It was a foul morning, the wind near gale force and poor visibility. I have seen plenty of rough seas, but it’s one thing to observe them from high up in the closed-in comfort of a big ship’s wheelhouse, quite another to face steep breaking waves virtually from sea level. Saltley told me to take the wheel while the rest of them, all except Pamela who was still fast asleep, reefed the main and then changed down to storm jib, and all the time the crash of seas bursting against the hull, spray flying across the deck and everything banging and slatting as the boat bucked and rolled and the wind came in blustering gusts.
‘Where are the islands?’ I yelled to Saltley as he half fell into the cockpit. We were hove-to again and nothing visible except a bleak circle of storm-tossed water and grey scudding clouds.
‘Over there,’ he yelled, putting on his harness and making a vague gesture towards the porthand shrouds.
All that day we only saw them once, but that once was enough to scare us badly, for we suddenly saw heavy breaking seas quite close on the starb’d bow and as we put about, I caught a glimpse of that wrecked tanker’s superstructure, a dim ghost of a shape seen through a blur of rain and spray. After that Saltley took no chances and we ran south for a good hour before turning and heaving-to again.
Later the rain eased and the wind dropped, but we had been badly frightened and even when there were no more clouds and the stars paling to the brightness of the young moon, we still kept to two-man watches. Dawn broke with high peaks aflame in the east as the sun rose firing the edges of old storm clouds. No sign of the islands, no ship of any sort in sight, the sea gently heaving and empty to the horizon in every direction.
Fortunately we were able to get sun sights and fix our position. We were some twenty miles east southeast of Selvagem Pequena. We had already shaken out the reefs and now we set the light-weight genoa. The contrast was unbelievable, the ship slipping fast through the water, the sea almost flat calm and the decks dry, not a drop of spray coming aboard.
Saltley took the opportunity to check his camera. It was a good one with several lenses, including a 300 mm. telephoto lens. He also took from his briefcase some official GODCO pictures of both the Howdo Stranger and the Aurora B. He asked us to study them carefully so that if our tankers turned up, however brief the sighting, we’d still be able to identify them. Later he put them in the top drawer of the chart table so that if we needed to check any detail they’d be ready to hand.
It was the middle of the afternoon before we raised Selvagem Grande. We sailed all round it and then down to Pequena and Fora. No tanker, nothing, the wind falling very light, the sea almost a flat calm with ripples that caught the slanting sun in reflected dazzles of blinding light. It was quite hot and towards dusk a haze developed. This thickened during the evening till it was more a sea fog, so that we had another worrying night with no sign of the light on Selvagem Grande and no stars and the moon no more than a ghostly glimmer of opaque light.
In the end we turned eastward, sailing for three hours on a course of 90°, going about and sailing a reciprocal three hours on 270°. We did that twice during the course of the night and when dawn came there was still the same thick clammy mist and nothing visible.
We were making towards Selvagem Grande then and by the time breakfast was over and everything washed up and stowed, the sun was beginning to burn up the mist and just visible as a golden disc hung in a golden glow. Water dripped in rainbow drops from the gold-painted metal of the main boom and the only sound on deck was the tinkling gurgle of water slipping past the hull.
Shortly after 10.00 I handed the wheel over to
Pamela. Saltley was dozing in his bunk, which was the starb’d quarter berth aft of the chart table, and Toni and Mark were up in the bows servicing the snap-shackle end of the masthead spinnaker hoist which was showing signs of chafe. I paid a visit to the heads, had a shave and then began checking Saltley’s DR position. I was just measuring off the distance run on each course during the night when Pamela called down to ask me how far off the island was supposed to be.
‘According to the dead reckoning at ten o’clock approximately nine miles,’ I said. ‘Why — can you see it?’
‘I think so.’
‘Speed through the water?’ I asked.
She checked the electric log and reported 4.7 knots. We had covered perhaps 2V2 miles since the last log entry. ‘I’ve lost it now,’ she called down. ‘The mist comes and goes.’
I dived up into the cockpit then, for if she really had seen the island it must be a lot closer than Saltley’s dead reckoning indicated. The sun’s pale disc was barely visible, the mist iridescent and so full of light it hurt the eyes. Visibility was little more than a mile. She pointed away to port. ‘The bearing was about two-thirty.’
‘The island should be on the starb’d bow,’ I told her.
T know.’ She nodded, staring into the mist, her eyes narrowed, all her hair, including her eyebrows, sparkling with moisture. ‘I just caught a glimpse of it, very pale and quite sheer.’ But in a mist it is so easy to imagine you can see what you are expecting to see. ‘I’m sure it was those sandstone cliffs.’
I stayed with her, conscious of her proximity, the female scent of her, finding the bluntness of her hands on the wheel, the intentness of her square determined face somehow attractive. She was such a very capable girl, so unemotional, quite the opposite of Karen. There had been an early morning watch when everybody was still asleep and she had joined me in the cockpit, sitting so close that every time the boat rolled I could feel the pressure of her body against mine. I had touched her then and she had let me, till without saying a word, but smiling quietly to herself, she had gone below to get breakfast. But that was two days ago, when we were hove-to in the gale.
‘There!’ She pointed and I saw the mist had thinned. Something glimmered on the edge of visibility. The boat lifted on a swell and I lost it behind the port shrouds. ‘Gone again,’ she breathed. It was as though we were sailing along the edge of a cloud, a lost world, all blinding white, sea and air merged together and fleeting glimpses of blue overhead. Then I saw it myself, like a pale cliff rising out of the opaque miasma which was the horizon.
Her brown hands shifted on the wheel, the boat turning to put that pale glimmer of a cliff close on the port bow, our sight of it unobstructed by the sails. I was standing now, my eyes narrowed against the sun-glare, the mist coming and going and nothing visible any longer but a glimmering void. ‘What do you think?’ she asked. ‘I’m steering two-forty. Shall I hold on that or get back to two-seventy?’
I hesitated. Had we really seen the cliffs of Sel-vagem Grande, or had it been a trick of the mist in the confusing glow of the sun’s hidden light? I brushed the moisture from my eyelashes, watching for the horizon to appear again. ‘I’ll hold on then,’ she said. ‘I’m certain it was the cliffs.’
I nodded, imagining I saw something again. But when I shifted my gaze I could see the same vague shape on the edge of visibility wherever I looked. A trick of the light. I closed my eyes, resting them against the glare, and when I opened them I could see a horizon emerging and there, over the bows, was that cliff, shining palely in that opaque world of mist and sun. ‘Something there,’ I murmured, reaching for the binoculars, and she nodded, standing herself now and steering with her bare foot on the wheel, her hair hanging loose and all bright with moisture like an autumn web. Swirls of mist and a little breeze cat’s-pawing the surface of the sea. The binoculars were useless, making the mist worse. Then the veil was drawn back, drifting astern of us, and suddenly we were in hazy sunshine, with the horizon hardening to a line and those cliffs emerging again and sprouting a funnel.