This Thing Of Darkness (6 page)

Even as the crew fought to clear their faces of these unwanted guests, the sea did it for them. Thick spume arrived in a volley, borne on a wall of wind that smacked into the port side of the Beagle with a shudder. Suddenly the sails filled to bursting, the wind squealed through the rigging, and the little brig darted forward as if released from a trap, keeling violently to starboard as she did so. The spume thickened into dense white streaks of flying water, the ocean itself shredded and torn as the elements launched their frenzied attack, raking the ship’s side like grapeshot. The sound of the wind raised itself into an indignant shriek, and then, beneath it, came something FitzRoy had never heard before: a low moan like a cathedral organ.
How appropriate,
he thought - for this was indeed shaping up to be a storm of Old Testament proportions.

Straining under the press of sail, and foaming in her course, the little brig drove crazily forward, her masts bent like coach whips.

‘Another hand to the wheel!’ shouted FitzRoy. No one heard him, but no one needed to: already two or three men were moving forward to assist the helmsman, who grappled with the wheel as it bucked first to port and then to starboard in his grasp. Like a burst of artillery fire, the fore staysail, the thick white triangle of sturdy English canvas that led the ship’s charge, flayed itself to ribbons as if it had been a mere pocket handkerchief.

‘Storm trysails, close-reefed!’ FitzRoy screamed from an inch away into Sorrell’s ear. Again, the crew barely needed the boatswain’s frantic attempts to relay the instruction. Figures swarmed back up the masts like monkeys, into the rigging and out on to the violently swaying yards. Even though they were close-reefed, the sails flapped madly, fighting like wild animals to cast aside their handlers, but gradually, steadily, they were brought under control. The storm trysails were FitzRoy’s only remaining option. Too much sail and the wind would rip the canvas to pieces. Too little and the ship would lose steerage, leaving the elements free to batter her to destruction.

The sea was heavy now, the ship rolling, the decks swept every few seconds by several feet of thick, foamy water. The sky had turned black, but incessant lightning flashes were now illuminating the scene, both from above and below.
It’s
like an immense metal foundry, thought FitzRoy. God’s machine room. If just one of these lightning bolts strikes a mast, we’re all dead men
. A flash illuminated Kempe’s skeletal face to his left, and he could read the fear written there. The lieutenant’s smile was frozen mirthlessly on his face.
I must not give in to my own fear. If I do they will smell it. They will know.

Hanging grimly to the taffrail behind them, Midshipman King stood open-mouthed in wonder.
Even during two years in the south, he’s never seen a storm like this
, FitzRoy marvelled. Then he followed King’s gaze. Then he saw the wave. And then all of them saw it, illuminated in a white sheet of electricity. A wall of water as big as a house - forty feet high? Fifty? Sixty? - towering above the port beam, a sheer brown cliff frozen in the lightning’s flash.

‘All hands down from aloft!’ he tried to shout, but the words died in his throat as he realized there wasn’t time. Every man on deck slid his arms and legs deep into the rigging, each desperately trying to sew himself into the very fabric of the ship, muttering prayers that the ropes would hold fast. FitzRoy looked up and saw the topmen scrambling in from the yards to the crosstrees on the mast. Another lightning flash, and his eyes locked with the terrified gaze of the Cornishman who had greeted him on his first day aboard. The man was clutching for dear life to the main-topmast cap.

A moment later, and the wave took the weather quarter-boat, effortlessly crumpling the little cutter to matchwood. Four brisk rifle shots snapping across the wind indicated that the windward gunports had blown in. Then the wave slammed across the deck, illuminated stroboscopically by the lightning, bulldozing into the men tangled in the rigging, pulverizing everything in its path. It felt like being hit by an oxcart. The Beagle tipped at an alarming angle, the whaleboat on the lee side dipped momentarily under the surface, instantly filled to the brim with water and was gone.
She’s going over on her beam-ends. Dear Lord, we’re going down.

As the wave passed, FitzRoy looked back up for the Cornishman, but the entire main-topmast was gone, the main-topsail and the crewman with it. The fore-topmast was gone too, and the jib-boom, while the maindeck bow gun, which had been lashed abreast of the mainmast, had jack-knifed in its lashings, carriage upwards. Most of the remaining sails were flying free of their stays, flapping insanely. The lee side of the deck was still under water. The ship sagged helplessly, seemingly uncertain as to whether to right herself or give up the ghost and slide silently into the depths. FitzRoy could see the drenched figure of Midshipman Stokes, up to his waist at the lee rail, hurling the life-buoy into the surging waves. Beyond him two figures in the surf struck out powerfully for the
Beagle
’s side, only to be swallowed by the darkness. When the lightning flared again, there was no sign of either man.

Even as Stokes performed his vain rescue act, FitzRoy screamed and gestured to Murray, who had lashed himself to the wheel, to bring the stern round into the wind; but it was clear from the helpless look in the master’s eyes that the
Beagl
e would no longer answer her helm. And yet agonizingly, unwillingly, the natural buoyancy of the little ship began to assert itself over the weight of water that had flooded her below decks. Like a cask she rose, and slowly regained her trim. As she climbed gradually towards safety, a second big wave cascaded across the decks. Stokes, caught in the open, slipped to the floor and was slammed against the lee rail, a mass of broken spars and tangled ropes piling after him, but somehow the water pouring through the sluices pinned him there, bruised and bloodied. Again the
Beagle
fought to right herself.

This is my ship. I must do something, before the next wave destroys us. FitzRoy slithered across the incline of the deck, grabbed a hatchet and hacked through the stern anchor-rope. Kempe, frozen to the compass-housing, looked on in horrified confusion, clearly thinking his captain had gone mad - but one or two of the seamen cottoned on, and stumbled across to help him. Between them, they grabbed the biggest fallen spar, lashed it to the rope-end, and hurled it overboard. Then FitzRoy hauled the dazed and bleeding Stokes back up the planking by his collar, just as the third wave made its pulverizing way across the deck. The waves were coming every thirty to forty seconds now, the crest of each peak level with the centre of the Beagle’s mainyard as she floundered her way through the troughs.

Curled in a dysentery-racked ball of pain in his cot below decks, Bartholomew Sulivan was shaken by the sight of the sick-bay door slamming open, forced off its catch by a waist-high tide of green water, even as the ship lurched and threatened to pitch him into it. Outside the door he could see crewmen, those who would normally have been resting between watches, bailing furiously for their lives. There was no time to feel for his uniform in the guttering flame from the oil-lamp, so he plunged through the cabin door in nightshirt and bare feet, and waded towards the companionway leading to the upper deck.

Gradually, the
Beagle
began to slew round. The anchor cable had run right out to the clink, and the lashed-on spar, acting as a huge rudder, was pulling her stern round into the wind. Sulivan took in the scene at a glance, his white nightshirt flapping madly in the wind. One or two crewmen froze in astonishment. Was this the ghost of their former captain, come to claim their souls?

FitzRoy froze too, but for different reasons.
I’m not running a damned kindergarten here, you young idiot! Get back inside!
He gestured angrily for Sulivan to retreat, but the youngster was not to be deterred. He had the best eyesight of any on the ship, and a lookout was needed. Barefooted, adrenalin dulling the vicious pain in the pit of his stomach, he sprang into the mizzen-mast rigging, and clambered up into the wildly swaying tops. Shorter and stouter than the other two masts, the mizzen-mast was the only intact vertical remaining on the Beagle’s deck. With the ship’s stern into the wind, it would now be taking the brunt of the waves. In the circumstances, it was an almost suicidal place in which to locate oneself.

Sulivan did not have long to wait. The first really big sea to approach from the stern thundered up underneath the rudder, like a horse trying to unseat its rider. As the little brig’s stern climbed towards the crest, her bow wallowed drunkenly in the trough. Broken spars and torn canvas shrouds cascaded down towards the bowsprit, some fifteen feet below the wheel. Then, with a smack, the wave broke over them from behind, punching the air from the sailors’ lungs and flooding the maindeck to waist height. Such was the weight of water that the
Beagle
slewed off course, her stern drifting to starboard; and FitzRoy, Bennet and Murray fought the wheel, every sinew straining, to prevent her broaching. FitzRoy barely dared look up at the mizzen-mast, but look he did, and there, sheened by lightning, was the wild, drenched figure of Sulivan, his face flushed with excitement, punching the air by way of a return greeting.

Another mighty sea came billowing over the stern, and another, and it became clear to the exhausted men at the wheel that they must soon lose their battle to keep the ship in line with the wind and the waves. All but one of the storm trysails were gone now, ripped into convulsing shreds by the banshee winds. With insufficient sail to guide her, it was only a matter of time before the Beagle slewed beam-on to the weather again.

FitzRoy fought to clear his mind.
If the steering chains or the rudder quadrant snap we’re finished anyway
. He gripped the wheel ever more tightly with cold, shaking fingers.
We’ll have to bring her head round into the wind. It’s our only way out of this. I’ll have to take a gamble with our lives.

There must, he calculated, be about thirty-five seconds on average between waves. To bring the
Beagle
’s head right round would take longer than that. If she was caught beam-to between waves in her battered state, she would certainly be rolled over. But if she stayed where she was, with big seas breaking repeatedly over her stern, the end would only be a matter of time. FitzRoy took a decision. Prising his fingers from the wheel, he grasped the hatchet once more, fell upon the anchor rope, and severed the rudimentary rudder that was keeping her in position. Then he seized the wheel from the bewildered Murray and waited for the next wave. Lieutenant Kempe, long past understanding, stood like a statue, clinging bedraggled to one of the uprights of the poop rail. Little King, open-mouthed, sea-battered and frozen in shock, no longer a naval officer but a stunned child, seemed barely to know where he was.

Another big breaker reared up behind them. FitzRoy could not see it, but he felt his knees give way as the deck surged up beneath his feet. As it did so he swung the wheel down violently to his right. The ship yawed to starboard, surfing down the rising face of the wave as the wind caught the tattered remnants of her canvas.

Of course, thought Murray, who suddenly understood. FitzRoy had used the force of the wave to accelerate the Beagle’s about turn to gain her a few vital extra seconds. It was an extraordinary gamble, for as she swung round, she rolled exaggeratedly to port, almost on her beam-ends once more. The lee bulwark dipped three feet under water, all the way from the cat-head to the stern davit. Foaming eddies of water barrelled across the deck, thumping into the chests of the crew, grabbing at their clothing, inviting them down into the depths.
The skipper’s mistimed it. She’s going down.
The main-topsail yard blew right up to what remained of the masthead, like a crossbow fired by a drunkard who’d forgotten to insert a bolt. Incredibly, tiny figures still hung from each yard-arm, tossed about like rag dolls but somehow still clinging to braces and shrouds. Up on the mizzen-mast, like a gesticulating lunatic on the roof of Bedlam, Sulivan swung far out above the boiling sea, the mast dipping so low over the water it seemed as if he would be pulled under by the next wave.

But somehow, slowly, ever so slowly, the Beagle rose again, her prow swinging, inch by inch, round into the gale. Water sluiced through her ports as her decks emerged once more from the angry foam. A flash of lightning illuminated the next monstrous peak. It was some way off, but it was coming in fast. The little ship seemed to be taking an age to manoeuvre herself into the wind. FitzRoy could only pray now.
Come round faster. For God’s sake, come round faster.
It was as if the little brig herself was rooted to the spot in fear. Imperceptibly, she felt her way by degrees to port, painstakingly precise in her movements, a frail, unwilling challenger turning to face a champion prizefighter.

The lower slopes of the wave slid under her bow, feeling her weakness, hungrily seeking the leverage to roll her over. The
Beagle
began to climb, but she began to roll too. Higher and higher she climbed; further and further she rolled to port. And then the peak of the wave furled over the prow, to deliver the final, killer punch. The
Beagle’
s bowsprit pierced the wave’s face at an insane, impossible angle; then she took the full impact three-quarters on, a foaming maelstrom powering unstoppably across her decks.

FitzRoy could see nothing. Surging white water filled his eyes and mouth. He no longer knew whether he was facing upwards or downwards. He merely fought for life, the breath sucked from his lungs by the thundering impact of the wave. Was this it? Was this to be his death, here, off the South American coast, at the age of twenty-three? Then, suddenly, there was air, and with a wild surge of elation he knew that she was through, that the
Beagle
had gone through the wave, that she had come round into the wind.