The Wreck Of The Mary Deare

We found an over-hanging slab of rock that gave us some shelter from the wind and the rain and still enabled us to watch him, and there we crouched, huddled close together for warmth whilst the tide rose and night closed in. If only the visibility had been better; if we could have seen the Mary Deare, perhaps attracted the attention of the salvage people. But we could see nothing; we couldn’t even hear them. All we could hear was the waves pounding on the other side of the reef mass and I wondered what it would be like at the top of the tide. Would the waves break right over these rocks? But by then we should be gone. Our plan was to slip into the water an hour before high tide and make for Grune a Croc. We were relying on a southward thrust from the tide coming through the main reef body to spill us out towards the rock, and though Patch had lost the hand-bearing compass, we thought the rock would be reasonably conspicuous, since it was the only one in the whole area to the south of us that would be exposed at high water.

Once we had decided what to do, we had nothing to occupy our minds. It was then that I became conscious of hunger pains for the first time. It wasn’t only the pains that worried me, but the feeling that I had no warmth left in me, as though the rain and the bitter cold had reached the central fires on which my body depended and put them out. I fell into a sort of coma of misery and through bleared eyes I watched the rock to which Higgins had moored slowly submerge. And then he was rowing again, and gradually the tide beat him. Oddly enough it gave me no sense of pleasure. I was too tired. As the tide ran faster so he had to row harder to keep abreast of our position. And then gradually his strokes became weaker until he was forced to steer to another rock and cling to it. But the tide rose and covered that, too, and, though he started to row again, the tide carried him slowly farther and farther from us. Night was closing in by then and I lost him in the gathering darkness.

It meant, of course, that we shouldn’t have to worry about where Higgins was when we abandoned our rock and took to the water, but when you are faced with a long swim and are afraid you may be too weak to do it, then the question of whether there may or may not be a dinghy in the way doesn’t seem very important. In any case, I was slipping into unconsciousness. I was so cold, so utterly drained of warmth — I had no sense of feeling left.

It was the water that woke me. It was warmer than I was and it lapped round my legs like a tepid bath. And then it slopped into my face. That was when consciousness returned and I felt Patch stir. ‘Good God!’ he murmured. ‘It must be just about high water.’

We stood up, stiff to the joints, forcing our bodies to unbend. Was it high water? Had the tide turned already? My numbed brain groped for the answer, knowing it was important, but not knowing why. The rain had stopped. There were stars and low-scudding clouds. A glimmer of moonlight made pale reflections on the ink-black water. ‘Well, do we go? What’s the time?’ Patch’s voice was no more than a croak. ‘What’s the time, for God’s sake? My watch has stopped.’

Mine had stopped, too. There was no means of knowing the time, no means of knowing which way the tide was flowing. Jolted by sudden fear, the sleep cleared from my brain and I saw clearly that we had no alternative. If we stayed on that rock we should die of exposure — tomorrow perhaps or the next day, but we should die. After tonight we should never have the strength to swim that mile. And the water was warm — warmer than the sodden, icy clothes draped round our bodies, warmer than the wind and the ice-cold driving rain that would come again. Besides, we had life-jackets and, if the tide was wrong, there were other rocks to cling to and die on. ‘Ready?’ I said.

Patch hesitated and I suddenly realised that he wasn’t sure of himself any more. He was a seaman. He was used to boats, not to the sea itself as an element in which to exist, body buoyed up by water. ‘Come on,’ I said. ‘We’re going now. Keep close to me and don’t talk.’

We inflated our life-jackets fully and then together we stepped off the ledge of rock on which we had huddled. When we had first come to that ledge it had been a thirty-foot drop to the rocks below. Now we stepped off into water, warm, buoyant water, and, lying on our backs, swam slowly south, our feet to the Pole Star, glimpsed every now and then through rents in the tattered cloudbase.

We kept abreast of each other, just two arms’ lengths away, moving steadily and unhurriedly. Soon we were clear of the rocks, rising and falling gently to a big swell that was rolling in across the reefs. We could hear it pounding against distant rocks — the rocks to the west of us that got the full brunt of it. ‘Storm coming up,’ Patch whispered.