Uncharted Seas (12 page)

Luvia held the glasses firmly to his eyes, yet he could not keep his hands from trembling. Slowly he lowered them and turned to look at the group who stood in the well of the boat, their anxious faces all strained up towards him.

His mouth twitched spasmodically before he spoke. ‘We win. Vedras is right. There’s a steamer to sou’-west of us. I can see her topmasts and the tip of her funnel when we rise on the swell.’

It was Thursday, 13th January, and they had been eighty-four hours in the boat. The tension snapped. Some portion of their inexpressible relief was manifest in a sudden outpouring of emotion. Synolda flung her arms round Vicente’s neck and kissed him. Basil led a husky cheer. Unity fainted. Jansen slipped to his knees and began to render thanks to God aloud. Luvia sat down on the thwart, put his head between his hands and burst into tears.

Within five minutes Unity had come round and Luvia was back
in the stern rapping out orders. The rest, having regained control of themselves, were springing to obey him; their languor gone; galvanised into a fierce activity by the miraculous promise of succour which had come to them when hope seemed past even praying for.

The mutineers were released; the sail was set. Jansen was sent forward with the glasses to keep watch upon the ship. Basil shinned up the mast and tied a long streamer of white material, which Synolda had ripped from her underskirt, to the spar.

‘How far off is she?’ he asked Luvia when he had finished fixing the pennant which he hoped might attract the attention of the look-out on the ship to them.

‘Difficult to say,’ the Finn replied. ‘Her funnel tip, which I could just make out, must be fifty feet above the water; a man sitting on it could see our sail each time she rises if he had glasses. At that height his horizon would be close on ten miles away. Maybe the funnel’s higher though. If so, we’re farther off.’

‘How long d’you reckon it’ll take us to come up with her?’

‘God knows! It’s a bad break her being almost dead to windward. Can’t sail within seven points of the wind, you see, so we’ll have to tack first one way then another to get nearer.’

‘With any luck she’ll spot us and turn out of her course to pick us up.’

Luvia shook his head. ‘I doubt that; anyway till we’re much closer. They’d never sight a small boat like this such a distance away. There’s so little shipping in these waters, too, the look-out knows it’s a cinch there’ll be nothing to report so the odds are he’s some lazy bum who’s sitting up in the crow’s-nest half asleep.’

A hoarse voice behind them asked anxiously: ‘In which direction is she going?’ It was De Brissac; his head still swathed in bandages, but well enough to lie propped up now.

‘I don’t know,’ Luvia grunted. ‘I couldn’t see the slant of her masts sufficiently to judge; but she’s practically broadside-on to us.’

Synolda grabbed his arm. ‘But if she’s ten miles away and not coming towards us she may disappear again before we get near enough to signal her.’

‘Yes,’ Luvia agreed soberly. ‘I’m afraid that is so. We’re not out of the wood yet.’ He had already visualised such a possibility, but forborne to mention it.

At the awful thought that they might not be rescued after all a quick reaction set in. They fell silent, strained their eyes in the
direction of the ship they could not see, and watched the maddeningly slow progress of the boat through the water with the acutest anxiety.

The life-boat was a heavy, broad-waisted vessel, built to survive in rough seas and not for speed. With a good wind she could not have done much more than six knots an hour and the light breeze which played about it at the moment was carrying it along at less than three. The necessity for tacking further reduced their actual progress towards the ship and when midday came Jansen reported that while the steamer did not appear to be any farther away he did not think they were much nearer to her.

As they were tacking all the time at an angle to their true course, it was difficult to observe in which direction the vessel was moving. A second and longer study of her through the glasses had convinced Luvia that she was not broadside, but three-quarters on, with her stern towards them. He could see no smoke rising from the funnel tip and concluded that she was cruising very slowly away to the southward. Jansen and the oldest sailor, Bremer, agreed with him.

Speculation was rife among them as to what the ship could be doing in such a lonely area of the ocean. From the little they could judge, without seeing her hull and at such a distance, she seemed too big for a whaler, while a tramp or passenger ship would hardly have been likely to be cruising at a few knots an hour in the empty spaces of the South Atlantic.

They were in no state to talk much, however, as, after the first excitement of sighting their possible rescuer had subsided, they suffered a relapse to their previous state of weakness. Even a few words meant an effort, and now the sun was over the meridian the real torture of thirst had them all firmly in its grip.

Since there were no liquid rations left to issue, old Jansen had the idea of breaking up the cask. Its wood retained a little moisture and when he had knocked off the iron hoops they eagerly shared out the curved staves. By hacking off small pieces of the wood with their knives they were able to chew it for the pitifully small amount of water it still held before spitting out the evil-tasting residue. Though it did not even serve, to wet their throats it occupied them for a while and gave them the illusion that they had had a meagre ration.

By one o’clock they still seemed to have made little progress and the light wind was dying fast. Luvia judged that they could not have made more than a mile in the direction of the ship in
the past hour, and, whatever might be her mysterious mission, cruising so slowly in these waters, he feared every moment that she would put on steam and sail away. In a cracked voice he ordered the sail to be lowered and the men to get out their oars.

They obeyed willingly enough, only too glad, in spite of their physical distress, to be able to lend a hand towards their own salvation, rather than remain idle in such frightful suspense.

Luvia took the stroke oar himself; Basil, Bremer, Largertöf, Harlem, and Corncob made up the rest of the crew. Jansen, at the tiller, turned the boat’s bow dead towards their goal and Unity relieved him of his job of look-out with the glasses.

An hour’s rowing brought them perceptibly nearer to the steamer. Occasional glimpses of her mast and funnel tops could now be caught when standing up in the boat, and from Unity’s perch on the bow thwarts she could keep them under constant observation, even when the ship sank a little in the gentle swell. But that hour had taken the go out of the best men in the boat.

It was over twenty-four hours since any of them had tasted water and for nearly four days they had subsisted on the barest minimum of food.

As in a nightmare, Synolda watched them from the stern; their faces grimed and furrowed, or red and puffy where the sun had caught them; their breath coming in painful gasps at each tug on the heavy oars; their eyes protruding unnaturally from blackringed sockets. Nearest her, Luvia was sticking it manfully; the muscles in his cheeks tightening under his four-days’ growth of golden stubble every time he threw his weight into a long, steady stroke. His fine head and splendid physique had attracted her from the beginning, and in these days of stress she had come to admire his courage and fortitude as well. Now, her heart bled for him as she realised that the rest of the oarsmen were quite incapable of adequately supporting his splendid effort.

Bitterly he realised that too. Their strokes were becoming ragged and uneven; their oars dipped into the water but there was little power behind the blades. Now and again one of them caught a crab, impeded the others, and checked the way of the boat. It was not that they were slacking, but too weary and feeble to row better even though their lives depended on it.

At half past two he replaced Bremer, Largertöf, Corncob and Basil with Isiah, Nudäa, Vicente and Jansen.

Another hour of dogged rowing and Unity reported that she could see most of the funnel and the upper bridge-works of the
ship. It had turned a little and was now heading dead away from them, but must be proceeding very slowly as they were certainly decreasing their distance from it.

At four o’clock Basil went up into the bow and found Hansie, about whom they’d all forgotten, lying there wide awake staring up at the sky. The ex-barman had come out of his drunken stupor some time earlier, but was suffering from such an appalling hangover as well as ravaging thirst that he had no idea a ship had been sighted and the fact that the others were rowing had not even impinged on his consciousness.

Basil dipped a canvas bucket over the side, and, filling it with sea-water, flung its contents over Hansie to rouse him fully. It then occurred to him to take a look at Lem. After Luvia had knocked the Negro out in the morning they had tied him up and gagged him to prevent his screaming tearing all that remained of their nerves to pieces when he came to again. Basil found him still and stiff, with his eyeballs staring; he was quite dead. His body meant so many stone of weight in the boat; so much extra to pull when every ounce mattered to the aching muscles of the rowers. Without the least compunction Basil heaved up the dead Negro’s body and, with an effort, pushed it overboard.

With Hansie’s revival Luvia decided on another change of crew. The ex-barman, Basil, Bremer and Largertöf, relieved Isiah, Nudäa, Vicente and Jansen. Harlem refused to be relieved although he had been rowing from the first like Luvia, and Luvia himself would not hear of taking a spell. The leader of the mutiny had stamina and a perverse pride of his own; he wished to show that he was just as good a man as the Finnish engineer.

By five o’clock Jansen said that through the glasses he could now make out the deck-houses of the steamer when standing on a thwart and insisted that Luvia should have his place taken at the stroke oar if only long enough to have a good look at the ship.

Luvia’s back was nearly breaking under the strain and the palms of his hands were half raw where they had chafed in his hours of strenuous pulling. He was not beaten yet but honestly glad of the excuse to give up for a while at least. Ordering Isiah to take Harlem’s place and Nudäa his own, he joined Jansen in the bow.

‘Yes,’ he agreed thickly after he had trained the binoculars on the steamer. ‘We’re nearer, much nearer. Not more than five miles from her. Difficult to tell what she is though with her stern
turned towards us like that. She’s pretty high out of the water—a cargo boat with ballast probably. Too far off still for us to see any of the people on her decks and unfortunately it’s unlikely they’ll spot us yet either. If only she were broadside-on or coming across our bows there’d be so much more chance, but who the hell ever looks out over the stern of a vessel?’

‘The thing is, can we get so near to hail before we lose her in the darkness, sir?’ the old carpenter asked despondently.

Luvia turned to look at the exhausted rowers. ‘We’ve got to, Jansen,’ he rasped. ‘We’ve damn’ well got to.’

During the next hour some of the oarsmen had to be changed three times. Their swollen tongues were like thick lumps of leather in their mouths, they could no longer draw breath properly through the closing passages of their throats, their faces were blackened and discoloured, their palms a mass of blisters from constant tugging at the oars so that the shafts now felt red hot to their touch.

Largertöf had fallen forward, sobbing on his oar, crying out in Swedish, ‘Kill me! Kill me! I cannot bear it any more.’ Hansie, Isiah and Vicente Vedras had all collapsed and lay gasping in the bottom of the boat. Gietto Nudäa was suffering from a violent bout of vomiting, as a result of having gulped down half a pint of paraffin from the supply for the lost primus stove in a crazy attempt to quench his thirst. Synolda was comatose; a white huddle tumbled in disarray at the stern of the boat.

Luvia carried on with the rest somehow. Old Jansen was at the tiller and Unity had the glasses again. She could observe the ship quite clearly now nearly down to her water line, but only her stern was visible and in that portion of her she could see no movement.

Low on the horizon a cloud passed in front of the sun; a light mist was rising and gradually the shadows closed around them. Basil fainted and there was no one left to take his place. While they were shifting him out of the way Isiah doubled up and fell beside him. The rowers were reduced to four.

‘We’re—not—far off,’ Unity managed to choke out as the survivors settled to their oars again, ‘but—it’s getting difficult to see her.’

‘She’ll show her lights—any minute …’ Luvia croaked back. ‘Stick to it boys—cheat the devil yet.’

For another twenty minutes Unity continued to stare through the glasses. It was quite dark now but through the mist she could
not make out any lights yet in the ship ahead. She was only a black patch, a little darker than the surrounding gloom. Suddenly Unity lost sight of her altogether.

Frantically she began to sweep the darkness ahead, trying to pick it up again, and not daring to tell the others of this overwhelming calamity which threatened to cheat them at the last when they were so near to victory.

In vain she peered and peered, the ship’s lights would certainly be on by this time, but the mist must have thickened considerably and was hiding them from her; only a dense, uniform blackness showed ahead.

At last Luvia ceased rowing and turned round. ‘How much farther?’ he gasped. ‘Where is she?’

‘I’ve lost her,’ Unity choked.

‘Oh, God!’ groaned Luvia.

‘There she is—there!’ Bremer suddenly sprang up and pointed, not ahead but over their starboard side, and through the mist they all made out the faint dark outline of the steamer. They were less than a hundred yards away but had nearly passed her in the darkness.

They tried to hail her, but none of them had sufficient voice left to raise a shout, so they wearily took to the oars again and pulled until they came up to within a few feet of her side.