Scend of the Sea

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The persistent slatting, rattling of the sail reached down into my coma.

My last spark of consciousness cursed the south-west wind. Could it not leave me to die even in peace? The roaring in my ears told me that the end could not be far off. My fading sea-instincts told me it was not the wind which was roaring — maybe I noted subconsciously that it had fallen. Perhaps that is what caused me to force open my eyes and wonder why, then, a sail should slat, when there was no wind?

The downrush of air forced oxygen into my unwilling lungs and I tried to get to my feet to cut loose that maddening slatting sail. As I grabbed one of the cockpit handles, the roaring increased, the wind increased.

A man hung in space over the socket of the mast.

The big Super Frelon helicopter hovered over Touleier, its rotors slatting and banging. All round the yacht the sea boiled in minor imitation of the gale. I tried to focus on the helicopter-one of the big long-range French-built craft the South African Air Force uses for troop-carrying-but all I could distinguish before a fit of giddiness swept me off my feet was the five-pointed roundel representing the Castle of Good Hope.

When I drifted back to half-consciousness, I was aware that an airman was fixing a 'horse-collar’ device under my arms preparatory to signalling the helicopter to winch me up. It was the thought of her, those priceless Waratah documents which were now all the living things I had left of her, that made me seize the grab-handle and hang on fast.

Take it easy, chum!' exclaimed the airman. 'We're here to help you. You'll be all right once we get you aboard.'

I heard a megaphone shouting above the racket of the rotors, but I was too far gone to know what was being said.

'Waratahl' I mouthed. 'In the galley. Top locker. I don't go without them!'

The pain in my hands jerked me to full consciousness. I could see the horror and pity in the airman's eyes as his glance went from the cut in my blood-matted hair to my hands.

I pulled myself together. 'Down there-a lot of documents,' I managed to get out. 'Bring them, and I'll come. Don't. . don't. . for Christ's sake don't leave her to sink; She's all I. . I. .' I couldn't formulate the words. 'Waratah!’ I articulated carefully. 'Waratah, man!'

He cupped his hands and shouted something to the hovering craft, and then signalled. He went below and came up with the documents she had wrapped in oilskin. Some of them were blotched and stained with blood and lymph from my hands.

This it?' he asked, as if speaking to a child.

I nodded. That one with all the blood — is that a little black notebook?' He unwrapped it quickly. It was.

A fresh wave of nausea overtook me. I could not uncurl my fingers from the grab-handle.

The airman made another hand signal to the Super Frelon.

He said, 'We're putting an automatic Sonar buoy on board — continuous homing signals, and then we can pick her up later-okay?'

I wasn't aware of being winched up into the helicopter. My first recollection was of lying among what appeared to be innumerable big fuel drums in the padded interior of the craft. The airman was pouring something down my throat.

Major Bates knelt next to me. He grinned when he saw me conscious. 'Our flight paths seem to cross a lot.' He saw my hands. 'You should stick to steamers.'

It was the mention of steamer that brought me sitting half upright — Waratah!

Bates said tersely, 'Can you sit up? Can you talk?'

I nodded.

He told the men who supported me, 'Carry him up forward and put him in the co-pilot's seat next to me. Give him something to eat. Coffee — put a shot of brandy into it.'

Bates was at the controls when they brought me to him, a man helping me on either side. Already I could feel a touch of warmth coming back into my body.

'Get this off — urgent — priority,' Bates dictated to the radio operator. ' "I've got Fairlie, alive, also yacht Touleier." Give the position.' He spoke over his shoulder to the man who had rescued me. 'Did you put that automatic buoy aboard her?' He nodded and Bates went on. 'It's not only your sponsors who would not forgive me for abandoning that little beauty in mid-ocean.'

'Mid-ocean?'._

Bates waved through the Perspex canopy. 'See any land? Four hundred and thirty miles out to sea.'

I started to get my thoughts straight as the food and drink had their effect.

‘I didn't realize anyone knew we were missing.'

Bates gave a short, mirthless laugh. 'Maybe people are getting wise to Fairlies popping up and then vanishing. I got a stand-by alert the day after the gale began. The papers were full of you-again. You gave them just the cream on the coffee that they love. Fairlie lost in search for lost father. All the rest of it. The whole works. The whole country's buzzing with you.'

He looked at me penetratingly, kindly. I sensed a difference of attitude from my frigid reception before by the authorities.

'Can you answer some questions? Some of them will be tough.'

He looked away and issued a string of orders.

Tafline. That is what he meant. I cringed.

'Give me a moment,' I replied uncertainly. 'Tell me more from your side first.'

'That man Jubela of yours should have a gold medal,' went on Bates, not looking at me. The Super Frelon was moving ahead, fast. 'Everyone wants to give him one.'

‘I saw him swept away and drowned,' I said weakly.

'A British tanker picked up Jubela barely a couple of hours after that,' resumed Bates. 'He'd got himself a rubber dinghy-the yacht's, I suppose? The tanker radioed that Touleier was lost — the hunt was on. We knew almost exactly where to go.'

'South of the Bashee.' My words were almost involuntary. 'It wasn't the yacht only,' Bates added grimly. 'Your man said you'd found the Waratah’ The cold agony of it flooded back. ‘I did.'

Bates glanced sharply at me. 'What he had to say so electrified HQ that I took a chopper that same afternoon and risked my neck to bring Jubela ashore from the tanker to tell us what he knew.' He smiled. 'I've learned to fly some since meeting the Fairlies. What Jubela said galvanized us still further, when we got him ashore. Apparently he'd been shouting his head off aboard the tanker for them to do something.'

I could hardly frame the words. 'About-what?' Bates said levelly. 'Jubela saw you come back alone, without…'

I could not say her name.

'He knew that something terrible had happened to her, but he didn't know what. He guessed she was trapped somehow when you came yelling for an axe. He'd also seen the name Waratah and said you'd told him about her.'

‘I explained to him about my father and grandfather,' I interjected.

'It was nothing to what he gave the papers,' Bates went on. 'I felt really sorry for your police pals trying to cope.'

Then he resumed rapidly, refusing to let me speak. 'The tanker picked up Jubela drifting in his dinghy miles away to the south-west of where he last saw you. The search was easy, after that. A couple of frigates went first, and they worked back from where Jubela was found. One of them got a sounding which looked good. By that time Jubela had told us about the seamount, but it was outside the scope of ordinary sounding equipment. Next day we got the survey ship Africana with her special equipment down from Durban. It was a piece of cake. She found the seamount, spot on.'

I broke into a flow of words. 'And the WaratahV

'That submerged seamount confused the echoes from the metal hull of the Waratah' replied Bates. 'The survey ship reported that it was, in fact, an isolated, narrow, needle-like pinnacle jutting up hundreds of feet sheer from the ocean floor, so narrow. .'

'It was just wide enough for Waratah to lie on top of it,' I said. 'Her beam was only fifty-nine feet.'

'In the wide ocean, you'd have to run slap into a tiny thing like that before you'd locate it,' remarked Bates. 'We also established that the seamount lies between the usual northbound and southbound routes the ships use; a sort of no-man's-water.'

I remembered how Douglas Fairlie had written that Waratah had yawed off course when the rudder jammed.

'Jubela's story about your lady friend being trapped aboard the hulk had the whole world by the ears,' Bates said. I did not like the way he would not look me in the eyes when he spoke about her.

They sent down divers and frogmen. They found the wreck, upside down, sixty feet below the surface.'

I waited. I could not ask.

They tapped the hull. They got an answer near an old hatch.'

I sagged forward in my seat and Bates shouted for assistance, but I waved them away. 'She's alive?'

This morning, five hours ago, when I took off, she was alive,' Bates answered tersely. 'Just. Immediately they found the hulk they got an air line down to her — fired it through the hatch with an explosive bolt. Water, too, fortified with this and that to keep her going.'

I thumped my hands, which they had bandaged while Bates talked, unfeelingly on the armrest of my seat. I did not even feel the pain. 'Why don't they get her out?’

Bates stopped me. 'There is only one man who can tell them how to get her out. We had to find you at any cost.'

I choked and turned away. I held up my shattered hands to Bates. I could not speak.

But he went on. 'They found Touleier's mainsail the day after she was missing — like Jubela, it had drifted away southeast, away from the seamount. Some rigging wreckage, too.'

'We cut away the mast.'

'The experts argued that where the wreckage had drifted, there also would the disabled yacht drift. That's the way Jubela went in his dinghy. But I had read what you told the C-in-C about the search for the Waratah and how the cruisers followed the current and looked south-east. I argued. I reasoned. When I quoted you they were dubious. I tried to tell them their search was making the same mistake as for the Waratah. I was out over the sea every day. I wanted to fly north-east, away-from the search area which they had plotted. I remembered your telling the C-in-C about two old steamers which had been disabled near the Bashee and didn't drift south-east at all, but north-east?'

I nodded. 'Tekoa and Carnarvon. Tekoa landed up near Mauritius after six months.'

Bates went on. 'The search drew a blank, of course. They called it off officially yesterday. I put my big oar in, for the hundredth time. At last they agreed to let me take this old bag and search north-east. The gale blew itself out on the coast a couple of days ago. See those fuel drums in the rear? The Super Frelon can take a company of troops but I loaded her up with fuel instead to get maximum range. I spent half last night estimating your probable drift to the north-east — if you were still afloat.'

The big machine, the calming sea below, and the broken rearguard of storm cloud hurrying away seemed as unreal as the two uniformed jackets under our torchlight.

I started to explain about the ash chute. 'When will we land?'

'About mid-afternoon.’

'Then tomorrow we can get her out.’

Bates swung away from the controls and his eyes locked with mine. 'Fairlie, there is no tomorrow.'

I was stunned, confused, still unable properly to grasp the fact that she was not dead,

'But she's alive and she's got air and water-you said so yourself.'

Bates's voice was edged. ‘I had to find you today. There is a new south-westerly gale due in the Waratah area tonight. I don't have to say any more, do I?'

I sagged in my seat. 'Surely they can keep the air and water lines going until it is past!'

'You'll see for yourself when we come over the spot,' said Bates, his voice gentle. 'There's a whole flotilla of ships at the wreck. Frigates, survey ship, salvage pontoons. They can't keep salvage pontoons at sea in a gale. To start with, they haven't got engines. The lifelines would snap in a seaway anyway. Unless we can get her out this afternoon, they'll have to cut the lines …'

'That's impossible!' I shouted.

The radio operator came behind us, handing Bates a signal. The pilot ignored my outburst.

He said sharply, 'If you want to save her, talk, and talk fast, man! Tell the salvage boys the set-up, the layout, the technicalities. Only you know them. Put in every tiny thing you can remember — it may be important for the boffins. Dan here will transmit in relays what you have to say. I'm pushing this old flying hencoop as hard as I can. Talk!'

While Bates flew, Dan knelt by my seat, taking notes to radio ahead to the salvage teams. I explained how the ash chute led into the interior of the Waratah, the hatch and its mechanism, how it had jammed shut, how the watertight bulkhead sealed the tunnel from the engine-room.

The Super Frelon roared on.

I dared not look at the south-western horizon. I dreaded that purple-blue smudge whose arrival would mean the end of the salvage operation. I tried to put from my mind the horror of her being trapped in that chute for five whole days, not knowing whether it was day or night, haunted by those two ghosts, one in a white jacket and the other in a blue. I banished the awful nightmare from my mind which was part of my frenzy aboard Ton/ier — that she would put an end to it all as they had done.

I fell into an exhausted doze after the stream of radio signals, questions and answers, technicalities, for I was awoken by Bates's hand on my shoulder.

'There!'

The Super Frelon was dropping fast from about 1500 feet. Ahead lay the line of the coast, the curious cleft of the Bashee Mouth, unmistakable. About ten miles offshore, I judged, a cluster of ships lay in a tight circle-three frigates, the survey.ship, a couple of long salvage pontoons, cumbersome and low in the water, and a cluster of small craft. On the outer fringe, hovering like cubs round a lion kill as if afraid to get closer, were more small craft; ahead, at a safe distance too, were two light aircraft.

'Press!' snorted Bates. 'See how they keep away? That's your Colonel Joubert's work. He's got a guilt complex about you the size of Table Mountain, and he's trying to work it off by being tough with everyone not immediately connected with the salvage operation. Flew specially from Cape Town to superintend things.' He gestured at the circling aircraft. ‘I just hope they don't try and come too close as we go in. They'll do anything for a picture, and you're about to give them one in a moment.'

'Me?'

'You, at the end of a winch line,' responded Bates. 'My orders are to drop you aboard Natal-she's the one nearest the survey ship.'

'Natal!' I echoed, dismayed. 'Lee-Aston!'

Bates laughed. 'You'll find a lot of attitudes towards you have changed! That includes Lee-Aston. All the big brass are waiting for you aboard his ship.'

'Thanks,' I said, but he cut me short and pointed at the horizon.

'Don't thank me yet,' he said quietly. There's your old enemy.'

The purple-blue smudge lay low on the horizon.

'It doesn't look good,' he said candidly. 'I've been getting special met. reports every hour. While you were asleep, the whole storm front seemed to pick up speed. It's heading towards us, fast. There's already a full gale off Cape St Francis.'

Here, in the sunlight and warmth of the helicopter cockpit, it seemed impossible that she should be entombed down there, sixty feet under icy water.

I craned to try and see through the waves, but Bates said, 'You can save yourself the trouble, chum. You simply can't see through that murky water. Here we go. Stand by.'

'What's the rescue plan, major?' I asked. 'Surely you're part of it?'

There's no plan-yet,' replied Bates. They're waiting for you. Everything depends on you. Her life.' He must have seen my face, for he added quickly, 'I shouldn't have said that. But you've got to face it. An hour ago the odds were fifty-fifty. Now they're sixty-forty against. In another hour. .' he indicated the grape-purple south-western horizon. 'I'm dumping this old grasshopper on a private field over there by the river which we took over as an emergency landing strip. I'm getting myself a trim little Alouette in her place.'

They lowered me by winch and 'horse collar' on to the frigate's stern.

Jubela was first at the cable. He could not speak. He took me, still suspended, in that curious high-up armshake he had given me the night I saved his life in the Southern Ocean. It was only when I saw the look on the sailors' faces who released me from the device that I realized how I must look:- I was still in my sea-stained, torn oilskins, and my hair and five-day beard were clotted with blood from the gash over my eyes. I held my bandaged hands clear, high away from the winch wire. Perhaps the two seamen thought I was a stretcher case, but it was Jubela who took me under the arms and guided me for'ard under their direction.

They rapped on a door.

'Come in!'

The men round the captain's conference table looked as startled as the seamen.

Lee-Aston, in faultless white, came forward, hand extended. He stopped at the sight of my bandages and blanched.

'I think I owe you more than I even thought,' he said quietly.

It was Colonel Joubert who pulled out a chair and fussed over me as I sat down.

'The thought of that pretty face down there kills me,' he said in a cracked voice. He turned away. 'What a bloody fool I was! Anything in my power to do now …'

Lee-Aston didn't waste any more time.

'Malherbe, Navy salvage,' he said crisply, introducing a sandy-haired lieutenant-commander. 'Jansen, Search and Rescue. Matthews, frogman. We've got the idea of the lay-out of the wreck and the chute from your signals. We haven't much time.'

Malherbe looked at his watch. 'It's 3.30 now. By five I must cut the airline.'

He fired the question savagely. 'What is holding that hatch?' I explained quickly.

'We could blow it with a light charge, then?' said Malherbe.

'And kill her in the process,' retorted Matthews. 'My frogmen couldn't get her out in time before the water rushed in.'

'The hatch isn't the real problem,' interjected Lee-Aston. 'We've known for days that she was under it. We didn't know what sort of compartment lay underneath.'

Malherbe said, 'We thought maybe there was a whole watertight compartment. That's why we delayed. You can't mount a salvage operation to lift a 10,000-ton ship in a couple of days. It would take months, even if it were possible.'

'She's right within our grasp, as it were,' said Lee-Aston. The voice was cool, controlled, but I saw his right fist contract until the knuckles were white against the bone. I knew then what was going on inwardly with him.

'The problems are enormous,' he added. 'I've no doubt that the frogmen could lever open that hatch, even without having to use explosive. But, before we can get her out, the chute will fill with water. We simply can't get her clear quick enough. She'd drown in sixty feet of water. She must be terribly weak into the bargain.'

Jansen, Search and Rescue, said, 'My boys will pick her out of the water the moment she surfaces. I'll put a ring of rubber dinghies in the sea immediately over the hatch, with frogmen at the ready in every one of them. There won't be any delay.'.

Lee-Aston leaned back. He said crisply, ‘I think you know, Captain Fairlie, that I was one of a court of inquiry which sat to investigate a collision between one of our new subs and a Frenchman at the entrance to the Mediterranean.'

'I don't want to know about subs. Let's get on with saving her,' I broke in.

Lee-Aston was unruffled. There was even a slight grin on his face. He looked round the conference table.

'Subs mean rescue.'

'What are you driving at, commander?' snapped Malherbe.

'You've got the perfect escape route in that chute, perfect for the buoyant ascent method of escape they use in modern subs! It's very simple: a man climbs into what we call a trunk, and seawater is let in until the compressed air pressure inside equals that of the sea pressure outside. Then he opens the hatch and simply steps out. You don't need a mask — or any breathing apparatus at all. The man in the trunk breathes air which has been compressed by partially flooding the escape trunk from the sea. Once he's outside the hatch and moves towards the surface, sea pressure decreases and the compressed air in his lungs starts to expand. He can't suck in water if he wanted to. He can't drown. It takes less than ten seconds to come up from 100 feet down. At sixty feet, it's perfectly safe.'

Malherbe thumped the table. 'Just pump in more and more air until it's compressed inside the chute!'

Matthews jumped to his feet. ‘I’ll get my team down there right away. They can lever open the hatch as the air inside equals the sea pressure outside.'

'Not so quick!' snapped Lee-Aston. He looked at his watch. 'How long before you can raise the air pressure in the chute to equal the sea's, Malherbe? We can't afford to fluff it now. It's a matter of very delicate checks and balances. Your frogmen will have to open the hatch at exactly the right moment, or else the chute will flood, or there won't be enough pressure to eject her. If the frogmen can't open the hatch, you'll have to stop pumping compressed air or you'll burst her lungs inside the tunnel. Jansen, get your men spread in a circle round the probable area of ascent. You'll have to pluck her out of the water smartly — she's very weak.' He spoke to an aide. Tell Major Bates I want him overhead in a helicopter — ' he looked inquiringly round the tight circle of faces ‘ — fifteen, twenty, minutes?'

'Eighteen,' replied Malherbe, who had been scribbling calculations on his pad. 'Eighteen minutes exactly. By then the pressure in the chute will equal the sea pressure outside the hull.'

Joubert caught my eye and gave me a tentative thumbs-up signal. He grinned hesitantly.

The other men started to get to their feet, but Lee-Aston held them back.

'Captain Fairlie, gentlemen. Where do you want to be when the pressure goes critical, captain?'

The austere captain's compassion warmed me. I wanted the new-found sympathy and understanding I had found round the table, but I also wanted to be alone if … if … I dared not frame my fears.

'Bates. With Bates.'

Tell Major Bates to pick up Captain Fairlie in ten minutes' time from the stern platform,' Lee-Aston ordered the aide. 'Aye, aye, sir.'

Lee-Aston stood with me at the stern. Jubela was alone on deck, staring as if mesmerized at the buoy marking the wreck. A galvanic ripple had passed through the circle of waiting ships from the conference table. Five yellow rubber dinghies, their grab-lines dripping, disposed themselves round the spot where the solitary orange-yellow wreck buoy bobbed in the rising sea.

Beneath it was Tafline.

Frogmen pulled on their black rubber wet suits and flippers, and I could see them checking times. Three of them hoisted scuba air bottles on to their shoulders and two had heavy crowbars.

Upon these men's deftness would hang her life-in twelve minutes.

The compressor's note quickened.

They were pumping the air into the chute which would kill or save her.

As if to mask the sound, Lee-Aston said, 'It is a very well-tried method, Captain Fairlie.'

I wondered how long I could go on talking.

'Won't the compression burst her lungs inside the chute?’ I managed to say.

'No,' replied the level voice. 'It's not nearly high enough, at sixty feet, for that. Coming up-you're absolutely safe from drowning, I assure you. You can't hold your breath even if you tried. As you come up the air expands-it comes out as bubbles.'

I saw Bates's little Alouette approaching.

'Don't imagine you'll see anything happening beforehand in that murky water, even from the air,' warned Lee-Aston. 'She'll come out and up in a cocoon of air, and the first you'll know of it will be a few air bubbles from her lungs preceding her.'

The Alouette swept in.

Lee-Aston said, 'Look at your watch in nine minutes.'

It was only then that I realized his own desperate anxiety under the cool exterior. My hands were bandaged beyond the wrists. I had no watch.

Lee-Aston waved the sailors aside and himself adjusted the 'horse-collar' round my shoulders.

The winch tugged. He stood back and saluted.

Bates was alone in the cockpit. The others of the crew stayed in the rear compartment. He did not say anything, but held out his left wrist with his watch. Six minutes.

I was grateful I could no longer hear the compressor. We came round in a tight circle. I saw a line of bubbles. Bates checked me.

'Frogmen. There won't be anything before the time.’

From the low altitude of the helicopter, I had a wider view of the horizon than from the frigate's deck. It seemed that the advancing purple storm bank was only a few miles away.

Bates came round again and hung in the centre of the circle of yellow dinghies. The frogmen, two to a dinghy, did not look up from watching the enclosure of water.

The helicopter hung.

There was nothing in the murkiness below.

Bates held out his watch, wordlessly.

Zero!

'There she blows!'

The thin line of bubbles, like a torpedo wake, were different from the strong cascades emitted by the frogmen.

Bates dropped the Alouette like a lift to about twenty feet above the water.

In the middle of the erupting water, I saw the short hair, the polo collar, the patterned shoulders. Frogmen seemed to dive from every quarter to support the white face against the dark sea.

Bates was grinning. 'Get down there on the horse-collar-you first!'

In the rear they stood aside, too, and in seconds I was hanging above the sea.

I looked down and she looked up. Tafline.