towards the woman, baby and stores, trying to bring the nose up. The two Lorensen brothers flopped completely in the bottom of the boat, only their heads and shoulders clear of the water, supported against the legs of Martens. He squatted over them, chaffing their heads and necks, trying to get some response from them.
‘She’ll yaw soon,’ predicted Richardson. ‘She can’t run on for ever.’
‘We’re being pulled away from Santa Maria,’ said Briggs.
‘So near,’ moaned Richardson. ‘We were so near.’
‘This wind will be scouring her holds,’ said Briggs, seeing the irony. ‘Making her safe.’
He eased around in the crush of people. Sarah still sat with her eyes pressed tight, unwilling to witness what was happening, her mouth twitching in perpetual prayer. She had completely enveloped the child in her protective clothing, so that only a small part of her face was visible. Sophia was trying to press closer to her mother, eyes blank and unseeing with fear. She was making no sounds, but spasms were jerking her tiny body, as if she were fevered. It would be terror, Briggs knew.
He felt out, touching his wife’s shoulder, and she opened her eyes.
‘You’re going to save us, aren’t you, Benjamin? It will be all right?’ she demanded. For the first time that he could ever recall in their married life, there was something like an accusation in her voice.
‘I don’t know,’ he said, honest even now.
‘I don’t want to die!’ she blurted. ‘I don’t want Sophia to die.’
‘The nose is going down,’ said Gilling, fear showing at last.
The rope connecting them to the Mary Celeste was so rigidly stretched that it could have been a piece of metal. And as relentlessly as a steel bar, it was pushing down against their stem, thrusting it lower and lower, so that the wind-driven waves were pouring in, every fresh gush of water bringing them nearer to becoming completely swamped.
‘Cut the line,’ said Briggs.
There was a hesitation when they realised that there was no axe aboard the boat. It was Gilling who produced the clasp knife, spluttering forward through the water and starting to saw at the painter. The water kept forcing him back, so that he constantly lost the spot against which he was trying to cut, and then suddenly, as abruptly as they had spurted forward, their crazy careering stopped.
‘Snapped,’ said Richardson. ‘It snapped somewhere on the ship.’
The waterlogged boat wallowed in the waves, hardly any freeboard remaining. Before anyone could prevent it happening, one of the seats was lifted out by the force of the water and floated free.
He didn’t know if he could do what Sarah wanted, Briggs thought suddenly. He didn’t know if he could keep her alive. Or any of them. Angrily he cast the thought aside. The despair which had momentarily gripped him and which he knew held the others was almost as dangerous as their predicament, he realised. With the need for the stern weight gone, he shifted back amidships, shouting the orders. The Lorensen brothers were recovering, he saw gratefully.
‘Raise the sail,’ he said. ‘We’ll set course for Santa Maria. Everyone who can, bail.’
Briggs stared back to the heaving water, seeking the life-rafts he now recognised it had been a mistake to abandon.
Richardson and Martens started trying to erect a canvas. Gilling and Goodschall continued with the bailing and the Lorensen brothers stirred. Without any utensils, they slumped in the boats on their haunches, trying to scoop the water back over the sides with their cupped hands. William Head had taken off his reefer jacket and tried to cover Sarah and Sophia with it, Briggs saw. As he looked, the cook began searching for a canister, then dropped into the boat and started to use his hands, like the two Germans. It was difficult to make any distinction between the sea and the gunwales, so deeply was the boat awash. Briggs was trying to bail now, jerking his hands in the sort of splashing movements he’d used the previous year, when they had taken Arthur to the beach at Cape Cod. It had been fun then.
‘No good,’ gasped Head. ‘It’s no good.’
Briggs paused, to stare out to sea. The Mary Celeste was bent fully into the wind, all her sails seeming full. Then a cloud thicker than the rest swept down and she was lost for the last time.
‘Weight,’ shouted Briggs, to the cook. ‘There’s too much weight. Throw the food over.’
Obediently, the man heaved the gunny sacks from the boat. They scarcely cleared the water as he put them over the side. The boat did not appear to rise at all.
Richardson and Martens managed a stud-sail of sorts, trying to get some wind, but the gusts eddied around them, with little direction. The waves were very high now, lurching towards them in great walls of water, and the boat didn’t lift, so that they were completely washed over. Boz Lorensen, emptied by his efforts to row, was the first to go, yelling as he felt himself lifted by a wave and stretching out his hand, which incredibly his brother snatched out and grabbed, preventing him from being carried completely away. He was pushed outside the boat, though, which lifted slightly. For a moment Volkert stayed inboard, pulling his brother to where he could get a grip on the gunwale, then looked towards the woman and child in the rear of the vessel. Without a word, he edged over, putting his body alongside his brother and reaching over, so that one of his arms was over the man’s shoulders, supporting him.
‘It’s going up,’ said Briggs, knowing there was excitement in his voice, but uncaring. ‘The boat is going up.’
Martens was the next over, trying a grip on the side opposite from the brothers, professionally knowing that if she continued to rise in the water they would need to balance.
He shouted to Goodschall in German and the young man hesitated, then slipped over, so that there were two men on either side of the boat. In the troughs beneath the waves, it was just possible to see the edge of the boat. Gilling, Richardson and Head were on their hands and knees, bailing with the ferocity of men who knew there was little hope left but refused to believe it. Briggs tried to trim the stud, seeking the wind.
Richardson sat back upon his heels, nearing collapse, gazing dully up at the captain and the sail he was trying to control.
Awareness suddenly came into his face and he said, ‘Northwest.’
Briggs turned to him.
‘The wind,’ said the first mate, limply trying to indicate the sail. ‘It’s north-west. To get us to Santa Maria, it would have to be south-westerly.’
The man was right, realised Briggs, feeling the hope seep from him.
Now that the wind was set into a quarter, it built up the waves even higher, so that there was no interval in the seas that engulfed them. The weakest of them all, Boz Lorensen, released his handhold first, and trying to save him a second time Volkert let go and they were carried away together, the older man still attempting to keep his brother’s head clear of the water, even though they had been separated from the only thing that could possibly save them. Briggs was tearing at the stud, to bring it down, knowing it had become a greater danger than help, straining through the rain and clouds in an effort to see Santa Maria. There was nothing, just sea and rain and blackness. With no way to keep her into the running sea, the next wave caught the boat broadside, tipping her up and tearing the gunwales from Martens and Goodschall. As quickly as she had lifted, the boat fell away again and there was the dull, slapping sound as the hull came down upon the two men beneath. The blood smeared out and Sarah screamed, an hysterical sound. Neither of the bodies surfaced.
The boat corkscrewed as it came down, throwing them all off-balance, and then in an immediate rush of water Richardson suddenly wasn’t there any more. Briggs came around at the cry for help. As he had been hurled from the boat, Richardson had grabbed out, snatching at the cook’s arm and pulling him overboard as well. Briggs saw them once, and then a wall of water engulfed them and they did not come up. Something else lifted on the waves and Briggs recognised one of the rafts.
‘Make for the raft,’ he shouted, to the men he couldn’t see. ‘There’s a raft on the port quarter.’
‘The baby!’ Sarah suddenly shouted.
She was holding Sophia out towards Briggs, imploringly. The little bundle sagged limply and Briggs realised that, as she had crouched trying to hold the baby against her, Sarah had actually held the baby’s head beneath the water.
He snatched the child, before the woman had a chance to pull at the protective covering to discover what she had done.
‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘She’s all right.’
