‘Any chance we can reach somebody with this thing?’ Brian had joined me, a foot on one of the steel rungs and the walkie-talkie he had taken from the hatchet-faced tree feller slung from his shoulder.
‘Short wave?’ I shook my head. ‘The range is probably no more than five miles.’
‘That Coastguard cutter.’ We were both of us whispering. ‘Could he receive it? Did he have short wave?’
‘Yes, but he’d have to be switched on and tuned to the right frequency.’
He nodded. ‘So it’s the VHP set up in the wheelhouse. D’you know the standby frequency that cutter uses? I’ve only operated VHP on land with an agreed frequency.’
‘Channel 16,’ I told him. Trouble is it’s the standby channel for all ships.’
‘And if he’s thirty miles away or more, then he’s probably out of range, and we’re blocked off from any of the inside passages by the mountains, so if he’s there …’ He shrugged, smiling at me, his teeth showing in the pale light that had turned almost green. ‘We’ll just have to hope for the best.’
It wasn’t only that VHP is a direct radio wave, so that if the Coastguards were in another inlet they wouldn’t hear us, but something he didn’t seem to realize was that every ship within an unobstructed 30-mile radius of us would have the call coming through on their loudspeakers. ‘That tug,’ I said, ‘will be only a hawser-length away — they’ll pick us up clearer than any other vessel.’
‘So what do we do?’
‘Wait till we’re a lot further south than we are now. In the narrows between Vancouver Island and the mainland there’ll be vessels of all sorts around, lots of fishing boats, more traffic coming in on VHP.’
There was movement on deck then. I think they were probably checking the towing lights. At any rate, nobody even shone a torch down into the hold. We were back in our log holes, and lying there I tried to work out what to say to Captain Cornish if we were able to get into the wheelhouse and raise him on the VHP set. There were other things on my mind too. I had to know whether or not we were taking the Hakai Passage. If we did, then inside of two hours we would be in the open sea, for it was not much more than five miles from Fitz Hugh Sound to the Pacific. The tug would turn south then, and once past Calvert Island we would be within range of the north end of Vancouver Island. If we didn’t go through the Hakai and kept straight on down the Fitz Hugh we would save at least a couple of hours.
We decided to wait until the early hours of the morning when the men aft would hopefully be sound asleep in the cuddy and watchkeeping on the tug would be at a low ebb. By then, at three-thirty say, I thought we would probably be in the open sea somewhere in the region of Calvert Island. But it was what I should say when I started calling the outside world on that VHP set that worried me. In the end I decided to sleep on it, having asked Miriam to wake me inside of four hours.
In fact, I woke of my own accord, for by then I was fairly rested. I was also very hungry. There was starlight in the gap between the logs and the steel rim of the afterdeck. I clambered up the rungs until I could see the Bear and had identified the North Star. It was straight above the wheelhouse, so we were still headed south, and it was not until an hour and a half later, when I had come to the conclusion that we were going to continue straight down the Fitz Hugh, that the position of the stars suddenly began to change. There was a light flashing straight over the bows, its reflection on the wheelhouse gradually changing as we turned. It was to port of us then and I stayed there until we were past it, the reflection of it showing the wheelhouse as a dark shape in silhouette, the stars steadying in their new alignment.
We had turned almost 90° to starb’d and were in the Hakai Passage.
Brian poked his head out. ‘We’ve turned, have we?’ He had felt the changed motion, something I had not noticed with my mind concentrated on the stars. I went back to sleep, planning to wake every hour and check our course. The time was then 01.12.
I woke again just before two and we were still headed south-west, then again a little after 02.30. I think it was the movement that woke me that time, and when I checked the stars, we seemed to be on a more westerly course. There was a flashing light away to port that intermittently illuminated the wheelhouse. That would be the beacon marking the southern side of the passage into the Pacific. No wonder the barge had started to roll quite noticeably, a lazy, slow, flat-bottomed roll which gradually changed to a corkscrew motion, an occasional jerk on the towing hawser sending shivers through the metal hull.
I checked the position of the stars again and there was no doubt about it, the southerly swell was on our port quarter. We were heading north-west away from Seattle.
I didn’t tell the others, and I didn’t go to sleep again. It could mean only one thing — that we were on a smuggling run and headed for a rendezvous with the South American carrier somewhere in the mass of islands between our present position and the point where the Inside Passage broke out into open water in Milbanke Sound. I remembered the Spider then, how the Mate had said Captain Cornish had gone in there just for the hell of it, mooring up to a red cedar that was half dead and had a bald-headed eagle’s nest in the upper branches. The whole area had been thick with small rock islands, but all of them steep-to, and deep water everywhere. ‘Looks much worse on the charts than it really is,’ he had said, and now I had this feeling we were being towed there.
That was when I climbed out onto the deck and peered in at the wheelhouse windows. There was nobody at the wheel, the place deserted. Slipping round the starb’d side, I gently slid open the door and went in. The trap door to the cuddy below was open. After listening for a moment and hearing no sound, I released the securing catch and lowered it quietly to the floor. Then I switched on the VHF set.
Even then, as I picked up the mike and pressed the button for Channel 16,I wasn’t sure how I was going to phrase my calls, except that I would use Pan, which is urgent but less so than the Mayday distress call. Tan. Pan. Pan. Are you there, Cornish? Calling Cornish. Cornish, Cornish, Cornish.’ I tried my best to imitate a Canadian accent, my lips’ close to the mike and speaking very quietly: ‘This is fishing boat Klewarney calling Cornish.’ I had talked to him a lot about the Kluane and Ice Cold — ‘Klewarney calling Cornish. Come in please Cornish. I got fish for you. Ice Cold. Cornish, Cornish, Cornish. Answer by that name only. Okay? Do you hear me, Cornish? Over.’
A fishing boat was the first to answer, the accent so strong I could hardly understand him: ‘Yu got fish? Yu tell me where. Where yu are, fella?’ And when I repeated my call, he shouted at me, ‘Who is this Cornish? Yu tell me where yu lying,’ and behind his words I caught the whisper of another voice: ‘Coastguard cutter Kelsey. Coastguard cutter Kelsey — state name of vessel and position. If you want to speak to — ‘
I slammed in then: ‘Get off the air, Coastguard. Shut up, both of you. I want Cornish. Cornish. Nobody else. Do you hear me? Cornish. Over.’
There was a pause, then Cornish’s voice came on the air, breathless and tinny out of the speaker as I bent my ear to it: ‘Cornish here. Switch to channel 16.’ I switched and his voice came up again, but still very faint, asking me what I wanted.
‘I have a big haul for you, and I’m keeping it ice cold. You understand? Over.’
There was a pause and I thought I had lost him. But then he said, ‘Yes, I think so. Where are you?’
‘North of where we were three nights ago,’ I told him. ‘About ten miles. Your Mate will know. He said you’d been there once. Tied to a tree with an eagle’s nest in it. You got that? Over.’