by JH Fletcher
In the evenings, when the tides were right, they watched the Filipino fishermen clearing their traps down at the low water mark. It made them sad that this, too, was something they were seeing for the last time.
They went to the agents and booked their passage on the steamer. As far as they could tell, no one had seen them, but they doubted they could keep it to themselves for long: in this town, if you sneezed in the bath it wouldn’t be long before people started asking about your cold.
Growing more and more nervous with every day, Wendy wondered whether they should be more careful, see less of each other.
‘People are bound to talk.’
Charlie didn’t give a damn. ‘Let them talk.’
‘I don’t want anything to go wrong at the last minute.’ She coaxed him. ‘It’s only for another three weeks.’
So it was. Then it was two weeks. Then …
8
Tuesday 26 March. The wind had been gusting strongly all the previous day and none of the luggers had gone out. During the night the wind had strengthened but, by morning, it had died to a sullen calm, with drizzle falling from a cloud ceiling low enough to brush the tops of the masts.
In the surly dawn light, Charlie went to check the barometer. And frowned.
‘What’s it doing?’ Nakamura asked.
‘29.2 inches,’ he said. He rapped the barometer case with his knuckles but the reading did not change. ‘29.2 and steady.’
‘High,’ Nakamura said. He stuck his head out of the hatch and looked up at the cloud cover. ‘I no like it.’
Charlie didn’t like it, either: there was a feel to the weather that made him uncomfortable, and when the wind gusted it seemed to carry more weight than it should, a bludgeon that might strike at any time.
Yet the sea was down, the wind — however it might feel — was light and the barometer was high. Probably the cloud cover would burn off, too, as the sun rose higher. A bunch of fools they would look then, if they were still in harbour.
Around them, the other luggers were making ready for sea.
Nakamura shouted across to the skipper of a nearby boat. A brief exchange of words, then he turned back to Charlie. ‘They are going out. All the fleet is going.’
They looked at each other, and again back at the sea. No white horses, no wind to speak of. The waves slopped against the lugger’s flank, shining like oil in the grey light.
And yesterday had been a day in harbour, a day without pay.
Charlie went and had another look at the barometer: 29.2 and steady. He returned to Nakamura in the wheelhouse.
‘What do you think?’
‘I think we should go.’
FIFTEEN
1
The cloud did not burn off; by midmorning it was as thick as ever and the rain was falling steadily. The wind had returned and was now blowing from the north-west. Charlie stood with his face to the wind, tasting it as it blew towards him.
It was no worse than a fresh breeze on the Channel coast, he thought. Of course, those winds, too, had been known to turn to storm, but so far there was no hint of that happening here. The word on everybody’s mind was cyclone, but Ito told him that the winds in an approaching cyclone were never as stable as this.
‘Always they shift.’ Ito made a seesaw motion with his hands. ‘To an’ fro. To an’ fro. Always.’
So that was all right. And still the barometer had not changed.
A lot of fuss about nothing, Charlie told himself.
Weather apart, it was a normal day. They took turns to go down; the piles of shell grew steadily higher. The overcast and rain made it hard to see very far, but now and again it lifted momentarily and they saw the rest of the pearling fleet scattered across the ocean. A scud of rain rattled on the deck and was gone as quickly as it had arrived. Everything as normal.
And still the wind blew steadily from the north-west.
The afternoon began the same way. The rain was coming down harder and they could see little beyond the end of the bowsprit. The wind, undeniably, was stronger, the seas higher and beginning to break, but for the most part … Nothing.
A wave broke under the stemhead. The hull lurched and spray flew like shrapnel.
‘We must make up our minds if we want to go back or ride it out,’ Charlie said.
‘Ride it out,’ Nakamura said.
It would be safer. There was a rocky island a mile or two to the north. They could spend the night there, out of the wind and the worst of the weather. It would be uncomfortable, but safe. Charlie had arranged to meet Wendy but that couldn’t be helped; when you were dealing with the sea, the weather took priority over all.
They made ready, hauled in the anchor and headed north. The other vessels had also decided to make a move. Most of them were heading in the opposite direction, towards Broome and what might be safety, but Charlie and Nakamura had been uneasy about the weather from the first and did not fancy the long haul back in this wind and a rising sea, with a desolate coast menacing their lee all the way. The island would suit them very well. By tomorrow, no doubt, the storm — if that was what it was — would have blown itself out.
2
It did not blow itself out; it blew harder, even in their sheltered anchorage. By dusk the wind was strong enough to shake the rigging and set the hull quivering on its anchor chain. In the middle of the night the movement had become violent; they turned out to set a second anchor. The rain was pouring down; within seconds they were soaked to the skin but, with the extra anchor securely in place, the movement was easier and they all slept intermittently until dawn.
Except that there was no dawn. In its place was a steel sky, no horizon and endlessly falling rain.
The first thing Charlie did was to look, yet again, at the barometer. 29.2 inches.
‘It must be stuck,’ he said, and rapped it again, but still it did not move.
The seas were ferocious now; there was no question of their going anywhere in this.
He went out to check the anchors. They seemed to be holding well. He stood at the rail and looked out at the island, where the breaking seas were showing their teeth along the rocky shore. Not too bad, even so, but it would be another story on the weather side; even from here he could hear the breakers roaring as they broke upon the rocks. As far as the mainland was concerned, they should be safe enough, with the island seven miles off the coast. There was more than enough sea room for anything but the most ferocious of storms.
He walked back into the wheelhouse. He looked at the barometer, then stopped and stared again, unable to believe what he was seeing.
‘Sacre bleu!’
It was the first time a French phrase had passed his lips for months.
28.8 inches. The gauge had dropped almost half an inch in less than an hour.
His sharp exclamation brought Nakamura running.
‘What is it?’
‘The barometer is down half an inch.’ Charlie spoke the words carefully, as though each were as fragile as glass. ‘In an hour.’
The two men stared at each other in dismay. One thing alone could account for so rapid a fall.
Cyclone.
As one, they raced onto the deck and stared north-west, the direction from which the wind continued to blow. Two hundred yards away, the island lay crouched between them and the storm. In the middle of the island, a low hill was crowned by scattered trees; Charlie saw how they were being blown almost horizontal by the gale. Beyond the crest, the sky was black. Where they were, the rain was falling heavier than ever.
‘There she is,’ Charlie said. ‘Heading this way, too.’
Again the two men stared at each other. Each knew what the other was thinking: a cyclone bearing down on them, a rock-strewn shore not ten miles under their lee, their anchors set in ground that might, or might not, continue to hold.
Charlie came to life. ‘Storm ports,’ he said urgently. ‘Batten down! For our lives!’
Each lugger carried circular plates cas
t from heavy metal sheet that in time of storm could be bolted into place over the portholes. Nakamura nodded and ran to fetch them. Ito was on deck, too, and joined Charlie in checking that each hatch was as securely tied down as they could make it. Within minutes, the job was done. Eyes half closed against the rain, Charlie turned to stare at the sky above the island. The blackness was much closer now, stretching a menacing hand to take them, to obliterate —
No!
They had battened down the hatches; now it was time to batten down their minds against the panic that might otherwise destroy them as surely as the storm.
A thought struck him. He looked at Ito, who was watching him closely. ‘Ground chain.’
‘Wha’?’
The extra chain was something every lugger carried in the bilges: fathoms of heavy chain, stored there to help in just such an emergency as this. Shackle it to the existing anchor chain, let it out as far as it would go, and the extra weight on the seabed would help the anchors withstand the worst of the winds, when the cyclone struck.
Or that was the theory.
It seemed barely credible that the stress of the crisis had so nearly driven the existence of the chain from their minds.
‘Chain!’ Ito’s expression cleared as he repeated the word, understanding at last what Charlie was telling him.
‘Let’s get it on deck!’
It was quite a job. It was heavy, slimy, awkward, but the knowledge that they had no time to waste gave them added strength. Somehow they manhandled the chain onto the deck, where they spread out the heavy links in two parallel lines.
‘Careful it doesn’t slide over the side!’
The hull was quivering like a horse about to bolt, but so far the deck remained reasonably level and the chain, secured by its own weight, did not move. Fingers fumbling, working against time, they used massive shackles to attach the lengths of chain to each of the straining anchor cables. Once again they made sure that the bitter ends were secured, and let them go. There was no question of easing them out; even in the lee of the island the seas were running far too high for that. As soon as the first fathom of links was over the side, the weight took over and the rest went out with a roar.
With no room for error, the two men watched, breath bated in their throats. The hull had dropped back on its anchors by the length of the additional chain, but everything seemed to be holding and Charlie thought that the additional weight might have eased the motion just a little.
‘Sails off!’
The sails were bundled loosely along the booms; they freed the lashings and carried the heavy canvas below, staggering and swearing under its weight. Next they lowered the gaff booms and took them down as well. Charlie even looked thoughtfully at the main booms; they were long and very heavy and he would have liked to see them down, too: the less windage aloft, the better. Unfortunately it wasn’t possible. The booms were far too long for that; they would have to stay where they were. Instead, he contented himself by checking that they were lashed down as tightly as possible.
While all this had been going on, Nakamura had finished bolting on the metal porthole covers. There was nothing more they could do. One last look at the vast area of darkness, black as night, that now had taken over almost all the sky, and Charlie followed the others below. He shut and locked the hatch behind him and lashed it tightly, running the line again and again through the metal handles.
The cabin was bare and fish-smelling at the best of times; now it was dark and gloomy as well, with little light able to come through portholes armoured by their protective plates. Not that there was much light to come in anyway.
The two Japanese divers regarded Charlie impassively, their faces yellow in the gloom.
‘A cup of coffee would be good,’ Charlie said.
Now there was nothing to do but wait.
3
With the barometer at 28.2 inches — over half an inch down from its previous reading and the lowest Charlie had ever seen on a gauge — the first of the cyclonic winds struck.
Amy II lurched and heeled on her beam ends. Ito cried out; for a moment it seemed that they were going to capsize. If that happened they would be drowned before they knew it. But it did not happen. The masts must have been almost in the water yet somehow the vessel righted herself, although the tension in the anchor chains set up a vibration that shook the hull.
A few inches above their heads, the rain crashed like a waterfall on the deck. Its roar deafened them, drowning all other sound. They could not even hear the wind, but it shook the lugger so wildly that it seemed impossible that they could survive.
And still the moorings held.
A moment’s respite, both from wind and rain. Once again Amy II swayed upright, like a dazed fighter getting off the canvas. Then, as though the storm had paused merely to regain its breath, there came a scream louder than anything Charlie had heard in his life and the first of the giant winds fell upon them, setting its teeth in the vessel and flinging it over on its beam ends until the very timbers howled.
Charlie leapt to his feet, only to be flung sideways as the lugger once again buried its masts in the sea. Somehow he scrambled up, clutching the nearest porthole as he tried to peer out past the plate that covered it. It was no good; the curved metal obscured all vision. The noise of the wind drove spikes into his brain. He had to know what was going on. It was impossible to go out on the deck but impossible to stay where he was. As he hesitated, gripped by the storm, teetering on the slippery edge of panic, a sound came louder even than the wind: the rifle crack of a shroud parting, followed by another. A second gust shrieked out of the north-west and he felt the mast — one? both? — go. Each mast passed through both decking and cabin, its foot fastened deep in the keel: the below-decks portions were part of the cabin furniture, taking up a good deal of space but in normal times barely noticed. Now the three men eyed them apprehensively. They did not move, yet the divers could tell by the movement of the ship that, above decks and out of sight, the masts must have sheared. For an instant the hull rode more easily, but the respite did not last.
There came a crash that shook the teeth in their heads. Another crash. They leapt to their feet, staring at each other in mounting terror.
‘Masts,’ Nakamura screamed, his face working. ‘In water. If they not cut loose, will smash the hull.’
There was only one thing to do. Impossible or not, they had to open the hatch and go out into the storm. Impossible or not, they had to cut away the fallen spars that were now grinding and crashing against the hull. If they did not — within minutes, perhaps less — the timbers of the hull would be crushed and the sea would come pouring in.
Charlie ran staggering to the forepeak to fetch the axe. Gripping the haft tightly, he crouched in front of the hatch cover and looked over his shoulder at the two men standing right behind him. He raised his voice above the tumult of the storm.
‘Ready?’
They nodded, faces grim, mouths tight. He unfastened the lashings and threw open the hatch.
SIXTEEN
1
For a day and a night, mounting apprehension had gripped the town of Broome, while the inhabitants looked anxiously at the sky. By the next morning the skies were black, the seas terrible and still rising, and the wind’s voice, in the gusts, had become a banshee howl. Some of the pearling fleet had made it back to port and were now anchored off the jetty, pitching wildly but with their crews safe from whatever might be bearing down upon them. By no means all the fleet had returned.
‘They’ll be sheltering up the coast,’ Wendy’s father said. He had been down to the wharf but there was nothing to be done there, so had come home again. He spoke to his daughter of the whole fleet although he knew that her thoughts were with only one; he wasn’t the fool she thought he was, nor — however much he deserved his business reputation — was he a domestic tyrant, although his daughter would always remain foreign territory to him, like all women. ‘There are islands. If they can reach one of t
hose, put a few rocks between them and the weather, they’ll be right. I remember a storm, once …’
But this was no storm. No ordinary storm.
At midmorning, the day dusk-dark, Wendy went out of the house herself. Her father had told her to stay indoors but that was impossible: fear — of the storm, for Charlie — drove her out.
Away from the house the wind was blowing hard, the torrential rain driving almost horizontal to the ground. There was no one else about yet, for all the tumult of the storm, Wendy was surprised to find that she was not afraid. She was as helpless as she had been in the house; all the same, it was better to be out than in. The wind made it almost impossible to walk, yet somehow, half staggering, half running, she managed to reach the wharf. The raging seas, dirty green and curdled with foam, charged like cavalry. She squinted into the wind and saw a lugger flying towards shelter, its sails reefed right down. For a moment her heart leapt, then the rain cleared momentarily and she saw that it was not the vessel she had been hoping for. She watched the sea turn black as a line squall sped towards the land. The squall caught the lugger. Its remaining sails disintegrated. The hull lurched, its rail barely clear of the water, before the whole vessel was hidden in an avalanche of spray. Within seconds, the squall had reached her. It drove her across the street, the rain blinding her. After it had passed she found herself breathless and soaked, but still on her feet. Again she stared at the raging ocean, trying to imagine what it must be like to be out there in the midst of it, but found she could not. She could not think properly at all: the tumult made that impossible.
The squall cleared and she saw the newly arrived lugger once more. Somehow, broken halyards flying, it had managed to drop its anchor and turn into the wind. Tiny figures showed momentarily on the deck before scurrying below. For the moment, that crew, too, was safe.
