Sea Lord

reflection hazed in the fog all around me. “Drop the bloody gun, you fool! Tie her up, then get on board!”

They couldn’t see me. They were blinded by their searchlight, and too intent on trying to lash the two bumping boats together. “Now jump!” I heard Garrard shout from his warm wheelhouse.

I was under Mist-Spinner’s stern. She was bucking up and down and I feared that her transom might crush down on my head. A foot above her waterline was an empty outboard bracket which I tried to hold on to for support. I missed the first time and the hull grazed agonisingly down my left arm. I grabbed again, held it, and gasped for breath.

I had to work fast, but it was hard. Mist-Spinner’s pitching threatened to pull my left arm out of its socket, but I held on while, with my right hand, I untwisted the rope from my waist. It was a heavy piece of old-fashioned manila; really nothing but a discarded piece of junk, but perfect for my purposes. Except my fingers were now so numb that I did not know if I could do what I had planned. I fumbled the rope, almost dropped it once, but finally managed to drape the rope over the outboard bracket. I took a deep breath, kept hold of the rope’s end with my left hand, then ducked under the heaving stern.

I struggled forward, found nothing, took a numbing blew from the dropping hull on my left shoulder, and had to come back up for air. I took another deep breath, ducked again, and kicked my way forward under Mist-Spinner’s stern. The metal rudder scraped against my bruised and bleeding shoulder. It was black here, black and freezing and airless and frightening. Tons of thumping boat were rising and falling above me. I felt forward with my right hand and found what I wanted. A three-bladed propeller mounted amidships. Which meant just a single engine driving just this single prop. The engine was still in neutral and its throbbing seemed to fill the claustrophobic darkness with menace.

I dragged the rope behind me. I was holding on to the propeller which was vibrating with the rhythm of the idling motor. If Garrard put the boat into gear now I’d lose my hand.

I forced the rope into the narrow space between the propeller and the rudder. I was desperate for air, but I needed to fasten the rope first. I looped it over the upright blade, hitched it round once more, then dragged myself back and bobbed up to the surface where I gulped air into my lungs.

“He’s not here.” That was Peel’s voice. I was gasping for breath, sure I would be heard, but they were too intent on their own concerns.

“Of course he’s there!” Garrard snarled.

“He’s bloody not.”

“Then look for the damned money!”

I ducked down again, went forward, and this time, because I knew where the propeller was, I had more time to work. I had time, but fear and cold were making me clumsy. I remembered some old rules for bad moments at sea; don’t hurry and do one thing at a time. I might be freezing and terrified, but all I had to do was work the thick rope round and round Mist-Spinner’s propeller blades. Barnacles on her hull scraped my back bloody as I stuffed handfuls of the heavy manila into the blade gaps. I finished the job by putting two turns of the rope about the rudder’s stock, then, my lungs bursting with pain, I pushed myself back and upwards. Christ, I thought as I broke water, I must give up smoking.

“The money’s here, but he must have fallen off and drowned,” Peel shouted from Marianne.

“I don’t give a damn where he is,” Garrard said. “Just get back here!”

I was gripping the outboard bracket at Mist-Spinner’s stern. My lungs hurt, my back was stinging, and I was cold, but I knew I must push myself away from the hull before Garrard put his engine into gear. I knew he would probably use reverse gear to back away from Marianne and, if I had done a proper job, Mist-Spinner wouldn’t move, but I still didn’t want to risk the rope shredding, the propeller biting, and me being driven under her hull.

“Put it down and shut up,” Garrard shouted from above me, “and untie that boat! Hurry!”

I had already paddled three or four yards clear of Mist-Spinner’s stern. I heard Peel shout that the yacht was free and I saw Garrard glance behind, as if he was reversing a truck, then he pulled the gear lever back and I heard the motor roar.

Then stop dead.

It just stopped. The gearing had transferred the engine’s power to the shaft, but the propeller was held fast by the rope I had jammed about the blades, and the sudden resistance stopped the motor with a brutal abruptness. There was a second’s silence, then Garrard swore, put the gear lever into neutral, and turned the starting key. The engine backfired, then settled into life. A billow of black smoke drifted over me. Garrard pulled the lever back and again the motor was jarred dead.

“Fucking thing’s broke!” Peel offered helpfully.

Garrard cursed the engine and started it again. He left it in neutral while it settled into a steady rhythm. I had swum back to the stern and was once again holding on to the outboard bracket. I could see Marianne drifting away as Garrard raced the Mist-Spinner’s engine, achieving nothing except a cloud of burnt oil that added to the fog. Then, when the engine was racing, he shoved it into gear.

It stopped dead.

“Christ Al-bloody-mighty,” Garrard swore viciously.

I was praying he would not try to jar the motor into gear again, for, each time he did so, he put a killing strain on the engine. If he persisted, time and again, in forcing its brute power against the jammed propeller then he could shear the crankshaft. Then all of us would be stranded on this foggy lee shore. I glanced behind to see we had drifted a good two hundred yards from the cardinal buoy. Its light was again hazed by fog. I knew we could not be far from the rocks of Les Trois Grunes. I also knew the tide set was swinging and weakening, and, though the tide should take us south of the hazard, the wind was a counterforce that might just be driving us on to the danger. A seaman would have realised the danger, but Garrard and Peel were no seamen.

I heard the engine cover being lifted.

“All right, Mr Garrard!” Peel shouted.

The engine started. In neutral, without the obstructed propeller, it ran sweetly.

“Sounds all right,” Peel said hopefully.

Garrard rammed it into gear.

The engine stopped dead.

Garrard let loose a string of curses. They were amateurs, their engine was broken, and they didn’t know what to do. A seaman would have realised there was an outboard bracket on Mist-Spinner’s stern for just such emergencies and swum to retrieve Marianne so that her engine could be utilised, but Garrard and Peel didn’t think of that. They were already in the spiral of self-feeding panic that causes most disasters at sea: one apparently small thing goes wrong, then another, and slowly, inexorably, the tragedies mount up. On land neither man would have been so prey to fear, but out here the unfamiliar cold and dark and sea-danger had unbalanced their susceptibilities.

They were drifting in the night. They didn’t know it, but they were drifting towards Les Trois Grunes. I’d only seen those rocks once in my life, and then from a safe distance, but I well remembered the broken and turbulent water surrounding them.

I clung on to Mist-Spinner, shivering and weakening, waiting to add to their panic.

“It’s the shaft,” Garrard’s voice sounded very close above me, and I guessed he must have been leaning over the engine. “Go and take a look,” he said at last.

“I don’t know about engines.”

“I’m not talking about the engine, you fool! The engine works, doesn’t it? I’m talking about the bloody propeller.” Garrard had at last worked out what might be wrong. “Lean over the back, and tell me what you can see.”

“He might be there!” Peel, at least, had not forgotten the mystery of my absence.

Garrard swore. I pulled myself round Mist-Spinner’s counter so that I would be hidden when Peel leaned over the stern. I held on to a rubbing strake and prayed that the cold would not sap my last reserves of strength.

Then, despite the cold, I almost screamed in fear.