Jubela was off watch and Tafline sat scanning the sea and the shoreline with my glasses: watching, hoping, tireless.
'An island!'
I threw a quick bight of halliard round a cleat and slithered to her side.
No island had ever been recorded hereabouts.
'There!' she pointed, giving me the glasses. 'It's dark against the white.'
The bucking deck and my unsteady hands made focusing difficult.
Then I saw the tiny cross at the summit. I laughed. I had not realized how keyed up. I really was. My nerves were as stretched as Touleier's rigging.
'Diaz made the same mistake four centuries ago,' I told her, disappointed. 'The cross is a replica of Diaz' original, which tumbled down and was found in fragments among the rocks below.'
'But — it looks like an island!' she maintained.
"That's why it deceived the experts for so long,' I went on. 'Its actual name is False Islet. Diaz logged that he had planted his cross on an island, and for hundreds of years men searched for an island, just as we are doing. Until an acute historian-detective hit on the secret of False Islet.'
She was still game. 'No chance of the Waratah being ashore there?'
'Not a chance,' I answered. 'Since the cross was found, thousands of people have visited the place. You can walk from the mainland across a sand causeway to it.' I added, to let her down lightly and not dampen her keenness, 'It's so easy to be deceived on this coast. In a few hours we'll come to a spot called Ship Rock. Another near it is called The Wreck. If you want to imagine things, the natural topography gives one full scope.'
Towards sunset the wind eased and backed to the south. We took in Touleier's spinnaker for the night, leaving her moving well under the American-cut mainsail and jib. We could not be off the Bashee until the following evening at the earliest, if the wind held. In the crowded shipping lane I decided to rig a spotlight high in the rigging to illuminate the sails so that we would not be run down by some unwatch-ful steamer. Touleier held close to the coast and at intervals the lighted resorts stood out clearer almost than the navigational lights. A thin veil of spume from the breakers hung over the cliffs. It was scarcely necessary for me to listen to the radio met. reports to know that the main front had bypassed the Cape — the change of wind direction southwards was a certain pointer that we had nothing to expect, or to fear, from this particular south-wester.
As we sat alone in the cockpit-she was half-turned away from me, gazing towards the land — she suddenly said:
'Did you really see the Flying Dutchman, Ian?'
She had never spoken of it again since that day when first the news of the Gemsbok panel reached us. My stomach knotted at her words. Gone was the quiet pleasure of sailing.
‘I told you, I saw a ship, an ancient ship, sailing against the wind.'
There was a long pause. She watched the distant coastline. 'You didn't link her in your mind with the Flying Dutchman!' 'No.’
She got up quickly, turned to me and dropped on her knees. She scanned my face, deeply, tenderly.
'My darling — are you quite sure of what you saw?'
In that moment, I would have traded away a dozen Waratahs for her.
I leaned forward and touched a wisp of short hair above her ear. She would not let my fingers go.
'When I was thrown against the rear of the bridge by the big wave,' I explained, 'I wasn't stunned. My sole concern at that moment was to prevent Walvis Bay from broaching to. Nothing was further from my thoughts than the Flying Dutchman-or the Waratah. My only thought was to save my ship. I grabbed the wheel. Then I saw. It was a ship, and she was close, between Walvis Bay and the land. She was darkened. It was all too quick to distinguish any details. I mean, I couldn't distinguish gunports, deckhouses, porthole lights or anything like that.'
'No human figures? A man with … with.. ’
'A bloodied sword? — No.'
'It was more an outline, then?’
'She seemed almost on top of us. I saw a high prow and a towering, square stern, and I noticed particularly the way she was heading — south-west. That meant she was sailing right into the eye of the wind.'
'The sails, what did the sails look like?'
I paused and considered. 'Now you come to ask, I don't remember seeing any sails. I should, being a sailor. But what struck me most forcibly was the way she was going. Both her stern and bow were quite distinct, both were high and well defined. There was no mistaking them. It was for all the world like one of those pictures you've seen of an old-fashioned caravel.'
'And you and Phillips-are the only two who claim to have seen this ancient ship? You are sure there is no other record of her? ‘
'Certain,' I replied. 'You might even discredit my sighting by saying that I had been subconsciously influenced by all my delving into the Waratah disaster. But Phillips himself-no! When Phillips sighted what he himself called the Flying Dutchman, he had no idea even that the Waratah was missing.
He had brought the Clan Macintyre successfully through a great storm. Half his ordeal was already behind him. No, what Phillips saw, he saw in daylight, not at night.'
She looked at me sharply, and then helped me slack off the mainsail under the dropping wind, waiting, in her quiet way, for me to continue.
'Let's discount my sighting for the moment. Phillips knew all about sailing ships. He stated categorically that the mizzen of the caravel he saw was raked back, and the foremast forward.'
'Your sighting is so recent, and yet Phillips' is much more explicit,' she said quietly.
'I can't say I saw the masts or the sails,' I went on. 'But I saw the hull clearly. The high bow and stern were exactly as Phillips describes them. And she was definitely sailing against the wind. It scared Phillips. He drank cocoa. I felt more like a shot of rum.'
'Were you frightened. Ian, like he was?’
'I knew only fear,' I replied sombrely. ‘I have tried since, over and again, to try and rationalize it. I still go cold when I have a nightmare and see right ahead of me that dark, old-fashioned hull and Walvis Bay about to crash into it. There were seconds only between us and certain death, that I know.'
She turned away and spoke so softly that I had to crane to hear what she said.
‘I saw nothing, yet I felt it all, hundreds of miles away, that night. It's impossible to describe the feeling. It was the same that first day I came aboard and saw your photographs.'
We left it at that. But had I 'felt' the Waratah then, I would have put the yacht about and nothing would ever have induced me to go in search of her again. As it was, the wind and the sea were quieting; it was a joy to have her close against me in the cold chill as the night wore on. There were no ghosts at sea that night. She was warm, she was alive, she was mine.
The lid of the Waratah’s coffin lifted next night, and the ghosts escaped.
At dawn Touleier was south of the Bashee.
We had sailed all day northwards, never out of sight of the great forests and high cliffs which come down almost to the water's edge. Far out at sea, even, we could hear the breakers. It is an iron shore. One scarcely ever finds a seashell which has not been smashed by the force of the waves. We both grew more tense as Touleier approached the Bashee, and she was very silent. We contented ourselves with minor tasks about the yacht and left unsaid many things. We did not talk about the Waratah.