The Wreck Of The Mary Deare

And then the moment when we had any choice of action was past. Griselda, clear of Les Hanois rocks, was altering course to get between us and Peter Port. Patch had seen it and he said, ‘You’ve no choice now.’ He hadn’t relaxed his grip of the wheel, but the tension was out of his voice. Mike stopped cursing at him. He seemed to understand, for he turned his head and stared at the motor boat. Then he let go of the wheel and stood up. ‘Since you appear to be skippering this boat, you’d better bloody well steer her. But by Christ!’ he added, ‘if anything happens to her …’ He stared coldly at me, still trembling with anger, and went below.

‘I’m sorry,’ Patch said. He had seated himself at the wheel and his voice was weary.

‘This isn’t your boat,’ I reminded him.

He shrugged his shoulders, looking round at Griselda. ‘What else did you expect me to do?’

There was no point in discussing it. We were committed now to go on until we reached the Mary Deare. But if the wind dropped … ‘Suppose Higgins catches up with us?’ I said.

He looked at me quickly. ‘He mustn’t.’ And then he added, ‘We’ve got to get there first.’

‘Yes, but suppose he does?’ I was thinking that after all Higgins had got to keep within the law. ‘He can’t do very much.’

‘No?’ He laughed a little wildly. ‘How do you know what Higgins can do? He’s frightened.’ He looked at me, sideways out of the corners of his eyes. ‘Wouldn’t you be frightened if you were Higgins?’ And then he glanced up at the sails and his voice was quiet and practical again as he asked me to ease the sheets and he altered course for the northwest Minkies buoy.

After that we didn’t talk any more and gradually I became conscious of the sound of the motor boat’s engine. It was very faint at first, a gentle undertone to the swish of the sea going past, but it warned me that the wind was easing. The overcast had thinned and a humid glare hung over the water so that the outline of Jersey Island away to port was barely visible. I started the engine and from that moment I knew Griselda would overtake us.

The forecast announced that the depression over the Atlantic was deepening, moving eastwards faster. But it wouldn’t help us. All the time the wind was dropping now and Griselda was coming up abeam of us, keeping between us and Jersey Island. The glare faded, leaving sea and sky a chill, luminous grey. There was no horizon any more. Patch went below to get some more clothes. It had suddenly become much colder and the wind was fluky, blowing in sudden puffs.

I sat at the wheel and watched Griselda draw steadily ahead of the beam, wallowing in the swell. I wondered what Higgins would do, what I would do in his place. I tried to think it out rationally. But it’s difficult to think rationally when you’re cold and tired and sitting alone, almost at water level, isolated in an opaque void. That sense of isolation! I had felt it at sea before, but never so strongly. And now it chilled me with a feeling of foreboding. The sea had an oily look as the big swells lumbered up from the west and rolled beneath us.

I didn’t notice the fog at first. I was thinking of Higgins — and then suddenly a grey-white plasma was creeping towards us across the sea, shrouding and enveloping the water in its folds. Mike came up from below and I gave him the wheel, shouting for Patch to come on deck. Griselda had seen the fog, too, and she had turned in towards us. I watched her coming, waiting for the fog to close round us and hide us from her. ‘We’ll go about as soon as we lose sight of her,’ I said as Patch came up through the hatch.

She wasn’t more than two cables away when her outline blurred and then she vanished, swallowed abruptly. ‘Lee-ho!’ Mike called and spun the wheel. Sea Witch turned into the wind and through it, the big yankee flapping as I let go the jib sheet. And then the main boom was across and Patch and I were winching in the starboard jib sheet as we gathered way on the port tack.

We were doubling back on our tracks through a cold, dead, clammy world and I straightened up, listening to the beat of the motor boat’s engines, trying to estimate her position, wondering whether the fog was thick enough for us to lose her.

But Higgins must have guessed what we’d do, or else we had lost too much time in going about, for the sound of Griselda’s engines was abeam of us and, just as I realised this, the shape of her reappeared. Her bows seemed to rip the curtain of fog apart and suddenly the whole of her was visible, coming straight for us.

She was coming in at right-angles, her engines running flat out and her sharp bows cutting into the swell, spray flying up past her wheelhouse. I shouted to Mike to go about again. We were heeled over, going fast and I knew that if both boats held their course we must hit. And when he didn’t do anything, my throat was suddenly dry. ‘Put her about!’ I yelled at him. And at the same moment Patch shouted, ‘Turn man! For God’s sake turn!’