“Cleat broke, nothing to worry about.”
“Why don’t you have proper winches like Tony?” I thought the question showed a return of interest; perhaps even the first symptom of resurrection. “Because they’re flashy nasty modern things that would look wrong on Sycorax, and because they cost over a hundred pounds apiece.” I felt my back aching as I tugged off the stiff, wet oilskins. “Do you want something to eat?”
“God, no.” She groaned again as the boat slammed into a wave.
“Where are we?”
“West of Ireland, east of Canada.”
“Are we sinking?”
“Not yet. But the wind’s piped up a bit.”
I woke an hour later to feel the boat pitching and corkscrewing. I oilied up, then went topsides again to find the weather was brewing trouble. I took down the main and hoisted my loose-footed storm trysail instead. I dropped the jib and reefed the mizzen. The boat was still unbalanced, trying to broach into the hissing seas, so I took down the trysail and re-rigged it as a mizzen staysail. That stiffened Sycorax nicely, and she needed stiffening for the sea was heaving like a landscape gone mad. We were far north now, so the night was light and short and I could see that the wind and heavy rain were creaming the wavetops smooth and covering the valleys with a fine sheet of white foam. Sycorax buried her bowsprit twice, staggered up, and the water came streaming back towards the cockpit to mix with the pelting rain. I had neither dodgers nor sprayhood, though the lashed tender offered some small forward protection from the sea. I pumped the bilges every few minutes.
For the rest of that night, all the next day, and into the following night, that wind and sea pounded and shivered us. I slept for an hour in the morning, woke to the madness, pumped for a half-hour, and slept again. I took Benzedrine. By the midnight of the gale’s second night the wind was slackening and the sea’s insistent blows were lessening, so I pegged the tiller, left the sails short, and crawled into my bunk. Angela was weeping in despair, but I had no energy to soothe her. I only wanted oblivion in sleep.
I slept five hours, mostly in half-wake dreaming, then crawled from the damp bunk to find the gale had passed. I forced myself out of the sleeping bag, pulled on a soaking sweater, and went topsides to see a long, long swell fretted with small and angry waves that were the remnants of the wind’s passage. I took down the mizzen staysail, unlashed the boom and gaff, hoisted the main and jib, then unreefed the mizzen. I pumped the bilge till my back could take no more pain. I was hurting in every bone and muscle. This was called sailing, but the wind had dropped to force four and there were rents in the dawn clouds that promised sunshine. The sea glinted silver in the west and I leaned on the coachroof, too tired to move, and thanked Sycorax for all she had done. I patted her coachroof and spoke my thanks out loud.
The cat, hearing my voice, protested that she had not been fed for hours. I slid back the hatch and climbed down into the soaked cabin.
The cat rubbed itself against my legs. I no longer called her Angel, for every time I did Angela answered. I opened a tin of cat food and was so hungry I was tempted to wolf it down myself. Instead I cleaned up the cabin sole, including the spilt contents of the zinc bucket, and tried to persuade myself that this was indeed the life that I had dreamed of in those long hospital nights.
An hour later a Russian Aurora Class missile-cruiser cleared the northern horizon. She was escorted by two destroyers that sniffed suspiciously towards Sycorax. I dutifully lowered and raised my Red Ensign. That courtesy over, and duly answered by the dipping of a destroyer’s hammer and sickle, I switched on the VHF. “Yacht Sycorax to Russian naval vessel. Do you read me, over?”
“Good morning, little one. Over.” The operator must have been expecting my call for he answered instantly. He sounded horribly cheerful, as though he had a bellyful of coffee and fried egg, or whatever else constituted a hearty Russian breakfast.
“Can you give me a position and time check?” We stayed on the emergency channel which was hardly likely to disturb anyone this far out to sea. “Over.”
“I don’t know if our American satellite equipment is working,” he chuckled. “Wait. Over.”
I smiled at his answer and felt the salt crack on my face. A minute later he gave me a position and a countdown to an exact second. He wished me luck, then the three grey warships slithered southwards through the fretting sea.
We’d done well. We’d cleared the tail of the Rockall Plateau, though I was further north than I’d wanted. If Bannister was doing half as well in his faster boat, then he’d take the St Pierre, so long as he lived to do it. My chronometer had stayed accurate to within a second, which was comforting.
“Who were you talking to?” Angela rolled over in her bunk.
“A Russian destroyer. He gave us our position.”
“The Russians help you?” she sounded incredulous.
“Why on earth shouldn’t they?” I gently pushed the cat off the Rockall Plateau and made a pencil cross on the chart. “Would you like some coffee?”
“Please.”
Resurrection had definitely started. I made the coffee, then scrambled some eggs. Angela said she could not possibly eat any eggs, but five minutes later she tentatively tried a spoonful of mine, then stole the mug from me and wolfed the whole lot down.
“More?”
“Please.” I made more. Resurrection was on course. She found her cigarettes and lit one. In the afternoon that we’d spent provision-ing Sycorax, Angela had hidden twenty cartons of cigarettes in the forepeak, just as she’d stowed a second sleeping bag and a set of foul-weather gear on board. “Just in case I decided to come,” she’d explained. Now she smoked her cigarette in the cockpit where she blinked at the misty grey light. She reached behind her ear and tore off the small patch. “So much for modern science.” She tossed it overboard. She looked dreadful; pale as ash, stringy haired and red-eyed.
“Good morning, beautiful,” I said.
“I hope you haven’t got a mirror on this damned boat.” She stared disconsolately around the horizon, seeing nothing but the long grey swells. Behind us the clouds were dark as sin, while ahead the sky was a sodden grey. She frowned at me. “Do you really like this life, Nick?”
“I love it.”
The cat did its business on the windward scuppers where it had somehow learned that the sea cleaned up after it, then it stepped delicately down on to Angela’s lap where it began its morning session of self-satisfied preening. “You can’t call her Angel,” Angela said.
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t like it. Call her Pixie.”
“I am not going to have a bloody cat called Pixie.”
“All right.” She scratched the cat’s chin. “Vicky.”
“Why Vicky?”
“After the Victoria Cross, of course.”
“That’s immodest.”
“Who’s to know if you don’t tell them?”
“I’ll know.”
Angela growled at my intransigence. “She’s called Vicky, and that’s the end of it. Do I look really awful?”
“Absolutely hideous. Loathsome, in fact.”
“Thank you, Nick.”
“What you do now,” I said, “is go below, undress, wash all over, dry all over, put on clean clothes, comb your hair, then come out singing.”