Читать книгу Not Child's Play - Dave Muller - Страница 9

A lurch, and the slightest of tremors passing through Arwen’s hull, wakes me.

Sandy feels it too. ‘David, we’re touching bottom!’

Instantly I’m on my feet, flinging off a foggy blanket of sleep as I lunge for the companionway ladder.

‘Start the motor!’ I shout.

As I step into the cockpit, Arwen lurches unnaturally upwards and I brace myself, knowing what is coming. With a tremendous reverberation, she drops to the seabed and heels violently over onto her port side. A wave breaks over the stern, sending a fan of sparkling phosphorescent spray into the mainsail. Water, glowing with phytoplankton, swirls along her decks and off the trailing edge of the boom.

The engine starts on the first turn of the key but I’m still disorientated and disbelieving. Arwen is hove-to and I waste valuable seconds uncleating the foresails. Sails free, I spin the wheel, slam the motor into forward gear and open the throttle, hoping to pivot Arwen on her keel to face the waves. The stern lurches skyward again, followed by another bone-jarring thump. A wave crashes over the side, causing Arwen to jolt sideways, throwing me off my feet into the side railings.

This time she stays on her side. A fearful whining vibration comes from the prop as it spins in air. We are aground.

The most important goal now is to stop us washing further ashore. We have to get an anchor out into deeper water. Crawling up to the bow along the steeply canted deck, I call to Sandy to bring the windlass handle. My fingers tear at the knot securing the plough anchor to the bow roller. The need to be fast and methodical conflicts with sheer disbelief. Obviously we are aground, but where, and how? In the darkness I can see phosphorescent-lit waves passing by, but it’s incomprehensible that we can be anywhere near land. Even though I fell asleep, we should have had kilometres of deep sea around us and hours of safe sailing time before we got anywhere near shallow water.

We carry three anchors on board Arwen. In anticipation of lots of anchoring around the islands, I’d replaced our small plough-type anchor with a heavier version while moored in Maputo. A smaller Danforth anchor and 100 metres of 20-millimetre diameter nylon rope are stowed beneath our bunk as an emergency backup.

It’s impossible to stand on the sloping deck so, while struggling to free the anchor, I’m forced to kneel in the cleft between the guardrail netting and the deck. Small waves jostle Arwen and suddenly another huge, glowing breaker looms out of the darkness and thuds into her midriff. The violent lurch flips me onto my back, wedging me between deck and netting. The phosphorescent firework spray slowly curves over Arwen’s deck and the wave washes back from what must be a shelving beach, sucking Arwen with it, momentarily pivoting her upright on her keel before flopping her onto her port side like a stranded fish.

In the distance I hear Sandy shouting, ‘Are you okay? You need anything?’

‘Yes. Can you bring the windlass handle?’

In near despair, I grapple with the anchor and chain and drop it over the bows. Sandy crawls up and hands me the windlass handle. I ask her to pull out all the chain while I jump over the side into chest-deep water and try to carry the anchor into deeper water.

The water is startlingly warm, like a bath. It does not take long to realise there’s no chance of my carrying the 60-pound anchor underwater as well as dragging the chain. Our only hope is going to be the small Danforth anchor and our 100-metre nylon line. I climb back on board and ask Sandy to fetch them while I clear the plough anchor and chain. With fiendish intent, the Danforth gets itself wedged in the timber framework below the bed and Sandy shouts for help. Turbo-charged by terror and desperation, we manage to wrest it free. Tammy and Seth huddle at the foot of the bed. We snatch a few moments to reassure them we will not allow them to get hurt, and instruct them to remain in the cabin.

Moving around Arwen has become an exercise in gymnastics. There are no level surfaces. Everything is canted at 45 degrees, forcing us to either crawl on our hands and knees or swing from overhead handholds like apes. We’re acutely aware of the urgency, but also of the overriding concern to not injure ourselves.

In the frenetic outpouring of physical and mental activity, strength drains from my body as I carry the anchor to the bows. In my head, a voice is telling me to just give up, give up, give up – Sandy and I can’t move 12 tons of steel against the power of the waves and gravity. I curse that voice. It’s distracting, draining me of vital energy, so I begin to talk to myself, my brain explaining to my body what I expect it to do. ‘Now, David, you need to get a large shackle from the locker. That is the locker next to the chart table, not the one below the spare bunk.’

It helps. My body responds like a robot, working calmly, methodically. My words soothe and slow me, helping to ward off panic while allowing Sandy to hear my thought process.

On deck, I tie the warp to the large eye-shaped shackle on the shank of the Danforth and drop the anchor over the bows. Arwen’s hull is still buoyed by the passing waves. I discover I can walk underwater while carrying the anchor and, between having to surface for breaths, manage to walk it out the full 100 metres of the warp into deeper water. I know it is spring tide; there had been just the faintest sliver of new moon the previous evening. If low tide is around midday, then it will now be approaching high tide. It’s the worst possible time to have run aground – not that there is ever a best.

Back in the bow, the winch handle in my hand, the hopeless voices rally. My body goes limp and I collapse on the deck, tears mingling with the spray. Arwen weighs 12 000 kilograms. Between us, Sandy and I weigh 140 kilograms total. What hope is there?

The waves rush past in the dark, each still buoying Arwen’s hull, which hinges on the keel before dropping back onto the sand. Sandy sits beside me and puts her arms around my shoulders. ‘Don’t give up,’ she whispers, ‘There is still life in Arwen. There is always hope.’ Together we set about winching Arwen’s bow seaward in readiness for the high tide.

Sandy braces herself on the deck with the warp belayed around her back, mountaineering style, while I lean back and forth on the winch handle with all my strength. The nylon line stretches until it is pencil thin and I’m terrified it will snap, but, millimetre by millimetre, the line reels in and Arwen slowly swings around till her bow points to the thin tinge of pink sky lighting the east.

With daylight comes orientation. We are aground on a featureless beach backed by low scrub-covered dunes. Attracted by the light, the children stick their heads out of the main hatch. They look like chicks in a nest, demanding the early worm. The sun spills over the horizon, welcoming Seth’s fifth birthday. Tammy spots the myriad large crabs scuttling about on the beach and asks if she and Seth can go ashore and catch some. They jump into knee-deep water and run off, laughing with joy as the crabs flee beneath the sand before them. Their carefree happiness exhibits far greater confidence in their parents’ ability to resolve this unexpected landfall than is warranted.

With the tide past high and receding rapidly, it’s obvious Arwen will not move until the next high tide. Our priority now is to find out where we are. Sandy and I decide to walk in opposite directions along the beach to see if we can identify anything that will give a clue. I head north until a break in the bush covering the dunes allows me to clamber to the crest. Before me, about a kilometre inland, a large lagoon stretches north behind the primary dunes. We must be near Cabo Sao Sebastiao on the spit of land that terminates just to the south of Magaruque. I wander back to Arwen. The sea has receded and she looks pathetic, stranded out of her element like a beached whale.

The children are playing on the beach, running and gathering sea beans washed up along the high-water line. These large, brown, bean-shaped seeds that fit neatly into the palm of one’s hand, grow on trees along rivers in the tropics. They drop into streams and heavy rains wash them to the sea. If the flow is strong enough, they reach the Mozambique Current, which transports them south until they wash up on beaches as far away as East London. Back home, sea beans are regarded as great treasures by beach-combing children. In sea-bean currency, Tammy and Seth have suddenly become rich, and they rejoice in it, piling up their booty on Arwen’s side deck.

Sandy has not returned, so I join the kids in their search for beans, trying to appear nonchalant. Suddenly, Sandy’s urgent shouts alert me. She’s running back from her excursion south, frantically gesturing out to sea. A small fishing boat, not much bigger than Arwen, is passing by just a few kilometres offshore. I clamber onto Arwen and swing down into the main cabin, snatching up the mic of our VHF radio. For a second I debate whether to call ‘mayday’, but we are not in a life-threatening situation, so I call, ‘Pan, pan, pan,’ the international radio call indicating an urgent message. There is no reply. It’s time to fire off a flare. Already the fishing boat is abeam and a quick tow off the beach is exactly what we need.

I hold the flare above my head, look away and squeeze the trigger. With a whoosh and trail of white smoke, the rocket climbs into the blue sky. At the peak of its trajectory a brilliant pink flare pops out, suspended from a small white parachute, and begins to spiral slowly back to earth with a serenity that seems absurdly detached from the urgency of its message.

Firing a flare is something you only do in desperate situations. As it soars, the gravity of our situation presses down on me in an emotional manifestation of Newton’s third law, and once again my legs fold beneath me and tears well up. I turn away as Tammy and Seth run around shouting joyfully while the flare drifts inland until it extinguishes just above the dunes. There’s no response from the boat.

Somehow, Sandy and I are going to have to drag Arwen back into the sea on our own. Apart from being aground and the railings bent inward where the waves have broken over the deck, she is otherwise undamaged. We’ve already turned her through 180 degrees, so there is still buoyancy when the tide is high. The problem is the keel, which will drag and dig into the sand.

Despite my anguish, I’ve worked out a plan to heel Arwen onto her side to try to skid her hull over the sand once the tide is in, and have explained to the family how we need to bury an anchor in the sand and fix a halyard to it. The wire basket dredge Sandy uses in her research to find molluscs is ideal for this and we are energetically digging a hole when Seth suddenly remembers it’s his birthday, and his priority is not digging a hole in the sand, but opening presents. It’s just as well – Sandy and I can only work for short periods before becoming breathless and enervated, and recognise the symptoms of shock. We need to get some energy into our bodies. It seems the perfect time – and excuse – for a birthday party.

While I gather cooldrinks and chocolates from the galley, Sandy ferrets out Seth’s presents from their hiding place. The galley is a mess. Dough has risen and flowed over the sloping worktop onto the cabin floor, some of it hanging like stalactites. Cupboards and drawers have burst open, spilling their contents.

We place a blanket in the shade beneath Arwen’s stern. The tidal range around the islands between high and low water is four metres, and it’s nearing mid-morning, so the tide is nearly at its lowest. Arwen has been left stranded 30 metres from the waves lapping the shore.

Seth happily tears open his presents: a set of small cars from Herman and Hilda, a book called The Chatty Parrot from Jen and Brad and a Lego crane from Mike and Renée. It’s going to be a memorable party and I realise I need to record it so I pick up my camera and take a couple of photos. As I walk back towards Arwen’s canting deck, I glance up the coast to where the islands lie. A wobbly mirage is emerging from the heat haze rippling across the beach. It slowly detaches itself and hovers above the sand, separating and merging and separating again until seven shapes on stilts can be seen.

‘It looks like we have visitors,’ I cheerfully announce. Sandy and I walk towards the shapes, which morph into two adults and five children. We’re relieved at the prospect of some help.

I’ve confirmed from our chart that we are indeed aground on a spit of land that trails into the sea about 10 kilometres north. The Island of Magaruque, our destination, lies a mere 20 kilometres beyond. I assume the visitors are fishermen from the island.

When they’re about 200 metres away, the islanders stop and stand facing us, leaning on walking sticks. This seems oddly reticent behaviour given the warmth we’d experienced in Maputo. We slow our pace, uncertain over their hesitancy. The five children, who we can now see are teenage boys, detach themselves from the adults and sidle inland as if to bypass us. The older couples remain on the beach.

We continue towards them until understanding comes like a punch in the stomach. The boys aren’t carrying sticks; those are AK-47s and they are now crouching down, one knee on the sand, aiming their rifles at us. We glance across to the adults and see that they are weighed down by large bundles over their shoulders. From their defeated stature, they are clearly captives.

The enormity – the horrific implication – of the sight before us is overwhelming. We are barefoot, dressed in shorts and T-shirts, exhausted, our children a hundred metres away, utterly defenceless. Reality slowly turns itself inside out; rather like the way I’d seen men in Maputo killing octopuses. My first thoughts are that this cannot be happening. The scene before us is generally viewed from the safety of a TV screen.

I realise we must get back to the children, but first I have to stop Sandy, the impulsive one in our family, from saying or doing anything.

‘Let’s walk slowly back to the children,’ I murmur. ‘And don’t say anything.’ We backtrack to where Tammy and Seth are sitting on the rug, Seth happily playing with his toys and Tammy paging though The Chatty Parrot. The teenagers follow us, slowly closing in without taking their eyes or rifles off us. Fitted jeans and shirts define their lean, muscular bodies. Their eyes show caution, but also the cold indifference of adolescents. In comparison, the two adults are thin and dressed in rags, their faces sad and resigned, eyes downcast. We reach the blanket and sit beside our children.

The oldest boy’s face is scarred, the skin puckered around the hollow socket of a missing left eye. Despite the scars, his face has yet to harden into the chiselled look of an adult and I guess he’s maybe 16 or 17 years old. The other four are younger, ranging from early to mid-teens. Pointing to the yacht, the leader asks something in a language I assume is Portuguese. Not understanding, I stare back blankly. He steps nearer, gesturing towards Arwen with his AK-47. A girdle of hand grenades hangs at his waist. Speaking at him, but directing my words to Sandy, I say, ‘Don’t do or say anything.’ He squints back at me with his single eye, clearly not understanding what I’ve just said. He’s tense, weighing up options. His eye flicks towards Arwen and he orders one of the boy soldiers to climb aboard. The boy hands his rifle to a comrade, jumps up onto the deck and vaults like a cat into the cockpit before disappearing into our home.

Suddenly, clothes, equipment and anything else he can lay his hands upon come spewing out of the hatch onto the beach. Tammy and Seth huddle into our laps, realising these are not nice people. Tammy starts to cry as her clothes and dolls land on the sand.

The two adults are ordered to pack the booty into bundles using the sheets from our bunks. There’s no need to understand Cyclops (the name we later give him) to know they are not being asked politely. Unhappy with their slow progress, Cyclops shouts abuse and strikes them on their backs and shoulders with the butt of his AK-47. Diverting his attention back to us, he shouts, ‘Vamush, vamush!’ pointing south along the beach. Tammy clutches my arm while Seth burrows further into Sandy’s lap, clutching The Chatty Parrot in front of him like a shield.

Most of us have fantasised about how we will react given the chance to play a story’s anti-hero. There’s always someone who rises from a position of weakness to take bold, courageous action, saving those they love, righting wrongs or, in cases of grandiose licence, saving the entire planet. We are primed to believe that courage and good will win. We seldom question such simplistic thinking or really believe we will ever be placed in any of these situations. For Sandy and me, that moment has arrived.

What are our options? Attack? Defiance? Try to reason with the boys? Try to escape? Try to conjure up some clever diversion that will disarm them and allow us to slip away? It feels as though I’m standing on the edge of an unimaginable reality where time and the imperative to do something momentous prods at me. But my brain has become detached and adrift as if the cables tying it to the anchor of normal life have snapped. All I can do is smile at Cyclops. I have no other defence or weapon. The priority is to protect the children and Sandy and survive. The only way to do this is to neutralise these youngsters with a smile and reassure Tammy and Seth with a nonchalant grin and hug, pretending this is just another unexpected and exciting diversion to our holiday. Something we can, and must, take in our stride. It’s nothing at all to worry about.

Cyclops keeps rushing at us, shouting all the more insistently and gesturing south. Clearly he’s indicating he wants us to go with them; something we are extremely reluctant to do. I beam back at him and shrug my shoulders quizzically. He seems exasperated by my response and turns his wrath on the old couple, who have now tied a good portion of our belongings into two large bundles they are trying to lift onto their heads.

Meanwhile, the boy soldiers have taken turns rummaging through Arwen’s cabin, emerging with their pockets stuffed. Cyclops realises he is losing out on the spoils and clambers aboard. A few minutes later he leaps down from the deck. One of the grenades hanging from his belt catches on the aft guardrail netting and dangles there like an incongruous fruit. Irritated, he turns and plucks it from the netting, clipping it back onto his belt.

By now Cyclops is close to hysteria and my inane smile does not help matters. He instructs two of the boys to walk south with the overburdened couple. There’s going to be no escape. No waking from a bad dream. No option but to walk away from Arwen and leave her to her fate. Snapping out of my paralysis, I realise we’d better take some action. I whisper to Sandy, ‘See if you can climb aboard and get some water and our hats, but for goodness sake, move slowly – don’t do anything suspicious and back off if he shows any annoyance.’

I mime to Cyclops that we need drinking water and hats. Cyclops moves to stop Sandy, but I make more drinking gestures while pointing to the children. He lets her go. While she fills two plastic bottles with water, Cyclops continues his tirade, shouting, ‘Vamush, vamush!’ while making increasingly aggressive herding motions. ‘You’d better hurry!’ I yell to Sandy. ‘He’s becoming dangerously agitated.’

In the cabin, Sandy quickly scribbles across the chart a message that in any other circumstances would sound ridiculously melodramatic: ‘Help, we have been taken south.’ There’s just time to fill two one-litre plastic bottles and snatch up a hat for each of us, as well as her small binoculars that, for some reason, have been left on the chart table. Outside, Cyclops continues to pace, making menacing prodding gestures with his rifle. To appease him I pick up Seth’s book, The Chatty Parrot, tuck it under my arm, take Tammy and Seth by their hands, and begin walking south. A minute later Sandy emerges from the cockpit and catches up with us.

It’s mid-morning when we begin to walk. I try to resist the temptation to look back at Arwen. The truth will be too real, too painful. I don’t want to accept that a dream I’ve been working towards for 26 years has ended and we are walking into a future that is frightening and unknown. Whatever happens from this moment onwards, our lives will never be the same.

Ten minutes later my resolve breaks, and like Lots wife, I succumb. Arwen lies with her deck canted towards us. She is still intact and complete, and even at that distance I can see the warm, varnished woodwork of her cockpit. The sun reflects off the polished stainless steel of her winches and rigging. The searing pain of anguish and failure burn in me as I consider the torment our parents, Stephen and friends will feel once they hear this news.