The oil rigs, having drilled unsuccessfully elsewhere, were now planning to move operations to the Pondoland coast. Was enough known about the area to dismiss wholly the theory of an undersea cavern, or a vortex? Why had nothing happened to the thousands of other ships which had used this same route? Would — whatever it was — lie in wait for one of the giant oil rigs and strike it down as it had struck down the Waratah. The most far-fetched speculation was no more absurd than the plain historical fact that a 10,000-ton liner, classed Al at Lloyd's, and commanded by one of the ablest sailors of the day, had vanished utterly, without trace, within sight of the land, in broad daylight, somewhere where I was now.
What had destroyed the ship had been something terrible and swift, something the skilled sailor could not calculate or foresee.
The two banks of blackness ahead of Walvis Bay began to merge; the darkness grew.
I hung on to the lifelines I had ordered earlier in the afternoon to be rigged as Walvis Bay went deep through a huge wave-not a roller, but a short, high, spume-tipped load of water. Her hull trembled, and the screw chewed air and thin water with the same kind of brash rattle that a car makes when the clutch is thrown out and the engine continues at speed. It went against all my seaman's instincts to push the game whaler like this-but I had to know, and this was Waratah weather. Walvis Bay dipped her entire starboard side under, and I ducked gratefully behind the solid bridge and forward superstructure which occupied most of her whole width of beam and was designed specifically to break the force of such as this as they swept aft.
Streaming water, I regained the bridge.
Taylor, one of the two technicians aboard whose function was to care for the scientific apparatus, had turned green.
The gyro doesn't know its arse from its elbow, with this bucking,' he said, hastily averting his eyes from a rearing oncoming sea. 'Nor do I, for that matter.'
'What's the trouble?' I asked. 'It was supposed to hold the platform steady in Southern Ocean seas.'
This isn't the Southern Ocean,' he retorted, gesturing half behind him as if the sight of the seas were too much for his stomach. 'It's different. It's this bucking and lurching that it can't take. Over-compensates. The platform rocks around like. . like. .' he motioned to the sea. 'Now she's overheating. If she burns out…'
'Switch the damn thing off, then,' I snapped.
'Can't — the rest position was designed for rest, not for. . for. . this. No one thought to have any securing bolts. If we switch it off, it'll rock itself to pieces. Can't you do something about this bucking?'
It was my turn to gesture towards the sea. I didn't say, if I'm right it will get a lot worse before the night is out. If the gyro went, the whole purpose of tracking the new satellite would go overboard. Yet here was an opportunity which in the long run might prove far more valuable in saving rigs worth millions of pounds than not taking a chance with the gyro.
I said, 'Go and have a chat with Nick Scannel. He's the engineer, maybe he can suggest some way of securing it.'
Miller, the other technician, came on to the bridge. He eyed me balefully. 'Have you told him?' he asked Taylor.
Taylor did not seem to trust himself to reply. He nodded.
'Gyro's getting hot,' said Miller.
'See Scannel and get on with it,' I said.
'Perhaps if I puke over it, it'll cool down,' coughed Taylor. He vanished hastily.
Feldman stood by during the conversation, silent, lips pursed. Was I, I asked myself quickly, succumbing to the mysterious forces of that soulless ship, dead for over sixty years in her grave, by pushing Walvis Bay down the same Pondoland coast, at the same season of the year, into the same sort of storms, on her same track, at her same speed? With that question, the cold thought swept over my mind, cold now as the sting of the cold rain mixed with bursting spray on my face: am I treading on Waratah’s grave at this moment? I made a quick calculation: no. Although I could not see the land well enough to be sure, Walvis Bay was still approaching, on a line out to sea, the mouth of the Bashee River. Waratah had been twelve miles out to sea; I held Walvis Bay twelve miles offshore likewise. Waratah had still been afloat at this point, and the Clan Macintyre, although eight or ten miles astern of her, had her still in sight. Waratah was by now on the port bow of the Clan Macintyre, having crossed shortly before from the landward side. Waratah had been doing thirteen knots, and the sea had been smashing into her, rising progressively on the southwesterly gale, as it was doing now.
Feldman said cautiously, 'If we reduced speed a little, sir, it might help the gyro.'
Everyone wanted speed reduced-the ship, the men, the gyro I
I controlled my reply and said evenly, 'She's making the best heading under the circumstances — she's taking the run of the sea dead ahead. If I reduced speed, it- would make the motion worse, not better.'
I knew what I was saying was merely a half-truth, begging the question.
Before he could start to argue, I followed it up. 'No further word from the Weather Bureau?'
'No, sir. Next forecast is not for another couple of hours.' 'Good. Then we can take it things are not really too bad, eh?'
I was using sophistry, not seamanship. Feldman was unconvinced. He gestured to starboard, landwards. Three flashes.
'Bashee Mouth,' he reported formally. He seemed to be wanting to say something more, but he went on, irrelevantly, as if to force conversation, 'Light's situated on the northeastern side of the river.'
We had opened the gate of the Waratah's tomb.
The enclosed bridge gave a sense of security compared with the exposed wildness of the upper deck.
I played along with Feldman. 'How's the wind?’
'Force 8, gusting harder than that, though. Over fifty knots.'
Force 8. The threshold of a real buster-with worse to come. It was still not the gale 'of exceptional violence' which had crippled other ships at sea the day the Waratah had disappeared. Had she not quite plainly rolled over and sunk? It was the complete answer — except that it begged one inescapable fact: not one body, not one shred of evidence of wreckage, had ever been found of the Waratah. If she had turned turtle, there was the Clan Macintyre to find wreckage coming from behind; steaming towards her was another liner, the Guelph. All the search ships had found not one plank.
I told Feldman, 'I'm going to my cabin for a moment.'
I wanted to check that chart in the actual presence of a big storm to see if I could not uncover some new factor, some practical aspect perhaps, which had escaped my academic investigations.
I did not go to the chart, however. I stood for a moment undecided at the same doorway she had stepped through. And it was she, Tafline, who occupied my thoughts at that moment of crucial decision for the ship. I went across and stared at the old photograph as she had done. It meant nothing. It was-simply a photograph. It was the thought of the slim, lovely presence that held me. Was her hair dark or light? Neither. It came to me now-it was the indefinable colour the fronds of kelp have on a clear day in the Southern Ocean as they grace an iceberg, neither dark nor light, yet with some unique quality of vibrancy they take from the refracted light which changes magically as the ice lifts and falls — three qualities of light, one from the sea, one from the ice, one from the sky.