Uncharted Seas Read online

  As French officers habitually wear uniform, their wardrobe of civilian clothes is small, so, although he was sailing under the Swedish flag, en route for Guadaloupe, he had obtained the Captain’s permission to wear his military kit. A little vain by nature, he was conscious, even in these anxious hours while the ship was battling against the hurricane, that he cut a dashing figure in his breeches and tunic of horizon blue.

  ‘You will drink?’ he asked the Venezuelan courteously.

  ‘Mille gracia, une Cognac.’

  ‘Deux fines,’ De Brissac told the white-coated Hansie.

  Vicente Vedras’s eyes flickered in the direction of Synolda Ortello, the South African girl. He leaned over to the barman. ‘For me separately, a bottle of champagne also. Two glasses. I take it to the Señorita there who is not well.’

  The Swede pushed a bottle of Hennessy towards De Brissac. Judging the roll of the ship with commendable accuracy, he poured two portions.

  Vedras took his glass and bowed politely. ‘This storm—it is ’orrible, but that we are in no danger is good news. For some little moments I was afraid.’ With a quick movement he tossed off his drink.

  ‘So was I,’ confessed De Brissac. ‘But these heavy seas will probably go down by morning. Here’s to better weather!’

  He drank more slowly and glanced round the saloon. It was not a pretty spectacle. The dozen odd passengers were lolling about in various degrees of discomfort and abandon, their canvas-covered cork lifebelts near at hand. The elderly Greek was being abominably sick. A plate of stale sandwiches, with their pointed ends curling upwards, reposed on a near-by table. The air was heavy with tobacco smoke. As the ship’s only common room and bar it was the natural refuge of the men who had been working at the pumps, and for hours on end they had been cooped up there smoking at an abnormal rate owing to the tension of their nerves.

  With a muttered: ‘You will excuse, mon Capitaine,’ the Venezuelan signed his chit, clutched the bottle of champagne to his breast, and stuffed two glasses in his pockets. Making a sudden dash across the room he landed up beside Synolda.

  Jean De Brissac advanced with a more cautious step towards the two nuns. He brought himself up a little unsteadily before them.

  ‘Mes sœurs,’ he said, and continued in French, ‘if I can be of any service to you I pray you to command me.’

  Neither of the women looked up from their rosaries, but they knew him by his polished riding-boots and beautifully cut breeches.

  ‘Thank you, Monsieur le Capitaine,’ the eldest murmured, and he could only just catch her words above the pandemonium of the storm. ‘But we have placed ourselves in the hands of the Holy Virgin. You can only add your prayers to ours.’

  He managed a bow, rocked unsteadily for a moment, and in two quick strides was back clutching the bar. ‘Encore une fine,’ he grinned at Hansie, showing his magnificent white teeth.

  Turning, he stared again at the groups of miserable passengers. Unity Carden was sitting bolt upright beside her father. Game little devil—De Brissac thought—queer people the English, and particularly their colourless, flat-chested women. Looked as though they would faint at the sight of a spider, but actually tough as the horses they rode so well. She was pretty in her way, he conceded, but she lacked nearly all the feminine attributes which appealed to his Latin temperament. He wondered if she’d ever see those friends with whom she and her father were intending to spend a pleasant month in Jamaica before returning home to the English spring.

  Personally, he would not have staked a fortune on her chances, or his own of reporting for duty to the Military Commandant’s office in the French colony of Guadaloupe. It was all very well for that hulking Finn to keep a stiff upper lip and talk optimistically. He was one of the ship’s officers, so it was his job to do so, but M. le Capitaine De Brissac had travelled a bit in his time and he didn’t at all like the way things were shaping. The Gafelborg was an old ship and it was no reflection on her officers that she could not face up to these devilish seas which were throwing her about as if she were a cork in a mill-race.

  He stroked his small D’Artagnan moustache and began to make a mental list of the really vital things to collect from his cabin if it did come to the point where they had to abandon ship. There seemed no immediate urgency about the matter. The old tub was probably good for a few hours yet, but if the storm didn’t ease, the constant pounding on the sprung plate would loosen it further, and once the forehold had filled with water the position might become critical.

  A sudden thought caused his handsome face to cloud with acute annoyance. Among his heavy luggage in the hold there was a packing-case containing the parts of a new type of machine-gun; his own invention upon which he had been working for over two years. It was impossible to get the crate up now; if the ship did go down the precious gun would be lost. He decided swiftly that he had much better put any nightmare pictures of the ship actually sinking out of his mind, and at that moment his eyes fell on Synolda.

  She was sitting up now talking to the Venezuelan. De Brissac wondered vaguely what she could possibly see in such a bounder. He thought her most attractive and would have liked to have known her better but she had been almost offensively curt on the few occasions he had spoken to her, whereas she had accepted Vicente Vedras’s attentions right from the first day of the voyage.

  ‘Please, Synolda,’ Vicente was saying, his words inaudible to the others in the roar of the storm. ‘A little champagne and a dry biscuit. Something to fortify you and keep your insides going. Champagne of the best and the little biscuit; believe me that is the thing, ‘owever bad the sickness.’

  She looked at him through half-closed eyes. ‘I feel so ill I wish I were dead. We’re all going to die—aren’t we? The ship’ll be shaken to bits if this goes on much longer.’

  ‘No, no, no!’ he protested. ‘Things are not so bad. The Second Engineer ’as said there is no danger. ’E can judge—that one—the big, blond man.’

  Vicente was so passionately anxious to believe the best that he had accepted Luvia’s statement without question. The future was rich for him, rich beyond his wildest dreams with the gold just discovered on his brother’s farm in South Africa; rich, too, in hopes of getting his way with Synolda whose beauty had inflamed his desires to fever pitch. He leant towards her:

  ‘Be of good cheer, little one. The storm by morning will be finish. Soon your Vicente will make for you a paradise in Venezuela.’

  She screwed up her wide mouth and shrugged slightly. ‘I’ve told you twenty times I’m leaving the ship at Rio.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ he said with sudden fierceness. ‘You come on with me to Caracas, otherwise it may be that you will meet bad trouble.’

  Her eyes hardened. ‘You’ve hinted at that sort of thing before, but laughed it off each time I’ve questioned you. Just what do you mean?’

  ‘You know, my beautiful Synolda. I am not one to threaten. I ’oped you would appreciate my delicacy—my patience—in the week of days since we left Cape Town. A week is a long time for us Venezuelans who are ’ot-blooded people; particularly when the sun shines as it did until—until, yes, the day that preceded yesterday. You are the loveliest woman I’ave ever seen. You will be kind to Vicente or there will be questions. The people at Rio will want to know things about your ’usband.’

  ‘He’s dead,’ she declared sullenly.

  Vicente nodded. ‘But it might be that some curious people would make the inquiry to know why you left South Africa without any luggage and all that—eh?’

  Synolda’s eyelids quivered. For the thousandth time in a hundred and fifty hours she wondered anxiously how much the dark-faced man opposite her really knew. Certain that he knew something had kept her civil to him—but what? Her home was actually in Caracas; not Rio as she had given out, although she meant to leave the ship there. He might perhaps have known her by sight when she was living in the Venezuelan capital, but she could not swear she had not set eyes on him during her recent vi
sit to South Africa so how could he know anything of her recent past? She had made a bad slip though in giving it out that she was a widow.

  He nodded again. ‘You be a good girl and nice to Vicente when the storm is gone—yes—it is better so.’

  Suddenly, above the muffled howling of the wind something hit the ship with a boom like thunder; the reverberation of the shock echoed for at least a minute. The timbers groaned, the bolts grated in the girders as though about to be torn out of their sockets; the deck reared up aft to so sharp an angle that the passengers would have been thrown from the settees unless they had clung to the screwed-down tables.

  De Brissac knew the ship had taken another giant wave on her for’ard well-deck; that sunken space between the fo’c’sle and the bridge would now be four feet deep in water and she must lift again before it could pour off through the storm ports.

  The Gafelborg rose once more, yet the deck of the lounge continued to slant steeply up towards the companionway at its after end. De Brissac waited, imagining that the volume of water was too great for the scuppers to carry it off so soon, but the lounge remained tilted permanently. He knew then that she had been seriously damaged.

  That knowledge was reflected in the faces of the other passengers; all but a few showed varying degrees of fear from a furtive, hunted look to one of stark terror.

  ‘Dear God! Dear God we’re going to drown,’ wailed a middle-aged woman, in Spanish; flinging herself on her knees beside the two nuns.

  The elderly Greek wrung his hands in an agony of misery. He was not frightened for himself, but he knew that if he was drowned his rascally half-brother would contrive some means to cheat his wife and son out of their share of the family business.

  The screws were vibrating like electric drills; at shorter intervals now as the stern was tossed for longer periods from the water. The old cargo carrier began to wallow horribly and it seemed that at any moment she might turn turtle.

  Basil Sutherland came scampering up the companionway on all fours; pitched into the lounge, and slithered down the slope towards the bar. De Brissac caught him by an elbow and steadied him. ‘Back already, eh! What happened just now?’

  ‘A hundred tons of briny smashed in the fore-hatch. No more use to go on pumping than it would be to try and ladle out the contents of a swimming bath with a soup spoon.’

  ‘The forehold is full up with water then?’

  ‘Yes.’ Basil was sober enough now. ‘Fortunately her forward bulkhead is holding, but she’s badly down at the head. She’s so sluggish in the troughs that her nose’ll hardly lift before another comber crashes over her fo’c’sle head.’

  ‘It looks, then, that we are for it.’

  A report penetrated the hubbub and Basil nodded. ‘ ’Fraid so. Hear that? They’re beginning to send up their rockets. They’ve been keeping the distress signals for an emergency.’

  ‘Mon Dieu! What is the good of rockets when there is so little shipping here in the South Atlantic?’

  Basil grinned mirthlessly. ‘And we’re over a thousand miles from the nearest land.’

  ‘I shall see you!’ The Frenchman ran up the deck, slipped, caught at the banister-rail of the companionway, and plunged down it.

  Bang! Smash! The ship reeled again under another sledgehammer blow. For a moment the dark green sea covered the starboard ports of the lounge, although it was up on the boat-deck. The shock and following dip to port were so acute that a number of bottles were jolted from the racks of the bar. Hansie’s face took on a greenish tinge as they smashed behind him.

  Even he was scared now. In a mental flash he saw a young girl nursing a baby. The child was his and he was doing the right thing by the girl, although he could not marry her because he had a wife already. What would happen to both of them if the sea got him and he could never send poor little Hildagrad any more money?

  Another of the women suddenly jumped to her feet and screamed. Instantly she was flung full length to the deck and rolled across it until brought up by the legs of a port-side table. Vicente and some others, swaying like a Rugby scrum, managed to get her up between them.

  Colonel Carden braced his good leg against a table to prevent himself from slipping off the settee. Beside him, Unity, still outwardly calm, felt as though her heart was rising into her throat to choke her. She feared that at any moment she would give way at last to an unsuppressible fit of terror. Grabbing her father’s hand, she pressed it and he turned to look at her.

  ‘Cheer up, Daddy,’ she said, striving to reassure herself. ‘We’ll be all right.’

  ‘Of course we will,’ he replied gruffly. ‘I’d be happier if we were in a British ship, but these Swedes are first-class sailors. The Viking blood, you know; we’ve got a dash of it ourselves.’

  The heaving deck had assumed a new angle. It sloped now towards the port bow. The forehold being full of water weighed them down by the head and something else had given them a permanent list to port.

  De Brissac, frantically grabbing the most important items of his kit down below in his cabin, rightly suspected a shifting of the cargo.

  Crack! Something snapped on the deck outside. The despairing wail of a human being penetrated to the lounge. Vump—smack—sisss! They were hit again.

  Jean De Brissac’s head suddenly shot up from the companion-way. It hovered for a moment. As the ship rode on the crest of the next wave he seemed to bounce up the last few steps. He was wearing his military cloak and had a rubber rainproof over the crook of his arm.

  The Gafelborg heeled over. The Frenchman lost his grip on the banisters and came crashing into the settee where Unity was crouching. His white teeth, set tight, flashed below his little dark moustache. She managed a feeble smile as he shouted an apology.

  The racing screws seemed as if they must be tearing the bowels out of the ship. She staggered, plunged, rolled in the troughs and was cast upward only to bump again on the next wave. The spray scurried past the ports incessantly. The passengers who could still think at all realised that the ship was now out of control; they were at the mercy of a crazy thing.

  Juhani Luvia, the blue-eyed Finn, suddenly appeared among them; his face was tense; with him were the Swedish First and Third Officers; the water was pouring from their oilskins. The ship’s siren began to wail piercingly overhead.

  ‘Get your lifebelts!’ bellowed the First Officer above the din. ‘You know your boat stations—go to them!’

  2

  To the Boats

  ‘To the boats!—to the boats!’ the cry was taken up in half a dozen languages. The passengers snatched their cork life-jackets and hastily set about adjusting them.

  In two groups they scrambled towards the entrances of the lounge which gave direct on to the boat-deck. The English-speaking passengers had all been allotted to the port boat aft, which was the Third Officer’s and also Juhani Luvia’s. The Finnish engineer grabbed Unity Carden’s arm with one hand and Synolda Ortello’s with the other. As the port entrance was the more sheltered of the two the little crowd had no difficulty in pressing through it.

  De Brissac’s place was in the starboard boat aft with the First Officer. They had to wait for a moment until a lull in the storm gave them a chance to fling open the door without fear of a sea driving them backwards. The Frenchman had hold of the elder of the two nuns, and, supporting her as best he could, he began to stagger up the slanting deck.

  Above him, to the right, the insistent buzz of the wireless in the operator’s cabin momentarily caught his ear; SOS—SOS—SOS; as the ether waves stabbed the dark night with their urgent call for help.

  The piercing note of the ship’s siren cut through the thunder of the storm; it was sounding an unceasing succession of short blasts. Another rocket was fired with a loud report; it burst in the blackness above and for a second De Brissac glimpsed its coloured stars before they went out.

  The Gafelborg plunged again; a sea of terrifying height loomed up out of the darkness to starboard. It swept forwar
d, hovered like a towering cliff, then broke and came rushing down to engulf them.

  He flung his right arm round a stanchion and clung to it with all his might. With his left, he clutched the frail body of the nun. For a moment they were both entirely submerged by the torrent of water. The ship lifted again and they gasped for breath while the flood seeped back over the side, sucking and gurgling and almost pulling them over with it.

  They caught a glimpse of a figure being whirled away behind them. It was the other nun. She crashed against the rail, doubled up, and fell limply. Someone sprang after her and dragged her to her feet, but she could not stand and was carried along in their rear.

  The boat was already swung out on its davits. The First Officer and a number of the crew, all wearing lifebelts, stood by it. Some of them were crouching in the boat ready to help the passengers aboard.

  A lesser wave scudded round their ankles and poured away in foaming cascades, the phosphorus in the spume temporarily lighting up the deck. Owing to their list to port and downward tilt for’ard, the starboard boat aft was higher than the others. Swaying drunkenly, half fainting and wholly terrified, the women were passed into it like so many bundles. The screaming of the wind drowned all efforts at speech except the stentorian bellowings of the officer through his megaphone.

  Another big wave surged over them and they all clung blindly to the nearest gear that offered. The boat’s complement was nearly completed when the officer made an imperative gesture to Jean De Brissac, but the Frenchman backed away.

  Some instinct warned him not to commit himself to this timbered cockleshell, packed with drenched, bemused humanity, which hung at what seemed to him so perilous an angle over the slanting side of the ship.

  In a flash of memory he recalled the advice of a man who had survived three shipwrecks. ‘Never try for a place in a boat. They so often prove death-traps when lowered in a storm, and even if a boat’s launched safely there’s danger of its becoming overloaded through picking up people who’re struggling in the water, or capsizing in a heavy sea. Far better avoid the crowd and play a lone hand. Lash yourself to a collapsible raft and wait until you’re floated off as the ship goes down. A raft rides the waves like a great lump of cork, so you can’t possibly drown. It’s only a question of endurance; just sticking the cold and discomfort till daylight comes and you’re spotted from one of the other ships the SOS has brought to the scene of the wreck.’