Scend of the Sea

'You have spoken about what you call a Waratah storm which you say has special features which no other storm has. What are they?'

'The counter-current seems to take over.. ’

'Seems! Are you incapable of giving me a straight, factual reply, Captain Fairlie?'

I said, 'It's the effect of all this-the build-up. I've never known a wave like that. She didn't rise. Walvis Bay put her head down, not up, as she would do normally …'

'Bah!' roared the big man. 'There's not a man of us who has been to sea who hasn't seen a hell of a wave sometime. Now you want me to believe. . what the devil do you want me to believe?'

I had come prepared to tell him everything. Now I could not. If what I had explained was so patently unacceptable, how much more would that other be?

The C-in-C snapped the intercom switch impatiently.

'Perry! Come and shut this blasted thing off, will you?'

We waited until he had gone again. We sat and faced one another.

Then the C-in-C said, 'What I report to the Bureau may well rob you of your command-you know that, don't you?' 'Yes.'

They tell me you're a damn fine sailor. They've got nothing against you as a captain or a first-class weather-man except…'

'Waratah,' I said.

'You've allowed something which hasn't any substance to eat into you, cloud your judgment — even risk your life and your ship.' He stopped and added brutally, 'Kill your own brother.'

I was alone on that shattered bridge with the water pouring through, trying to swing her head clear of that dark sinister shape among the white waves.

I said, without heart, There'll be a proper official inquiry into my brother's death.'

Then I feel sorry for you if you can't do better in public than you have with me in private,' he replied tartly.

There was a pause. My mind shut fast on the Waratah. I had made up my mind. I wondered what Tafline had been doing during the hours I had been with the C-in-C.

'You're holding back on something, Fairlie,' snapped the C-in-C. 'I've a damn good mind to send a frigate or two to have a close look at the area.'

'South of the Bashee!' I interjected ironically.

'Listen!' he replied brusquely. 'You can make up your mind which way it's to go. You can tell me confidentially, and then we'll set the recorder going and I'll ask you the right questions and you can give the replies, as if we had never discussed it meanwhile with the machine off. That'll let you out. Otherwise..' He shrugged.

I stood up. 'Thanks for the chance. You're wasting your time if you think your ships will find anything where I failed. I've been there in daylight, too.'

The C-in-C's rough surgery was gentle compared to the brutal cautery of the Buccaneer inquiry.

When the massive air-sea search failed to find Alistair or any trace of his plane, the inquiry was announced for ten days later. It seemed to me to be rushing things, but public interest remained at a high pitch and I suspected that the Air Force wanted to put itself in the clear as soon as possible. The hearing was scheduled to be in public, as is customary with all military and civilian crash investigations.

Smarting from the interview with the C-in-C, I wanted to get away inland with her, find solace, forget about the Waratah. But I had brought my cabinet from the ship and stored the documents in her flat. The model of the Waratah had intrigued her first. She had made me lift off the removable top to explain the interior. She expressed delight at the scale reproduction of the first-class music lounge with its tiny 'minstrels' gallery' of carved wooden pillars in the centre and heavy curtains gathered at each wooden corner supporting post; plush, comfortable settees with backs tuckered like a Tibetan anorak; concealed lighting (the Waratah was the first ship ever to try it); and, inevitably, some potted palms. Starting with the model, she had lost herself in the mass of documents, microfilms, newspapers, weather reports, and the full evidence of the Board of Trade inquiry in London, until the days slipped by and we still had not moved from Cape Town.

Both of us had been tense at the beginning of the Buccaneer inquiry. She had sat by me on a hard chair in the big Ministry of Transport conference room. It had low concrete beams and a rather battered dais at one end for the chairman and two assessors. The place smelt of stale smoke. The battery of pressmen used old tin lids on the battered tables to crush out their cigarettes. The presence of so many reporters reflected the intense public interest. The public galleries, too, were crowded. Witnesses, set apart to one side of the room, had to run the gauntlet of the public eye as they walked from their seats to a stand by the chairman's table. The down-at-heel air of the place seemed an unworthy funeral parlour for a creature as swift and noble as the Buccaneer.

I was called on the second day. She pressed my hand quickly as I rose and walked up to the stand. A ripple ran through the news section. They, like myself, had been lulled into a comfortable drowsiness by the previous day's flat monotone of technicalities, flying and meteorological. The hearing was taking shape as an open-and-shut case of an aircraft being lost in bad weather through nobody's fault.

That is the way I wanted it, too, for Alistair's sake.

Musgrave, a Supreme Court counsel who had made his name by specializing in aircraft matters and was often called in to serve on boards of inquiry, led me through my sighting of Alistair's Buccaneer coming towards Walvis Bay, his passing over the ship, his disappearance. I breathed a sigh of relief. No suggestion of low-flying! Only a casual, passing reference to our rendezvous. I glossed over the datum point story; no one probed it.

I waited to be told to stand down.

Musgrave said, 'Thank you, Captain Fairlie.'

I turned to go, but he said almost casually.

'Did you and your brother find the Waratah's treasure, Captain Fairlie?'

A galvanic Shockwave passed through the newsmen. Pencils were grabbed, unsmoked cigarettes forgotten. Men and women whispered to each other in the public galleries.

Bewildered, I looked across at Tafline. She was sitting very still and upright on her hard chair; I could see how white her knuckles had gone from clenching her gloves. Already some people were starting to crane forward to look at her — they had seen me come from her side.

'There was no treasure in the Waratah,' I stated flatly.

'Which means, of course, that you found the ship which for sixty years has defied every effort to locate her?'

'I didn't say I found her,' I was confused, rattled, off balance. There was nothing in her manifests to show she carried bullion. .'

'Bullion, Captain Fairlie? Who said anything about bullion?'

Already a newsman or two had broken from the table and were racing for the nearest telephone.

'Listen,' I said desperately. The Waratah was carrying a cargo of frozen meat from Australia, some ore, a couple of thousand tons of bunker coal, 279 tons of fresh water. .'

Musgrave nodded, pleased. 'Exactly. We take your word for it, Captain Fairlie.' He slipped a pile of papers in front of him. 'In fact, in going through every single detail in connection with the Waratah — even to such a minute fact as the amount of fresh water in her tanks -1 think it is fair to say that there is no living person who knows as much about the Waratah as you do.'

I cringed for the next blow.

'In fact, Captain Fairlie, if it wasn't treasure you were after, I cannot see any reasonable. .' he emphasized the word ' — person going to a hundredth of the trouble you have done: weather, metacentric heights, minute analysis of evidence. .'