King of the Sea

Chapter 16

Chapter 16

The ink on her journal had dried by now. She laid it down and came to him. No woman's lips had ever felt so soft and warm, nor her body so firm and ... and what? There was a kind of desperation in the way Teresa clung to him.

"How much longer have we?" she asked. "I must go back on deck." He felt like a traitor as he raised his hands to pull her arms down from about his neck.

"How long?"

"About two hours."

She gave a startled little jump and then began pressing her lips to his neck in a rapid succession of kisses, hot and urgent. Troy, who had quite forgotten what it was like to have a woman do that to him, almost yielded to her unspoken invitation. But, with superhuman effort, he disengaged himself at last and retreated to the door. "It's..." he stammered. "We're... everything's going to be all right."

The look of reproach in her eyes harried him all the way back to the bridge.

After several eternities dawn came at last, and with it a scene of desolation that struck dismay into every heart. The unknown shore was half a mile off the port beam, running almost due north-south at that point. To the north they could see it curl round in a more northeasterly direction; its southern end, however, was lost in squally rain and the dark of the storm.

"There's a stretch of coast south of Portsmouth looks like that, Cap'n," Boris said. "Shall I fetch the chart?"

Troy nodded, but with little enthusiasm. "Not that it matters much. There's no getting nearer, no matter what coast that is." His practised eye was scanning the line of the surf, up and down, down and up, seeking any irregularity that might spell hope.

When Boris returned Troy passed him the spyglass. "What d'you make of that bit there? Look dead ashore and then south a point or two."

"Got it." The First Officer confirmed. He watched several mighty rollers break before he added, "Well, it'd take three or four them to smash us to bits. Any one would do the job along the rest of the line!" "Mark it," the Captain told him.

He did better than that, for he found a place on the chart where two shelves of rocks parted in a vee - which would cause just such a weakening in the power of the surf. And better still, the narrowest part of the vee was obscured by the speckled texture that, on a marine chart, denotes sand or fine shingle.

There was a sudden, sickening thud, deep in the bowels of the ship. Both men thought at first that she had struck a rock, though the leadsman had been continually reporting depths of twenty fathoms and more. Still, there were such things as pinnacles.

Then Troy realized what it was. Phoenix, held fast on her anchor, felt solid and heavy; her timbers creaked at the assault of each giant swell. No longer was it so; now she felt skittish and light, tossing freely at each movement of the ocean. "That link has snapped of its own accord!" he cried.

He ran to the back of the bridge but the bosun, also guessing what had happened, was already preparing to set the storm sail and the mizzen-top. Boris was calling all hands on deck for the umpteenth time that voyage, it seemed. Troy returned to the chart. His heart was pounding and every muscle was tense; it amazed him to feel how the tiredness simply drained away in seconds. He felt like a new man, fresh from a sleep around the clock. Quicker almost than thought itself, he formed a reserve plan if his attempt to cut and run failed. "Stand by to set every last stitch of canvas we carry, Mr Boris," he barked.

"Aye aye, sir!" Both men were suddenly in their element.

"Starboard your helm, Mr Quartermaster. Full

turn."

"Aye aye, sir!"

Orders and responses came crowding other's heels. It took an amazing time for the liberated Phoenix to drift downwind to the point where her stern rope took up the slack - so much so that Troy even began to wonder if the chain hadn't snapped at the anchor itself rather than at the hawse pipe. But at last they felt the check as stern rope and anchor chain stretched into a single, taut cable. on each

This was the most critical moment of all in a plan that was, in itself, a string of desperate expedients. The wind was nor'easterly, oblique to the coastline, the waves came from due east, running dead onshore So far, Phoenix had been held at anchor, facing somewhere between the two, with the wind to port and the sea to starboard. Now that she was no longer held by the bow, the wind should nudge her round, swinging her on her stern rope until she came broadside on to the waves. By then the wind would be fair and large behind her, still on her port quarter. Troy's plan was to sever the stern rope with an axe at some point during that swing-around, roughly when she was pointing south east. At that angle she should be able to sail steadily before the wind, on storm sails alone, quickly putting the miles between herself and that treacherous coast. It all depended on catching the right moment.

In fact, she never swung at all; it all went wrong from the start. Though the wind was generally nor'easterly, it became as it neared the coast, gusting anywhere from northerly to due west. A gust from the north would have spun her in half the time, one from the west would send her tripping over her own stern rope, which was running the full length of the port side to the remnant of the anchor chain ahead.

The gust- and a fierce one at that came from the west. Phoenix immediately keeled over her own stern line, turning broadside on to the seas. Even that would not have been fatal if it had happened between two waves. Unfortunately, at the very instant when she was keeled over, a mighty swell got beneath her and lifted her twenty feet or more toward the skies. The whole crew prayed for the anchor to lose its grip and start to drag once more, leaving them still tethered and able to give it another go.

Too late the bosun released the stern capstan, hoping to pay out a little slack. The rope parted with a mighty c***k, came lashing sternward with a vicious whistle, and whipped the man's head clean off, leaving the rest of the watch miraculously untouched.

For a moment nobody moved, nobody screamed, nobody even breathed. It was done so suddenly, and now so eerily calm again. The rope lay on the deck, so limp and inanimate you could not believe it capable of anything so lethal and terrifying. Only the bosun's headless corpse, pouring blood in diminishing gushes, bore witness to what had, indeed, taken place.

Troy was first to recover. In fact, it was the splash made by the severed head as it plunged into the sea about a cable's length off her stern that broke the spell of horror for him and alerted him to their present danger. "We'll go for the gap, Mr Boris." There was twenty years of command in his voice.

"We've no time to come about, sir," the First Officer replied.

"No. We'll run her aground backwards. Set all her foresail first with yards braced back."

While the officer ran to carry out these commands, Troy turned to the port watch, where McLellan had assumed command, and shouted, "Counterbrace the mizzen-main. Set and counterbrace mizzen t'gallant." Phoenix, now at complete liberty, responded to the wind with alacrity - too much so, to start with. "I

can't hold her, Cap'n," cried the quartermaster.

Troy ran to share the wheel with him. "We'll have the foresails to help in a jiffy," he gasped. "See that gap in the breakers - three points off the stern? Just off the port capstan?" He was laughing suddenly. Free! He had never felt so wild and free.

"Got her!" the man grunted.

Troy took a grip on himself, though he was still elated. "Port your helm and bring her through that, Mr Rogers. And steer as you never steered before. If the charts are right and the tide with us, we have no more than twice her beam to slip her through."

"A camel!" the man grumbled. The foresails, well braced aback, were helping to push her bows to starboard now, considerably easing the wheel. "A camel through a needle's eye."

"If any man afloat can do it, Mr Rogers, that man is you. I'm staking the lives of all aboard on that!" As he turned to go forr'ard he added, "I'll give you what help I can with the sails. We'll put up all the canvas we can."

Abe Rogers understood then that he was to take her through the gap and run her straight at the shore without any further command, using his experience and judgement alone.