Death in the Caribbean, page 10
‘We can have a civilised drink before it gets dark,’ he said. ‘I’ve made some supper. I’m afraid it’s rice again, but I’ve roasted some yams to go with it. Let’s have a drink first, and then we can have supper before dark.’
‘We can be more civilised than that,’ I said. ‘We’ve a fair supply of paraffin, and I don’t see why you and Ruth shouldn’t sit down properly in the saloon. I can eat at the wheel all right. I’m all for a drink now, and I’ll get the saloon lamp and the navigation lights going before I relieve Ruth. Then I’ll carry on till midnight.’
‘I can probably manage to steer,’ Caval said. ‘We can break up the night between the three of us.’
‘No. It’s far better to have a cook who’s not mixed up with watch-keeping. Ruth and I can manage the watches, for the time being, anyway, and if you can rustle up some coffee around dawn it’ll be much more valuable than taking a watch.’ I was concerned for the old man, and to relieve the cook of watch-keeping is good sea practice in any case.
I enjoyed Caval’s rum, and then made my round of the lamps. The saloon lamp was trimmed and three-parts full of oil, but the navigation lights obviously had not been used for ages. However, they only needed oil and a bit of cleaning, and by sunset I could report, ‘Lights burning brightly, and all well.’
‘You’ve done splendidly,’ I said to Ruth. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘A bit stiff. But I’ve got much more used to the wheel, and I rather enjoy steering. I don’t know what I’d do, though, if the wind suddenly went round and the sails were taken aback.’
‘Let the schooner do what she wants, and scream for me,’ I said. ‘It’s not very likely to happen with this wind – it’s more likely just to fall off for a bit, and then she’ll roll and the sails slat. I’d notice any change like that, though, even if I were asleep, and I’d probably be on deck almost as soon as you could call out. Can you take over again at midnight?’
‘Yes. But I’m not so sure about waking up.’
‘Don’t worry. There’s a handy lashing for the wheel, and I’ll call you when the time comes. You’ll get more rest if you can go to sleep without feeling that you’ve got to force yourself to wake up.’
Caval called up from the saloon that supper was ready, and Ruth went below. They left the saloon door open, and the soft glow of lamplight from the companionway was homely and comforting. Ruth was back in a minute or two with a bowl of Caval’s rice mixture for me, and I was ready enough for it. When she offered me a second helping, I was ready for that, too. Then she turned in. Caval tidied up his galley, and wished me a goodnight.
I was not sorry to be alone on deck. I shut the saloon door so that the light would not interfere with the binnacle, and settled down for my night watch. The schooner almost steered herself – she needed only a finger-touch on the wheel to stay on course. I could have added to her speed by setting another jib, and she seemed to have provision for a topsail, though we hadn’t carried one on the trip to the Chacarima Inlet, and I hadn’t worked out precisely how to set it – I didn’t even know if there was such a sail on board. But I didn’t want more sail. The schooner was comfortable and going well, and I had no intention of racing for the Oyster Rocks.
About halfway through my watch I got a good sight of Polaris, and felt reasonably confident about our north-south position. Our position east and west was another matter, but I was no worse off than any old-time mariner running down his latitude to try to get where he wanted. I was, in fact, a good deal better off, for I had at any rate some Admiralty charts of the area, and knew what to look out for. I decided to try to stop thinking about Chacarima caves for the moment, and to concentrate on finding Caval’s islet with water on it in the Oyster group. When we’d filled up with water I should have to work out what to do, but the immediate task was to get water.
It was blissfully peaceful to be alone at the schooner’s wheel in the clear tropical night. The wind remained steady, but had fallen off a bit with the coming of night, and I doubted if we were making more than about four knots. I had contemplated heaving to for the last hours of darkness in case we came too quickly to the Oyster Bank, but at our present speed we couldn’t possibly make it, and the few miles extra northing we had made during Ruth’s watch had also to be made up. So I decided to keep on sailing through the night.
Midnight came, but I didn’t call Ruth. After my good sleep in the afternoon I wasn’t feeling particularly tired, and I thought that she probably needed rest more than I did. So I let her sleep on until two o’clock, leaving her a relatively short watch until dawn. She was rather cross when I did call her, saying that I wasn’t playing fair, but the fact that she needed to be woken up suggested that I was right in my feeling that she needed sleep.
I went below soon after two a.m. but I didn’t turn in at once. I wanted to transfer my Polaris sight to the chart, and thought I might as well work up the notes on course and estimated speed that I’d made in my pocket diary, which served as our working log. In the diary was the note that Ruth had given me about our divergence in the afternoon from my set course of 330 degrees to around 340 degrees. It was a page torn from a little loose-leaf notebook, and I’d slipped it in the diary to work up later. I’d not seen her writing before, but as I looked at her neat, clear figures they seemed vaguely familiar, particularly an exceptionally neat 3, with a straight top-stroke like that of a printed 3. Suddenly I remembered where I’d seen that 3 recently. I got the black notebook from my holdall, and there it was. I put Ruth’s navigational note against a page of the notebook from the Chacarima cave. The notebook was almost all figures and so was Ruth’s navigational note, the figures of degrees and times. The handwritings were astonishingly similar, if not identical. What the hell could that mean?
*
My first thought was to take the black notebook to Ruth at once, and tackle her about it. But then I thought, No – we’ve got to get to the Oyster Bank for water, and Ruth is an essential member of the crew. I must wait until we’ve anchored safely and got water on board. There’s got to be straight talking with both Ruth and Caval, but there’s nothing to be gained by trying to do it now. Patience, as Cervantes observed somewhere – Patience, and shuffle the cards.
It wasn’t easy to be patient, but I forced patience on myself. I tidied up the chart, and went to my bunk, taking the black notebook and Ruth’s navigational note with me.
I had a hurricane lamp in my cabin, and its light was good enough to read by. I compared the figures on the note and in the notebook again, and was more than ever sure that they were in the same hand. There were twenty-three pages of figures in the notebook, a few of them crossed out as if they were false starts at proving something, the rest line after line of numbers, algebraical letters, and mathematical signs. There were some sets of what looked liked complex equations, but what any of them meant was beyond me. I pored over them for an hour and then gave up, turned out the lamp and tried to go to sleep. I couldn’t get to sleep properly, but dozed off and on until half-past five. I’d left some sea water in a jug, so I got up, and had a quick wash, and went on deck.
It wasn’t dawn yet, but the eastern sky was lightening. There was a steersman’s bench behind the wheel, to allow the man at the helm to take the weight off his feet, but Ruth wasn’t sitting on it. She was standing most responsibly at the wheel, silhouetted against the lightening sky. I thought what an attractive figure she made, and was at once cross with myself – she’d been up to some very funny business, and it was my job to find out what it was. That she happened to be an attractive woman was entirely irrelevant.
She was glad to see me, and called out gaily, ‘Morning, Peter. It’s really rather lovely up here at night, and my watch has gone pretty quickly.’
‘Course still all right?’ I asked.
‘Yes, I think so. I’ve been down to about 327 and up to about 333. I jotted them down for you, with the times, but you’ll see that they just about cancel out, and the average course must by very close to 330.’
‘Good. Steering a sailing boat is not like steering a liner, and you are doing well if you can hold a course within five degrees or so. This wonderful trade wind helps, but even so you’ll soon promote yourself from deckhand to AB – that’s Able-Bodied Seaman, in case you don’t know.’
‘D.Phil., AB – sounds good.’
‘Don’t swank. Do you know what an Able Seaman has to be competent to do?’
‘Not exactly.’
‘Well, he has to be able to hand and reef a sail, to box the compass, and to steer.’
‘I can do the compass, and you said my steering was OK.’
‘On a clear night in an easy wind. What happens if I send you up the mast to reef a topsail?’
‘I just do my best, I suppose.’
I couldn’t help liking her, whatever she was up to.
‘You’d better learn the Law of the Sea.’ I quoted the old Shipmaster’s Rule.
Six days shalt thou labour, and do all that thou art able,
On the seventh, holystone the deck and scrape the cable.
‘Pah. I’m going to join the Seaman’s Union. They can deal with brutal blue-nosed skippers like you.’
*
A few minutes after six Caval appeared with coffee. ‘I’ve found a tin of dried milk,’ he said, ‘so you can have milk this morning, if you want it. For myself, I shall stick to rum. There’s a ration of two bananas apiece – that’s the last of the bananas I put in our sack. If you can find Oyster Island there should be some wild ones growing there. When do you think we’re likely to hit the island?’
‘Hit it? Never, I hope. But we ought to be there soon after midday, and see it some time this morning. I’d like to get a bit more sail up. There’s a yard on the foremast that looks as if it’s meant for a square topsail. Do you know if there’s such a sail on board?’
‘I don’t. But you’re right, these schooners do carry a topsail sometimes. If the Grand Duchess has one, I expect it will be on board – there’s really nowhere else to keep it. What sort of state it will be in is another matter.’
‘We can find out. I’ll go and hunt in the sail locker.’
The sail locker was forward, reached through a hatch in the foredeck just abaft the forecastle. It was light now, and the open hatch let in plenty of light. The locker was really a small hold. There were several sails on racks, but they were not tidily stowed – clearly the Grand Duchess kept her working suit furled and ready for use, and did not often carry more canvas. But I liked the look of the yard, and wanted to experiment with it. I also thought I’d get up another jib.
There was a spare mainsail, old and much patched, and I hunted through the rest of the considerably mixed bunch. I found a high-cut jib of the sort old sailors used to call a ‘Yankee’, and after much pushing and pulling I dragged out what looked like a squaresail. All the sails were of heavy canvas, and it was a job to get my two sails up the hatch. With some help from Caval I managed it, and I opened the sails on deck. I could set the Yankee easily enough, but I didn’t know my way about the squaresail.
Everything about the Grand Duchess was heavy and built to last, and there were strong tarred ratlines leading up both masts. I went up the foremast to have a look at the yard. It was a fine spar, but heavy, and I felt the need of a crew. However, I studied the blocks, worked out how they ran, and climbed down again to release the halliards. Then I lowered the yard and bent the topsail to it. I wasn’t at all sure how the sheets went, but I devised a rig that worked, though I don’t know even now if it was what the original rigger intended.
I had no experience of trimming square rig, but by a process of trial and error I got the sail setting fairly comfortably. It was a fine sight, and a grand powerful sail, with real drive in it. Trimmed as well as I could fix it, and sheeted home, I reckoned that it added at least half a knot to our speed. Then I got up the Yankee. That was a good sail, too, and suited the schooner. With the Yankee and the topsail up I heaved the log, and was delighted to find that we were doing between six and seven knots. The wind might have picked up a bit with dawn, but not much: our new speed was almost all due to the extra area of sail.
It made the schooner slightly more difficult to control, and Ruth was having a rather anxious time at the wheel when I relieved her. ‘I don’t like that big square thing,’ she said, pointing to the topsail.
‘You’ll soon get used to it. It’s a fine sail, and I’m sure the old schooner hands swore by it. But it does really want a crew, and I won’t leave it up at night. For the moment it’s doing well, helping to get us to our fresh water and bananas. Now you go and get some sleep. By the Nuevan breakfast time we ought to be in sight of our island.’
*
All landfalls, even if you’ve only crossed the Channel from Dover to Calais, have a touch of miracle about them: it seems superhuman to have found your way across the pathless sea to the place to which you actually wanted to go. The best of modern navigational aids do not make the event less miraculous. What mariners of the ancient world must have felt when they made Tyre, or Carthage, or Corinth, I don’t know – I suspect that they had the same sense of mingled triumph, humility, and gratitude to providence that I have whenever a buoy, or rock or headland comes up roughly where I have expected it to be. To make the Oyster Bank from Nueva was not really very difficult: I had compass and chart, a well-rigged schooner and a reliable wind. Even so, when one of the steep northern outliers of the Bank turned indisputably from cloud into landmass I felt an enormous relief. We were a bit north of the point I’d been aiming for – roughly the middle of the bank – but I was no more than a few miles out, and it didn’t matter, because with the wind steady from the north-east we could make southing without difficulty.
When the rock was unmistakable, and the line of other islets was beginning to appear, I called Caval from the galley. ‘There are your Oyster Islands,’ I said. ‘Can you tell me anything about the look of the one you used to go to?’
He peered ahead. ‘Your eyes are younger and better than mine,’ he said. ‘But yes, I can make out the islands. I’m afraid it is many years since I have been there. Let me think – they’re a coral formation, and we anchored off a beach in a half-moon-shaped lagoon. The island rose quite steeply, and was well-wooded – only two or three of the group have trees, the rest are just bare rock. That would help to identify it. I remember rocks and islets stretching away on both sides, so it would be somewhere towards the middle of the group, I suppose.’
‘We ought to be able to find it. Can you take the wheel for a moment while I go below for the chart?’
I had the chart pretty well in my mind, but I wanted to make sure of the approach. The scale of the chart was too small to show much of individual islets, but the general picture was clear enough. The Bank was steep-to and there seemed no great hazards in the way. We could stand in safely to a mile or so offshore and then cruise gently along the group until we found a well-wooded island rising from a lagoon. If it had trees it would have water – it wouldn’t much matter if it wasn’t the actual camping island of Caval’s youth.
Instead of being pleased at coming to the islands, Caval seemed profoundly unhappy. ‘I can’t help thinking about Adam,’ he said. ‘He and I were about the same age, and we grew up together. Of course he was one of the servants and I was the young master, but that didn’t make any difference. I don’t really think it ever did. It was a feudal relationship, I suppose, but it was a happy one for both of us. And I sent him to his death.’
‘You didn’t,’ I said sharply. ‘You sent him to accompany your guests on what should have been a perfectly ordinary picnic. You couldn’t know what we were going to find in the cave, nor how it was going to affect him.’
‘I should have known that – fear of the caves is deeply rooted in all our people . . . But you are right, and I must not be morbid. I can’t help feeling horribly responsible, though . . . Well, the psychologists talk of work as therapy – I’ll get on with cooking the breakfast.’
*
Going south, we made a spanking pace through the water, and it wasn’t long before we were coasting the line of rocks and islets. They were an enchanting picture – azure sea, white coral beaches at the foot of the rocks. All the northerly ones seemed bare of vegetation, but as we passed one big and rather forbidding fellow that stood out a bit from the rest I could see the green of trees.
We were carrying too much sail for inshore navigation – the drive of the big topsail was an embarrassment now. I put the schooner into the wind and trusted her to look after herself while I hurriedly took down the topsail and got in the Yankee jib. The clatter woke Ruth, and as I was getting back on course under the more handleable working rig she came on deck. ‘Oh, how beautiful!’ she said.
I was glad to have her, for I wanted to go up the foremast to have a look at things, and to try to work out pilotage. We were safely past the big rock, but we had drifted inshore while I was handling the sails, and were now only about half a mile from the wooded island. From the crosstrees on the mast I could see a lagoon plainly. The northern arm of the enclosing beach terminated in a reef, but the reef didn’t go the whole way across and there was an entrance a good couple of cables in width. Coming down from the mast I dropped the mainsail, and left Ruth at the helm to steer for the entrance under staysail and jib, while I went forward to see to the anchor. There was no problem about letting it go, but I was nervous about the manpower available for the antique winch when it came to getting the anchor up. However, we’d tackle that problem when we came to it.
Leaving the anchor ready to let go, I went back aft to Ruth. I told her to carry on as she was until I raised my arm, which meant that she was to turn into the wind. Then I went forward to the anchor.
We glided through the entrance, and I decided to make for the reef-end of the lagoon, where the shoreline cliffs and the reef itself offered considerable protection from the prevailing wind. The water was glass-clear, and I could see right to the bottom. There were a few coral heads on the sand, with rainbow-coloured fish darting among them, but none of the corals came near enough to the surface to be dangerous.
