Seagulls in My Soup (27 page)

“I'm making for the west coast of Ibiza, Antonio. I'm going to seek shelter in the lee, or get her around to San Antonio!” This was a small port and holiday resort on the northwest side of Ibiza island. “We can get her to a doctor there!”

The weather, now that we were running away from it, was far less violent.
Cresswell
retreated to the west into the black nothingness of the night. Antonio leaned his streaming wet head close to me. “Yes, she will be safe if we do that. Saint Anthony is my patron saint!”

I grinned at him, despite the hell we were undergoing. “Mine's Charlie Chaplin,” I shouted.

He actually laughed as I handed him the wheel and relieved him at the pump.

From the strait to Es Vedra, on the southwest tip of Ibiza, was about fourteen miles. Off the wind, on a dead run, still with all sail up,
Cresswell
flew, her stern yawing this way and that, more or less on an even keel now, but rearing and pitching like a maddened steer. Antonio and I still fought the stiff pump and struggling helm.

By five o'clock, in the murky light of a rain-ripped gray sky, weary by now, only kept ataut by Sissie's cocoa and the screams of Señora Puig, we sighted, about a quarter of a mile away, the great conical rock of Es Vedra, almost a thousand feet high, huge and ghostly as it reared up to the low black clouds, straight from the seabed. Then we knew there might be hope for us in this insane night.

I managed to get a peep down below again. Sissie and now Miss Pomeroy were both bending over the squirming shape of
Señora
Puig. I called down, “OK, Sissie?”

She turned to me sternly. “Go away!” she shouted abruptly. Then she seemed to gather herself together. She braced herself against the midship sponson in the wildly pitching cabin. “Oh,
deah
Skippah!” she howled, back to normal now, “it reahlly, honestly is not the place for a
chep
down heah! Ai'm sure that Señora Puig will be
dreadfully
embarrassed . . . and with you being British and everything!” As she hollered she moved toward the steaming kettle on the stove. Behind her, hanging onto the berth-side for dear life, La Pomeroy, her battered face the color of some ghastly painter's palette, tried to see me through her almost-closed eyes. A glimmer of a smile flitted across the slab of beaten beef.

“Cocoa?” I said hopefully to Sissie. “We'll soon be in the lee of Es Vedra.” Another almighty scream of pain broke loose from Señora Puig.

“No more cocoa, dahling Skippah!” shouted Sissie. “This is for us . . . Ai'll make you some as soon as the boat steadies up. Oh, you poor souls—you and Antonio must be simply . . .”

I didn't hear the rest of Sissie's comment. Antonio was now steering directly for a point about ten yards off Es Vedra rock.

“Plenty of depth?” I asked him.

“Sure, the rock drops down, almost vertical, to the . . .”

Even as he said it,
Cresswell
, with an almighty crash, yammered and stammered over
something.
Aghast, I glanced over the side. She was sliding over a rock only two or three feet below the surface!

All hell let itself loose. As we held on, Antonio and I, stupefied, the seas lifted
Cresswell
's hull and crashed it down on the flat-topped rock. With a roar terrible to a sailor's ear—horrible to
anyone's
ear—
Cresswell
scraped over the rock for twenty yards or so, lift and scrape, lift and scrape, with a noise like a steam train flying in and out of a short, dark tunnel. But the boat took it—right to the very last moment.

Then it happened.

I somehow knew it was going to happen. It wasn't a case of calculating the likelihood. It was more an instant prescience. The stern smashed down on the far edge of the rock just as we were about to clear the danger, miraculously, so we had thought, scot-free. The rudder hit the rock, the shock broke the rudder cable bottle-screws, and the rudder, being removable, jumped off its pintles.

The rudder was secured to the hull by a rope lanyard about six feet long, so we didn't lose it; but we were, in effect, rudderless. It would be extremely hazardous, even foolish, with the boat bouncing around as she was, to try to lean over the whaleback stern and recover the rudder. There were more pressing demands, to say the least.

It isn't often, thank all the gods, that a sailor finds himself out in a raging gale, with a possibly damaged keel, and rudderless, with an agonized, hysterical pregnant woman below, screaming blue murder, another one so badly beaten up that she can hardly see, and another who has never had any midwifery training.

I didn't need to tell Antonio. He pulled me to the wheel, cast off all the sheets, levitated himself somehow to the foot of the wildly swinging mainmast, and let go the jib, the gaff, and the main halyard. The mainsail came down with a clatter as Antonio scrabbled at the terylene and dragged the flailing sail down onto the coachroof. It was a performance which would have made a Chinese acrobat look like an undertaker.

With the boat now almost stopped in the crazily heaving seas, I could now leave the wheel and rescue the rudder. Soon, after panting and moaning for ten minutes, stretched right over the bouncing, narrow whaleback stern, I somehow managed to wangle the gudgeons of the eighty-pound rudder over the pintles on the pounding and lunging sternpost, re-screw the steering cables, and regain command of the boat.

Within minutes of getting underway again,
Cresswell
had zoomed beyond Es Vedra rock. Quite suddenly, as the rock loomed over us, very close, there was no more wind, no more panicky seas. It was as though the storm had never been.
Cresswell
was one minute yawing, pounding, rising, and falling like a started stag; the next minute upright, sedate, and slowing. Now almost the only noises were the loud groans and sobs of Señora Puig below.

I turned to Antonio. He looked exhausted and very glum indeed. “We'll stay in the lee here until we get things straightened up a bit below. It's like a pig-sty down there. You get the bilges pumped out and I'll check the keel. Then we'll high-tail it for San Antonio. We can be there in two hours or so.”

We lowered the main and jib again, and left the mizzen up to cock her bow against any stray gust of wind which might find
Cresswell
's hiding place. Then, both exhausted, Antonio and I collapsed to smoke a dry cigarette for once. A mite of comfort.

The groans now coming from down below were heartrending, nerve-shattering—almost soul-destroying. It was horrible. I could not think of anything that sounded more terrifying since the 'berg had almost capsized onto
Cresswell
in the Arctic five years before. The screams were truly dreadful to hear. Now Antonio broke down. He bent his head forward and burst out sobbing.

I leaned over and clutched his shoulder. “Come on, Antonio, we'll leave the mess below. Let's get underway again. We can be in San Antonio by eight.” It was now dawn. Idleness is no cure for grief.

No sooner had Antonio dragged himself to his feet again, still sobbing, when another sound came from down below. It was not a high-pitched scream now; not a low, agonized moan; not a bellow of pain. It was thin but quite loud—loud enough to echo back from the almost vertical sides of the great rock only a few yards away from the bedraggled
Cresswell
. This voice yelled and gurgled. It screamed protest, it demanded justice, it hollered violent indignation. For a moment Antonio and I stood, quite close to one another, staring in disbelief into each other's eyes.

“
No lo creo!
I don't believe it . . .” murmured Antonio. Then he grabbed the mainsheet horse-rail and swung himself over it. “
Un chiquito?
A boy?” he shouted.

Sissie's voice sounded as if she were in a transport of delight. Of course she didn't understand Antonio's bellowed question. I translated for him as I came out of my shock. “Is it a lad or a lass, Sissie?”

“Oh,
deah
Skippah! Antonio, dahling,” she wheezed, “it's a lovely little
cheppie
—oh, so tiny and cuddly and
eb
solutely
cozy
and warm and
charming
 . . . Oh, I could simply ooze oodles and oodles . . .”

By this time Antonio and I were crowding the companionway hatch, both excited. All our bone-weariness was now completely forgotten. I peered down at the mess below. Sissie was standing, still wet through, her breasts heaving under the now dirty and bedraggled frilly blouse. In her arms she held a bundle wrapped in one of my shirts. Her faced beamed.

La Pomeroy somehow squeezed past us, a bucket in hand. Antonio rushed down the ladder and tried to grab the bundle from Sissie, but she wouldn't let go. “Skippah, tell him to be careful!”

I didn't need to. Antonio sensed that he was not in order, and poked one of his calloused fingers into the bundle. Now he was cooing, too. Behind him again now, Miss Pomeroy, all bashed and battered, took the hands of a weakly smiling, silent Señora Puig. Then Antonio looked down at his wife, reached for her, and broke into great, deep sobs.

By this time I had managed to drag myself down the ladder and take a peek at the tiny face. It wasn't very handsome. It looked a bit like a walnut, all creases and little wrinkles—rather like a miniature version of Miss Pomeroy's. The tiny lad's eyes were open. Sissie told me later that he couldn't see yet, but he looked at me and I could swear he winked. Then he stared at me for a few seconds longer, wondering just what kind of a world he had entered. He gazed into my salt-begrimed, sleep-begging, filthy, bearded face, curled his little mouth up, frowned, and let out a bellow which I told Sissie would be heard in Gibraltar.

“He's going to be a big, strong fisherman,” cooed Sissie. “Aren't you, oh you adorable little cheppie.”

“More like a bloody cattle-boat skipper, with a voice like that,” said I.

Now Antonio was on his knees, praying. In his hands he held his wife's rosary. As I turned and started up the ladder to get the sails up and head for San Antonio with our new passenger, I noticed Sissie's hands. Both were scalded and blistered by hot water from the fallen kettle.

That's how Antonio Cecilio Tristan Vedra Pomeroy
Cresswell
Puig of Formentera received his name.

We got into San Antonio at about nine a.m. Señora Puig was collected by a hastily called doctor, who also examined Sissie and Miss Pomeroy before Antonio and I carried the baby's mother ashore. Sissie, despite her bandaged hands, insisted on carrying the baby to the car, clucking and cooing at it all the way down the jetty, with La Pomeroy at her side, holding blindly to Sissie's hem. It was like a refugee arrival.

Sissie paid for Miss Pomeroy's treatment, of course, and in another few days they were both their old selves again, La Pomeroy even down to moaning about the turn her late love affair had taken. “OhpoorpoorSven! Idon'tknowwhathe'lldonowwithnoonetolookafterhim!”

“Serve the bugger right,” I told her. “I can't understand you, Miss P. There he's been knocking seven bells out of you, and now you're worrying about him . . .”

Sissie, still bandaged but healing fast, sat at Miss Pomeroy's side. She said nothing, but from her look I knew she thought me hard.

Miss Pomeroy burst into silent tears and bent her gray-rooted, blue-rinsed hair over her twelve strings of pearls and her now-washed blue silk dress. The silver shoes looked very much out of place in
Cresswell
's cabin.

It had been decided that Miss Pomeroy would stay with Sissie and me until her “guardian” in Leeds (whoever
he
was) sent her the fare home to England in reply to a hastily written letter from Sissie. It is not often that a sailor finds himself trapped with a bishop's sister and a star of the 1919 Follies. I realized that I had been singled out by the Fates for a singular honor. I resigned myself to acceptance. The fare wouldn't be too long arriving; then Miss P. would disappear over the horizon in the general direction of some obscure Yorkshire suburb, and I would again be able to look the small, dark fishermen of Ibiza straight in the eye.

“Oh I'm so much looking forward to being in dear old England again but I shall so miss poor Sven . . .”

I waited for no more. I asked Sissie for the loan of two dollars and headed with Nelson to a nearby fisherman's bar in the now almost deserted resort of San Antonio. Nelson wagged his tail as he looked up at me striding along, as if he were trying to cheer me up. I looked down at him. “Bloody women! Don't know if they're on their ass or their elbows!” Nelson wheezed.

A week later, with Sissie's hands and Miss Pomeroy's face almost healed, Sissie and I sailed back around to Ibiza town. We sent Miss P. back overland by bus. There would have been no escaping that squealing voice at sea.

Sissie bought some diesel fuel before we sailed, and we had a good, steady passage back.

Going into Ibiza harbor was as near as I'll ever feel to going home. The little general's converted fishing boat wasn't at the outer mole, but there was a brand-new-looking twenty-four-foot converted ship's lifeboat, all gleaming white and sparkling in the sun. I stared at it as we dropped our anchor, then realized, astonished, that it was in fact none other than Dreadnaught. The elderly, bronzed, mustachioed Romeo in the new gray suit, standing on deck, was none other than Amyas Cupling, the engineer-poet.

“Amyas! What ho!” I called out to him.

He leaned forward on a brand-new steel guard-rail and hollered back at me. “
Cresswell
, ahoy! Tristan, old man! Miss Saint John! Had a good cruise, as it were?”

“Pretty fair! Dreadnaught looks . . . splendid!” I replied.
Cresswell
was almost alongside Dreadnaught by now.

“Thanks. Of course the engine is still down, as it were. I'm going to refit it in Venice for the winter!”