The wind gusted once again, driving a combination of rain and spray into Robin’s face like a handful of sharp gravel. There was an explosion of sound above her, and one of the communications golf balls sailed away down the wind, looking ridiculously like a big white balloon. It was well clear of Maxima’s stern before it hit the water, bouncing off into the driving spray and vanishing. With any luck, that was the one Manuel had been working on, she thought. And it seemed likely — she hadn’t seen the electrician secure the cover when they’d come back inside. If it was the twin to the one Manuel had been working on, then its departure meant the end of all of their electrical navigation and communications equipment. She was thinking of staggering up to the bridge and asking what equipment had just gone west when Maxima swooped down the back of the next wave and buried her poop in green water. The men on the lower deck ran back, trying to keep their feet as the water boiled up past the base of the pool. Maxima heaved. Then she began to rise again. There was a sharp crack from below and astern, louder than the noise that had signalled the departure of the golf ball. When Maxima finally shrugged off the green water and began to sail steadily up the face of the oncoming wave, Robin saw that the lowered bathing section had been bodily torn away. The teams ran back to the stern and began to pull the divers aboard, clearly fearing that the missing section might have hurt them as it tore free. But no. Both men came back aboard unharmed. And Robin could have sworn that one of them gave a weary thumbs up.
As the teams on the lower deck were heading in, Robin decided she no longer had any business being out here. She turned and walked forward, following the hand rail to which her safety line was attached. In the shadow of the bridge house, she paused to unclip. As she did so, Maxima reached the crest of the wave that had torn her bathing section off her. She hesitated, see-sawing there. A flaw in the storm wind cleared away the rain for an instant, and there, surprisingly close, a couple of hundred metres to the south and on the crest of the third wave further on, Robin saw the unmistakable ruby gleam of an emergency beacon.
‘I cannot help,’ said Toro a couple of minutes later. ‘Raoul has chopped away most of the net and Emilio believes he has fixed the Spurs cutters, but we are not yet entirely free. And I am reluctant to take the chance of starting the motors quite yet, although the engineer says he believes the repairs will hold. You know it would be foolish of us to try a rescue before we ourselves are safe. You know how many people drown each year during heroic attempts to save children and pets who survive anyway after their would-be rescuers are dead.’
‘That’s true. But you’ll have to risk it soon, because for some reason I still don’t quite understand, we’re drifting round to beam-on to the wind and waves. The seas will kill us pretty quickly if we don’t do something.’
But in fact, as they were talking, a chain of circumstance that neither was really aware of came to its culmination far below them. Ever since the waves pooped Pilar, she had been sinking deeper and deeper into the Pacific. As they talked, she was half a kilometre below them and still heading rapidly for the distant ocean floor. The nets were still attached to her winch, and the dead weight of the wreck was more than enough to overcome what little buoyancy was left in the floats on the float line. The pull of the sinking vessel on the nets still attached to Maxima was the force that was dragging her southwards and swinging her round, pulling her towards Miguel-Angel, who was bobbing in the water precisely above the point at which Pilar had sunk.
And as Robin and Captain Toro discussed what to do next, the simple physical laws that had governed the relationship between the two vessels came to their inevitable end. Pilar, precisely below Maxima, completed Raul’s work for him. The tension she exerted on the nets peaked at the very moment the extra-lightened stern — with half of the pool water missing and the bathing platform gone — was thrust upwards by the face of the next wave. The strain between the sinking vessel and the floating one reached its peak. The last section of net between them, hooked round Maxima’s propeller, snapped. The whole tangle jerked free to plunge on downward with Pilar, taking the fish and the fishermen, all tangled in the billowing mesh, to their final resting place at the bottom of the ocean.
Everyone on board Maxima felt the jerk of freedom. Her stern jumped up by a metre and more, easily overcoming the downward pressure of the wave. ‘That’s it!’ said Robin. ‘We’re free!’
Toro nodded and put his walkie-talkie to his mouth. ‘OK, engine room,’ he said. ‘Let’s try for slow ahead. And once the motors are running I’d like power and heating restored. But one thing at a time.’
‘When we get power back we should get communications,’ said Robin. ‘Unless it was the communications gear that went west with the golf ball just now.’
‘I don’t know what it was,’ said Toro.
‘You want Manuel and me to go up and see?’ asked Robin.
‘Maybe later. Right now, I want you here. Your experience may prove useful.’ Maxima used her new freedom to start a series of increasingly wild corkscrew movements that amply emphasised what Toro was saying.
‘I’d have said may prove vital,’ said Nic as he staggered through the door. ‘What’s going on? Even my intrepid yachtswomen are feeling seasick.’
‘We are trying for steerage way,’ said Toro. ‘We should have full control in a few minutes. Then, I believe, Captain Mariner wants us to investigate an emergency beacon she believes she saw nearby.’
‘That I do,’ she said. ‘In fact, I think, if you’ll lend me the walkie-talkie there, I’ll ask Raul and Emilio to stay in their wet suits for a little longer.’ As Robin spoke, the heaving deck beneath her feet began to throb. Everyone fell silent, as though their group focus on the vibrations would help the engines start up successfully and keep running. And perhaps they did, for, little by little, the rhythm of the Caterpillars quickened like the beating of a wakening heart. The propellers span, beginning to bite into the water. The vessel’s motion steadied and she began to move forward more purposefully. Robin and Toro both went to stand at the shoulders of the helmsman. Still three-quarters on to the sea, with the waves coming in on her port quarter, Maxima began to get properly underway, answering to the dictates of the helm as well as to those of the wind and the waves.
‘We have a problem, Captain Mariner,’ said Toro, the first to speak.
‘I know,’ Robin answered. ‘Our best and safest course will take us away from the distress beacon.’
‘As soon as we start running with the sea behind us,’ Toro agreed. ‘And I dare not try and turn around in this. If we get caught beam-on to these seas …’
‘I know,’ said Robin. ‘But there must be a way …’
As she broke off, the power came back on. The lights blazed and the bridge equipment sprang to life. Robin was at the radar screen before it had even finished loading and updating. ‘There!’ she said as it cleared. ‘The radar set has the beacon placed at one hundred and twenty metres off our starboard forequarter. I can give you a precise bearing in a minute. I think the sea will push us in that direction anyway, but the chances are we’ll sail straight past … Look, Captain, I know we’d be foolish to risk so many lives trying to save one, but that beacon is so close. The Cats seem to be purring …’