John stood up and stretched, then he stepped out of the cockpit and on to the deck, holding on to the shrouds and looking round him. After a time, he stepped carefully across to the hatch and disappeared below. For a time I could see his shadow moving against the lamplit wall of the doghouse, and then it disappeared and after a few minutes, I felt sure, he was asleep.
The night seemed very dark and although it was midsummer, I began to feel cold. I began to wonder why I could not see Rodonda Island. I peered under the boom but saw only universal blackness. There wasn’t a star to be seen and there was no moon. Only low overcast sky and rain. I walked carefully up the deck, leaning inwards and holding on to the handrail on the doghouse, and then the handrail on the bottom of the dinghy until I could cross over to the shrouds. From there I stepped across to the staysail boom and ran my hand along this to the forestay. Looking behind the jib, I could see Rodonda quite clearly, a dark round rock of an island, and perhaps a mile away. All was well. An hour passed, and I sat in the cockpit and listened to the rush of Tzu Hang and the occasional spatter of spray, and I watched the dark outline of her sail against the sky. I wondered when we should see Curtis Island. After that there would be no more land until the morning. The black waves came swinging like walls out of the night and disappeared again, and sometimes they hissed quietly as they came, showing a thin white line in the darkness, or a phosphorescent glow. There was no malice in them.
I sat in the cockpit and thought of nothing in particular. I thought of Beryl in the forecabin and wondered if she was sleeping and thought that this watch was like all watches and that it was going slowly. Soon there was only an hour to go, and I went below to make myself some tea, but I kept looking aft to watch the occasional flash of a light so that I could check the course, and several times I had to climb up on deck to correct it.
I woke up Beryl and she was awake at once, and when I was back in the cockpit, I could see her shadow moving as I had seen John’s below. She came and sat beside me and I felt a warm flood of companionship between us. ‘The wind is up, isn’t it?’ she said.
‘No, I think it’s down now.’
I checked the log, leaning aft and flashing a torch on it. There were seventy-eight miles on the log in eleven hours, and the wind looked like holding. Beryl settled down with her hand on the wheel. She wouldn’t move until she woke John at three, sitting patiently and alert at the wheel, and quite untroubled by any need for the various devices that John and I would employ to pass the time.
I turned in but could not sleep until we had seen Curtis Island. After a time, I came to the hatch again. Beryl was just as I had left her an hour before.
‘Want anything?’
‘No thank you.’
‘Seen anything?’
‘No. Sometimes I think that I see something to port, but I couldn’t be sure. Now I can’t see anything. Can’t you sleep?’
‘No, I just want to see Curtis Island. There’s a creak. Have you heard it?’
‘Yes, isn’t it annoying? I heard a creak. I thought that it must be the mast.’
Tzu Hang never creaks in a sea, and this new noise, together with the possibility that we were being set further towards the west than I had allowed for, and consequently nearer to Curtis Island, had kept me awake. Once the noise had been noticed, it seemed to grow louder and more persistent, like a rat gnawing at a wall board. I began to imagine that Tzu Hang had been strained during the bashing we had given her, on our way up to Melbourne. I moved about, listening anxiously, as if I was a new and nervous father trying to discover in the middle of the night whether his offspring was really only sleeping.
Under the doghouse the noise sounded louder, and I noticed a new mug swinging on its cup-hook. I steadied it and the noise stopped immediately. It was only a rough bit of pottery in the handle, grating on the hook. I suppose it went on, but we never noticed it again. The noises of a ship blend into a tune so well known that it is never heard. Anything new strikes a discordant note which seems to vibrate through the ship as horribly as reveille to the soldier. We are often asked how we know, if we are all asleep below, if anything goes wrong, but any little change in the ship’s rhythm, any slight sound, and least flap of a sail or the lift of a boom, and whoever is nominally on duty awakes immediately.
I heard Beryl call. ‘Now I can see something,’ she said.
I looked out of the hatch. The sky had cleared slightly, and dark against a dark sky, but clearly visible, was Curtis Island. Perhaps it was a good three miles away, but it looked much closer. I went below and fell asleep immediately and stayed asleep until I felt someone shaking me by the leg. It was John and it was also daylight. I felt as if I had dropped off for a few minutes only and quite indignant at having to get up so soon.
When I went aft to put on my oilskins, I looked out of the hatch. It was a grey morning and there were plenty of whitecaps still showing. Tzu Hang seemed to be going as well as ever. John was leaning over the after end of the cockpit, cleaning the face of the log.
‘What have we done?’
‘117. Pretty good. I think that the wind has dropped slightly, but she’s still going well.’
As soon as I was ready, I climbed up the ladder and then made that familiar movement to the cockpit, one hand to the mast, one hand to the shroud, as I stepped aft. It is as well that these movements should become automatic, because they have to be carried out on black nights, with a wildly moving deck, and spray flying; when there is no room for mistakes. A great mountaineer once said that only fools and children jump on mountains, and he might have added Gurkhas, going down hill. The same applies to small ships.
For once John was content to go below without fiddling with the sails. If he was quick he would get an hour and a half before breakfast. His eyes looked slightly red on the rims, and I knew that he would be asleep in a moment. But no trump of doom, no clarion call to heaven, would bring him out of his box-like berth quicker than Beryl’s call to breakfast.
I always disliked the nine to twelve watch in the evening. Between washing up after supper and the beginning of the watch, I was too wide awake to sleep, but half way through the watch I became involved in a desperate struggle to avoid it. The morning watch was far better. I was usually well rested after six comparatively undisturbed hours in my bunk, and the wonderful prospect of breakfast in an hour and a half made pleasant the worst of mornings. From seven onwards Beryl would be about and I would be able to talk to her as she appeared from time to time in the hatchway.
Until then there were many things to see and think about. First the weather portents, the barometer, the wind, the sky and the clouds, and the sea. Then the set of the sails and a quick look round for any loose ends of rope, or signs of chafe. Then a check on our position, and a search for land if we happened to be near it. Then a check on the birds that might be visible about the ship. I was always trying to recognise a companion of the day before, and often found one.
By the time all this was done Beryl appeared at the hatch. I showed her Pyramid Rock, a jagged tooth sticking abruptly out of the sea on the port quarter.
‘Can you see Flinders?’
‘No, not yet; I’m not sure, maybe there is something … still poor visibility.’
She had plaited her hair and tied it over her head. It didn’t look very elegant, but at sea we had to put up with it. She passed me the cat’s earth, in the blue plastic basin, to empty over the side. As I handed it back, I heard the primus hissing.
A moment later Pwe arrived on the deck herself, put her paws on the cockpit coaming, just aft of the doghouse, and looked at the weather. She decided that it was too wet to keep to the deck and went below again. Here she did all that was possible to interfere with the cooking, protesting her hunger in a loud voice, and jumping on to Beryl’s back, if she got the chance, in order to explain her need more lucidly.
I heard Beryl call that breakfast