The Main Cages

by Philip Marsden

  For some time he had been watching the Golden Sands. He had seen her pull away from Porth quay, cross the harbour and enter the open sea. On the up-rows he saw London Terrace and the pipe-smoke clouds above it; on the down-rows the sea and the single yellow shape pitching across it.

  Neither occupied him. Nothing occupied him very much except this last harvesting, this last oblong of oats. He watched the flails and the horses’ heads and listened to the whirring of the canvas belt as he reached the terrace and turned for the down-row. The yellow shape was a little further to the right. He wondered idly, who would get there first? Would he have cut the last stalk before the boat reached Pendhu? Or would he still be sitting here in the binder’s seat as it came inside the rocks and disappeared round the headland?

  It was close. He still had, what, twenty yards – and twenty yards was fifteen rows. The boat was well over halfway to the headland. It would be touch and go. He flicked the reins, turned at the bottom and drove the pair hard up the hill. Their hooves drove into the soil. The slope steepened, London came closer. The blades cut quicker; the flails flailed faster; the tines of the sheaver spun more urgently and, foot by foot, the line of stubble behind him advanced. He reached the terrace and turned, and there was the boat just half a mile away. The sun shone on its funnel and its bows. It was dipping and surging in the swell. It was going to beat him to it.

  Silence.

  Tacker appeared to react before it happened. Most could not understand why he was dashing forward again when they were expecting another song. But the Stephenses knew at once. Charlie Treneer knew. The Petrel skippers knew.

  Jimmy leaned out of the wheelhouse. He saw Tacker pulling up the hatch. ‘That hose again?’

  ‘Could be!’ And Tacker dropped down to his shoulders, found the rungs of the ladder with his feet, and ducked inside.

  Jimmy eased himself back to the helm. Without power the Golden Sands was beginning to yaw. He tried to keep her straight but his steerage was going. Charlie Treneer had come forward. Mr Bryant was behind him, but before he could speak Jimmy told Charlie, ‘Go drop us six fathoms of chain, will ’ee?’

  As Charlie left, Bryant stepped into his place and said, ‘Why has the engine stopped?’

  Jimmy said nothing. He was thinking. If the hose had gone again, Tacker could bind it up in a few minutes. He had only thirty fathoms of chain and there was at least that much water. He wasn’t trying to anchor; he just needed the weight at the bows to stop them going broadside. Broadside in that swell would be very uncomfortable.

  Mr Bryant leaned through the door. ‘Answer me!’

  ‘Be all right, Mister,’ boomed Jimmy. ‘Don’t ’ee worry!’

  Charlie was on the foredeck freeing the lashings from the anchor. Red Stephens came up and helped prepare the chain. The wheel was now loose in Jimmy’s hands. The boat’s motion was changing and they were swinging and it wasn’t the bows dipping any more, but the sides; their pitch was turning to roll. The boat dropped onto her topsides and there was a series of slow clatters and shiftings as everything loose on board moved to port. Charlie stumbled. The anchor slid overboard and the chain rattled out over the gunwale. Red took a bight from the loose chain and flicked a couple of hitches over the post. The chain snapped tight on them.

  But the boat was still beam-on to the seas. Jimmy watched the angle of the chain as it entered the water. They all watched it. Very slowly it began to stretch out. The Golden Sands was sliding downwind, swivelling as she did so on the weight of the anchor. Another shadowy sea rose and the boat tumbled down before it. But now the sea anchor was working. It checked her roll and they rode over the crest. When she dropped down into the next trough she was pointing into the wind.

  Tacker was still below.

  Half a mile astern was the white water around the Main Cages.

  ‘Tell me, Bran, has she stopped or no?’

  Ivor Dawkins had pulled the binder to a halt. He was leaning on his knees and squinting out to sea. Bran Johns followed his gaze. He put the sheaf he was holding to the ground and shielded his eyes.

  The Golden Sands was swaying back and forth in the swells. Bran lost her for a moment as she dipped into a trough but then her bow rose and she climbed up over it. She had no way; there was no white water at her stern, none at her bow.

  ‘Well,’ said Bran, ‘if she’s in trouble, she’s in the right place.’

  Dawkins glanced at him and Bran nodded towards the headland. ‘Williams’ll have her in his telescope.’

  The passengers were silent. As the boat began to wallow so they wallowed too, half aware that the engine had stopped, that the ceaseless bucking of the boat had altered, that there were plenty of people in the know to deal with it.

  Lady Rafferty was feeling less ill. Without the sickly fumes from the engine, she could breathe easily again. Sir Basil was sitting with her, patting her hand. ‘Back in no time, my dear!’

  In the hiatus some of the children had slipped free of their parental clutch and stood in a group before the bar. They were trying to keep their balance as the boat heaved about, holding out their arms and crying ‘Whooooo!’ and ‘Eeesh!’ whenever the deck tilted beneath them. They giggled as they felt the weightlessness in their stomachs when the boat dropped.

  Then one of them fell and knocked his head on a bench. He stared for a moment before crying out. Parson Hooper half-stood to assist but the woman in the yellow hat was there already. ‘I told you, Edgar! Now just stay here.’

  Cameron came aft with Joseph Stephens; the passengers all turned to watch them.

  ‘What is happening, Major Cameron?’ asked Lady Rafferty.

  ‘Blocked hose – they’ll soon clear it.’ He threw up his hands and smiled. ‘Engines! Why didn’t we ever just stick to sail?’

  Tacker was crouched in the bilges. It was very hot. Without the engine there was no electric light. He had taken off his coat and he had lit the emergency lantern and hung it from a hook. The shadows were swaying with the boat and he was trying to follow the hoses with his fingers. He had been there several minutes before Red pulled up the hatch and came down the ladder.

  ‘Bring’s that light, Red!’

  Red unhooked the lantern and held it out and squatted down himself. Close up, he could feel the glow of heat from the engine. ‘What’s the trouble?’ he asked.

  ‘Pff!’ he shrugged and shook his head.

  The line that had leaked before was intact. Tacker sat back and frowned at the mass of steel before him. Sweat ran down his temple and he wiped it with his sleeve. He shook his head. Switching off the fuel tap, he worked the pipe free from its nozzle. At that moment the boat rolled and Tacker dropped the pipe and fell, reaching out a hand to the bulkhead. Red twisted so that it was his back that fell against the boat’s side. He had managed to keep the lantern steady, even as his head dropped close to the frames. For a moment as he pushed himself up he could hear the trickle of water through the timbers.

  ‘The anchor’s out,’ he said. ‘Bringing us head to wind.’

  Tacker nodded. He eased open the tap and let the fuel drip out into his palm. Raising it to the light he could see, against his skin, paler bubbles in the black pool. He wiped a finger on his thighs, then dipped it into one of the bubbles and put it to his tongue.

  He held it out to Red, and Red tasted it too.

  ‘Salty?’

  Red licked his lips. He nodded.

  Parson Hooper glanced at his watch. They had been stopped now for five minutes. He looked at those around him. They were like people in a station waiting-room, still and resigned. Most of them were watching Mr Bryant and Major Franks and Rose and Cameron who were leaning against the bar and gripping it with the boat’s motion. But they were standing. It was their standing, realised Hooper, that was reassuring the passengers. If only he could get across the aisle, across the open area beyond, he could stand too; he could add his own calming presence to theirs.

  Anna saw him try to rise, then sit back. She turn
ed to look out over the stern. The boat was facing in a different direction. Through the back of the deckhouse she could now see Pendhu Point rather than Kidda Head. Evening had painted its cliffs the colour of honey. The seas were driving towards it, rising in white surges at its base. She could see Hemlock Cove and the cove beside it where the ship had gone aground and to the left of that were the shapes of the Main Cages. She could see the rocks, could see what they were doing to the water. But what colours – what a white and what a blue! And what a sky! Anna had been gliding through the day, and now with the approach of evening she was gliding still.

  Jimmy said nothing. His face was as blank as ever. As Tacker lurched into the wheelhouse and told him that seawater had got into the engine, that to start it again would mean draining it and flushing it through – hours of work – Jimmy gave no response.

  His options were narrowing. The sea anchor was stalling them. He could put out another but it would only slow them a little. They were drifting downwind at nearly a knot. The ebb tide was taking them in the same direction, increasing all the time. He guessed that they had half an hour, forty minutes at most, before they reached the Main Cages. If he kept the helm down hard, he might gain a little steerage from the anchor and avoid the Curate. But as for the other rocks, it was pot luck.

  Tacker suggested lighting a flare. Jimmy shook his head. It would panic the passengers and panic Bryant. ‘Anyway,’ he grunted, ‘Williams’ll see us. Raise M and V.’

  Later, Bran Johns was unable to recall the exact moment when he started running. He could see himself standing at the binder with Ivor Dawkins and both of them watching the Golden Sands, and then he was bounding down through London, through the stubble, and the dogs were running with him and he was scrambling over the wall to the cliff path.

  He ran swiftly. The dogs followed him for a while, then stopped and trotted back. From time to time, he glanced over the wind-stunted hawthorn – to seek out the boat and the churn of water that would appear at her stern when the engines restarted. But she was still drifting. She was in trouble; that was clear now. The rocks were less than half a mile to leeward, and down-tide.

  He reached the slope above Hemlock Cove and saw the path drop down seventy, eighty feet to the stream. Opposite him was Pendhu Point and the watch hut on its end. He descended in a series of leaps, jumped the nearly-dry stream before zig-zagging up the far slope. No more than a third of the way up, he was already struggling. His throat ached. He felt dizzy. He was not even sure he could do anything once he reached the hut. Maybe Williams wasn’t there. There was no need for a watch on a fine day like this. But Williams was always there, and he had probably rung through to the lifeboat already – but where were the maroons?

  With each step his boots scuffed higher against the dusty earth. But the top still seemed far off. ‘Come on!’ he told himself. The slope steepened and at the top were lichened boulders and the path ran between them and then out across the grass to the headland.

  The hut door stood ajar. Inside, the shutters were closed. Williams lay slumped on the table.

  ‘Captain!’

  Williams remained unmoving.

  ‘Captain! Captain Williams!’ Bran was so short of breath he found it hard to speak. He put one arm against the door frame and bent at the waist. Williams did not move. Bran stepped forward and pushed open the shutters and the hut filled with sunlight. He saw the lines of rashes on Williams’s bare forearm. ‘Captain! Captain!’

  Williams stirred. Someone was standing a long way away and calling ‘… tin … tin … tin.’ He dragged his head up.

  ‘Captain!’

  His hair was sweat-flattened against his head. His mouth was dry.

  ‘Look!’

  Williams followed Bran’s pointing arm and saw only a huge light that burned and filled his vision. Something was inside his head, trying to beat its way out. He covered one eye with his hand and slowly the cliff appeared and the sea and the dark shape of Maenmor and in the midst of it all the yellow hull. He responded not consciously but with the instincts of something rehearsed a thousand times in his mind; he never thought it would happen twice in one summer.

  The mortar tube stood in the corner. A box of maroons was on the shelf above the window and he stood to retrieve them. He handed two to Bran and told him to place the mortar in the hole outside, to point it up and slightly out to sea, to light the touch-paper.

  He himself picked up the telephone and rang through to the exchange. Two rings for the Lifeboat Secretary, three for the Cox and five for the boat.

  ‘The Golden Sands,’ he heard himself say. ‘Three-quarters of a mile sou’sou’east of Pendhu. Requires immediate assistance.’

  ‘The LSA?’

  Williams looked out to sea again. He could hardly open his eyes with the throbbing in his head and the light before him, but the yellow shape was well offshore. She would be moving parallel to the shore. If she was going to strike at all it would be the rocks.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Send the boat.’

  Then he heard the maroons – first one then another – and he sat down again and took up his telescope and raised his brow to try to loosen the mask that seemed to cover his face.

  On the Golden Sands, Jimmy Garrett saw the grey trail rise from Pendhu, then another. The boat would be on its way. But he was filled with indignation: why should he need assistance?

  CHAPTER 29

  Jack was on the Town Quay. He had been to the net loft and he had come out on to the quay and he was now hauling in his punt, gathering up the painter in long, loose coils. The wind was fresher. Short little seas were lapping at the boats in the inner harbour. It was still easterly – easterly and an ebb tide would mean a hard row up the river. Beside him was the maund full of odds and ends for Anna’s studio. This time tomorrow he would be on his way down to Newlyn, if not already there, but now he was going to Ferryman’s and nothing else mattered.

  ‘She’s not at home!’ Toper and the others were on the Bench. ‘She went up Porth dinner time!’

  ‘Took the Garretts’ boat, Mr Swee!’

  ‘For the regatta!’

  Jack carried on with his coiling. All right, so he would go to Bethesda and look out for the boat and they’d row up to Ferryman’s together later on. He pulled in the punt, loaded the maund and turned to wave to the Bench.

  That was when they appeared, high over the capped and hatted line of Parliament Bench. Two green stars in a sky too bright for stars; two late and muffled thuds on the wind. From the direction of the lifeboat station came a couple of much louder reports, echoing off the town’s walls, rolling back from the headland.

  Toper let out a yelp and Boy stood on the bench to look over the wall.

  ‘Anything?’ called Treneer.

  Boy peered out towards Pendhu and the open sea beyond but could see nothing more than a speckling of white crests on the swell. He sat and shook his head.

  Tick-Tock Harris was looking at his watch. He had set it the moment he heard the maroons.

  ‘A visitor, swimming,’ speculated Toper.

  ‘A yacht.’

  ‘False alarm.’

  ‘Eeee.’

  Jack was already on his way.

  On board the Golden Sands, the group of men were still standing at the bar. Parson Hooper had given up trying to join them. It was Lawrence Rose who saw the maroons through the back of the deckhouse – the brief blooms of green above Pendhu Point.

  ‘Help’s on its way,’ he said quietly.

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Bryant.

  ‘Lifeboat.’

  The mention of the lifeboat only alarmed Bryant even more. He could not wait any longer. He stumbled out under the awning to the wheelhouse. ‘Mr Garrett,’ he barked, ‘you will explain to me exactly what is happening!’

  A flicker of contempt crossed Jimmy’s face. ‘Tack!’

  Tacker had been examining the fuel intake to port and he came into the wheelhouse from the other side, wiping his hands. ‘Dam
ned cap’s off, Jim, must have poured in down –’

  He stopped when he saw Bryant.

  Jimmy said, ‘Perhaps you can take Mister here somewhere else.’

  Tacker led him out to the forward deck. Mr Bryant gripped the rail to steady himself. The wind had freshened further. The bows were kicking hard against the anchor chain but the seas were still long, with long rounded tops and smaller waves which rolled over them and half-broke over their backs.

  ‘Well, sir,’ said Tacker.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Looks like the engine’s gone.’

  ‘What are you doing about it?’

  ‘Not a lot we can do, sir.’

  Bryant looked at him. There must be something else, something he didn’t understand. ‘But you’ve put the anchor out. At least we are not moving …’

  Tacker said nothing. Bryant knew suddenly that it wasn’t true, that they were still moving. And for the first time, above the mysterious constraints of the sea that he had made no progress in fathoming, he saw the plain logic of their position: they had no power and they could not stop. It was a simple enough equation, and in the heat of the late afternoon it left him with a feeling of cold terror. What could he tell the passengers?

  ‘Lifeboat’s on its way, sir. They’ll tow us in.’

  Bryant clutched at that. ‘So it’s just a question of waiting?’

  ‘That’s it, sir. Be here in no time!’

  Bryant went back through the deckhouse awning. A silence had settled on the passengers. Most had felt the first shadows of doubt, sensing with the passing of each minute that their situation was becoming more dangerous. And with the doubt came the need to know. They watched Mr Bryant stand to face them from the bar.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, you have probably noticed that we have had a little breakdown –’