by Roger Bax
I said, “Besides, Joe, what about your business here?”
“It’ll be all right,” Joe said. “As a matter of fact …” he had the grace to look a little embarrassed. “I did put out some feelers. I’ve a pal who’ll look after all the boats while I’m away, and the rest of the work will just have to wait. If the trip’s successful, you can build me a proper workshop when we get back.”
That seemed fair enough, and we shook hands on it. Then Joe said: “There’s just one other thing we ought to get clear before we start. Who’s going to be skipper of this expedition?”
I thought for a moment. I said: “Suppose we fix it this way, Joe—you’ll be in charge of everything to do with sailing the boat. I’ll be responsible for the expedition as a whole, subject to what’s nautically possible. How’s that?”
“It suits me,” said Joe. “As long as we know. The only time in my life I was nearly drowned was when two chaps gave orders at once.”
I said, “What happened?” I always liked Joe’s happy reminiscences.
Joe said: “One of them shouted ‘Port your helm!’ The other one shouted ‘Starboard your helm!’ So we kept going and hit a tug.”
Now that Joe was coming with us the expedition took on a very different character. He had the quiet confidence of the professional, and though a passage to Sweden in a small boat was still a big undertaking, particularly if the weather should turn against us, it no longer seemed lunatic. All preparations went ahead very smoothly in that last busy week. Joe took complete charge at Southfleet. Denny couldn’t do much—he had to go every day to the outpatients’ department to have his hand dressed. I was mainly up in town, for what with food and a passport there was quite a bit of extra arranging to do on Joe’s account.
The day before we were due to sail, I paid a last visit to the X. Y. Z. office. There hadn’t been any news for some time, but as it happened a message came through from Steve while I was still in the office. It was tacked on to the end of a cable to Donovan and said simply, Please convey best wishes Uncle Philip and many happy returns. Steve had evidently remembered the date and was on his toes. Donovan shook his head sadly as he handed me the cable and said, “That guy’s sure headin’ for a crack-up.”
The last day at Southfleet was pretty nerve-racking, for we had nothing much to do but wait for the tide. Denny had his stitches out in the morning and in the afternoon he insisted on reloading the punt gun. It took him a long time, with one good hand and a swathe of bandage, but he wouldn’t let anyone else do it. After that, we forgot about the gun’s existence. It made an admirable bowsprit.
High tide at Southfleet was at ten o’clock, and we had decided to go down the creek under power over the last of the flood. As the mild and peaceful evening drew to a close I sat up on Dawn’s foredeck smoking an after-supper pipe and thinking how lovely the creek looked. The wet mud reflected the colours of the sunset, the wide saltings were darkly purple under sea-lavender. I wondered if I would be looking on this scene again in a few months’ time with Marya by my side. Perhaps, I thought, it was better to hope than to know.
Presently the church clock in the village began to strike nine and Joe said in a quiet matter-of-fact voice, “Well, let’s get under way.” He started the engine and I got the anchor. In a few moments we were gliding gently downstream. One or two people waved to us from their houseboats as we passed, and we waved back quite casually. From our appearance, we might just have been going out into the Estuary for another trial, but on board there was an almost tangible excitement. Joe was just a shade too-calm, Denny just a fraction too nonchalant. As for myself, I was speechless now that we were actually started on the great adventure.
As it turned out, sailing conditions during the next four days were so perfect that a tyro could have made the passage single-handed. A great anti-cyclone was stationary over the whole of Northern Europe, so our radio told us, and a light steady breeze on the starboard beam persisted almost to the end of the trip. Day after day Dawn just sailed herself, with the tiller lashed amidships and the sheet made fast. Joe said it was like sailing in the trade winds. Usually there are lots of chores to be done at sea, but we had to look for jobs to keep us occupied. It fell to me to keep Dawn well swabbed down and shipshape in accordance with Joe’s exacting requirements, and usually I did the cooking. Joe attended to the navigation of the ship, though there was precious little for him to do. He and I shared watches at night. Denny’s job was to get his hand better. We didn’t talk much about our plans, for August and Tallinn were still far off. Most of the time we just lazed.
On alternate evenings we tuned in to Moscow radio and listened to Steve’s broadcasts. The first talk had no interest for us—it was a piece about Soviet patriotism taken, I judged, straight from pravda. I could only suppose that Steve was carrying out his plan of getting on the right side of the Soviet Press Department by writing sympathetic pieces for a change. On the third evening, however, we had a most exciting message. Reception was particularly good, and the voice of the woman announcer came through so clearly and in tones so familiar to me that I could almost imagine myself back in the studio, waiting my turn. We listened tensely while she repeated several times, “This is Moscow radio calling X. Y. Z. for Steve Quillan,” and finally, “Steve Quillan begins in thirty seconds from—now.” It was the drill for synchronizing the broadcast with the X.Y.Z. transmission from New York, into which it had to be exactly fitted.
Then Steve began, and this time we got our signal with the word ‘Today’. For the next two minutes I was scribbling hard, while the others stood by anxiously. Steve was on a political theme. I took down: “Today the ordinary Russian has U.N.O. very much in mind. He knows of course that it is touch and go whether the organization will deal successfully with its problems, but the man—and indeed the woman—in the street will not be put out by what may be temporary difficulties. They prefer to see how things go, and to hope that gradually there will be a greater desire among all nations to co-operate for their common good and to ensure the maintenance of peace …”
So it went on, and it took me quite a while to transcribe the whole broadcast into legible longhand. It was the most awful drive!—what the Russian man-in-the-street thinks hasn’t the slightest influence on Russian policy anyway—and it was chock full of dreary clichés and empty hopes. However, that didn’t worry us. You could have heard a pin drop in the cabin as I ringed every ninth word, for we all knew that what emerged on any of these occasions might well mean the success or failure of our expedition. There was so much bad news that might come Steve’s way, and that he might have to transmit to us. But this message was heartening. It was all in the first few sentences of the broadcast and read IN TOUCH WITH WOMAN BY SEE. The ‘SEE’ was obviously ‘SEA’, and the meaning was plain. Steve had managed to contact Rosa, the dressmaker in Tallinn.
Joe was particularly impressed by the demonstration. Though he’d been told about the cypher, and had admired the idea, he hadn’t seen the magic actually at work until now. He took off his peaked cap, scratched the grizzled hair over his right ear, and then read the whole message through, while a slow grin spread across his face.
“He wraps it up, doesn’t he?”
I said: “I hope he wraps it up enough. They’ve only got to cotton on to one of these messages, and heads will roll.”
Denny said thoughtfully: “That dressmaker is taking a big chance. I suppose she thinks it’s worth it.”
“She must know what she’s doing,” I said. “It’s not the first risk she’s taken. It was pretty dangerous for her to call on Steve at the hotel that morning in Tallinn, but she was past caring about herself. She lost practically all her family when twenty thousand Estonians were rounded up and deported to Siberia overnight.”
We all sat silent for a moment. Then Joe brought us back to earth with, “What about a cup of tea?”
On the fourth day out the friendly breeze died away, and we ghosted along in the light airs with a spinnaker set.
We knew we were not very far from Denmark. As night fell the wind was scarcely more than a coolness on the cheek and we made little progress. However, soon after daybreak Joe gave an eager shout from the foredeck and after inspection through his glasses a triumphant “Land-ho!” It was the Jutland coast, about seven miles off the starboard bow. We all had a good look at it, for there’s no thrill greater than a successful landfall after a long passage in a small boat.
What we needed now was wind. Joe was in the highest spirits and nearly whistled his head off, but no wind came. In the end we decided to stow the sagging sails and rely on the engine to get us into Gothenberg before nightfall, just in case the luck of the weather should turn against us. We reckoned that we could fill up with petrol in Sweden. All afternoon we steamed north-east at a steady seven knots, helped by a favourable tide. By late evening we were dodging shipping in the Gota estuary, and before dark had been given a friendly welcome at the Royal Swedish Yacht Club and were safely tied up to one of their buoys in Langedrag Yacht Harbour.
The first long leg of our journey was over. We had a pleasant meal ashore and turned in with a delicious sense of relaxation.
Altogether we spent about four days in Gothenberg, and we found it a very welcome rest. The motion of the boat had been slight, but it was a relief to feel solid land under us again all the same. The Swedes were kindness itself, and their hospitality was almost embarrassing. We ate as we hadn’t eaten for years, and I’m afraid we drank rather more schnapps than was good for us. We had to excuse ourselves from two parties because of the necessity to listen in to Moscow, but in fact there were no more messages. As we were supposed to be on a pleasure cruise we made a sightseeing tour of the city. But we were none of us really in holiday mood—the difficulties of our mission were never very far from our thoughts—and soon we began to prepare for the next stage of our journey.
There wasn’t a great deal to do. Dawn, after a morning of spit-and-polish, looked as smart and clean as any yacht in the river, which was saying a good deal. We’d had such an easy passage to Sweden that there was almost nothing to be done in the way of repairs and renewals. We filled up with petrol and topped up the fresh-water tanks and the batteries, and laid in some additional stores. We also bought Swedish maps and charts of the Gota Canal and the lakes we should have to pass through, but we couldn’t get anything better of the Tallinn area than the charts we’d brought with us. Joe thought we might be able to get some information locally about the lights in Tallinn Harbour, since at least an occasional ship must be trading to those parts. I was agreeable, provided an opportunity arose naturally, but was scared of letting anyone know that we were interested in Tallinn and was against raising the subject ourselves. We spent some time drinking and listening in dives along the waterfront, but we learned nothing useful from the few English conversations we had.
We had three hundred and fifty miles of rivers, lakes and artificial canals to negotiate before we reached the Gulf of Bothnia, not to mention more than sixty locks. There would be no more sailing until we reached the great inland lakes, so Denny came into his own with the engine. He had been to see a doctor in Gothenberg about his hand and the verdict had been quite encouraging. The wound was healing according to plan and in a week or two he’d be able to start doing finger exercises to get the stiff muscles and tendons into use again. With one sound hand and a much reduced bandage he was able to do most of the things that had to be done to the engine, and virtually took charge of our passage through the canals.
For the next week or two we all looked and behaved like tourists. Joe, in particular, was as carefree as a schoolboy. He had found on the library shelf a guide-book to Sweden, and he spent a lot of time up on the foredeck telling us about all the wonderful sights we were missing. There was plenty to see and plenty to occupy us. We could tie up practically anywhere we liked, and for long periods we spent more time ashore than afloat. We would chug a few miles in the morning, just for a change of scene, and for the rest of the day we would explore. Once we’d left the factories of Gothenberg behind it was a fertile and pleasant landscape that we passed through, and the further we went the more picturesque it became.
We pottered along to little Lake Akersjo, through a canal cut in the solid rock, and then out into Lake Vanern, which the guide-book told us was the third largest in Europe. We had a look round Vanersberg and took in some more stores. There was room to move about, now, and one night about an hour after dark we staged a sort of dinghy-rehearsal. We found a quiet spot, and I put Joe and Denny ashore on the lakeside. Then I rowed out to where Dawn was lying at anchor, muffled the oars, and rowed in again as quietly as I could towards the point where I’d left the other two. They agreed that they’d been unable to see the dinghy until it was nearly at the bank, but they’d heard faint noises while it was still quite a way out, possibly a quarter of a mile. But this was a lake. By the sea there were always covering noises, if only of wavelets splashing on pebbles. It didn’t look as though we had much to worry about on the score of the dinghy.
Lake Vanern was nearly ninety miles long and fifty wide, so we were able to do some sailing again. The pilotage was intricate, for right across the centre of the lake there was an archipelago of tiny islets and underwater rocks. It was good practice for what was to come later. We had one unpleasant night when a freak storm got up, and it seemed for a time that we might be driven ashore, but we weathered it. Next day we passed a charming little place called Sjotorp and then began to climb the exciting staircase of locks to Lake Viken, the highest point on the route.
If only we had had the girls with us, cruising through the canals and lakes would have been an idyllic life. The scenery was getting better all the time, and for some miles the canal was so high up that we could look down from the deck of the boat upon rolling countryside stretching away far below us and all around. Pleasant though it was to laze, we didn’t forget business. We had listened regularly to Steve’s broadcasts and just before we entered Lake Vattern—the second big lake on the route—we got another message. This time the subject of the broadcast was a cocktail party that Molotov had given to foreign diplomats in Moscow and the relevant portion, when transcribed, read like this: “Today Mr. Molotov was host to all the leading lights of Moscow. The diplomats were all on holiday, and as a special treat young communists—girls and boys—gave a most delightful concert. One of the unchanged features of eternal Russia is the singing, which still has a unique charm. It is understandable that working Russians would as soon spend their hard-earned money on good concerts as use their roubles to buy tickets for the theatre, for the choral tradition is very strong indeed. However, that’s all by the way. This party was a significant as well as a pleasant occasion …”
I won’t bore you with the rest of the stuff. It was a shockingly bad broadcast, and I felt pretty sure that Steve had sweated it out with a wet towel round his head in an atmosphere thick with vodka fumes. Indeed, we began to think that the party had been altogether too much for him, because when we applied the rule of thumb method we produced LEADING HOLIDAY AND THE WHICH THAT MONEY BUY IS. This was plaintive but unilluminating. Then I realized—as I should have done earlier if I’d been paying attention to the words instead of to the shorthand—that Steve, greatly daring, had meant ‘leading-lights’ to be taken as one word. We now got LEADING-LIGHTS AND BOYS UNCHANGED STILL WORKING ON TICKETS.
We drank Steve’s health in schnapps. It was a most satisfactory message, for it showed that he’d received and understood my letter about the Vake shoal buoy, and also that he’d managed to get Rosa at work on the spot. I was beginning to have a superstitious feeling that everything was going much too smoothly, and a fear that our luck would break at a critical moment.
Chapter Eight
In fact, though, our luck and the weather still held. We crossed Lake Vattern under all possible sail in the merest of breezes. There was no point in pressing on too fast, because we certainly didn’t want to find ourselves in the Baltic until
well into August. We took in stores and refuelled at Motala on the eastern shore of the lake, and then began to bump our way down the long escalator of locks to the sea.
On July 20 we locked out of the Gota Canal at Mem and tied up at the old wharf. Once again we were in what passed in these parts for salt water, and the open sea lay ahead, though we had to reach it through a long fiord and by pilotage among hundreds of rocks and islands which lay scattered in our path. We had a little conference at Mem about the next stage of our journey. The alternatives were to sail direct for the Gulf of Finland—Hango, which guards the northern shore of the entrance, was about 220 miles away—or else to go north to Stockholm and then make the direct passage—a mere 175 miles—across the neck of the Gulf of Bothnia. Since we still had time to kill we all voted for Stockholm as a safe and civilized jumping-off point for the start of the final assault. A couple of days later, after an uneventful trip along an inland route, we tied up to a mooring in the Stockholm Yacht Basin among as fine an assortment of craft as I’ve seen anywhere. We still had just over a fortnight in hand.
To have sailed from England to Stockholm in a small yacht so soon after the end of the war was considered something of a local event, and we hadn’t been there twenty-four hours before we had a newspaper man on board. I wasn’t very happy about that, for publicity was the very last thing we sought. It was quite certain that the Russians had their ears to the ground in Stockholm, for they had always resented the smuggling of Balts to Finland and Sweden on private vessels and the sanctuary that the kindly Swedes usually provided for refugees. The juxtaposition of my name and Denny’s would inevitably give the whole show away to them. It wouldn’t take them long to add up two husbands and a private yacht in Baltic waters and decide that a relief expedition was under way. On the other hand we certainly didn’t want to give anyone the impression that we had something to hide. For the purpose of the inescapable newspaper interview, therefore, I changed my name from Sutherland to Suthers, and Jack Denny became Mr. Jack. If the immigration people noticed that the published names were different from those in our ship’s papers and passports they probably thought it was the result of bad newspaper reporting. Anyway, nobody complained. I said in the interview that we were on holiday, and that we planned to do a little sailing in the Stockholm archipelago before returning home through the Gota Canal. We were all ecstatic about the beauties of the Swedish scenery and the fascinating castles and monasteries that we’d seen on the way.
