The loading and periodical hammering went on for pre cisely twenty-seven minutes. I timed it, thinking perhaps it might be important to know how long it took to load the cargo. And all the time they were talking, a mixture of English and Spanish that at times was about as incomprehensible as pidgin English. Once I heard what sounded like an Irishman say, ‘Jeez, you’d never think there was that many junkies, would you now? Do you think they cleared this lot with St Peter?’ And they laughed.
That was the only time any of them referred to the cargo and the only clue I got from listening to their talk. But at least it confirmed what the Hallidays had been saying — this really was a drug run. At no time did I hear anything that indicated what they were doing with the stuff and I could only presume that it was in very durable bags that were being tamped into the interstices between the logs.
As soon as they had finished loading, the lines were let go and the vessel moved away, out into the open water between the islands, the thump of its screw gradually fading. By then the tug was backing up to us, the thresh of water from its stern getting louder, then dying away as men at the for’ard end of the barge made the towing hawser fast. A shout of ‘Let go ashore!’ then ‘Take her away’ was followed by renewed threshing that faded until the hawser was taut and the barge plucked sideways, juddering and scraping itself against rock.
The sound diminished, then ceased abruptly, and after a moment we could hear the swish and gurgle of water against the hull. We were under way, the tow’s next stop Seattle, unless Cornish had read between the lines of my message and had understood what I had been trying to tell him. I wasn’t at all certain he had, also I didn’t know how far away he had been. The range for VHP can be very variable, dependent on the terrain and the conditions, and the fact that his voice had sounded so faint that I could hardly decipher what he had been saying did not necessarily mean that he was outside the normal limits of very high frequency transmission.
He was, in fact, over forty miles away, just to the south of Hannah Rocks and heading east for the Alexandra Passage inside Egg Island in an effort to pick up the Indian fisherman who kept coming on the air to say he was lost somewhere in the region of Smith Sound. They had continued to search for him after I had radioed in, for forty miles to the south of us conditions were very different: the wind had dropped and with it the temperature. They were in thick fog, and with the entrance to Smith Sound littered with rocks and shoals they were concerned for the Indian’s safety.
There was, of course, a good deal of speculation in the cutter’s wheelhouse about the identity of the Kluane and whether there was a fish storage vessel of that name waiting to receive a large haul that was being kept frozen. Only gradually did the truth sink in as they argued about it, remembering how I had talked of Ice Cold as a mine and Edmundson had confirmed it as being in the Kluane. But they still didn’t see how I or Tom Halliday could be calling in on the VHP distress channel.
In court, Captain Cornish would read aloud the excerpt from his log recording the message I had transmitted. The time of that message, and the time entry recording his abandonment of the search for the lost fisherman and his alteration of course for Spider Island, would show a lapse of 181/2 minutes. That was the length of time they had spent discussing it before finally reaching the decision to abandon the Indian and alter course, and they had only made that decision because of the Mate’s insistence that I was the only person to whom he had mentioned the Kelsey’s navigation of the Spider in at least six months and that he had specifically referred to the cutter’s stern being made fast to a red cedar which was half-dead and had an eagle’s nest in the upper branches.
However, having made the decision to head north, Captain Cornish in his testimony declared that the more he thought about it, and about the failure of the customs operation when he had been taking Edmundson up to the Cascades, the more he began to appreciate the urgency. His log showed that he was proceeding north at maximum revs and, allowing for favourable tide, was making just on 20 knots over the ground.
We did not know this, of course. Huddled together in the narrow confines between timber and steel at the bottom of the hold, all we knew was that we were headed south at an estimated 6 knots and that another night would have passed before we were into the Narrows between Vancouver Island and the mainland. We knew we were heading south because the sun was shining on the port side of the wheelhouse and we assumed we would be going inside Vancouver Island because that was the normal towing route.
As we steamed south it gradually became colder, the sun’s brightness dimming, daylight fading. The tug’s siren began to blare at regular intervals. We were in fog, white trails of vapour drifting across the logs, the cold and the damp earing into us.
By then we were convinced that there was now only one man on the barge, for we had heard no sound of voices. Even from the top rung, with our heads in the open, we could hear nothing except the sound of the water rushing past. It seemed that the men from the logging camp, who had been on the barge when loading the cargo, had all been evacuated on the South American vessel. There might, of course, be two men on board, one of them sleeping. ‘We’ll have to presume that,’ I said. Brian didn’t say anything. He had heard the man at the wheelhouse singing to himself and thought it was to compensate for the boredom and loneliness of being on his own.
There seemed only two possibilities open to us, and these were discussed endlessly: we could keep watch until the tug was approaching a suitable ship, take over the wheelhouse, then cut the hawser and steer the barge alongside. Alternatively, we could wait until we were in the Narrows, passing really close to a jetty or some small boat, then slip over the side and swim for it. Of the two I favoured cutting the tow and going alongside a Canadian vessel, and in the end Brian agreed. That way it wouldn’t be our word alone; we would have the barge and its cargo as evidence, as well as one of the crew. Also it would be dark. I didn’t like the thought of swimming for it in broad daylight, nor did the others. Even if the fog did hold, and we were not spotted by the tug’s lookout, we would still have to contend with the strong tides running through the Narrows.
So finally it was settled. We would wait till the early hours, when it was still dark and we were somewhere off Port Hardy on the north end of Vancouver Island, then take over the barge. The only problem, of course, was whether we would be lucky enough to have a fairly slow vessel overtaking us at the right time. As soon as we had cut the tow, I would start transmitting a Mayday call in an effort to try and persuade the Rescue Coordination Centre at Victoria to take immediate action. The tug would know, of course, that it had lost its tow and I hoped my emergency call would discourage it from coming back for us.
It was a good idea, but alas, the best laid plans … what we didn’t know was that the tug was on a bearing west of south, heading for the open sea passage down Vancouver Island’s rugged and largely uninhabited west coast. The Coastguard cutter didn’t know it either. Nor did the RCC in Victoria. Cornish had contacted them, using his HF single sideband, and they in turn had contacted customs. As a result, the cutter was ordered to wait up for the tow behind Pearl Rocks at the eastern end of the Rankin Shoals. One of these rocks dries as much as sixteen feet, and since it would be low water about two hours after the cutter’s ETA, there would be little chance of the tug’s radar picking it up, any blip being merged with that of the above-water rock.