouth was open a fraction and the stubble gathered in salt and pepper across his jaw. Libby thought of Tom’s white hair and sparkling blue eyes, and she wept silent tears for him as she stood there at the wheel. She felt an ache in the pit of her stomach, half fear, half longing, and she looked to port and starboard, astern and for’ard to make sure they were not gaining on any other boats and none was gaining on them. She felt the ache for the future, not being able to recall how many days John-Cody had left and knowing that the future without him would not seem like any future at all. It was the first time in her thirty-two years that she had felt anything similar and she wondered about Bree and what her reaction would be when they broke the news to her.
She thought of Ned Pole and his plans for Dusky Sound and she couldn’t help but wonder at him. He had stopped the school bullies in their tracks, bullies Libby didn’t even know were there. He had transformed Bree’s life at a stroke and yet in another he had ruined John-Cody’s. The same man had barely raised his voice in anger when his only son was drowned, yet a handful of years later he was responsible for having John-Cody deported. None of that made sense: the deal at Dusky was so important it had made him that callous, and yet he could display a gentleness to Bree that was reminiscent of John-Cody himself.
The Korimako steamed north-west and the wind dropped still further till the sail luffed and flapped like a sheet pegged on a clothes line. Libby thought the jib ought to come in but Jonah and John-Cody were sleeping and she had to stay at the wheel. It would not impede their progress, the revs remained at 950 and the boat headed on at seven and a half knots. She gazed through the hole in the board and felt a new dampness on her face; fog was lifting from the surface of the sea, spectral like smoke. Slowly she shook her head: that was all they needed, with no navigation. She looked at the sky and the stars were hidden, dawn was on its way and the world was grey and bleak and a silence descended that stifled the sound of the engine.
John-Cody was dreaming: he and Tom were in a storm in the Foveaux Strait west of Dog Island. They were running with the sea, the decks awash, seeking shelter from a wind that howled from all points of the compass. Just the two of them on board, Tom’s face white with fear, and he could feel the tension in his own as he fought with the spinning wheel. The sea raged about them like thunder in his ears, waves curling and lifting, standing for what seemed an age before dashing against the windows with a sound like cracking whips. He stared at the glass and wondered how long it would be before it gave and both he and Tom were swept overboard to their deaths. The current shifted violently under his feet and he hauled the wheel round, but it shifted again and he opened his eyes, saw Libby wilting at the helm and Jonah with his head in his hands. The storm was gone and Tom was gone and he realized he had been dreaming.
Carefully he prised himself away from the table, trying not to disturb Jonah. A grey light bled through the windows and he looked at the clock above the barometer: eight almost and getting light. Eight o’clock: the current was silent under his feet and sweat crawled in his hair. He hauled open the port door and stepped out on deck.
The Korimako moved through water as still as glass and he could barely see the bows for the fog. For a long moment he just stood, head high like a hunter, and then he felt movement and a shiver worked the length of his spine.
‘Libby?’ He snapped her from her doze at the wheel.
She cried out suddenly. ‘Sorry, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—’
‘Turn the engine off.’
‘What?’
‘Do as I tell you. The black handle.’ He jabbed a finger at the dashboard in front of her. ‘Pull it up.’
Libby did as she was told and the engine shuddered and died: John-Cody stepped back on deck and waited till the vibrations left the metal. The boat rocked gently, water smacking steel, the shrouds creaked but apart from that there was no sound: except … and he heard it and a weakness went through him that all but took his legs. A slow rushing, a sound that had sent terror through generations of sailors; like moist breath, hollow, long and drawn out, then a moment of silence before the boom of waves upon rock.
He stepped inside, pushed Libby away from the helm and twisted the ignition key. He hauled the wheel to starboard, turning them full about.
‘What’s going on?’ Libby picked herself up where she had fallen against the door. Jonah was next to her, eyes bright and questioning.
‘Rocks.’ John-Cody squeezed the word between clenched teeth. ‘Waves on rocks we can’t see.’ He looked at Jonah. ‘Get on deck. I’m going to run south and kill the engines. Tell me when you can no longer hear anything.’
Jonah went on deck and Libby stepped alongside John-Cody. ‘If it’s rocks it’s land.’
He looked sideways at her. ‘How long has the fog been down?’
‘I don’t know. I must’ve dozed off.’
‘If you were tired you should have woken me.’
‘I’m sorry.’ She looked up at him. ‘But if it’s land …’
‘I don’t think it is land. I think it’s the Western Chain.’
Libby frowned.
‘Tahi, Rua, Toru, Wha, Rima: five massive rocks, Libby, rocks stretching into the ocean. If we run aground on them we’re dead.’
They steamed south for a few minutes then he killed the engine.
‘Your boat.’ He stepped on deck while Libby held the wheel and he listened along with Jonah. ‘Hear anything?’ he asked as the vibrations died once more. Jonah looked at him and nodded.
Back on the bridge he started the engines again and they steamed south. The sound was on the starboard side now and he went on for a few more minutes before trying again. He stood with Jonah, both of them at the starboard rail and looking west into the gloom.
‘Hear anything?’
Jonah shook his head.
‘Me neither.’ John-Cody pushed fog-damp hair from his eyes and went in to start the engines. Now he turned the boat east and they steamed for a mile or so and then he hauled the wheel to port.
Libby was watching him. He could still feel the roll of the ocean current though the wind was nothing and the water looked flat as a millpond.
‘Wh
at’re we doing now?’ she asked him.
‘Going north again. We do that and we listen.’
They steamed ahead and he cut the engine and gazed through the holes in the board till Jonah shook his head. John-Cody started the engine. Again they went north and again he cut the engine and still Jonah shook his head. He started the engine once more and they went north and this time Jonah nodded.
John-Cody left the wheel to Libby and went out on deck. He stood and listened and again he heard the rushing sound off the port bow. He still felt the current under his feet and nodded slowly at Jonah. ‘Western Chain,’ he said. ‘That’s the Southern Ocean roll.’
‘What now?’ Libby asked when he went back inside.
John-Cody put his arm round her shoulders. ‘Now we go east for an hour then north very gently. We’re east of the Western Chain and in a couple more hours we’ll be in the lee of the Snares. We sit there till the fog lifts and then we’ll see the islands.’ He broke off and stared through the holes in the boards. ‘After that we’ve got four hours at sea till we reach Stewart Island, and from Stewart Island we can see Bluff Cove.’
TWENTY-SIX
BREE AND ALEX MET the boat at bluff cove. With the Snares left behind and Stewart Island all but in sight, Libby had spoken to them on the radio and told them roughly what time they would be in. John-Cody kept the news of Tom’s drowning to himself. Tom had a widow in Manapouri and he didn’t want her to learn of her husband’s death over the airwaves. Alex had parked her car on the wharf and Libby stood in the bows and watched Bree waving frantically as the boat steamed into harbour. John-Cody was at the wheel, steering his course through the holes in the boards. They were almost out of fuel and the Korimako limped in, having lost a crewman. John-Cody was as drained as he had ever felt and it was all he could do to bring the boat alongside. He would have to leave her there at Bluff with Jonah to organize repairs before driving Tom’s truck back to Manapouri. It would take another two days to steam to the wharf at Deep Cove and John-Cody had only four days till he had to leave New Zealand.
