The Main Cages (28 page)

He fished out a flare and wiped it on his trouser leg. He took it into the open air. Red and Joe and Rose huddled with him inside the coaming. The first match blew out. So did the second. The third flickered against the touch-paper and went
out, and the next. Time and again Tacker tried to light it, but the matches flared and went out. Red took the barrel of the flare. ‘It’s bloody sodden, Tack!’

Rose smacked his hand on the gunwale. ‘What sort of tinpot ship is this?’

The seas were butting against the bows. As each one came through they could feel the weight of it trying to drag the boat round, and they all knew that all that kept them from rolling over was the sea anchor.

‘She’s coming!’ Cameron was standing against the foredeck.

Rose looked up. Cameron was pointing to the steamer.

‘She’s coming round!’

The others came to the rail and they could see that the gap between them and the ship was narrowing as she swung round towards them. On the wind came two blasts from her foghorn.

‘Hurrah!’ cried Rose.

Cameron went aft to tell Bryant. There was an odd hush among the passengers.

‘How long, Major Cameron?

‘Ten, fifteen minutes.’

‘Then what?’

‘They’ll put us under tow.’

The news spread fast through the deckhouse. Travers raised Birkin’s sleeping head from his shoulder and went to stand with several others in the doorway.

‘You can see her!’ he called back. ‘Coming straight for us! A mile away!’

‘Thank God!’ said Mrs Bryant.

Even the Master agreed that there was a good chance she would reach them in time.

The pitch was changing, but so slightly that only Jimmy noticed it. Everyone was concentrating on the steamer, but as he played each of the seas with the helm, Jimmy could feel
it. The seas were becoming shorter. They were steepening. Deep beneath the
Golden Sands,
the sea-bed was beginning to rise – towards the first of the rocks, towards the Curate.

The steamer was close now. Those in the bows of the
Golden Sands
could smell her coal-smoke on the wind. Still a few hundred yards off, she swung round and began to drop back, stern-first. Five or six men were standing high up at the ship’s stern-rail. Beneath them the black paint was chipped and scabs of rust glowed in the late sun and the name was painted in white:
Hopelyn,
Newcastle.

Jimmy told Tacker and the others to shorten the sea anchor.

Back in the deckhouse the passengers had sat down. The boat’s motion was becoming wilder. Only Travers stayed on his feet. He was leaning against the jamb of the companionway door and the still-freshening wind was flicking at his hair. ‘… three hundred yards … they’re coming in backwards now … two hundred … one fifty …’

‘That’s it!’ said Major Franks. ‘Come on!’

‘… one hundred …’

‘Come on –’

‘Please!’ Mrs Franks put a hand to her chest. ‘Stop him! He’s giving me flutterings.’

‘… eighty, sixty …”

Beside Mrs Franks was the Master. He looked into her eyes and began to whisper.

‘… fifty … They’re going to send a line …’

‘They’re sending a line, my dear!’ repeated Franks.

But Mrs Franks was not listening. She was looking at the Master. ‘That’s better. Yes, much better …’

The
Hopelyn
was in place. One of the seamen raised his arm. From the bows of the
Golden Sands
they watched an ellipse of heaving-line rise from the stern and uncoil against the sky. It flopped down into the waves – twenty yards off. They saw the scuff of water as it was pulled back aboard the steamer.
The figure of the seaman stepped away from the rail, out of sight. They were dropping back; the stern of the ship was coming in closer.

The man threw the line again and it drifted out above them. The last of the coils spun out and fell, slapping down across the
Golden Sands’s
foredeck. Red and Tacker both grabbed at it. They began to haul. Others joined them. High up on the
Hopelyn’s
stern they saw where the line was attached to a loop of wire hawser which came flopping down into the water, across the seas between them and up onto the
Golden Sands.
Tacker reached for the spliced eye, but already the two ships were moving apart. The slack was slicing up through the water. Tacker leaned forward.

‘Quick, man!’ shouted Cameron. The line slackened for a moment, then began to tighten again. Tacker took the eye in one hand and jammed it over the mooring cleat. He jumped clear. The line pulled tight and the eye narrowed and creaked. He raised his arm.

In the last half-hour the wind had strengthened. Those in the bows could feel it harder on their faces. They could see the lines of spume streaking the water, and the dark corrugations that moved through the troughs and covered the ridges and slopes of the sea all around them. But for now they were watching the hawser. It made a shifting angle between the boats – now slack, now taut. Then they saw the sudden surge of white water at the
Hopelyn’s
stern and she began to move. The line flicked a curtain of spray upwards, and very slowly the
Golden Sands
made her first forward progress for thirty-two minutes.

Cameron started to clap.

‘At last!’ hissed Rose.

‘Yee-eee!’

Tacker looked over his shoulder and raised his thumb to the wheelhouse. Jimmy nodded.

When Cameron went aft, Sir Basil looked up at him and said: ‘We’re moving!’

They could all feel the boat going forward beneath them, and a ripple of applause spread across the deckhouse.

‘About time,’ said Lady Rafferty, and closed her eyes.

Tacker and Red and the others were on the foredeck. Five of them were hauling in the remaining anchor chain. It was tricky to keep a grip on the deck and haul at the same time, and now with the boat’s forward motion the bows were slamming down hard into the swells. Each time they fell, the spray came over the bows and fell on them. But they didn’t mind; not now that each second took them another yard from danger.

In the wheelhouse, Jimmy was still struggling with the helm. He was trying to keep the bows steady to lighten the tow. Each time they rose from a trough the warp sliced down into the crest and he lost sight of the steamer. Then they topped the wave and the hawser stretched across the trough to the ship. The glass in front of him was streaming with spray. The bows came up and the wire jerked tight against the cleat. It slackened as they cleared the crest and dropped down into the next. They fell hard to port and the wire jumped clear of the brass fairlead. Jimmy threw the wheel. He watched the warp rasp along the gunwale, then cheese-wire down into the wood. He felt the enormous weight of the two ships moving away from each other. The line strained against the cleat. Those in the bows had pulled the anchor in and Tacker was lifting it down off the bows. He propped it on the deck and held it and he too watched the cleat – watched it rip out from the foredeck, bang against the prow and shoot overboard.

The
Golden Sands
fell back. They were lifted up onto the next wave and for an instant those in the bows saw the whole scene – the steamer off to starboard, the far smudge of Kidda Head, the line of land to the north, the cliffs of Pendhu and the white water around the Main Cages. Then they dropped down a dark slope of water and rolled far over onto their beam. Tacker fell. With a heavy clanking the anchor somersaulted down the deck. It slammed into the bulwarks and
toppled, catching Rose on the shin. On the wind his cry carried down through the boat.

Down in the scuppers, Tacker looked up at the weather rail high above him. He was sure they were going over. He saw the anchor tumbling towards him and he rolled to avoid it. Water bubbled up from the scuppers and he thought: ‘We’re going. We can’t go back from this.’ But the boat stopped at the very edge of her balance – then dropped back onto her keel.

On board the
Kenneth Lee
they were coming under Pendhu; in the lee of the cliffs it was suddenly calm. The sun-coloured rocks rose above them. Echoing overhead they could hear the cry of gulls and fulmars.

They watched the edge of the cliffs ahead and the sea opening out as they came round. One by one the Main Cages slid into view. They could see the seas high against Maenmor, rising fifteen, twenty feet up the rock before falling back. Each time the swells came in they smothered the smaller rocks beside it.

Jack picked out the disturbed water to the east and the
Golden Sands
beyond it and the steamer to one side. ‘They’re under tow,’ he thought. ‘They’re not far off the rocks but the steamer has them in tow.’ At that moment the lifeboat cleared the lee of Pendhu and the first of the swells picked her up and for a moment everything disappeared in the spray. When they came up again, Jack saw that there was no line between the two boats.

Tacker hauled himself up out of the scuppers. Rose was clutching his leg and together with Cameron they took him aft and sat him on a bench. There was confusion in the deckhouse, but when they saw the men come in the passengers fell quiet.

Parson Hooper pursed his lips and looked at Rose. His hair was wet and water dripped from his chin. As he hopped up to the bench Hooper could see the darker stain swelling at his calf. The woman in a yellow hat turned her boy’s head away.

Oh Lord!’ Mrs Franks put a hand to her mouth when she saw Rose.

‘Now what?’ said Lady Rafferty, opening her eyes.

Cameron rolled up Rose’s canvas trousers. There was a gash three inches long and they tied a clean rag round it, dipped in seawater.

Rose forced a smile and said, ‘Get that anchor over again!’

Bryant leaned forward. ‘What is happening, Major Cameron?’

Cameron looked at him. Fear had rid Bryant of his harshness and his face was wide open, almost boyish.

‘They’ll be bringing the steamer in again.’ Then Cameron stood and went forward.

The
Golden Sands’
s movements were chaotic again. She was being raised up to the top of the seas, rolling back as they pushed through. The steamer was dropping in towards her. Tacker and the Stephens brothers and Cameron stood at the foredeck.

‘Come on, you bastard!’ Charlie Treneer shouted at the steamer. They scrutinised the figures at the stern-rail. One of them would send over the heaving-line again and it would drop on the deck of the
Golden Sands,
they would haul it in and this time make sure the wire was secure on the samson post. A couple of hundred yards to the north would be enough, enough to clear the rocks, just a couple of hundred yards …

Then from beneath the
Hopelyn’s
stern came the boiling of the propeller. She began to push forward again – away from the
Golden Sands.

‘No!’ cried Tacker. ‘You can’t leave us!’

One of the seamen at the rail raised his arms and pointed
over the
Golden Sands.
Tacker realised then. They all realised. They had been watching the ship for so long they had not seen how far they had drifted. But the men on the
Hopelyn
could see beyond the
Golden Sands,
over the top of the deckhouse to the rocks. They were running out of water.

Tacker and Red reached for the anchor and heaved it over. It was the last thing they were able to do.

The Curate rock was twenty yards astern. Above it the swells were half-breaking and pulling back, but even in the troughs the rock was not visible. It lay eight feet below the surface, and Jimmy was steering straight at it. The sea anchor had worked. It brought their bows head to wind and he had given up trying to avoid the rock and was using all his steerage to aim straight for it.

Tacker was paying out the anchor when he realised what Jimmy was doing. ‘Jim!’

Tacker secured the anchor and ran to the wheelhouse. Jimmy was leaning out of it, siting the white water astern and working the helm with his left hand.

‘For Christ’s sake, Jim – port the helm!’

Jimmy shoved him aside. Tacker fell, and watched his brother go into the wheelhouse and jam the door closed. From the outside they all pushed at the door, but it wouldn’t give. Jimmy was leaning against it.

‘What the hell are you doing, Garrett?’ Red Stephens kicked at the door.

Three of them shouldered it and the hinges gave. The Stephenses held Jimmy while Tacker took the helm. But it was too late. Only two seas now separated them from the surf and the rock beneath it.

Few of the passengers were watching. Each of the countless ups and downs of their progress from Porth harbour had served to numb them a little more. A fatalism had settled among them. One or two of the children were whimpering.
Parson Hooper had his head bowed and was whispering in panic: ‘Help, help, oh please God, help me …’ Mrs Bryant and several of the others assumed he was praying and bent their heads.

The Master had his palm pressed against Mrs Franks’s forehead. Her eyes were closed and he was muttering in a strange tongue and all those around him were watching him and listening.

The Dane Soren and Travers and Lee were the only ones looking astern, the only ones able to face the coming rocks. The noise of broken water now filled the deckhouse.

Anna studied the stitching of her borrowed jersey. The end of the sleeve was frayed. She was frightened now. She closed her eyes. She prayed. She hoped that when she opened her eyes she’d be somewhere else entirely, but here was the boat again, here was the noise of the surf, the frayed sleeve and the stitching – and the fear.

The stern of the
Golden Sands
dropped sharply. Anna let out a cry at the suddenness of it. Two children beside her screamed. The boat was right over the Curate. The next sea broke hard against the bows and even with the sea anchor the boat swung round and was rolled onto her side. They saw the water breaking over the stern and felt the boat being driven down and they could see over the rail into the boiling water below. They all waited for the strike.