Split Code (28 page)

Across the bay, nudged and blackened by all the intervening waves, lay the brilliant bouquet of lights that was Herceg-Novi. With a good pair of binoculars I could have picked out the hotel where Bunty lay fast asleep, with Grover and Sukey. A car headlight showed, on the winding road which edged all three waterways, and lights from a street or a jetty where the villages were. The fishing boats you might expect, lantern at prow, were quite absent. Those who made their livelihood from the sea knew when the sea was at its most dangerous.

When Zorzi came back I said, ‘It would be best if I have the helm. Do you agree?’

I thought perhaps that pride would stop him, but he consented. Long before I could steer for harbour, they could remove me. And my life as well as theirs was in danger. I took the tiller, instead of the wheel, so that I could sit up, my feet on the cockpit bench, and see all around me. I had it for five minutes only. Then, the lines in the darkness ran white, and I knew the first squall of the Bora was coming.

Like a dam bursting, Lenny had said; and it was just that. All the lights blackened and there was a roaring which drowned my voice screaming at Petar. I saw him pull in the runners. Then, sheeting in with one hand, I turned
Dolly
into the Bora.

She was half round when the wind struck, throwing her back like a card as her bows began to climb the first wave. Behind the blast of buffeting sound I could hear the groaning of overstrained timber. For a moment she balanced there, shuddering. Then her bows came down, the body of creaming black water moved backwards under her keel and I paid off, easing the sheets, shouting to Trifun and strained my eyes, as the water swirled round the cockpit and ran down my neck and streamed from my sodden hair, to see where the next one was coming.

There was another, and another a moment or so after that. I took them each on the shoulder, and
Dolly
righted herself every time with a stream of water inboard on the weather side. I reckoned the last was a 40 to 50 knot gust. Then it died, though the seas it put up were still coming on, of an average steepness.

One experience like that in a trip and you would say you had been lucky; it had chipped the barnacles off; and the story would gain in the telling. But we were more than an hour from the island, with another basin and the next set of narrows to get through, and the Bora was only beginning.

I set Trifun and Petar to pumping out oil and seawater. I told Zorzi I needed to know how the baby was faring. Also the state of my two friends. He listened, then without comment vanished below.

From his point of view, Benedict had to survive. Nor did he want any damage to Lenny and Donovan which would invite police attention. I doubted if my lashings would stand up to another roll such as that. Of all of us, short of stoving in or capsizing, Ben was probably safest, but I wanted to be reassured about that. In a while Zorzi came back and grunted, which was all the reassurance I got. I took it that Mihovil was still senseless.

Between fright and seasickness, Petar was becoming less of an asset as well. After Trifun had been pumping alone for a while Zorzi joined him and after some words between them, Trifun went below and I heard pans rattling in the galley. Someone had suggested soup, it seemed a long time ago. You needed something on a bad night or your efficiency dropped, with the cold and your spirits.

I shut the door into the saloon with my foot. Absolute darkness was imperative. The danger of the Bora squalls lay in their suddenness. Next time the wind would be stronger, the wave would be higher. And if I didn’t see it in time we would broach, and fill and roll over. I had a hard weather helm and I held it with both my hands, my feet braced on the opposite locker, and kept my raw stinging eyes on the blustering dark to the north.

We did eleven knots, in uneven gusts, into the second basin, and Trifun put a hand on the helm while I drank my mug of hot soup. I think it surprised him how heavy it was. Perhaps he thought you don’t have to be strong to handle seven-pound babies. Most people think just that, who haven’t lifted a pregnant mother, or an eleven-or thirteen-year-old spastic. It’s partly a knack. It also develops fairly strong muscles.

When I’d finished the soup I took the helm back again. I had explained once more, as simply as I could, about the stresses on the sails and the rigging, and the various ways of easing the strain on the ship: of meeting the waves so that they did the least harm, using the sails to give her way so that she would answer the helm.

Elementary seamanship, including even a lesson in tacking. The booms, thank God, were on their crutches and lashed. A flying boom in a storm can kill more than land-lubbers. That was why the trysail was up; small and strong and loose-footed to give just enough power without catching so much wind that the yacht could blow over. I thought, from the way the helm answered, that with another crew I might have risked a scrap of canvas on the mizzenmast, but that was out of the question. We should have to do as we were.

Now we had sea room, which was a mixed blessing, for the waves could develop. The wind also was stronger. I brought
Dolly
up to it, and she answered like a fine lady, sliding over the kicking, seething force of the sea with her port rail throwing spray from the water. Beside me, Zorzi jammed his feet on the lee bench of the cockpit and Trifun lay huddled on the same bench, his back to the saloon bulkhead. I could hear Petar retching below.

Across the bay lay the lights of the naval dockyard at Tivat. If a naval frigate appeared at this moment, sailing alongside, she could perhaps winch us aloft: six men, a girl and a baby; and put a seaman aboard to bring
Dolly
safely to harbour. But there was no frigate sailing helpfully in the basin, and even if I disregarded the men, and the guns, and got to the radio telephone and summoned them, we should be across the basin and into the narrows before help could get to us.

And I should be dead, or disabled, and when the boat sank, no one would save Ben from drowning. Then Zorzi said,
‘White seal’
and the second squall hit us.

I had expected with the bilges cleared that I could count on turning into the wind that much more quickly. It was easy to allow the helm to drag my hands down, but although the bows swung to the left, it was an irregular movement which lost its drive as the wind smacked us.

It punched the masts, the sails, the rigging and took away all the air I was breathing. I could see Trifun, in the dark, with one hand clutching the saloon roof and the other stretched to the sheets. Then the first wave was there, a little too much on the beam, with the breaking spray avalanching into the cockpit.

Dolly
rose, and hesitated, and then slid down the trough: paying off as I pulled the helm towards me, and then scooping round as I eased her ready to climb up the next. My sight kept blearing with the water dashing into my face and my lashes and I shook my head, trying to clear it.

The safety of all of us depended on my night vision. On judging the shape and nearness of every wave, so that I could present
Dolly
with a slope she could climb in spite of the wind force. This squall was fifty knots, and the waves were between fifteen and twenty feet, trough to cap. I had seen a yacht laid back at the wrong moment by a gust. That time, the wave fell on her mast, and rolled her clean over.

For us, the next wave was less frightening, though water came racing down through each of the side decks and poured in waterfalls through the scuppers as we bore away, and we had lost steerage again. The wave after that was less steep and I didn’t luff, but we took more water and the next time I did bring her nearer the wind. Above the deafening noise I could hear the slamming and creaking of the standing rigging over my head, and wished I knew the boat, and how far I could push her. We heeled down into another trough and there was a shattering crash, this time below decks and beside me.

It was, I thought, the saloon table, but there was no time to investigate: under our feet green water was hurling itself backwards and forwards. I shouted ‘Pump!’ to Zorzi and saw him lay hands on it. Trifun still had charge of the sheets on the lee side. Petar had not come up.

The squall lasted ten minutes, and at the end my hands were quite numb and my back and shoulder muscles pulled raw and burning. But when I wiped my eyes and took my bearings, I found we were nearly abreast of the light at Bijela. We had driven across the whole of the basin. Between us and the island which was our destination lay only the Verige, a mile and a quarter of narrows.

I did wonder, while we had sea room, whether to do anything about the mizzen. Or whether to try the opposite: to take Trifun with me forward and try to hand the jib, leaving us better balanced with only the trysail. What decided me against either action was the interval we had had so far between squalls. We were now at the mouth of the narrows. Even in the darkest part of the night I could see the white water within. Squeezed in that long, confined neck the steep seas would push and jumble, forming no pattern; and we should have to tack to make any progress. We would be facing the teeth of the wind.

There were horrors enough in that prospect. But if a squall hit us, I had no idea whether I could pull us through it.

Best to go now, without thinking.

I gave Trifun the tiller and clipping myself to the rail, made one quick cast over the boat with my torch. Then I opened the saloon door and shone the beam inside.

The floor of Johnson’s comfortable sitting place was heaped with broken wood and rolling and smashed chinaware: a door had come off one of the cupboards and the table, as I thought, had uprooted itself and lay half across Donovan’s legs. He and Lenny were still unconscious, lashed to their benches. Lenny had a long bleeding scratch by one ear, caused probably by flying glass. There was no sign of Petar or Mihovil, but no sign either of any water on the elegant carpet. We seemed to be dry.

I was closing the door when the wind moderated enough to let me hear, from the forward stateroom, a baby’s thin, frightened crying.

I could do nothing about it. I closed the saloon door in Zorzi’s face as, hearing it also, he stopped pumping and made to go forward. I said, ‘He is frightened, not hurt. I need you here.’

He stayed. I think I disliked him more at that moment than at any time up to that point. He cared nothing for Benedict, and had shown it. He only wished to protect his investment.

The sailing directions for the Tjesnac Verige said that the bottom was mud, and there were no dangers outside a distance of about fifty yards from either side. Whatever I did would be a gamble. But if we were caught by a squall, a push to the right or the left could send us hurtling on shore and wreck us. We had to sail up the middle, and because the wind was dead ahead, we had to do it in short zig-zags, by tacking.

I took my class of two through the procedures again, hoarsely shouting, as the Nedjalja and Opatovo lights opened up, one on either side of the channel. Then I pronounced the magic words
Ready about,
and put the helm slowly down, and as the sails whipped, pulled in my sheets and slackened the runner. On the other side, Trifun did the opposite with Zorzi watching him. I pitched him out of his seat and took his place, my feet braced against where I’d been sitting as
Dolly
veered over and tilted. Trifun, who had not been expecting it either, stumbled down the new slope and just stopped himself from hitting the lee locker with a spectacular crash. They fitted themselves, tight-fisted, into their new positions and swore at one another as they got in each other’s way. Zorzi had lit a cigarette while he was below and it hung from his lips, the tip glowing red in the windy dark. The wind blew the smoke past my face and it smelt, rank as it was, of land and of comfort.

It also smelt of whisky. He had had a quick private nip, had our leader, in those few minutes below; but had made no effort to allow us to share it. More face-saving, perhaps. And the kind of leader who can’t admit that he’s scared is not the man I would choose to rely on.

A little while later I said
Ready about
again, and this time they were smarter in getting to their new positions, but the boat herself lingered for a fraction of a second in the eye of the wind. Then she came over and we settled on the new tack, but I could feel the sweat running down inside my soaked jersey.

Sailing close-hauled in a lumpy sea, there is always the danger that your boat will hang in stays, pointing into the wind without moving into one tack or the other, and so quite at the mercy of the weather. And with her ill-balanced sail,
Dolly
had been given a much harder task than she merited.

The helm kicked, and I straightened my shoulders and pulled against it while I watched and thought. The motion was fearful; I could see the pallor in the two men’s faces by the swimming blue light of the compass: my own was probably even whiter. I had reached no conclusion when we reached the end of the short leg I allowed myself and, waiting for the fractional easing of wind that might help, I shouted again to go about.

I should perhaps have seen the heavy seas that were coming but I didn’t, largely because they formed no regular pattern but approached simply as a mass of heaving black water. They threw
Dolly
off her course just as she was swinging and this time what I was afraid of had happened. Instead of veering she stayed pointing ahead, her keel crashing and slamming as the waves struck her.

There is a trick and I used it. If she couldn’t come round by her bows, she would have to turn the other way. I put both hands round the helm and instead of easing it down brought it up. I slackened the trysail as she turned and went on turning, until her stern faced the wind and her trysail and jib flapped and shuddered and whipped. Then she was round and they filled, and we were on the new tack by courtesy of a gybe which she had suffered only because she was the lady she was. I drew a breath of relief and then a sharp explosion from above made me hold it. With my mind on the backstays and mast, it was a moment before I saw what it was. The jib halyard block had given way, freeing the top of the scarlet triangle to crouch and snap over the foredeck.