The Black Tide (28 page)

I felt my way in the blackness over piles of rope to the outline of the high poop deck, found the wooden steps leading up to it and came out on to the top of the dhow’s great after castle to see the dim outline of a figure sprawled across the helm. ‘Take her, man! The entrance. There’s a launch, you see – inflatable – take time to launch it though.’ His voice came slowly, full of coughs and gurgles, so that I knew there was blood in his throat.

‘You’re hit,’ I said. It was a bloody stupid remark.

‘Take the helm,’ he gurgled, slipping away from me in the dark and sliding to the deck.

The dhow yawed, the swept-up curve of the bow swinging away to port, the wind lifting the furled sail so that it flapped with a loud cracking noise. I looked up from the dark shape sprawled at my feet to see the lit tanker with the frowning cliffs behind it swinging across our stern. The movement quickened, the wind catching the bows, and I dived for the helm, throwing my weight against the long timber arm of it, forcing it over to port. I felt the pressure of the water on the rudder and slowly the bows steadied and began to swing back into the wind.

I waited until the tanker was directly astern of us, then I centred the helm, holding the dhow into the wind, hoping I was steering for the entrance. There was no chance of doing anything for Choffel or even finding out how badly he was
injured. The dhow wasn’t easy to steer. Like most straight-keeled vessels I had to anticipate her movements, countering each attempt of the head to pay off with a slight correction to the helm. She waddled and yawed like an old woman and once the wind got hold of her she was hard to control, very slow to respond and the engine labouring.

Ahead, I couldn’t seem to see anything beyond the ship’s stem, the lights of the tanker producing just enough of a glow to illumine the waist with its muddle of ropes, pulleys, sleeping mats and cooking gear and the mast with the great roll of sail strapped to the curved wing of the spar. These were all very clearly picked out, the upswing of the prow, too. But beyond that there was nothing, just a stygian blackness.

I could hear Choffel groaning. Once I thought he cried out. But the dhow required all my concentration and when I did glance down at him I couldn’t see him. That was when I remembered he was armed, but the dhow was paying off, the wind catching hold of the rolled-up sail and the bows falling off. Part of the sail had come loose, a fold of it billowing out in a dark bubble of canvas so that I thought I’d never get the bows back into the wind.

Away to port I could hear the sound of breaking waves, could just make out a line of white. Dark cliffs loomed, the line of white nearer, the sound of the waves louder. We were being set down on to the south shore of the
khawr
– or was it the land closing in as we neared the entrance? With the helm hard over, the bows slowly swung through the wind. I could feel it on my left side now, my eyes searching the darkness to starb’d, ears strained for the sound of breakers. I should have looked at that chart more closely, up there on the tanker’s bridge when I had the chance. There was a box fixed to the poop deck just for’ard of the helm, a big wooden box with an old-fashioned brass-knobbed binnacle in it. But I didn’t want to use my torch, and anyway I’d no idea where exactly the tanker had been moored in relation to the entrance, what the bearing would be. All I could remember was that the entrance was narrow and dog-legged, the bend being leftward going out.

The line of white was very close now, the cliffs visible as a
darker darkness in the night. I put the helm over and the bows swung easily to starb’d. I glanced astern at the lights of the tanker. They were swinging across our starb’d quarter and already she looked quite small, the reddish glow of the cliffs behind her fading. I was being forced off course, but the line of broken water to port was still closing in and nothing visible to starb’d. I heard a cry and saw a figure standing clutching at the ornamental rail near the thunderbox on the port side, his arm pointing for’ard. I checked the helm, peering beyond the vague flapping bundle of the sail. A dark line showed high above the bows, the shape of low hills, and in that instant I heard waves breaking and dragged the helm across to starb’d.

There was no response.

The wind had strengthened. It was blowing half a gale and I knew we were nearing the entrance. But there was nothing I could do, the long arm of the helm right over and the dhow not responding, her head held in the grip of the wind and the engine labouring. I watched appalled as the looming outline of the land ahead grew darker and higher, the sound of the surf louder.

And then the engine note changed, a sudden surge of power and the bows were coming round. I caught a glimpse of a figure crouched, or more likely collapsed, over some sort of a control rod set into the deck. But it was only a glimpse, for we were turning to port and in the entrance now, the blackness of land on either side, the wind howling and waves breaking all round us.

It was like that for five, perhaps ten minutes. It seemed an age. Then suddenly the wind died away, the sea took on a regular pattern with only the occasional break of a wave. We were out of the
khawr
. We were out into the Persian Gulf and the dhow was bashing her way through the waves, rolling wildly, the engine racing and everything rattling and shaking as we steamed into the night with no land visible any more, just an empty void of darkness all around us.

Dawn broke with ragged clouds streaming low overhead and a lumpy sea. It was a grey world, visibility growing reluctantly but, as the light increased, gaps appeared in the overcast, glimpses of clear sky showing a greenish tinge. The dhow wallowed sedately, rolling as her bows ploughed into the waves, and the beat of the engine was unhurried and regular. We were at least ten miles from the shore. I could see it on the starb’d quarter, low down to the south and west of the familiar Group Flash Two of the Didamar light, the dark line of it turning an arid brown as the sun rose.

We were out into the Hormuz Straits, into the main shipping lanes. There was a tanker quite close with its steaming lights still showing white, another hull-down, and a third coming up astern. I had the binnacle box open and was steering a full point east of north. Choffel, when I had hauled him off the engine speed control linkage, had muttered about the tanker’s launch being very fast, powered by a single big outboard. But I thought it more likely they would be searching the inshore traffic zone, between the Didamar and Tawakkul lights, not right out here between the west and eastbound tanker lanes.

There was blood on the deck where Choffel had lain after collapsing at the helm, blood on the carved end of the helm itself. But he hadn’t bled where he had lain clutching the speed control lever, or in the vicinity of the thunderbox where he had hauled himself up by the rail to warn me we were driving on to the north side of the entrance. And when I
had got him down to bin Suleiman’s hovel of a cabin and laid him out on a sleeping mat with a stinking salt-stiffened blanket to cover him, I didn’t think he had been bleeding then.

A pity Sadeq hadn’t killed him. Now it was up to me. I yawned, my eyes heavy-lidded, my body sagging with tiredness. I had had no sleep and I always found the first 24 hours at sea a little trying.

I couldn’t just pitch the man over the side. Or could I? Fate had delivered him into my hands as though of intent, so why didn’t I do it – now, while I was too tired to care whether he was a corpse or not? If I didn’t do it now, if I let him stay there, then I’d be responsible for him. I’d have to feed him. I’d have to do something about his wound. It was in his stomach, he’d said. And I’d have to clean him up. My God! Acting as nurse and sick-bay attendant to the man who had sent Karen to her death! If that was what I’d have to do, then Fate had played a dirty trick.

In the east the clouds were turning a flaming red, the sea catching fire as it had done that evening at Ras al Khaimah. It seemed a long time ago. A gap in the clouds took on the appearance of an open furnace, the ragged edges gleaming like red-hot clinkers. I saw a heraldic lion crouched in the cloud-gap. I blinked my eyes and it was a dragon breathing fire, its scales all crimson, and then the sun appeared, a bright red orb that slowly turned through vermilion and orange-yellow to a searing glare that changed the sea to a brilliant purple and the waves to glittering gold. Suddenly it was hot, the sun burning up the clouds, the fire-brown streak of the Musandam Peninsula lost in haze.

How far to Qisham, the big island on the north side of the Straits? I couldn’t remember. And there was Larak, and inside of that Hormuz itself, both of them much smaller islands. I stood leaning on the helm, swaying with it as I tried to remember the chart, my eyes drooping, half-closed against the glare. Surely I was far enough out? Why not turn now, head eastwards into the sun? The Straits were like a horseshoe facing north. As long as I kept to the middle, steering clear of all the ships, and of the islands and reefs of Ras Musandam, following the curve of the Iranian coast,
there was no reason why the dhow should attract the attention of sea or air patrols from either side, and at an estimated six to eight knots we should reach the border between Iran and Pakistan some time tomorrow night. Gwadar. If I could anchor off Gwadar. Must check the fuel. I didn’t know whether we had enough to reach Gwadar. But that was the nearest place that had an air service to Karachi. Two days to Gwadar. And if we were short of fuel, then I’d have to sail the brute. Through slitted eyes I stared up at the great curved spar with the sun-bleached, heavily-patched sail bagged up round it. My head nodded and I caught myself, wondering whether one man could possibly set it alone. But my mind drifted away, abandoning any thought of how it could be done, unable to concentrate. I was thinking of Hals, and Sadeq – Baldwick, too. A kaleidoscope of faces and that little ginger-haired Glaswegian. Sadeq spraying bullets. Standing at the head of the gangway, very much the professional, a killer. I couldn’t recall the expression on his face, only the fact that he was about to cut me down and didn’t. I owe you my life, he had said, and now I couldn’t recall his expression. Not even when he’d lifted the barrel and fired at Choffel. Hate, pleasure, anger – what the hell had he felt as the bullets slammed into the poop?

There comes a moment when tiredness so takes hold of the body that the only alternative to sleep is some form of physical activity. When I opened my eyes and found the sun’s glare behind me and the dhow rolling along almost broadside to the waves, I knew that point had arrived. The sun was higher now, the time 08.23 and a big fully-loaded tanker was pushing a huge bow wave barely a mile away. I wondered how long I had been dreaming at the helm with the dhow headed west into the Persian Gulf. Not that it made much difference, with no chart and only the vaguest idea where we were. I hauled the tiller over, bringing the bows corkscrewing through the waves until the compass showed us headed east of north. There was a rusty iron gear lever set in the deck close by the engine control arm and after throttling right down, I put the lever into neutral. Lengths of frayed rope, looped through holes cut in the bulwarks either
side of the tiller arm, enabled me to make the helm fast so that we were lying wind-rode with our bows headed east into the Hormuz Straits.

I went for’ard then, into the waist of the vessel, running my eye over the bundled sail as I relieved myself to leeward. Then I went round the ship, checking the gear. It was something I would have had to do sooner or later, but doing it then I knew it was a displacement activity, putting off the moment when I would have to go into the dark hole of the shelter under the poop and deal with Choffel.

The dhow was rolling heavily. With no cargo to steady her, she was riding high out of the water, heeled slightly to starb’d by the wind and wallowing with an unpredictable motion, so that I had to hold on all the time or be thrown across the deck. I was feeling slightly nauseous, dreading the thought of that dark hole as I made my way aft. The entrance to it was right by the steps leading to the poop, the door closed with a large wooden latch. I couldn’t remember closing it, but perhaps it had banged to on a roll. I pulled it open and went in.

It was the smell that hit me. Predominantly it was the hot stink of diesel oil, but behind that was the smell of stale sweat, vomit and excrement. At the stern of the cabin two shuttered windows either side of the rudder post showed chinks of light. I had settled Choffel on a mat on the starb’d side. We had been heeled to starb’d then, as we were now, but sometime during the night, or perhaps in the dawn when I was off-course, he must have been rolled right across the ship, for I found his body precariously huddled on the port side. I could only just see it in the dim light from the doorway, the blanket I had wrapped him in flung into a heap at his feet and his hands pressed against the timbers of the deck in an effort to hold himself steady.

He looked so lifeless I thought for a moment he was dead. I was not so much glad as relieved, his stubble-dark features white against the bare boards, his eyes wide and staring and his body moving helplessly to the sudden shifts of the ship wallowing in the seaway. I started to back away, the smell and the diesel fumes too much for me. The engine noise was
much louder here, and though it was only idling, the sound of it almost drowned the groans of the ship’s timbers. They were very human groans, and seeing the man’s head roll as the deck lifted to a wave, I had a sense of horror, as though this were a ghost come to haunt me.