'Forget that view: lend a hand here with the wheel while J fix the engine.'
'I don't know the first thing about steering.'
'You don't have to. Hold it steady, that's all. And keep your eyes skinned, straight in front of you.'
She did as I said, reluctantly. I went below; I tinkered with this and tinkered with that but the diesel wouldn't fire. After a while I put my head out of the box which was the engine room and took a look at the sea. Ichabo was being carried towards Broke Rock by the seaward set of a fairly strong current that was pushing northwards up the channel at a couple of knots.
'The bloody thing won't start,' I told Jutta. 'Ira in a shocking state.'
`That means we'll have to go back?'
The relief in her voice needled me. J wasn't going to have my plans wrecked at the outset. My irritation laid my decision slap on the line.
'No. We sail.'
'You never give up, do you?'
I'd begun to sound a bit tough-even to myself. I softened the come-back. 'No, Jutta. Especially not when I've got a thing like that-' I gestured at the Broke-which was now not more than a couple of cables' lengths away to starboard – ' almost under my keeL'
The northerly wind was backing and becoming flukier: I'd have to make a couple of sharp tacks to get clear. The sea was changing, losing its green and becoming greyer. I didn't like the look of that cloud-bank either. But there was no turning back now: I was committed.
'Steer.. I gave her some elementary helm orders while I made sail. The big high boom-the height of a man by the mast gooseneck-was designed to swing clear of the wheelhouse roof, so that the helmsman could have an unobstructed view. I wanted the cutter on the port tack. The wind was freshening all the time and backing north-west. I was afraid that the boat would be caught in irons with someone inexperienced like Jutta at the wheel but the sail took all my attention. Eventually-however, Ichabo came round slowly and clawed her away past the Broke and we moved out to sea by way of the narrow passage.
I took the wheel after that and we stood off the coast with the wind freshening still further and the squalls churning up the water in the rebound from the land, as Kaptein Denny said they would. Behind Elizabeth Point-the old ghost town site-the land was a dreary waste. Ichabo handled welclass="underline" she came from the same yard as Gaok and probably had much the same underwater lines. But with that ugly menace of the storm on the southern horizon I could have wished for someone better than a girl for my crew. Still, I had gone into it with my eyes open, and by resorting to sail had made my commitment complete to the in-shore route. Yet, looking at the grim, deadly shore and the growing line of white breakers, I wondered with some trepidation what the next twenty-four hours would hold.
By afternoon it was blowing a fresh gale and the wind was steady in the south-south-west. Kaptein Denny's forecast might have been computerized for accuracy. Ichabo had begun to run towards the coast in the final leg of a somewhat Sshaped course to pick up the entrance to the inshore route, which lay well to the north of Elizabeth Point. The scud and 87 overcast were down to mast-height. Ichabo was riding welclass="underline" waves would come up astern and her bow would dip on the summit as if she were crouching for some stupendous leap, then she would careen into the trough, bucking and shredding the seas. It was an exhilarating and frightening motion, all at once, to be caught in the gigantic crossfiow of energy between wind and sea. It was an uncomplicated challenge of survival. It clarified my senses and I didn't feel tired any longer. Alabama Cove was opce the famous Confederate raider's funkhole. It is roughly a funnel-shaped affair with the broad end of the funnel in the north and the narrow end in the south. The coast forms one side of it and a discontinuous line of reefs and sandbars the other. There are gaps of deep water between these hazards. From end to end the place measures three or four miles. There is a safe channel up the middle This can only be entered via the narrow section in the south. At the other extreme is Tuscaloosa Islet, a low-lying group of rocks which offers a safe anchorage in almost any weather. The islet is named after the Alabama's auxiliary and onetime prize, the Tuscaloosa. If you could put a trapdoor across the entrance-nothing could winkle out a ship inside, That half-mile-wide gap is a death-trap. You have to negotiate it-Kaptein Denny had briefed me in detail-by steering for a strange beacon made out of whale skeletons, set up at the foot of a solitary sandhill. It's called New Bedford Point. The bones were put there by American whalers that frequented the Sperrgebiet before the Declaration of Independence. The dry, salt-impregnated air has preserved the bones ever since,
J checked the briefing in my mind as I headed for the point The suspicion also arose, when I saw the holocaust ahead, that it might be a death ride Kaptein Denny had organized to take care of me. But the time for choice was almost past: astern loomed a wild, bleak and rain-scourged sea; chunks of it kept slapping in our faces like wet clothes. There was a continual lash and splutter of spray past the wheelhouse and Ichabo writhed and twisted in the mounting seas. The sky was a solid wall of cloud.
`There!' I pointed, to show Jutta.
The landmark I was homing in on-a fan-shaped patch of white among some curious black hummocks behind the whale bones-came into sight. I felt easier. They were spot on 88 where Kaptein Denny said they would be. Once again, Jutta didn't share my relief. She hung on to the grab-handle in the wheelhouse, her oilskins streaming. I had the windows open because the wipers didn't work.
In… there?'
I had to admit to myself it didn't look too good. To myself alone. Spray was exploding forty or fifty feet high on the outer chain of sand-spits and reefs. A clear line of white water demarcated it all the way down to that savage little blinder off the southernmost point. A patch of breakerless water near it was the entrance-way. lchabo was like a wild animal being driven by beaters into the mouth of a boma thornbush trap. Violent gusts and squalls bouncing back from the land stirred up the channel like a gigantic swizzle stick.
`Kaptein Denny said it'd be okay.' I couldn't think of anything else to say.
'We'll never make that tiny gap.'
'We will and we must.'
Tuscaloosa Islet, where we intended to anchor, was low and close inshore and difficult to make out. That didn't help Jutta's fears or mine. First we had to reach the channel leading to it.
I spotted discoloured water right ahead of the bow. That I meant twelve fathoms -so Kaptein Denny had said. Every warning of his was at a premium now.
'I'm going to mug her right down.'
I had to shout for Jutta to hear.
'Hang on to the wheel for a moment while I fix the sail. Just hold her steady. I won't take a minute.'
I was a fool, of course, to have entrusted the steering under such conditions to a novice, but it seemed simple enough and I didn't intend to be long. I felt the gale cool the sweat inside my oilskins when I got outside the wheelhouse. That should have been a red light, telling me how hard it had been to work the wheeL
But I went on to the saiL
At that moment Ichabo must have hopscotched over a shallower bit of bottom. From being merely storm-triggered rollers, the sea became a battering-rain. Ichabo caught it on the port quarter. She yawed wildly; the boom thwacked me in the rib-cage. I felt as though I'd been kicked by a mule. 89
I was hurled off the wheelhouse roof on to the foredeck I caught a glimpse, plunging past the windows, of the wheel spinning out of control. Jutta's hands were in the air sema- phoring her helplessness.
Where I finished up I was swamped and soused immediately by torrents of water. The cutter's head fell off. She started to swing beam-on to the sea-the most dangerous position for a boat under such circumstances. The peril made me try to rise but I fell back, heJpless.