Again the pause, and the indistinct murmur of voices then: ‘Yeh, reckon we got the message. A big haul, you say…’
But I shut down on him then, for the tug had suddenly come on the air quite loud demanding to know what my position was and why I was putting out a Pan call. Then abruptly everything went quiet and I switched off, opening up the trap door again and slipping out of the wheelhouse, back to the hold. I had done all I could. It was now up to Cornish.
Just after four a change of movement warned me we were turning. The barge was rolling again, quite heavily, the wind catching us almost broadside and making a whining sound. A glance at the stars confirmed the alteration of course. We were headed almost due east, straight in towards the land, the speed of the tow falling away until we seemed to be barely moving. Then, suddenly, we were under the lee, the rolling abruptly ceased, no wind at all. We were in the Spider. I had no doubt of that, and shortly after that there was a dreadful grating sound, steel on rock as we ground to a halt against one of the islands; then feet pounding, lots of shouting, followed by a hollow thud and the sound of the tug’s engines close alongside.
‘We’ve left it too late,’ Brian hissed at me. And when I told him I had already contacted the cutter he could hardly believe me. ‘Christ! I was fast asleep. Where are we?’
‘At the rendezvous.’ And I explained where I thought we were.
Footsteps on the deck again, the sound of mooring lines being made fast, voices calling back and forth, then somebody in authority — it sounded like the Greek tugmaster — calling those on the barge to come aboard the tug for breakfast. ‘How longa’we got, Captain?’ And another voice answered him, ‘Bout an hour, that’s all.’ They were scrambling onto the tug, somebody asking where the supply ship was and a voice answering, ‘Holed up in Kildidt Sound.’
‘Tha’s not much more than coupla miles away.’
‘Sure. But they gotta go round — Fulton Passage or else Spider Channel. They ain’t gonna fly, that’s for sure. So Skip’s probably right. You got ‘bout an hour. Okay?’
The footsteps died away, everything suddenly quiet except for the slow grinding of the two hulls as they moved to the ghost of a swell coming in through the entrance. I went up the rungs then, peering cautiously out. We were in what appeared to be a lake, rock islets all covered in trees and merging into one another so that there was what appeared to be a continuous shoreline of green all round us. Glimmers of sunlight glinted on the water, the surface ruffled by a slight breeze, and the tug standing over us, funnel and deck housing higher than the logs on the deep-laden barge. The wheelhouse appeared to be deserted. I could actually see right through it to the mountains beyond and a mackerel sky, the scaling of the cloud all silver like a dusting of snow.
The radio had been left on and I could hear a voice, an Indian by the sound of it. He seemed to have got himself and his fishing boat hopelessly lost. ‘Bloody Indians.’ Somebody had entered the tug’s wheelhouse from below. ‘Drunk, I bet. Sleeps it off and when he wakes up don’t know where the fuck ‘is shit-bag of a boat is. Typical.’ And another voice said, ‘What about that Klewarney boat?’ It sounded like the tug’s Master. ‘He wasn’t lost and he seemed a lot nearer. Who was he calling?’
‘One of the fish company ships by the sound of it. Calling Pan like that. Raised the Coastguard cutter, didn’t he? Wonder where those buggers are?’
‘Wherever they are, they’ll be occupied now, presuming that Indian’s put out a search-and-rescue call.’
‘Sure. So why don’t you finish your meal. We’ll be busy ourselves soon.’
I didn’t hear the reply, for both of them went out by the other door and all was quiet again, only another fisherman jabbering away on the radio to a mate of his down around Egg Island at the entrance to Smith Sound. I climbed back down to my log hide, Brian whispering to me, ‘You reckon the captain of that cutter understood what you were telling him?’
‘I think so.’
‘How long before he gets here?’
But I couldn’t answer that. I’d been going to ask Cornish what his position was, but then the tug had come on the air and I had had to shut down.
‘They could radio for a helicopter.’ Miriam was rubbing at her left leg as though it had gone to sleep. ‘You said they had one on that night operation. If they called in a helicopter — ‘ But I had to tell her it was most unlikely. It would mean explaining the whole situation over the air to the Rescue Coordination Centre at Victoria and, presuming Cornish had understood my message, he would be afraid the tug might be monitoring his radio calls.
‘Then he may be too late.’ Miriam’s voice was strangely calm. ‘In which case Tom’s death …’ I detected a tremor then. ‘Isn’t there an airbase somewhere you can contact on VHP?’ But even as she said it she seemed to realize the impracticability of it — ‘No, of course … So we just wait.’
‘Yes,’ I said, wishing I had been able to get their position, or even a rough indication of it. Waiting is bad enough, but when you don’t know how long you’ve got to wait… ‘They won’t be long,’ I added, but she knew very well I was only saying that to bolster her courage, and mine too. Voices on the deck of the tug then, one of them cursing the cook for not having served steak for breakfast. ‘Bacon, sausages and mash — there’s better’n that served in the bloody army now.’
I crawled back in amongst the logs, cursing the man for drawing attention to the emptiness of my stomach. I had had nothing now for twenty-four hours and would have willingly settled for bangers and mash, or anything else I was offered. Other voices emerged from the tug’s bows, and then suddenly they were all over the after end of the barge, doing something to the upper layer of logs — what, I couldn’t gather. All I knew was that they seemed to be working their way downwards and there was a lot of straining and cursing. Soon feet came into view, boots braced on the steel rungs and sawdust raining down. A muttered curse and more straining. Something had been hammered in too tight. ‘Look at my bloody nails!’
What the hell were they up to? And then, when I saw a boot feeling for the rung right opposite where I lay, I thought it would only be minutes before they discovered us. But that was as low as they came, and after another ten minutes or so they all retreated on deck, the job, whatever it was, apparently done.
We had half an hour of quiet after that, and then somebody shouted, ‘Coming in through the entrance now.’ Soon the steady thump-thump of a single screw sounded through the metal hull of the barge.
After that everything became very confused. There was a sense of unreality almost, as though it was some radio play I was listening to, for there was nothing to see, only sounds, and these to be interpreted as best I could. As a result, I don’t think I was at all scared, my mind being concentrated in my ears, my imagination totally engrossed in trying to convert sounds into visual activity.
The tug’s engines started up. That was the first thing. I heard its hull scraping along the side of the barge as it-moved away, and then, after a little while, there were voices calling, different voices speaking some sort of Spanish patois, the sound of mooring lines hitting the deck, fenders rubbing and squeaking along the port side as the hull of the barge was thrust sideways, a violent movement that ground our plates against the rock. We were made fast to the new arrival, and as soon as that was done and the movement had subsided there were men all over us.
What they were doing I couldn’t make out, but they seemed concentrated at the for’ard and after ends of the barge and their movements suggested they were taking cargo on board. But where they were putting it I had no idea. It certainly didn’t come down past the ends of the logs where we were concealed. If it had, we should certainly have been discovered. As it was, I never saw any more of the men working above me than the occasional foot placed on the rung immediately outside my lair, and then only when they started hammering. It sounded like wood on wood, as though periodically one of them took up a mallet and started beating at a log.