CHAPTER SIXTEEN

On the afternoon of the second day out from Bundaberg, the skies began to clear, but the wind still remained strong. The Faithful was now in deep water, having left the shallow water of the continental shelf astern, when, during the night, she passed over the southern extremities of the Great Barrier Reef.

Now she was charging along under full sail with the wind on her starboard beam, on a course which would take her directly across the Coral Sea to the Solomon Islands.
Kiri heard footsteps on the bow planks above her. The hatch cover opened for the first time in days, and sunlight streamed into her tiny prison. Unable to see, she shielded her eyes from the dazzling glare of the sun with one hand, and held Sky closely to her with the other. Suddenly the front of her dress was torn open and a hard calloused hand gripped her throat.
Instinctively she seized the strong forearm in front of her face and sank her teeth deep into flesh she was still too blinded to see.
There was a loud grunt and the arm was quickly yanked away.
`Rotten bitch.'
The voice belonged to Bates, the labor recruiter. Kiri looked up, her eyes becoming used to the light. She recognized him immediately, the same ugly lout who had used her as a human shield when he kidnapped her from her island of Kiriwina so long ago. But now there were hard white scars on his cruel face, a legacy of the whipping Ben had given him on the South Brisbane dock. He was lying on the deck, his angry face twisted with rage, framed by the hatch against the clear blue sky.
Bates' arm hung down into the compartment. It was bleeding profusely with the hand clenched into a tight bloody fist. He swung it savagely, seeking retribution for the wound he had suffered.
Kiri quickly shrunk back out of reach of the flailing fist. She heard a shout on the deck. Bates quickly withdrew his arm, and the darkness returned when the hatch was hastily slammed shut.
She heard more footsteps on the deck. There was more loud shouting, followed by what sounded like a scuffle. When it was over, the hatch opened again. Kiri looked up into the glare and saw Clancy the mate.
'Captain says this hatch can stay open now, so long as there's no rain, spray or sailors goin' down in there. You and the boy can sit up here on the bow and get some air if you want. But as soon as it starts to get dark, I'll be back to lock it.'
Kiri waited until Clancy had gone away before she poked her head up out of the hatch. The air outside was fresh and clean after the stench of sweat and vomit in the forepeak. She scrambled out onto the deck and pulled Sky up after her.
The bow still rose and fell. There was a big swell running, but the crests of the waves were nearly two hundred yards apart and the motion of the vessel was now a slow easy roll. Kiri sat with her arm around Sky with the wind in their faces, until the sun came to rest, like a huge red ball on the horizon, and slowly sank into the ocean.
For the next nine days the Faithful held true to her course, sailing under clear skies with a favorable sou'-easter filling her sails.
The rough passage which Isaiah Cockburn had expected at the start of the voyage was now the last thing on his mind as he sat at the chart table and carefully made his daily entry into the ship's log.
He carefully noted the Faithful's position, established earlier in the day when he had taken a noon sun-sight with his sextant. He made a rough estimate of the wind velocity and entered that too into the log. When he turned to the barometer to take a reading he was startled to see the glass had plunged alarmingly.
Cockburn took a long second look at the weather-glass, then hastily left his cabin and climbed up the main companionway to the deck.
One look confirmed his fears. High in the sky were clusters of mares' tails—long wisps of whitish clouds.
Mares' tails, accompanied by a sudden fall in the glass meant only one thing—a tropical storm was approaching.
Cockburn turned to face the wind. It had lost much of its strength. Soon he knew it would return with a vengeance and whip up the sea into a seething frenzy. He knew it was the calm before the storm.
`Clancy.' Cockburn yelled at the top of his voice.
The mate scrambled down a ratline to the deck.
`I know Isaiah,' Clancy said before Cockburn spoke, `I've just been aloft. I'd say we haven't got much more than six or seven hours before it hits us.'
Cockburn nodded his agreement. `Then prepare the ship.'
`All hands - prepare to shorten sail and batten down.'
Sixteen men jumped to Clancy's command. Eight sailors scrambled up the ratlines of the square-rigged forward mast. They quickly lowered every sail, then lashed each one down tightly to its yard. Four others doused the two most foremost of her three stay-sails and tied them fast to the bow-sprit.
The rest of the hands lowered all but the largest of the fore and aft rigged mizzen mast sails at the stern of the vessel. The sail left hoisted was a gaff-rigged spanker, ringed to the mast, and laced at the foot to a twenty six foot long boom, at least fourteen inches in diameter, and fashioned of solid Tasmanian huon pine.
With just the spanker and the forward stay-sail flying, and with everything that was capable of moving securely lashed or battened down, the Faithful continued on along her course and awaited the fury of the storm.
During the few hours before darkness fell, the mares' tails gradually increased until the sky was filled with a whitish haze. After darkness came, and when the moon was briefly visible through breaks in the cloud cover, it was shrouded in a eerie misty halo.
The first incredibly powerful wind gusts hit the brigantine over her beam just few minutes before midnight. Cockburn ordered Clancy to tie a double reef into the spanker. Eight men crawled out onto the rolling wheel-house roof over which the huge sail-boom extended, and relying more on the sense of feel than sight, reefed down the big heavy sail in total darkness.
Then the rain came. It lashed down on the deck—justscattered windswept showers at first, but then later it came with the ferocious intensity and sheer volume of water found only in the tropics. And all the time the wind kept increasing. It screamed in the rigging and whipped up the sea into huge towering waves, mercifully hidden from view by the blackness of the night. But the deafening roar they made as they crashed down on the Faithful was spine-chilling.
Cockburn, Clancy and four sailors remained in the wheel-house all through the long night. The rest of the crew were sent below to their bunks to get what sleep they could, until it was time to stand their watch or take a turn at the helm.
During the night the wind had backed around to the stern quarter. Now the Faithful was racing along, pushed forward by the ever increasing wind and huge following seas.
Up in the forepeak, Kiri and Sky were tossed around wildly as the bow pitched and heaved, then raced headlong down the face of the waves. Sky was already limp and unconscious, and Kiri was so sick she felt as if she wanted to die.
When the first grey streaks of dawn appeared, Cockburn's tired and bloodshot eyes peered out through a porthole in the wheel-house. What he saw was awesome. The seascape was terrifying. Angry mountainous seas with long overhanging crests were breaking everywhere. Between them there were huge streaky patches of white foam, and the air was filled with spray.
The stay-sail at the bow had blown out during the night. Cockburn estimated the wind strength to be over sixty knots. Even inside the wheel-house the howl of the wind in the rigging was deafening.
The Faithful was taking a beating which Cockburn wasn't sure she could withstand. The huge seas buffeting the stern quarter were becoming even bigger, and more dangerous. The Faithful was moving too fast—far too fast. With the double-reefed spanker still flying and even with three men on the wheel, it was becoming harder by the minute to maintain control of the vessel, and prevent her from broaching and swinging broadside onto the waves.
During the night, the Faithful had jibed twice, accidently allowing the wind to send the enormous boom swinging at lightening speed, a full one hundred and eighty degrees, from one side of the vessel to the other, and threatening to tear out the mast.
Cockburn decided to take the last option open to him—to take down the spanker and run directly before the wind and the following seas, and hope the speed of the vessel was reduced enough to maintain control.
Clancy called up a dozen men from below. Before going outside the wheel-house and into the wind and rain, the men carefully tied themselves one to the other, so if one man slipped, his mates would save him from being washed or blown overboard.
Half a dozen sailors crawled out onto the heaving deck and prepared to lower the sail. When the halyards were released the men on the wheel strained to bring up the helm, in order to point the bow far enough into the wind to allow the sail to become slack. When at last it did, all hands scrambled onto the wheel-house roof to haul it down.
At that moment an enormous wave knocked the bow of the Faithful back off the wind, the spanker filled with air and the huge boom swung wildly across the wheel-house roof, breaking bones and cracking skulls as it mowed every last man, screaming and shrieking, into the sea. In seconds the string of broken bodies was swallowed up in the swirling grey water.
There was another sickening thud when the boom hit the supporting mizzen mast shrouds with such force that it wrenched the bolts of their anchoring chain-plates clear out of the ship's hull on the port side. Then there was a loud splintering crack when the unsupported mast snapped like a twig and carried its rigging over the side into the sea.
Cockburn stood in stunned silence. Clancy screamed at what was left of the crew to get axes to cut away any of the mast's rigging that was still attached to the ship. Already the mast was slewing around in the water with its end slamming into the hull like a giant battering ram. Everyone knew, unless the mast could be freed by cutting away the remaining shrouds on the starboard side of the ship, it was just a matter of time before the mast staved-in the hull, and sent the Faithful to the bottom.
With the mast still attached to the ship she became almost impossible to steer. She broached constantly, swinging side-on to the roaring seas, and huge walls of water roared over her decks, threatening to capsize her.
Cockburn and Bates took the wheel as Clancy led the remaining men on the ship, four crewmen and the vessel's government labor agent and interpreter, out into the maelstrom with axes to cut away the starboard shrouds.
It was the worst thing they could have done.
No sooner were the men on the deck, than the three chain-plates on the starboard side yielded to the strain and pulled themselves out of the hull. In an instant the wire rope shrouds attached to them flew through the air, then whipped across the deck on their way to join the mast in the water on the other side of the ship.
Cockburn watched in horror as the shrouds sliced through the men's bodies, and a wall of water sweeping over the deck turned crimson as it washed them over the side.
A few hours after the mast broke free from the ship, a combination of the heavy going, fatigue, and advancing years, caused Isaiah Cockburn to collapse. When he dropped, his head slammed heavily into the sharp brass corner of a timber seat-locker. Blood oozed from a deep gash just above his temple as he passed into unconsciousness on the wheel-house floor.
Bates left the captain where he fell. For the rest of the day, wide-eyed and afraid, he held the vessel stern- on to the storm as best as he could. But by nightfall his mind and body could take no more, and he too finally succumbed to exhaustion and collapsed.
From then on the brigantine was left to her own devices, completely at the mercy of the sea.
But miraculously the Faithful managed to stay afloat, and somehow avoided being sucked into the eye of the cyclone. By midnight the conditions began to ease, as the storm spun off to the west toward the Queensland coast.
Bates came-to once during the night. When he awoke, the wheel-house was pitch black, the lantern having long since burnt its wick as well as the oil. Outside the wind still screamed, and huge waves still crashed over the ship.
Bates tried to get up, but the motion of the vessel threw him back to the floor. He fell down hard on top of Cockburn's body. In the darkness his hands closed around the captain's head, and he felt his fingers become sticky with blood. He held his ear close to Cockburn's mouth. He couldn't hear the captain drawing breath.
Panic gripped Bates when he realized he was the last man alive on a doomed ship. He screamed out in anguish into the night. Then he crawled into a corner of the wheel-house and lay there whimpering like a whipped pup. He lay curled up, his knees tucked under his chin, and holding his head in his hands, until mercifully he passed out once more.
When Bates awoke again, it was daylight, and a beam of sunlight was shining directly onto his face. He opened his eyes slowly, thinking he was in another time and another place.
The sunlight moved off his face and danced around the wheel-house wall. He got to his feet quickly and squinted outside.The wind had gone, and the sun was poking its way through a small patch of blue, in an otherwise grey, cloudy sky.A glimmer of hope appeared in Bates' eyes. The storm had passed. The Faithful was still afloat, though listing heavily to one side, and she was just rolling gently on a sloppy swell.Bates rubbed his eyes and grinned wearily, suddenly glad to be alive.
He turned away from the porthole and looked around the wheel-house. The grin slowly left his face. Something was missing. At first he couldn't put his finger on it. Then he looked down at the large pool of blood on wheel-house floor, and realized Isaiah Cockburn's body was gone.
Bates lurched out of the wheel-house. The deck was a shambles, littered with splintered timbers, blocks, and tangled lines which had not been severed from the ship during the storm. He stood holding onto the rail on the high side of the listing ship and called out Cockburn's name over and over again. Each time he called out he waited for a reply. None came.
Eventually he stumbled below down the main companionway. At the foot of the steps there was salt water up to his knees. He called out Cockburn's name. Again there was no answer. He waded forward toward the main hold. He saw daylight between the planking of the hull where the mast had been pounding the side of the ship. It was clear the rupture was the source of the water which was slowly swamping the Faithful.
Bates turned and waded back past the companionway to Cockburn's cabin in the aft section of the vessel. He pushed open the door and saw the captain. Cockburn sat strapped into his swivel chair at the chart table. His face was ghostly white and covered in crusted blood. His mouth hung wide open and his blue eyes, now pale and glazed, stared back at Bates.
At first Bates thought the Cockburn was dead. But then he got a start when the glazed eyes blinked.
`God almighty Isaiah,' Bates gasped, `I thought you were dead up there in the wheelhouse.'
Cockburn eyed Bates with distain, then spoke in short gasping breaths. `And I may well be soon, you sniveling yellow bastard. When I heard you crying like a baby up there,I came down here to die like a man'.
Bates glowered. `And so you will be, you old fool, and sooner than you think. This ship's takin' on water faster than six men could pump it out.' He turned to leave, then added, `I've got no time to waste here. I'm goin' to jury rig a ship's boat with a sail, fill it with provisions, and get off the Faithful—alone.'
`Go ahead Bates, I'm done for. But what of the Kanakas?'
Bates scowled. `What of 'em'?You don't think I'd take 'em with me do you?Anyway, with any luck they're already dead. But I sure as hell ain't takin' the time to go see.' The scowl changed to a grin. `I was goin' to do 'em in at the start of this voyage you know Isaiah, but Clancy caught me in the act.'
`I know that Bates.' Cockburn was breathing heavily, his eyes half closed. `Clancy told me.I entered the incident into the ship's log like everything else. But for the storm, I'd have had you answer to Silas Moser for it.'
Bates eyes widened in anger. He lunged at Cockburn and hit him hard across the face. Then he unbuckled the captain's seat strap and pushed his head under water. He held it there for a full minute after the old man's body gave its last feeble jerk.