He fought the wild object which I identified as the mainsail. I saw the sweat break out on his forehead as he held the bucking thing. He half knelt, his arm about it. The animated fabric jumped and thrust to break his iron hold. I lay and retched salt water. The splintered strake worked along the cracks. I was numb with shock and the tumult. I saw what was frustrating Sailhardy, and tilting our lives in the balance: the mainsail halliards ran through holes bored through the mast. One had snarled up, and the islander could not get at it. I edged along the gratings and got my fingers to it. It whipped free. In a moment Sailhardy had the sail captive and lashed a bight of rope round it. The boat lay over on its port side. The sea poured in.
Sailhardy gestured me to bale. I snatched up a home-made pottery bowl containing our meal-the cooked mollymawk chicks floated pathetically in the rising waters I baled frantically. Then, as if stunned by its own disbursement of force the gale cut off.
" We're right behind the line of Inaccessible Island, and it' s making a kind of huge slipstream," said Sailhardy. The normal modulation of his speech was doubly startling in the quiet. "In a moment we'll catch it again! Get the water out of her, for the sake of all that is holy!"
Although it was still light where we were, it was dark half a mile away. We soared sickeningly and fell into the troughs of the swell.
Sailhardy looked grave. " We must run for Nightingale Island," he said. " Inaccessible is right into the teeth of the storm, and we've been blown too far ever to hope to regain
Tristan again."
" What if we miss Nightingale?" I said. The light was brindled by flowing spume ahead.
"If we keep afloat, we could be blown for a thousand miles before the gale eases," he replied. " There's five gallons of water, and a few mollymawk chicks to eat." He looked sombre. " If I miss the beach at Nightingale, I'm going to spill her over and drown us both. It's better that way."
From my knees as I baled I looked up into the lean face. I knew he meant it.
" Reef that foresail right down," he said tersely. " We may be lucky and get another lull. That's the way they come from the Drake Passage."
The rag of sail slatted in the trough of each wave and parachuted at the crest. The slipstream ended. The gale hit us again like a piston. How Sailhardy steered in that wild vociferation of untrammelled force, I do not know. The boat arced towards the sky in wild genuflexions. I held on to the mast and tried to manage the fragment of sail which kept her upright. I knew then why sailors speak with a special note in their voices about a Tristan whaleboat. She was superb. Even in my fear I felt some of Sailhardy's exhilaration at the storm's challenge. Under his hands, the frightened composition of wood and canvas wheeled up to the top of each comber and then, in the welter at the top, Sailhardy held her as she shied and started to break away. The descent was terrifying.
Sailhardy threw an arm forward, pointing. There, a sinister tower ringing death from the tocsin which clanged round its black cliffs, was Nightingale Island. White gouts burst from its cliffs like signal guns as the water climbed in awe-provoking slow motion up the black granite. Behind a barrier of kelp and sea-bamboo was the beach. The boat swung heavenwards. Sailhardy wrenched one arm from the tiller and threw it across his eyes. Something black hit him. The boat, out of control, started a toboggan run down the wave. Sailhardy regained control. I was crawling to his assistance, but stopped short. The bird was shiny black, with fiery bloodshot eyes. It looked like something conjured up by a sick mind to match the contortion of nature about us. I gazed unbelievingly. There was something wrong. It had no wings.
Sailhardy was shouting and grinning. There was a ragged hole in his mouth where a tooth had been knocked out.
" Island Cock!" he yelled. " Luck! It's as old as the D o d o! T h e w i n d b l e w i t c l e a n o f f t h e i s l a n d! L u c k y !
Lucky!"
Lucky! We would need every bit of luck, I thought grimly, looking around. The bird's over-size talons gripped the gratings. The Flightless Rail, the bird that can't fly and lives in burrows in the ground. It's in the same category as the New Zealand kiwi. I had no interest in ornithological curiosities at that moment.
Sailhardy began his run in for the beach. At the base of a thousand-foot cliff I could see the off-white streak of broken shingle which passes by the name of beach in these waters.
He shouted, and I shifted the rag of sail. The whaleboat slewed to port. There was more drift on her now. Sailhardy fought to keep her head up into the gale. Water poured over the side. I baled. The pitch-black bird moved his grip and glared unwinkingly at me with his drunk's eyes.
Sailhardy shouted something, and indicated the sail. The wind blew his words away, but I knew what he meant. Either he had funked it, or there was some danger I was not aware of. He intended to go about! I flicked the sail free. The whaleboat began her next sickening plunge.
Then it was quiet.
On every hand was the evidence of the gale's dissoluteness. From the low level of the boat the sea was a terrifying sight. Suds and spume lay six inches deep on the jerking surface of the water. Nightingale Island soared, appeared, and disappeared as the waves obstructed our view.
It was quiet.
I heard the aircraft engine overhead.
2. The Whale-Spotter
The engine coughed. The sound was as incongruous as the presence of the hovering helicopter. Tristan is too remote from the world ever to have seen an aircraft; the South African Air Force men I took to the island during the war were not fliers, but radio personnel.
" Helicopter!" I exclaimed. " Where the hell it comes from, though, I wouldn't know."
Sailhardy's strong hands were on the tiller. He guided the boat through the next crest before replying. " The main body of the storm isn't here yet," he said. " If it was, that helicopter would be blown from here to Bouvet."
The black machine, its fat belly emphasised by orange paint, came closer. The colours gave it away: black and red, seen easiest against the ice. She was intended to operate over ice.
" She's a whale-spotter," I said.
Sailhardy jerked his head upwards. " I'd say it was fairly calm still at five thousand feet. Won't be for long, though."
" That's a damn brave pilot," I said. " I wouldn't care to fly in this lot, even if it is clearer farther up." The helicopter manoeuvred. It was clear it had not seen the whaleboat.
" She's searching," I said, puzzled. " It can't be for whales.
No factory-ship skipper would fly off an aircraft in weather like this."
Sailhardy was anxious. " Any moment the storm will hit us. Then I don't give a fig for our chances or the helicopter's." The machine's movement became decisive. She started to drop towards the whaleboat. The pilot had seen us.
" It couldn't be searching for us," I started to say. "There were no ships at Tristan when we left the anchorage this morning."
Sailhardy reached out and scratched the head of the strange bird. " Whatever that aircraft is about, this chick certainly brought us luck," he smiled.
" We haven't been rescued yet," I said. "Look at the sea. It's one thing to have a helicopter overhead, and another to pull you up from a swell like this."
He nodded. " We're rising and falling forty feet at a time," he said. " I reckon it can't be done." As if to refute him, the machine came down with a rush directly over our heads. Its rotors drowned speech. From a winch on its side, a rope snaked down. The pilot's judgement was superb. The rope was about three feet above the boat but slightly to one side. Before I had time to grab it, we nose-dived into the trough. The helicopter waited. We shot upwards with the next sea. My heart was in my mouth. I thought the sea would touch the Westland. I saw the pilot behind perspex. There was a rapid movement of the controls. The machine edged out of reach.