Day Thirty-two and the time 14.47. ‘Well, that’s that,’ Saltley said. ‘AH we need now is a picture of the two of them together.’
We got this just over an hour later, the two tankers lying within a cable’s length of each other a mile or so to the east of Selvagem Grande. We went in close enough for Saltley’s telescopic lens to record the white-painted names on the two fat sterns, then veered off to take shots of the two of them in profile. We didn’t go in close, for the Ghazan Khan had her gangway down and the Shah Mohammed’s high speed inflatable was alongside. They could, of course, be going over the plans for their operation, but it did occur to me they might also be considering what to do about us. We went about and headed south-east for Tenerife, sailing close-hauled into a confused and lumpy sea.
The wind was still backing and as darkness fell Saltley made a near-fatal decision, ordering Pam to take the wheel and put her about, while the rest of us eased the sheets and got her going at her maximum speed downwind. It was certainly much more comfortable, and though the island of Madeira was further than the Canaries, if the wind continued to back and held in the south all next day it would be a lot quicker, and he needed to get to a telephone as soon as possible.
The course took us to the west of Selvagem Grande and as we picked up the faint glimmer of the light through a mist of rain, I wished Stewart had fitted his yacht with radar. Presuming the tankers had now left for their final destination, I would like to have known what course they were steering. Saltley joined me at the chart table and we discussed it for a while, all the various possibilities, while the aroma of onions assailed us from the galley as Pamela fried up a corned beef hash.
I had the first watch, taking over from Mark as soon as I had finished my evening meal. The course was just west of north, the rain dying away to intermittent showers and the wind almost dead aft so that we were running goose-winged with the main to port and the genoa boomed out to starb’d. Alone at the wheel I was suddenly very conscious of the fact that I was the odd man out. The other four were all part of the yacht, part of the owner’s life, moving in a world entirely different from mine. Through the hatch I could see them sitting over their coffee and glasses of Spanish brandy, talking excitedly. And well they might, for they had the proof they needed.
But what about me? What had I got out of the voyage? I was back to the uncertainty of that wild accusation, to fear of arrest, perhaps trial and conviction. All very well for Saltley to say that, once the tankers had reappeared, the nature of their operation known, then confirmation of the statements I had made would include acceptance of my version of what had happened to Choffel. But there was no certainty of it and already I was feeling that sense of withdrawal from the others that is inevitable when an individual knows he is destined to take a different path. Brooding over it, sitting at the helm of that swaying, rolling yacht with the wind at my back and the waves hissing past, everything black, except for that lit saloon and Pamela, with her arms bare to the elbows and the polo-necked sweater tight across her breasts, talking animatedly — I felt like an outcast. I felt as though I were already consigned to oblivion, a non-person whom the others couldn’t see.
Ridiculous, of course! Just a part of that accident of birth that had plagued me all my life, drawn to the Middle East yet not a part of it, neither a Christian nor a Moslem, just a lone, lost individual with no real roots. I was thinking of Karen then, my one real lifeline — apart from my poor mother. If only Karen were alive still. If only none of it had happened and we were still together, at Balkaer. In the darkness I could see the fire and her sitting in that old chair, the picture superimposed on and obliterating the lit saloon below. But her face… I couldn’t see her face, the features blurred and indistinct, memory fading.
And it was then, with my mind far away, that I heard a sound above the hiss of the waves and the surge of the bows, a low murmur like an approaching squall.
The sound came from astern and I looked over my shoulder. There was a lot of wind in the sails and it was raining again, but the sound coming to me on a sudden gust was a deep pulsing murmur. A ship’s engines. I yelled to Saltley and the others. ‘On deck!’ I yelled, for in a sudden panic of intuition I knew what it meant. ‘For your lives!’ And as they came tumbling up I saw it in the darkness, a shadow coming up astern of us, and I reached forward, pressing the self-starter and slamming the engine into gear. And as I yelled to them to get the boom off the genoa, I felt the first lift of the mass of water being driven towards us.
Everything happened in a rush then. Saltley seized the wheel, and as the boom came off the genoa, he did something I would never have done — he put the yacht about, screaming at me to tag on the genoa sheet. Mark and Toni were back in the cockpit, the winch squealing as the big foresail was sheeted home, the yacht heeling right over and gathering speed as she powered to windward, riding on the tanker’s bow wave, spray flying in solid sheets as the black hull thundered past our stern, smothering us with the surge of her passage. We were driving down the side of the tanker’s hull then, back-winded and trying to claw our way clear, trie tip of our mast almost touching the black plates as we yawed. And then we were into the wake, everything in sudden appalling turmoil, the boat swamped with water. It swept clean across us.
Somebody slammed the hatch, trying to close the doghouse doors as he was flung into the guardrails with a cry of pain. I grabbed him, then lost him as I was swept aft, my feet half over the stern before I could seize hold of anything.
I was like that for a moment and then we were clear, Saltley still gripping the wheel like a drowned limpet, the rest of us distributed all over the cockpit area. ‘Did you see a light?’ Mark shouted in my ears. ‘Somebody flashing a light — up by the stern. I swear it was.’ His hair was plastered to his skull, his face dripping water. ‘Looked like Morse. A lot of flashes, then daa-daa… That’s M isn’t it?’ Pamela’s voice called up from below that there was a foot of water in the saloon. ‘Or T. It could be a T repeated.’ I lost the rest, listening to something else.
Saltley heard it, too, the deep rumble of an engine borne on the wind and dead ahead of us. ‘Ease sheets!’ he screamed and spun the wheel as the bows of the second tanker emerged like a half-tide rock out of the darkness ahead. The yacht turned away to starb’d, but too slowly, the wall of water taking us on the port bow, slamming us over, then lifting us and sweeping us from end to end. We took it green, a sea breaking over my chest and flinging me against Saltley. Somebody was gripping hold of my ankles as I was swept to starb’d, and then the rumbling giant was sliding past our starb’d quarter and the sails were drawing, pulling us away from that sliding wall of steel. The wake hit us as the tanker passed, but not as badly as before. Suddenly all was quiet and we were free to pick ourselves up, the boat slipping smoothly through the water and the sound of those engines fading into the night like a bad dream.
We were lucky. None of us had been wearing safety harness, and though we were all suffering from bruises and cuts and were in a state of shock, nobody had been washed overboard and no bones had been broken.
It was only after we were back on course, everything sorted out on deck and beginning to clear up below, that I remembered the light Mark had seen flashing from the stern of that first tanker. But he couldn’t tell whether it had been the flash of a torch or a cabin light being switched on and off, the flashes seen through the circle of a porthole. It could even have been somebody accidentally triggering off the safety light on a lifebuoy.