Scend of the Sea

'Four Fairlies’ I replied. 'Our gale was from the southwest. Our run of the sea was from the southwest. Our courses were all southwest. That is our one common factor. Two of us were flying at 300 to 600 miles an hour. Two of us were doing thirteen knots …'

'No!' she burst out. I was startled at her sudden outburst. 'No! Not you-and the Waratah! You're here-alive, well, unhurt in the present. She's dead, gone, wrecked, in the past! No,' she corrected herself, 'it isn't like that at all, is it, Ian? The Waratah is here and alive, as much as you and me, isn't she?'

'Yes.' Outwardly the answer was reserved; inwardly, my heart exulted. In that outburst I had seen in her things more precious for me than all that long-dead secret.

I therefore almost regretted that she controlled herself. 'I'm sorry. The Waratah reached out for you, still another Fairlie. The fourth. Please show me every detail. I want to know.'

I showed her on the chart. The nearness and warmth of her sent my blood tingling.

'I began to turn seawards, towards deeper water. Here, this little arrow shows it, the one I've drawn by the question mark. I thought that with more depth under her, she might ride more easily. She was pitching and rolling, taking a lot of water aboard. Then suddenly there was a great crash, the lights went, the bridge windows were stove in, and we all hit the deck. The ship dived like a mad thing, putting her head down like nothing I've ever known. I thought she would plunge clean to the bottom. I grabbed the wheel so she wouldn't broach to. Then I saw something … I… I…'

She was staring at me, startled, penetratingly.

'Why do you say it like that, Ian?'

I, in my own way like her, had to control my runaway emotions. I picked my words.

'The mere fact that a great liner vanished in broad daylight on a short three-day passage, within sight of the coast, on a well-frequented sea route, makes it strange enough. But it becomes stranger still. One man projected the Waratah mystery into the fourth dimension.’

She glanced at the cracked photograph and shivered. She waited for me to go on.

I rummaged in the cabinet and found what I wanted.

'There has never been anything like it in a sea tragedy, before or since,' I said. 'On her last voyage, between Australia and South Africa, the Waratah carried a passenger named Claude Sawyer. Three or four days out from Durban Sawyer dreamed a dream. Here are the exact words in which he described it to the official inquiry in London, which praised his integrity — and his courage.

' "I saw a man with a long sword in his left hand, holding a rag or cloth in his right hand, saturated in blood.

"‘I saw the same dream twice again the same night, and the last time I looked so carefully that I could almost draw the design of the sword." '

The only sound in the cabin was the distant clatter of loading cranes on the dockside.

She asked quietly. 'How was Sawyer able to appear at the hearing? Did he disembark in Durban?'

'Yes. He was so shattered by his dream that he left the ship. But he was to be more shattered still. The day the Waratah disappeared, Sawyer was alone in a Durban hotel.

‘ "That night I had another dream. I saw the Waratah in big waves; one big wave went over her bows and pressed her down; she rolled over on her starboard side and disappeared." '

She glanced uneasily at the Waratah photograph, as if to reassure herself that it was once 10,000 tons of real, tangible, steel.

Then she asked, 'Did Sawyer say he spoke to the man with the sword and the blood-soaked cloth?'

'No. Sawyer never at any stage in the future varied his story or elaborated it, but the name which has become attached to the figure he saw is Vanderdecken.'

'Vanderdecken?'

'Vanderdecken was a medieval Dutch sailor, the legend goes, who diced with the devil for his soul. He lost, and was condemned to sail perpetually round the Cape of Storms. Like Drake's Drum, in times of danger and calamity men claim to have seen the Flying Dutchman's ship. But no one has ever seen the person of the Flying Dutchman close to, like Sawyer.'

'Do you believe it, Ian?'

She was grave, unhappy. I knew, in that moment, that like Vanderdecken I was dicing, but I was dicing for a heart.

I temporized.

The star witness of the Waratah inquiry was the first officer of the Clan Macintyre, Phillips. He was specially commended for his evidence. He gave the world the last, most explicit, facts about the Waratah that we have. His bearing at the inquiry made him what is called the perfect witness.

'But there was something else, something which Phillips did not record until later.'

I searched in the cabinet again and pulled out a photo-copy document.

I quoted. ' "During the evening of the second day I was on the bridge of the Clan Macintyre. I saw — or thought I saw — a curious thing.

' "Just as the angry light from the storm was fading from the wind-torn sky, to which great waves were leaping, I got a glimpse through the wrack of a small vessel far away to starboard, or landwards.

' "I rubbed my eyes and looked again, but the gloom and piling seas had hidden her, and I did not see her any more. Yet I am absolutely positive she was not imaginary.”

' "She was a weird, old-fashioned sailing ship, with a tremendous high bow and stern, squat and square, with three masts, the foremast raked forward and the mizzen raked back.

' "What made me feel colder than the icy rain and wind was that she was sailing into the teeth of the wind- a thing impossible!

' "Was she the Flying Dutchman, going to the Waratah's funeral, or returning from it?

' "I did not like the look of that ship in the distance, and had three cups of boiling cocoa to bring me back to the present."'

She was silent, puzzled.

There was an imperative knock at the door.

The moment was past.

'Dockyard superintendent to see you, sir.' It was Fourie, the bo'sun.

'On deck, sir.' He grinned. 'Can't believe his bleedin' eyes, begging your pardon, miss.'

I saw the man examining the hole in the deck. I dodged and took her up to the crushed radio hut. After what I had just said, I owed it to her to show what the storm had done to my ship. Patches of rust had begun to appear on the jagged metal where the radiosonde hut had been, and along the buckled edges of the forward catwalk to the harpoon gun platform. During the first day of the tow we had planked a wooden patch over the gaping socket where the winch had been; now it looked more irregular and untidier in the rain coming in from the grey sea than it did when dry; the rain also emphasized the line of the buckled bow; it drifted in through the broken windows of the bridge.

She looked round intently, disbelievingly. She did not speak. Her only response was a quick jerky sigh, an intake of breath maybe, a smothered exclamation. Then-our lips were together and our bodies close and warm, as if of their own impulse they sought to burn out the icy desolation and terror of that night whose witness was before us. How long we stood in each other's arms I do not know.

It was Fourie and his sideburns who brought our surroundings back to us. He came carrying a battered umbrella with an air of diffident, apologetic gallantry. The deck, the docks and the rain came into focus again.

'Begging your pardon, sir,' he said with a sidelong, half-reproachful glance at her damp hair. He held out the umbrella to her; abstractedly she took it and thanked him. He gave a half-amused salute with his fist and shambled away.

I groped for something ordinary to say. I nodded towards the dockyard man.

'When I hand over to him, I hand over my command. That is why I wanted to let you see the ship first.'