The Black Tide

Then suddenly we were out of the wash, everything preternaturally quiet. Blackness closed over us as the searchlight went out. It took a little while for my eyes to become accustomed to the darkness. Somebody said, ‘She had her nav lights on.’ I could see the broad back of her now, the stern light showing white and the Iraqi flag picked out by the steaming light on her after-mast. Moonlight gradually revealed the surface of the sea. Was this her final departure? Had the Aurora B arrived in the darkness? We searched the horizon, but no sign of another tanker, and shortly after 03.00 we lost sight of the Shah Mohammed behind the dark outline of Selvagem Grande.

When dawn broke the sea was empty and no vessel in sight.

We were north of the island ourselves then, all of us very tired and arguing wearily about what we should do. In the end, we turned downwind with the intention of checking that the tanker hadn’t returned to her old position south of Fora. Shortly after noon I heard Toni Bartello wake Saltley to tell him he had sighted the smaller islands and a tanker lying to the south of them.

We were all up then, putting about and changing sail so that we lay hove-to with the tanker just in sight like a sheer rock on the edge of visibility. We kept it in sight all afternoon, lying drowsily on deck, stripped to the waist and warm in the sun.

Towards evening the wind began to back, the air thickening till we could no longer see the tanker. A small boat came out from under the lee of Pequena, its bows lifted and moving fast. It was an inflatable with three men in it. We could hear the sound of its outboard clear and strident above the growing rumble of the reef surf as it made straight towards us. Only when it was a few yards off did the man at the wheel cut the engine and swing it broadside to us. One of the three stood up, clasping the top of the windshield to steady himself. ‘Who is Captain here?’ His face was narrow with a high-bridged nose and a little black moustache, and his accent was similar to Sadeq’s.

Saltley stepped into the cockpit, leaning forward and gripping hold of the guardrail. ‘I’m the captain,’ he said. ‘Who are you?’

‘What you do here please?’ the man enquired.

‘Are you Portuguese?’

The man hesitated, then shook his head.

‘You’re from that tanker?’

‘Yes.’

‘The Shah Mohammed?’

Again the hesitation. ‘I ask you what you do here?’ he repeated. ‘Why you wait in these islands?’

‘We’re waiting for another yacht to join us. And you — why are you waiting here?’

‘How long before the yacht arrive?’

‘A day, two days — I don’t know.’

‘And when it arrive, where you go then?’

‘The Cape Verde Islands, then across the Atlantic to the Caribbean. Are you the captain of the Shah Mohammed!’

‘No.’

‘Well, tell your captain he came too close last night. I shall, of course, make a report. You tell him.’

‘Please? I don’t understand.’ But obviously he did, for he said something to the man at the wheel and the engine burst into raucous life.

‘What are you waiting here for?’ Saltley yelled to him.

The man waved a hand to the driver and the engine quietened to a murmur. ‘We wait here for instructions. We have new owners. They have re-sold our cargo so we wait to know where we go.’ He leaned his weight on the inflated side of the boat. ‘You in Selvagen Islands before this?’ And when Saltley shook his head, the man added, ‘Very bad place for small ships, Por-toogese fishermen no good. Understand? They come aboard in the night, kill people and throw them to the sharks. Okay?’

‘Do you mean they’re pirates?’ Saltley smiled at him. ‘You understand the word piracy?’

The man nodded. ‘Yes, pirates. That is right. These very perilous islands. You go now. Meet friends at Cape Verde. Okay?’ Without waiting for a reply he tapped the driver on the shoulder. The motor roared,

the bows lifted and they did a skid turn, heading back towards Pequena.

‘What did he mean by pirates?’

Saltley looked round at Mark. ‘A warning probably. Depends whether I satisfied him we were going transatlantic’

That night, just in case, we had two of us on watch all the time. The wind continued to back until it was sou’westerly with a thin cloud layer. Towards dawn the clouds thickened and it began to drizzle. Visibility was down to little more than a mile and no sign of the tanker. After feeling our way cautiously south and west for nearly two hours we suddenly saw broken water creaming round the base of a single rock. This proved to be Ilheus do Norte, the northernmost of the chain of rocks running up from Fora. We turned due south, picked up Selvagem Pequena, skirting the island to the east in thickening visibility.