The Wreck Of The Mary Deare

He didn’t answer, but went to the desk and got some keys, and then he went out and I heard him unlock the door of the next cabin. There was a scrape of heavy baggage being moved and I went to give him a hand. The door was opened and, inside, the cabin looked as though a madman had looted it — drawers pulled out, suitcases forced open, their hasps ripped off, their contents strewn over the floor; clothes and papers strewn everywhere. Only the bed remained aloof from the chaos, still neatly made-up, unslept-in, the pillow stained with the man’s hair oil.

He had the keys. He must have searched the cabin himself. ‘What were you looking for?’ I asked.

He stared at me for a moment without saying anything. Then he shifted the big cabin trunk out of the way, toppling it on to its side with a crash. It lay there, a slab of coloured hotel labels — Tokyo, Yokohama, Singapore, Rangoon. ‘Catch hold of this!’ He had hold of a big brown canvas bundle and we hauled it out into the Corridor and through the door to the open deck. He went back then and I heard him lock the door of Dellimare’s cabin. When he returned he brought a knife with him. We cut the canvas straps, got the yellow dinghy out of its wrappings and inflated it.

The thing was about twelve feet long and five feet broad; it had paddles and a rudder and a tubular telescopic mast with nylon rigging and a small nylon sail. It even had fishing tackle. ‘Was he a nervous sort of man?’ I asked. For a shipowner to pack a collapsible dinghy on board one of his own ships seemed odd behaviour — almost as though he suffered from the premonition that the sea would get him.

But all Patch said was, ‘It’s time we got moving.’

I stared at him, startled at the thought of leaving the comparative security of the ship for the frailty of the rubber dinghy. ‘The seas will be pretty big once we get clear of the reefs. Hadn’t we better wait for the wind to drop a bit more?’

‘We need the wind.’ He sniffed it, feeling for its direction with his face. ‘It’s veered a point or two already. With luck it will go round into the northwest.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘There’s four hours of tide with us.’

I tried to tell him it would be better to wait for the next tide and get the whole six hours of it, but he wouldn’t listen. ‘It would be almost dark then. And suppose the wind changed? You can’t beat to windward in this sort of craft. And,’ he added, ‘there may be another depression following on behind this one. You don’t want to be caught out here in another gale. I don’t know what would happen at high water. The whole bridge deck might get carried away.’

He was right, of course, and we hurriedly collected the things we needed — food, charts, a hand-bearing compass, all the clothes we could clamber into. We had sou’westers and sea boots, but no oilskins. We took the two raincoats from the cabin door.

It was nine forty-five when we launched the dinghy from the for’ard well-deck. We paddled her clear of the ship and then hoisted sail. The sun had disappeared by then and everything was grey in a mist of driving rain, the rocks appearing farther away, vague battlement shapes on the edge of visibility; many of them were already covered. We headed for Les Sauvages and in a little while the flashing buoy that marked the rocks emerged out of the murk. By then the Mary Deare was no more than a vague blur, low down in the water. We lost her completely as we passed Les Sauvages.

There was still a big sea running and, once we cleared the shelter of the Minkies, we encountered the towering swell left by the gale. It marched up behind us in wall upon wall of steep-fronted, toppling water, and in the wet, swooping chill of that grey day I lost all sense of time.

For just over four hours we were tumbled about in the aftermath of the storm, soaked to the skin, crammed into the narrow space between the fat, yellow rolls of the dinghy’s sides, with only an occasional glimpse of Cap Frehel to guide us. And then, shortly after midday, we were picked up by the cross-Channel packet coming in from Peter Port. They were on the lookout for survivors, otherwise they would never have sighted us, for they were passing a good half mile to the west of us. And then the packet suddenly altered course, coming down on us fast, the bows almost hidden by spray flung up by the waves. She hove-to a little up-wind of us, rolling heavily, and as she drifted down on to us rope ladders were thrown over the side and men came down to help us up, quiet, English voices offering words of encouragement, hands reaching down to pull us up. People crowded us on the deck — passengers and crew, asking questions, pressing cigarettes and chocolate on us. Then, an officer took us to his quarters and the packet got into her stride again, engines throbbing gently, effortlessly. As we went below I caught a glimpse of the dinghy, a patch of yellow in the white of the ship’s wake as it rode up the steep face of a wave.

CHAPTER FOUR