‘Cover the inlet!’ his terrified mind cried, but his groping hands could not seem to find this. Water began to spurt and swirl into the helmet, stinging his eyes. In desperation he tried to block the flow- to no avail. He struggled frantically but the water rose above his mouth and nose, choking him.
Andrew woke up, bathed in sweat and with his blankets wrapped tightly around him. “Oh! Thank God!” he muttered, as he realized it was only a nightmare. For the next hour he lay awake, trying to will himself to think nice thoughts, about Muriel, or even about Letitia- but with limited success. The horror of the deep was upon him.
With it was the nagging fear that he still had those three dives to do, and no reasonable excuse to chicken out. ‘How will I ever face them?’ he wondered miserably.
Somehow he drifted off into a restless sleep, to wake feeling tired and drained. He took himself off to school, feeling deeply troubled. ‘Am I a coward?’ he wondered miserably. In an effort to drive all thoughts of diving out of his mind he concentrated on his school work and on being social with his friends.
But despite his efforts he found his mind continually returning to diving. During the lunch break he took himself to the library and did some reading up on the Second World War in the Pacific. It was an eye-opener to him, especially learning about the ferocious naval battles in the Coral Sea and among the Solomon Islands. That huge fleets of warships, even mighty Battleships, had clashed in vicious, close-range night battles off Guadalcanal really stirred his imagination.
The ‘Internet’ gave more information, then led him straight back to diving. Before he thought about it not being a good idea he had clicked on a site titled ‘Sunken Glory of Ironbottom Sound’. It was about divers exploring the wrecks of some of the warships sunk in that infamous strip of water. Seeing the barnacle and coral encrusted wrecks in colour both fascinated and alarmed him.
There was an article about an American transport, the President Coolidge, which had struck a mine in 1942 off the entrance to Luganville Harbour, Vanuatu. The wreck was in quite shallow water but just looking at the pictures made Andrew feel uneasy. Some of the photos showed divers right inside the huge ship: looking at the gauges in the engine room, and down in the hold.
‘I could never do that,’ he thought, deeply aware that there was a dark corner of his being that he did not even want to face. The fear of being trapped underwater lurked right on the surface of his conscious personality. ‘At least my diving course has nothing like that,’ he mused, his course being a basic ‘Open Water’ diving course.
Even though he wanted to drive the fears out and his rational mind told him to stop thinking about diving he found himself drawn to such information. It was as though he felt he had to face it, if only to prove to himself that he was not a coward. He also had to admit that the stories held a dreadful fascination.
In the City Library he found an old book titled ‘Ordeal by Water’, a World War 2 biography by Peter Keeble on Marine Salvage in the Red Sea and Mediterranean. It was full of interesting and grim facts about the dangers of diving back in those days of primitive equipment and limited knowledge. The very idea of crawling around inside a wreck in the dark, groping with his hands to locate dead bodies, repair damage and render booby traps safe was enough to make Andrew shudder. It certainly increased enormously his admiration for his grandfather.
‘How did he do it?’ he wondered.
Another concern to Andrew was his friend Graham Kirk. Graham was in 9B. The previous year the two had been quite good friends and Graham had joined the Navy Cadets as soon as he turned 13. What made Andrew think of that was hearing Peter Bronsky say to Graham, “Happy Birthday!”
On learning that it was Graham’s 14th birthday Andrew asked casually, “Are you having a party this year Graham?”
The response was a shake of the head and a look of such misery that Andrew thought for a moment that Graham was going to burst into tears. As the party the year before had been a big event that got him even more worried. Andrew remembered how Graham had a burning ambition to be a naval officer but had discovered that his eyes were not good enough. Graham had dropped out of Navy Cadets. The shattering of his dreams had sent Graham into a suicidal depression. Andrew had thought he was over that but now, looking at him, he wondered and worried. Unsure how to help, he left him to the company of his new friends: Peter, Stephen and Roger.
The bright spot in Andrew’s life was Muriel. She was not allowed to go to the movies (‘Too young for dates’ her parents insisted) but he was able to talk to her on the telephone every evening. These phone calls got longer and longer until, on Thursday night, his father put his foot down and told him to cut it short and to keep the chats to fifteen minutes ‘So other people can use the phone’.
They did not meet until Saturday afternoon. Usually the Navy Cadets met every Friday evening but that week the parade was a half day for sailing. As usual Andrew rode his bike to cadets with Carmen and Blake. All wore their ‘short white’ uniform but carried backpacks with ‘pirate rig’ (old clothes) for wearing while sailing. All the way Andrew found his heart all a-flutter with anxiety and anticipation, hoping that Muriel would still like him.
She did. Her genuine smile of welcome and bright, cheerful conversation immediately convinced him of that. Andrew’s spirits soared. ‘She is so pretty!’ he thought. From then on he used all his efforts to be nice to her and to try to impress her. The only dampener was when she asked if he was looking forward to their diving trip the next day.
Even just thinking about it made Andrew’s heart turn over with a lurch. ‘It will mean flooding my face mask again,’ he thought. The dive after that was even more daunting. That would involve completely removing the mask under water, then replacing and clearing it. Just thinking about it made Andrew feel sick in the stomach but he managed to make himself sound calm and enthusiastic.
To help take is mind off diving he concentrated his thoughts on sailing. Immediately after parade and roll call the cadets split into four person boat crews and set to work rigging their ‘Corsairs’. These worked best with a crew of three but there were more cadets than boats so the extra crew member was added to each. Andrew’s boat was captained by his ‘Divisional’ leader, Cadet Midshipman Bob Armstrong, a big, burly lad who Andrew really admired. The other members of the crew were Andrew, Muriel and Percy Parsons.
Having just spent two months of sailing almost every second day during the sailing competition with the army cadets (Read ‘Mudskipper Cup’) Andrew could have rigged the boat blindfolded. Thus theirs was the first boat on the water, followed closely by Carmen’s, crewed by an all-girl crew which included Shona, Jennifer and Tina Babcock. As soon as the safety boat was in the water and radios tested sails were hauled taut and the sailing practice commenced.
The afternoon was merely a simple training activity to familiarise recruits and Seamen with steering so for Andrew it was just a pleasant outing. He sat in the centre of the boat and held the jib sheet while Muriel took the tiller. That gave him plenty of time to think and look around. As the sailboat slipped quickly down the Inlet past the main city wharves he was vividly reminded of the photos in the old album. The taste of salt spray and the smell of the sea, mixed with a waft of diesel fumes from a passing launch, instantly brought to his mind the image of the tug Wallaman Falls.
‘This is where that photo of her turning at speed was taken,’ he decided, looking across the Inlet to the line of mountains that sheltered the port on the eastern side. That made him think of diving but he firmly resolved to not think about it and again