Wreckers Must Breathe

by Hammond Innes

  ‘Think of the winter,’ I said. ‘I’m on holiday. It doesn’t matter to me what I spend.’

  He grinned. ‘You’re drinking with me,’ he said. ‘We’re an independent lot of folk down here. We don’t sponge on visitors if we like them. Our independence is all we’ve got. We each have our own boat. And though you can come out mackerel fishing with us and we’ll take your money for it, we’ll not take you out if we don’t like you.’

  ‘Anyway,’ I said glancing at my watch, ‘I ought to be starting back. I shall be late for my supper as it is. I walked over from Church Cove.’

  ‘Church Cove,’ he said, as he placed a stein of beer in front of me. ‘I’ll run you back in the boat.’

  ‘That’s very kind of you. But it won’t take me long to walk it and you certainly don’t want another trip in your boat when you’ve been out in it all day.’

  ‘I would. It’s a lovely evening. I’d like a quiet run along the coast. The boat’s out at her moorings. It won’t take me ten minutes.’

  I thanked him again and drank my beer. ‘Why did you call this a half of six?’ I asked. ‘What beer is it?’

  ‘It’s Devenish’s. There are three grades—fourpence, sixpence, and eightpence a pint. If you came here in the autumn you’d only be offered four.’

  I nodded. ‘Do you like steamboating?’

  ‘Oh, it’s not so bad. It would be all right if I could take Cadgwith along with me. I hate leaving this place. I did six voyages to the West Indies last winter. You can always pick up a berth at Falmouth. This time I think I’ll try a tanker on the Aden route. If there’s a war, of course, we’ll be needed for the minesweepers or on coastal patrol.’

  I offered him another beer, but he refused and we left the pub. It was not until we were walking down the village street in the pale evening light that I fully realized the size of the man. He was like a great bear with his rolling gait and shaggy head, and the similarity was even more marked when he had put on his big sea boots, for they gave him an ungainly shambling walk.

  I enjoyed the short run back to Church Cove. For one thing, it gave me my first glimpse of the coast from the sea. For another, I got to know my friend better, and the more I knew of him the more I liked him—and the more I was intrigued. In that short run we covered a multitude of subjects—international situation, bird life on Spitzbergen, stocks and shares, Bloomsbury, Cadgwith. My impression of him was of a rolling stone that always and inevitably returned homesick to Cadgwith. But though he had obviously gathered no moss—he lived in a little hut on the slopes above Cadgwith—he had certainly gathered a wide knowledge of life, and that knowledge showed in his eyes, which were shrewd and constantly twinkling with the humour that bubbled beneath the stolid exterior of the man. His nature was Irish and his features Slav, and the mixture was something new to me.

  Once I expressed surprise, for he told me that War Loan had risen 7⁄8 to 893⁄8 on the previous day and suggested that, since the Stock Exchange was apparently taking quite an optimistic view of the situation, war did not seem likely.

  I could not help it. I said, ‘What do you know of stocks and shares?’

  He grinned at my surprise. ‘I could tell you the prices of quite a number of the leaders,’ he said. ‘I always read the City page of the paper.’

  ‘Well, it’s the first time I ever heard of a fisherman reading the City page of a paper,’ I said. ‘Whatever do you read it for?’

  ‘I’m in a capitalist country, running a luxury business. Stock and share prices are the barometer of my summer earnings. When prices were going up in 1935 and 1936, I did pretty well. Since then there’s been a slump and I have to go steamboating in the winter.’ He looked at me with that twinkle in his eyes. ‘I read a lot of things you probably wouldn’t expect a fisherman to read. There’s a free library over to Lizard Town. You can even get plays there. I used to be very fond of plays when I was in London.’

  I explained that plays were my life and asked him what he had done in London. ‘I was in a shipping office for a time,’ he said. ‘But I soon got bored with that and turned to stevedoring. I was with the River Police for a time. You know, you meet people down here, quite important people, on holiday. And they say you’re wasting your time in Cadgwith. It’s not difficult to get the offer of a job in London or to pull strings when you’re there. But London is no life for a man. After a few months, Cadgwith calls to me again, and I come back.’

  That I suppose was why he spoke so well. Talking to me, his voice had no trace of the sluggish Cornwall accent. Yet I had noticed that the local accent came readily enough to his lips when he spoke to the villagers.

  Interspersed with our conversation, he pointed out interesting parts of the coastline as we went along. He showed me the seaward entrance to the Devil’s Frying Pan with its magnificent arch of rock. He also pointed out Dollar Ogo to me. The cave did not look particularly impressive from the outside, but he told me that students from the ’varsity had come down and explored it for five hundred yards. ‘They had to swim most of the way,’ he said, ‘pushing biscuit tins with lighted candles in front of them.’

  ‘How far can you get up it by boat?’ I asked. I was thinking that it would give me such an excellent opportunity of examining the various rock formations. Geology was one of my hobbies. But his reply was, ‘Not very far.’

  When we arrived at Church Cove, I said, ‘I must come out mackerel fishing with you some time.’

  ‘Any time you like, sir,’ he said as he carried me pick-a-back ashore. ‘Any of the boys will tell you where I am.’

  ‘Who shall I ask for?’ I enquired.

  ‘Ask for Big Logan,’ he replied, as he shoved the boat off and scrambled on board. ‘That’s what they all call me.’

  ‘After the Logan Rock?’ I asked with a grin.

  He looked at me quite seriously and nodded. ‘Quite right, sir,’ he said. ‘After the Logan Rock.’

  That was the last I saw of Big Logan for a whole week. When I got back to the cottage I found a letter waiting for me. It was from my editor. He was not recalling me, but he wanted me to do a series of articles on how the international situation was affecting the country.

  Kerris came in to see me after supper. He had seen that the letter was from my paper and he wanted to know whether I was leaving or not. I explained the position and said that I might be away a night or two, it depended how far afield I found it necessary to go for material. ‘By the way,’ I said, ‘do you know Big Logan of Cadgwith?’

  ‘Surely,’ he said. ‘Why?’

  ‘He brought me back here from Cadgwith this evening by boat. Nice fellow, isn’t he?’

  ‘Ar, very nice fellow to speak to,’ was his reply. ‘To speak to, mind you.’ He looked at me for a moment and the temptation to gossip was too much for him. ‘But no good,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Not worth that plate. Comes of a good family, too—his mother was a lady at one of the big houses over to Helford.’

  ‘And his father?’ I asked.

  ‘One of the fishermen at Cadgwith.’

  And then I understood why it was that he had been named Logan. It explained so much of his complex character. ‘He was born at a house near the Logan Rock, wasn’t he?’ I asked.

  ‘Ar, it was at the farm up there.’ He shook his head. ‘But he’s no good,’ he said. ‘He’s proved that. He married a Birmingham girl who was here on holiday. She had money and she built a house over to Flushing in Gillan. She were a lovely garl. But he didn’t know when he was well off. He played around with the local garls and she’s divorced him now and gone back to Birmingham. Now he lives alone in a little shack in Cadgwith.’ He shook his head again. ‘He’s no good is Big Logan,’ he said as he went out of the room.

  I smiled to myself at that. Generations of wreckers in Kerris, I felt, spoke that condemnation of Big Logan. I felt sure that it wasn’t because he had fooled around with the local girls that he thought Big Logan no good, but because, having got on to a good thing, Bi
g Logan had let it go as Kerris never could have done. Big Logan’s parentage explained so much.

  That evening I settled down by the light of the oil lamp and wrote the first of my articles. The other two, however, were not so easily written and required a good deal of travelling, including an excursion into Devon, where I spent a night at Post Bridge in the midst of Dartmoor. Cornwall was much more affected by the crisis than Devon, for in general it was the departure of the visitors that brought it home to the country districts at that time. Not until later were the farmers inundated with schemes for growing more food. It is true that in the towns and even in the villages men were being called up, but this hardly touched Dartmoor and the more agricultural areas of Devon. In South Devon and in South Cornwall, however, I found the atmosphere very tense around the big towns. I had a look at Falmouth, Devonport and Plymouth, and in none of these ports was a warship to be seen. ‘Most of them left last Thursday,’ I was told. It was this departure of the fleet that brought it home to them. That and the appearance of sandbags, tin helmets and gas masks.

  Back at the Lizard again I found things much the same. There were fewer visitors and the villagers spoke of cancelled bookings. But visitors still came and gradually everything was slipping back towards normality. Most of the tourists I spoke to were trying desperately hard to ignore the news and enjoy their holidays. ‘God knows when we’ll get another,’ was their justification. But they read the newspapers just the same and still hoped against hope.

  Then on Thursday, August 31, came the news that the children were to be evacuated and I had to re-write my final article, for Cornwall was a reception area and this brought the crisis right home to even the remoter farms and villages. On Friday I spent the day lazing and bathing, determined to forget the war scare. But when I got back I was just in time to see the first bus-load of Midlands children arrive with their teachers at Lizard Town. They looked tired, but happy. I stopped and spoke to them. They thought it a grand adventure. I found one little boy with a gas mask that seemed larger than himself who had never been outside Birmingham streets. There were many who had never seen the sea. I went home to be met by Kerris in a state of some excitement. ‘Have you heard the news, Mr Craig?’ he asked. ‘Germany has marched into Poland. It came through on the news midday. And we’ve got three little boys billeted on us. Fair bastards they be. Still, mustn’t grumble. Government pays us eight-and-sixpence each for them.’

  My stomach felt suddenly hollow within me. So it was war after all. Somehow, I had always felt that Hitler must climb down if we called his bluff. ‘Well, at least the tension is over,’ I said dully. ‘We know the worst.’

  When I had finished my tea I went out for a walk, taking the path along the cliffs towards Cadgwith. The peace of the coast closed in around me, but it was a bitter balm. The fact that this would remain, whatever happened to my generation, no longer afforded me the satisfaction it had done a week earlier. Rather, I hated it for its aloofness and felt that it had no right to be so serene and beautiful when all Europe was to be subjected to the torture of war. I found myself even longing for the appeasement of the previous September. But it was the cry of emotion rather than reason. I knew that it could not be this time. We were not simply tied to Poland by a treaty. We were faced with the forces of oppression and brute force and we had to tread them under-foot before they ran riot over all Europe and had outgrown the strength of democracy.

  I found myself suddenly looking down upon Cadgwith without any knowledge of the walk there. It was just the same as before, the boats drawn up on the beach, the gulls wheeling and screaming, the little white cottages and the smell of fish. That men were dying in a desperate fight for freedom against a mechanised army that had no thought but those instilled into its soldiers by a vast propaganda machine, left this little fishing village untouched. And the probability was that it never would be touched. I shrugged my shoulders. War or no war, there was no reason why I should not get an evening’s fishing. I went down into the village and found Big Logan operating the donkey engine that hauled the boats up. While the wire hawser was being hitched on to the next boat I had time to arrange for two hours’ fishing on the following day at six in the evening. I went to the pub where I heard that five destroyers had been seen going down the Channel. The rumour was that they were going to pick up the Bremen now two days out from New York after the hold-up by the American authorities. And I spoke to a man who said that the coastguard had seen a submarine about six miles off the coast moving westward. ‘That will be a bloody U-boat,’ my informant told me.

  Like all the other people still on holiday, I tried hard to treat the following day as a normal one. Only when actually in the water, however, did I forget the atmosphere of tension that gripped me. On the beach, I felt moody and depressed. I could not settle down to enjoy the sunshine and the temptation to go back to the cottage to listen to the news bulletins which were broadcast with disturbing frequency was too much for me. Automatically I listened to broadcast after broadcast that were no more than a repetition of the previous ones, in most cases not even worded differently. There was nothing new—no ultimatum, no outbreak of hostilities on the Western Front; only the rapid progress of German troops into Poland. By the time I left for Cadgwith I was heartily sick of the news.

  With a pair of lines over the side of the boat and the gentle chug-chug of the engine, I was at last able to forget that the country was living under the threat of war. And soon my whole mind was occupied with the task of landing mackerel. Big Logan stood facing me at the tiller, whistling softly through his teeth. He hardly spoke a word, except when I hauled a line in and he looked astern for the darting strip of silver that would tell him there was a mackerel on it.

  We went as far as Dinas Head. As we headed back the wind began to freshen from the sou’west and little scuds of cloud appeared, flying low across the sky. By seven-thirty the light was beginning to go. ‘Looks like a bad night,’ I said.

  ‘Ar, it’s going to rain all right.’ He rolled himself a cigarette and put the boat in towards the cliffs. ‘We might have a try for pollock,’ he said.

  The sea was getting up and away on the starboard bow I could see the waves swirling white round a submerged rock. ‘You want to know this coast pretty well,’ I said.

  ‘You’re right there. It’s a wicked bit of coast this—submerged rocks everywhere. And they’re not rounded like they are over to Land’s End, but all jagged. See the Gav Rocks over to Kennack here?’ He pointed across the bows to the jagged reef, now half-submerged, that curved out across Kennack Sands. ‘A Dutch barge went aground there—oh, it must have been four winters back. In three days there was nothing of her left except an iron stern post that’s there to this day, wedged among the rocks.’

  ‘Have you had any wrecks recently?’ I asked. ‘There was the Clan Malcolm, I know—but since then?’

  ‘Not just round here. There was one over to St Ives.’ He lit his cigarette. ‘Now the Clan Malcolm, she was a lovely wreck—a real Cornishman’s wreck.’ He shook his head over it. ‘If we had a wreck like that every year we wouldn’t need to worry about the winter.’ He put the tiller down and edged the boat along the shore. We were very close in now and the sea was making it difficult for me to stand. ‘You might get at pollock here,’ he said, taking over my other line.

  But, though we circled for more than ten minutes around the spot, all I got was a snide—a cross between a baby swordfish and an eel that made the bottom of the boat abominably slimy and got thoroughly tied up in the line. At length Big Logan headed the boat out to sea again. ‘You ought to get a few mackerel on the way back,’ he said. At that time I had caught just on forty. The sea was getting very jumpy, and every now and then I had to sit down on the thwart for fear of losing my balance. The movement of the boat did not seem to worry Logan. With feet spread slightly apart his great hulk seemed to tread the planks and almost to steady the boat.

  We were level with Caerleon Cove and about half a mile out w
hen I got my next bite. I felt one sharp tug and then the line went quiet. I pulled it in. It was a mackerel all right. They always seemed to lie quiet after they had been hooked. I left Logan to deal with it and went over to the other line. As soon as I felt it I knew it was shoal mackerel for there was one on this line too. I began to pull it in. Suddenly there was a flash of broken water in the trough of a wave. I caught sight of it out of the corner of my eye. Something solid went streaking through the water beside the boat. The sea swirled and eddied, and before I had time to see what it was the line went tight in my hand and I was whipped overboard.

  Instead of bobbing to the surface immediately, I seemed to be sucked down into the sea. I was seized with a sudden panic. My breath escaped in a rush of bubbles and with my lungs suddenly emptied, I found myself as near to drowning as I have ever been. I fought my way upwards with a horrible feeling of constriction across the chest. And when I thought I could not restrain my lungs from functioning normally any longer, I came to the surface and trod water, gasping for breath.

  Almost immediately Big Logan hailed me from the boat, which had now circled and was making towards me. A moment later he had hauled me on board and I lay panting on the bottom of the boat. A fish flapped unhappily on the boards beside my head. I rolled over and found myself face to face with the mackerel that I had left Big Logan to deal with. Its plight was so similar to what mine had been an instant ago that I scooped it up in my hand and threw it back into the sea. Then I sat up and looked at Big Logan. ‘What was it?’ I asked.

  He shook his head and tugged at his beard. ‘I’d just got the mackerel off your line,’ he said, ‘and had dropped the weight back into the water, when suddenly the whole boat was rocking like hell and you were overboard. I looked up just in time to see your feet disappearing over the side. The line was tight in your hand, I could see that. Something pretty big must have got hold of it. It not only jerked you overboard so violently that your feet did not even touch the gun’l, but it snapped the line as clean as though it had been cut with a knife.’