Signal the Air Force? Even if I knew their wavelength, such a by-passing my own people would invite a rocket which might mean my getting no nearer Antarctica than the next port…
Say even the Weather Bureau were to accept my assessment of the impending gale-against all the skill and advice of their other weather stations — what would their reaction be? Walvis Bay carried a load of scientific equipment whose delicacy had caused a hundred headaches ashore and afloat. The Weather Bureau would play it safe. Get out of the storm area, it would say with complete justification. If there's any risk to the equipment in making the nearest port, turn back to Durban. You can still be there, safe in port, ahead of the storm. If you can't risk that gear in a winter's gale off the Cape, then there's no point in trying it in the Roaring Forties. They would appreciate the finer points of difference between the ocean swells of deep waters and the sort of seas I knew spelled Waratah weather.
My glance at my watch was more instinctive than anything else. It may have even been subconscious, the rendezvous time.
It gave me reason to beg Smit's question. I needed time. I must not miss the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity which offered to try and solve the Waratah mystery.
'The shipping forecast is due in ten minutes,' I said. 'Bring me up one of the transistor portables from the ward-room. Come and hear yourself what the Weather Bureau thinks of it.'
'Good -1 mean, very well, sir.' I liked Smit's unquestioning enthusiasm which burst through his veneer of formality as soon as he came under pressure.
I took another long look at the south-west. That curious sky and blanched sea still told me — Waratah. If it was, or if it wasn't-like a martyr on a gridiron, whichever way I turned I would get myself burned.
The Weather Bureau turned the spit again with its lunch-time forecast.
Siriit came racing up the companionway just as the bland tones of the woman announcer, sitting in her soundproof box 600 miles away inland, said, 'There is a gale warning. We repeat, there is a gale warning.'
Smit grimaced derisively as she shifted the emphasis from one word to another with professional satisfaction.
‘A strong south-westerly wind between East London and Durban will reach thirty to forty knots in the south of the area.'
Forty knots! Smit glanced sideways at me. I could sense his let-down. Here I had been virtually ordering the crew to panic stations with threats of a Force 10/65 m.p.h. gale while the Weather Bureau — the people who had access to all the information and mutations from their weather stations-came up with a piddling little thirty-forty-knot blow which would do little more than wet the weather-ship's decks. My let-down was the kicker to years of patient, often heartbreaking, research and compilation into which I had thrown all my spare time in the Southern Ocean. Had I, as Alistair had said and she made implicit merely by her lovely presence, been simply wasting my time in a self-made statistical funkhole while life rushed by a thousand miles across an ocean waste?
My bitterness rounded on young Smit. 'Switch off that damn thing,' I said harshly.
'Aye, aye, sir,' he said, scared. 'Orders for the ship, sir..?'
'My orders stand,' I snapped. 'Look at that sea, you fool. And that sky. Can't you ...see!’
'No, I mean, yes, sir. Snug the ship down, sir. Grabs to be secured. Emergency …" he forced himself to say the word '. . gale rations from the galley. Galley fire to be doused by 1800 hours. Crew to stand by …'
'Don't go on like a bloody parrot,' I snarled.
He stopped at the bridge ladder. 'In case … in case. . you have to leave the bridge, sir, what course, speed?'
The way he was repeating everything made it all sound doubly ludicrous; now he was trying to use a euphemism to try and say that if my non-existent gale washed me from the bridge. .
‘You heard-as before,' I retorted. 'Course, south-west, true, speed thirteen knots. No reduction or change of course without my express permission.'.
'Aye, aye, sir.' Smit fled down the ladder.
By mid-afternoon the old shipmaster's words had begun not to sound but to thunder in my mind-’a ship — without-a soul'. They took on the rhythmic thump, rip and rend of the seas which now smashed against the bow of the Walvis Bay, throwing themselves in spouting cascades of broken water and tails of spray high over the platform where the harpoon gun had stood, and then spreading themselves feet deep across the decks like ragged, too-eager fingers searching again and again for a weak winch, a fatigued hatchcover, or a loosened stanchion to pluck away over the side. Walvis Bay knew how to toss them clear, and she was still fighting well within herself; nonetheless, I could hear her strain in the shuddering vibration of the hull and propellers. I had stood and watched with a kind of morose satisfaction at the rapid build-up of the sea and the gale until young Smit, oilskins streaming, reported to me before going off duty.
'Handing over, sir.'
I nodded.
'Shouldn't. . er. . it's getting a bit wet up here, sir. Can't I bring you your oilskins …?'
I regretted my curtness earlier. 'Yes, thank you.'
He grinned and said boyishly, 'Looks as if you're right and they're wrong, sir.'
There were too many things on my mind to accept the compliment. I was far too unsure, too. I checked my briefness and said:
'See what the wind gauge says when you go to my cabin.'
He returned and helped me into my waterproofing. 'Only thirty-eight knots, sir.' He sounded disappointed.
I grinned at him now. 'So who's right is anyone's guess.'
'When it gets worse-I mean, if it gets worse, sir, don't hesitate …' He stopped at the presumption.
‘I’ll call you all right if it really blows.'
'Thanks awfully -1 mean, very good, sir.'
In his haste, he nearly bumped into Feldman. Feldman was slightly older than I, an unemotional, rather wooden first officer with a shock of black hair and a full face. He had none of Smit's volatile enthusiasm — the enthusiasm of a man of sail, I told myself. Feldman was reliable, providing the decisions were made for him. He spoke slowly, deliberately, and was, on occasion, almost pernickety.
He greeted me briefly. He held on against the bucking of the ship and took a long look to the south-west, and then westwards towards the hazed shoreline. Jubela had been at the wheel for a few minutes before Feldman's arrival — morose, silent, withdrawn. There had been no conversation between us before Feldman came, except helm orders.
Feldman finished his long scrutiny and then said slowly, as if afraid almost to voice his thoughts, 'Shouldn't we reduce speed a little, sir? She seems to be taking a lot of water. There's the gyro gear …'