Southtrap

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The main force of the storm hit Botany Bay shortly after two o'clock that afternoon.

From the time the ship had broken free of the iceberg she had been running free under triple-reefed main and fore topsails with a strong quartering sea and gale. There was also a rag of trysail in the mizzen stays to try and help the steering. The wind had steadied into the south-west in a full gale. Handling a square-rigger was as unfamiliar to me as driving a veteran car for the first time. And this was at open throttle.

A tremendous sea was building up and I blessed Botany Bay's square, heavy stern. The waves would race up astern and tower ready to burst and poop the ship. Then I would hang on, waiting for the inevitable explosion which would sweep the ship and everything on deck into oblivion. But it did not come. The heavy stern would lift and in a flash the ship would lurch into the trough. The sails would go slack as the wind was cut off by the depth of the rollers. Then she would rise to the next crest and the sails would crash like gunshots as the wind caught them anew. She would find her keel, tear away again with a shock which seemed to set every scrap of standing rigging thrumming. It was a process which repeated itself time and again. The wheel was kicking like a rodeo jumper; to help Bent I brought along a young man with shoulders like a blacksmith. Kearnay's lifelines were in full use.

At the start, Linn had been on deck with me and I had lent her my binoculars for a last look at the Quest.

'They're all coming out on deck!' she had told me.

'Heaven help them, Linn.'

'That applies to us too, John,' she replied gravely.

But we also had that space-probe-sized instrument now transmitting from under her weatherproof. And from the buoy aboard the Quest.

The thought of the transmitter and what could happen if Wegger by some mischance spotted it fuelled my tension. I had decided that the ship could spare me for a few minutes while I settled Linn below, out of view of the hijackers. I gave orders, gathered up Linn's bag, and we hurried below.

When we were out of sight of the deck Linn stopped. Her lips came hard against mine, against my cheeks, my eyes.

'Darling! Darling! Darling!'

I drew her to me. I detected the outline of the aluminium box inside her clothes.

She eyed me between tears and laughter. 'I'm pregnant with secrets, my love!'

'That transmitter frightens me, my love,' I said in a low voice. 'We've got to hide it somewhere else, quick. I die every time Wegger looks at you.'

We were in the central gangway dividing the various exhibits in their cubicles and to our right was a horrifying real 'coffin bath' exhibit which showed convicts being thrown into salt water after being flogged until they fell unconscious. Tough-faced warders were apparently trying to revive some unfortunate.

'Nothing for us there,' I said. 'We mustn't be seen searching around, Linn.'

'We can pretend we're looking for a sleeping place forme, John.'

The next exhibit depicted a man being flogged at the dreaded triangle or flogging-post; nearby a blacksmith was riveting a huge iron ball round a new convict while a long branding-iron was thrust into the palm of his hand to mark him for life with an arrow.

'I couldn't stay there, even though I know it's not real,' muttered Linn.

'No place to hide,' I said, going on to the following exhibit. A man was dismounting from his horse amid a clutter of handcuffs, leg-irons, necklets, pistols and manacles, and a notice above read: 'Captain Starlight, legendary bush-ranger.'

'John — look, the horse has a real saddle. The saddlebags! Perfect for the transmitter!'

Linn reached for the zip in her parka. 'Wait.' I gave a searching look in every direction.

'Okay. That transmitter's dynamite.'

She pulled it out. It looked ludicrously small and inadequate.

'It's working?' I asked unnecessarily. 'Sure?'

'Smit set it operating and it stays so, he said, even if it falls into the sea. It's waterproof, among other marvels.'

We unbuckled the saddle-bags of Captain Starlight's horse and hid the transmitter inside.

'I feel as if the world is off my neck, Linn.'

The creaks and groans of the ship's timbers in the seaway were like a muted chorus of wronged convicts.

'I've got to get back on deck — use one of these cubicles for a cabin. Maybe there's a bed somewhere as part of an exhibit. Try and make yourself comfortable.'

'You've no place either, John.'

Tut me next door to you — horrors don't mean a thing if you're close.'

She smiled and said gently, There's only one penguin-rug — we'll have to share, my darling.' Then she kissed me. 'Look after yourself, up there.'

'Don't come on deck unless you have to — the seas aren't funny.'

They weren't then, when I kissed her goodbye. That had been a couple of hours ago. They were even less so now.

I was hanging on to the weather rigging, a captain's station. The feel of this ship was coming through the soles of my feet, just as a racing-driver steers by the feel of the seat of his pants. Botany Bay was starting to lie over more and more as the wind worked up, and even her return roll was stiffening against the thrust of her storm canvas.

I felt her go over — and watched fascinated and afraid while she lay over until her lee gunnel was almost level with the water as if she meant never to come up again. Then the dense streaks of foam which were the crests of the rollers toppled, tumbled over, exploded, and vomited across the main deck and a welter of water poured into the waist. It seemed that the old-design hull could never have enough life in it to throw off the tons of water. Botany Bay hung like that, paused, and then began the reverse roll to right herself, taking her time, as if sea and waves didn't matter. Back and back she went, against the drag of the tops'ls and power of the gale, until her main yardarm dipped into the wild seas on the opposite side.

Each time Botany Bay did it my heart came into my mouth; yet right herself she did until I was forced to accept that this was her way of sailing. To anyone accustomed to a modern yacht's manners, Botany Bay was terrifying.

Now, however, she was close to the limit. I would have to reduce sail soon, free her of some of the leverage aloft.

I put the modern battery-operated megaphone to my mouth.

'All hands! All hands! Aloft and stow! Four reefs in the tops'ls!'

The men dodged out from behind the foc's'le head where they had been sheltering and watched their moment. Gripping the lifelines as the main deck flooded from a sea which burst inboard, they clumped clumsily across the deck in heavy boots and sou'wes-ters to the protection of the life-nets I'd rigged below the weather shrouds. As she rolled to port again, up they went into the rigging with astonishing agility. They would have to fist the thrashing canvas into quiescence: Botany Bay had only single topsails, not the more modern double sails, and their bigger area meant twice the muscle-power.

One of the men scrambling up the main shrouds stopped, pointed, and shouted something at me. His words were snatched away by the wind. I followed the direction of his hand. There was nothing but an endless succession of racing hills of water. Then the stern lifted, which gave me a wider sight of the horizon.

I stood rooted at what I saw.

The approaching snow squall looked like a destroyer's smoke-screen laid across the face of the west. Reaching out fingers towards the labouring ship was a millrace of clouds scudding low almost to mast-height. The squall was still about five kilometres off and travelling like a bullet.

But ahead of it was the thing which froze my blood.

It was a monster comber with a long overhanging crest of dense white reaching for the ship like an outrider of the main body of water.

No ship's stern would ever rise to that.

Botany Bay was already squirming down a roller, away, as if she realized what was coming.

I whipped the megaphone to my lips. I gave one of the rarest orders at sea.

'Stand by for your lives!'

That killer rudder wouldn't take it either. No two men could hold its rebound, even with its special kicking tackles.

I turned the megaphone on Ullmann.

'Ullmann! Get to the wheel! Forget that bloody gun!'

He stood hesitating.

I must have sounded like one of the Furies riding the gale when I re-directed my words at him.

'Ullmann! Lend a hand! Get to that wheel! The whole ocean's coming up astern! Run, man, run!'

He must have been convinced by my urgency, for he went across the lurching deck to Wegger, passed the strap of his machine-pistol round his arm, and seized the for'ard spokes of the double wheel.

The young man with the blacksmith's shoulders glanced astern over his shoulder. Many a better man than he had been killed in the Southern Ocean doing that.

'Keep your eyes front!' I shouted above the wind's roar. 'Don't let her broach to! Keep her head steady!'

Then I knew I might still help the ship, if the men now in the rigging could manage in time.

'Set the main tops'l staysail!' I shouted through the megaphone.

The small triangular sail, which would be high above the swamping effect of the waves as the ship fell into the trough, might just carry her forward enough to ride out the monster when it struck.

I didn't have time for anything else.

I threw a bight of rope round the shrouds, lashed myself fast. It was impossible to tell whether the substance which machine-gunned my face was snow, hail, rain, ice or spray. It was equally impossible to hear anything. The wind was hurling itself over the starboard quarter with a roaring, moaning sound which changed to a higher pitch when it struck the rigging. The wild seas smashing against the hull under-wrote the din.

Then the great roller struck.

One moment the main deck, poop and helm were visible, the next all I could make out were three masts sticking out of a cauldron of water. I was punched in the back, but the rope held. Water poured over me as if I had been a surfer who had come unstuck from his board. Botany Bay heeled right over, until the main hatch disappeared. The lee main yardarm went deep into the sea.

I caught a glimpse of the young man with the blacksmith's shoulders being thrown loose and against the for'ard part of the double wheel. He spread-eagled his arms, looking like one of the waxworks figures below stripped for flogging on a grating. The killer wheel jerked again and he was flung head over heels into the scuppers. The breaking wave took him overboard. There was nothing I could do to save him. Ullmann's face 'was purple as the veins stood out as he attempted with Bent to hold the ship from broaching to. The driving spray was too thick even to see what was happening to the men on the foc's'le head.

'Don't let her head come up!' I tried to yell above the din to the helmsmen.

No human power would ever bring Botany Bay upright again.

Her stern lifted, lifted, and the bow went down down.

She tobogganed into the trough.

It cut off wind pressure from the reefed tops'ls holding her listed as surely as if they'd blown clean out of their bolt-ropes. From the rigging high above there was a clap like thunder. The small tops'l staysail blew away like an errant albatross's wing.

Then from the maelstrom on the main deck I saw the top of the main hatch start to emerge; two lifeboats lashed to it were gone. We'd secured the motor-launch aft the mainmast on skids; now I saw it break clear of the foam — intact.

Botany Bay was making a great fight for it. She possessed an unsuspected buoyancy. The lee ports of the poop deck clanged as hundreds of tons of water poured overboard.

Then I spotted the young helmsman. He was sprawled out, floating mizzen-yard high, within three metres of the deck. It might as well have been three kilometres. His arms were reaching out helplessly for safety and his mouth was wide.

Now Botany Bay's mainyard emerged from the spume and she came on to an even keel and started to give that long majestic roll to recovery. The lee poop deck flooded again at the movement and scooped up the young man out of the sea as neatly as if it had been intended. He crawled across the deck and locked his arms round the binnacle.

'Get back to the wheel!' I shouted. 'Back, man, we'll make it still!'

The ship lifted as she began her ascent to the crest, shaking her decks clear of hundreds of tons of water like a terrier shaking itself after a bath. Unknown objects washed astern and thumped against the break of the poop.

If Botany Bay managed to pull herself back to life again, there was only one course left open for me — to heave her to and ride out the storm and give her time to lick her wounds. For wounded she was, as I could feel by the lethargic drag under my feet, which meant that huge quantities of water had poured in below through smashed hatches and skylights. The patched-up leak in the bow had probably broken out afresh. Muscle-power alone would have to rid her bilges of the water — Botany Bay had no mechanical pumps.

Now Botany Bay was straining as she climbed wearily out of the trough. Miraculously, the masts were still in her. The foremast seemed askew to me. I saw men still clinging in the rigging where I'd sent them to reef the topsails.

I ripped off my securing rope and swung myself up to check astern. There couldn't be another wave like that. There was only a plunging, rolling, racing, raging mass of hillocks of water pursuing the injured ship.

I regained the deck and shouted, 'All hands! All hands! Stand by!'

Orders were a good thing for a stunned crew. It stopped them from thinking about the death they'd escaped.

I hadn't given a thought to Wegger. Now I found him beside me.

'Shotton! What are you doing now?'

I rounded on him. 'I'm going to heave her to. Put her under a storm trysail and try and fix things. We're lucky to still be afloat and not upside down…'

He pulled the Luger from his weatherproofing. It seemed a ridiculous token of force after what the Southern Ocean had just thrown at us. Part nerves, part reaction made me laugh in his face.

'Don't play kids' games, Wegger. If you want to go on living, let me handle this!'

He aimed the gun at me.

'Get on!' he ordered. 'Get on, Shotton! To Prince Edward Island! No heaving-to!'

'You're out of your mind, Wegger! The ship's sinking under us…'

A crewman, with water and fear all over his face, clawed hand-over-hand along the life-nets and shouted at me.

'Sir! Sir! Come quick! She's making water for'ard! The patch has come adrift from the hole in her bow — it's pouring in…'

He stopped when he became aware of Wegger's gun.

'Get on with it, man!' I said.

He indicated the foremast. I scarcely needed him to tell me, when I saw the way it was tottering.

The bowsprit chain-guy's parted again, sir — like it did after we hit the growler — and the foremast's taking the strain. All the rigging's stretching. It'll go overboard any moment!'

'I'll come.' Before I did so, I addressed the trio of helmsmen. Try and keep her steady — if you want to save your skins!'

Bent nodded but his eyes remained concentrated aloft. He was too good a helmsman to take his eyes off the sails.

I made my way for'ard along the life-nets, clinging like a spider and watching my moment as the seas burst aboard. Botany Bay was sick, lurching now like a drunk across the tops and troughs instead of riding them.

There was a small group of men at the foremast weather rigging. One glance was enough. The topgallant mast was leaning leewards and whipping. Any moment it would go overboard. It must have been a prime spar to have taken all it had.

Trap those backstays together!' I ordered. 'Slap it about, men! We'll take up the slack of the lanyards later, when the weather eases. If that mast goes, cut it adrift.'

These yachtsmen-deepwatermen certainly knew their job. They started in with no-nonsense swiftness and competency. Their lives depended on it.

The motion here in the bows was frightening. The blunt cut-water was never meant to cleave the waves but ride over them. Tumults of seething foam burst from it. Two men were trying to keep their footing in the life-nets rigged below the jib-boom while they did something about the patch in the bow.

One of them called to me, 'It's hopeless, sir! The water drives in every time she plunges. It needs to be stopped with tar…'

Because my mind was anxiously on Linn the answer clicked into my mind.

I'd melt down those waxworks figures in place of tar! 'Do your best — I've got an idea. I'm going below,' I replied. 'It could work.'

The second man had a frost-bitten face and a sense of humour. 'Make it work before we drown, sir!'

I gave him the thumbs-up sign and hurried below-decks via the entrance below the poop.

The scene that greeted me was the way I imagined an old-time warship's deck must have looked after it had been swept by a broadside. It looked like a scene from Dante's Inferno. Light came from a dim smoking oil lamp. Headless wax figures rolled, banged and thumped. The stage-props of the various tableaux swept around in utter disarray. There was water everywhere.

'Linn!' I called. 'Where are you? Are you all right?'

'John!'

I found her crouched in a cubicle. She had barricaded the entrance against debris. She had clipped a couple of pairs of exhibition handcuffs on to a hook on the wall and was using them as grab-handles.

'John! What's happening? Are we sinking…?'

Briefly I explained my plan for the bow leak.

'We've got to find some way of melting the wax and dipping the sail into it,' I added.

'What about the bath — the one they used for the convicts?'

'You're a sailor's daughter, Linn!'

'I could help,' she hurried on. 'We'd have to make a fire under it, though.'

The thought of a naked fire in a wooden ship would have sent any old shipmaster to his grave.

There are as many ways to sink a ship as to hang a cat,' I told her, thinking of the crisis on deck. 'You're wonderful. I'll send down a couple of men as soon as we've worked on the rigging.'

Then I asked, 'Where is the transmitter?'

I saw she'd taken the saddle for a pillow.

'Yes,' she smiled. 'It's not as close to me as my shirt, but it's near enough.'

'Good girl. Keep at it. We'll beat 'em yet.'

I kissed her lightly and hurried back on deck.

I life-lined along the rail to the men in the bows and gave them my orders. Then I returned to the quarterdeck.

Bent called to me from the wheel as soon as I mounted the ladder from the main deck.

'She's wild, sir. She's running away. We can't hold her — riot even three of us.'

Their faces were glistening with sweat; the cords knotted Ullmann's powerful neck every time the wheel bucked.

'I'll try and get a scrap of flying jib on her — if we can fix the foremast,' I told Bent. That will make her more manageable.'

I switched my attention to the men who were making their way cautiously down the ratlines from the upper rigging.

'Goosewing the main tops'l,' I ordered them. 'Let go the fore tops'l halyards — the mast may give at any moment.'

For four days Botany Bay fled before the gale on that goosewing.

Four days.

For four days the hill-like ridges of water chased her stern, each threatening to wipe the ocean clean of the only man-made thing in all its turbulent vastnesses.

For four days the gale held unabated from the west. For four days it raged steadily, relentlessly. My tired mind computed its average speed at 55 knots. It may have been more, — it certainly was not much less. I remembered that the record for the Prince Edward channel was 72 knots in a blow. I didn't want any records for Botany Bay.

For four days the crests of the waves — and often the body of the rollers — threw themselves over the ship's rail.

For four days Linn and her helpers melted down the waxworks, head by head, body by body, exhibit by exhibit, dipping the sails which were the precarious membrane between life and death into the wax until each was smashed into uselessness by the waves. Then a new sail would be impregnated, a new patch rigged, until it, too, went the way of the others. The naked fire was a calculated risk. Time and again the burning planks — they burned the partitions between the exhibits first, then every scrap of loose woodwork they could find — spilled from their makeshift gratings under the bath and had to be soused with fire-buckets before the long process began again from scratch.

But it was no lasting answer. The sea kept streaming in through the leak.

On the first day squads of men pumped the bilges reasonably dry in two hours of back-breaking donkey work. At that stage the crew was still relatively fresh.

On the second day the clanging of the pumps rang through the ship for five hours. Botany Bay lived again.

On the third day it took eight hours.

On the fourth we pumped all day. All the waxworks had been melted down and the sail patch was now all but useless. The men were exhausted, driving themselves to the pump handles like zombies. While they pumped, we floated. But the water was beating them, creeping slowly but inexorably up inside the hull.

Between stints of renewing the sail patch, Linn made food for the tiring crew. At first, while there was still wood for burning, she supplied them with hot coffee to supplement their chunks of bread-and-meat. Now the fuel was gone and sea water was starting to pollute the fresh water tanks. By next day I knew the water would be undrinkable.

For four days Botany Bay staggered goosewinged under a sky as unrelenting as the sea and wind. The overburden of cloud seemed never to rise much above the ship's royal yards. It was impossible to obtain a fix to establish our position. We could have been anywhere. Our only course was the gale's course.

For four nights and four days I had conned the ship from my post at the weather shrouds until my eyes and face were aflame with salt. Wegger, Ullmann and Bravold — one of them had always been on guard. Both Ullmann and Bravold had put their strength to the wheel. Without them, the game but exhausted Bent and the other pump-drunk crewmen would never have held the ship.

Now it was the dawn of the fifth day. I was at my station. I had staggered below to try and get some rest. Linn had taken me under the penguin-skin rug and pillowed my head on hers against Captain Starlight's saddle. Sometimes I had not known whether those capsuled moments of bliss and warmth were dreams or not, until some savage lurch of the ship would jerk me awake while Linn held me in her arms. Then I would kiss her, drag myself away, and stagger back to face the remorseless enemy on the quarterdeck.

Now it was the dawn of the fifth day. I was at my station. Jets of icy spray whipped into my face, scouring it down to the blood like sunburn. The bloodshot faces of the three men at the wheel were haggard in the binnacle's light. Bent was there, trying to penetrate the blackness and catch a glimpse of the goosewinged sail. A sail to steer her by, I thought light-headedly — then I realized something was amiss. It wasn't the deck under me, growing deader and deader. It wasn't the wind. Something was happening, my stunned mind registered.

The sound which had run through the ship for days like an undertaker's hammer had gone silent.

The pumps had stopped.

I pulled myself together. Before I could put my mind to this new problem, a figure loomed up alongside me. He was gasping and his face was ghastly with fatigue.

'The water — it's beaten us, sir! Pumps are no longer drawing. Must be fouled up. She's had it.'

He stood swaying, passing the responsibility for the dying ship on to my aching shoulders.

I asked as steadily as I could, 'How much water is in her?'

'It's right up to the waxworks deck, sir.'

I'll come below.'

I felt my way. The swinging lantern seemed dimmer than before. But its light was strong enough to show me enough. The water was ankle-deep. Linn was there, dressed in weather-proofing and boots. She had the hood drawn over her hair so that her face was in deep shadow. She had the penguin-skin rug looped about her shoulders against the cold. Ashes from the fire sloshed about. The chopped partitions and air of desolation made it feel as if Botany Bay had already passed beyond man's recall.

I put my arm round her and said to the man, 'Get for'ard. There's nothing we can do here any more.' My sluggish mind was already made up. Botany Bay stood one last chance, the slenderest of chances. 'Get half a dozen axes. I want the fittest men up on deck. Have them man the weather deadeye lanyards.'

The man stared at me uncomprehendingly. 'Quick,' I said, as if that word had any meaning any more. 'Quick as you all can.'

He went.

Linn said, This is the finish, isn't it, John?'

I couldn't see into the depths of her eyes in the smoky light.

'It could be, Linn.'

'I want you to know I love you, my darling.'

'These days have been a voyage to ourselves, my love. You've given me everything I've ever wanted.'

I took her close in my arms. Immediately I felt the hard outline of the transmitter under her parka.

I smiled wryly and shook my head. 'It was a good idea, Linn darling. It could have worked except…'

'For the Southern Ocean?'

The water round our ankles sloshed alarmingly. I kissed her and said, 'I don't know whether there'll be room in the motor-launch for us all. The other boats are all stove in. I may have to stay.'

'If I stay also, there'll be room for one more man in the launch,' she replied. 'That's the way I want it, my darling.'

'Then keep very close to me, Linn.'

We went on deck. Wegger and Bravold were there, both with Scorpions. They seemed more ridiculous than ever. Ullmann was at the wheel.

'She won't last another hour,' I told Wegger. 'We can try the motor-launch. But it won't take everybody.'

'Where is Prince Edward Island from here?' he demanded.

'You must be bloody mad to ask a question like that at a time like this.'

'I haven't thrown in the sponge,' he said thickly. 'I'll make it yet. What course?'

I laughed contemptuously. 'Try east. Just due east. You may finish up in Australia.'

I turned my back on him and picked up the megaphone. I couldn't make out the crew but I knew they must be huddled somewhere up for'ard.

'One of you get below,' I ordered. 'Put a drum of oil in the for'ard lavatory so that it spills out the hawse-hole. Understood?'

'He's gone, sir,' called back a voice from the darkness.

'Stand by to wear ship,' I said. 'Men, I'm going to try and bring her head to the sea. If we can stream a sea-anchor, we might still make it. The snip's stone dead. She mayn't come round. It's just an outside chance. If she hangs in stays, chop the fore and mainmast lanyards free and send the masts overside. Clear?'

'Clear, sir,' came the muffled reply.

I paused for a moment, hoping for a smoother patch to risk the fateful manoeuvre, which is difficult enough in a storm in any sailing-ship, let alone one which is sinking under your feet.

I saw a blue, phosphorescent glow — it seemed almost tangible — to starboard, the weather side.

'Hands to wear ship!'

I do not know whether anyone got as far as his station.

The wind switched direction without warning as if it had cannoned off a solid object.

Simultaneously with a frenzied shout, 'All aback forward!' I heard a crash overhead as the single sail blew from its bolt-ropes. The wheel gave a tremendous kick out of Ullmann's hands, and the ship broached to. There was another shattering crash and the foremast went overboard! followed by the main topgallant mast. Blocks, yards, rigging came showering down on deck. Botany Bay went over on her beam ends.

There was only one order now.

'Abandon ship!' I shouted. 'All hands to abandon ship!'

Out of the darkness of the bow came a hysterical scream.

'Ship right ahead!'

I, too, saw the outline of the ship. It was the same bluish phosphorescent colour I had noted before the masts went.

It was a ship, oddly foreshortened, taller than Botany Bay along its tall cutwater.

I recognized it as I saw it.

It was a ship — and a rock. A rock shaped like a ship. Ship Rock.

Ship Rock is one of the deadly outliers of Prince Edward Island.