Pirates of the Archipelago, Part Eleven
Annie has been cast out from the safety of the Ring of Leaven. This is where monsters lurk, where her father died...

Pirates of the Archipelago

Part Eleven

Albatross struck the water with a crash so loud I was sure her hull was going to split wide open. I've no doubt that if she hadn't been such an old and solidly built craft she would have fallen to pieces. As for me; when the world disappeared from underneath us my insides were slow to catch up. It was like when I used to jump down the stairs at Aunt Agnes's house when I was no more than a toddler. I used to dare myself to jump from one step higher each time, just to see if I could stand the vertigo, to see if I had the guts.

I had wedged myself hard against Albatross's bottom decking but even so the impact when we hit the water was enough to drive all the breath out of my body in a great whoosh. My head cracked hard on the side of the hull and knocked me out, despite my hat and my bouncy, wiry, ringletty locks. If it hadn't been for the thwart that I'd squeezed myself under I'd have been thrown out and either crushed to death by the keel or driven under the surface by the force of the water falling from the barrage overhead.

Albatross lurched violently from side to side, shipping seawater. I was brought back to consciousness by the splutter of salt spray in my nose and mouth. The boat was filling up rapidly. I couldn't think straight - my head was still ringing from the crash and my vision was dark. Thrashing around did me no good. The thwart that had saved my life when we hit the water was now trapping me inside and holding me down. I would drown unless I did something, and soon. I couldn't move my arms to pull myself up and out - they were caught up under me.

Push, shove, and every time I tried to escape the wooden beam above my chest pushed me back down into the bottom of the boat. I was starting to panic. The water was rising ever higher - in two or three more seconds my nose would be submerged and my lungs would draw in nothing but the sea. I drew in a deep breath and kicked hard against the transom. My body, half-afloat now, skidded over the bottom boards towards the bow, but my knees caught against that cursed thwart and I was trapped again. One more try. I twisted myself to the side with my back against the centreboard casing and gave one last desperate push, wriggling like an eel as I went.

My head hit the foredeck locker door with a stunning blow and my eyesight went dim again, but at last my right arm was free. I grabbed the side of the boat and pulled for my life. Albatross tipped towards me and with a frantic kick I boosted myself out as she went over on her side and filled up with water. I had capsized my craft, but I was no longer ensnared within her.

She didn't sink, of course. I had spent a fair chunk of my earnings in having her side lockers filled with expensive coconut-plastic foam. Foam is better than airbags because it can't be punctured and you're not tempted to take it out to make more carrying space. Albatross lay on her side, flat on the water with her mast lying straight along the surface. I threw my arms over it and hung on, while I gradually recovered my composure and my breath.

That fall from the barrage, and the ensuing panic while I escaped from under the thwart that had saved my life, only to try to take it from me, was the closest I had yet come to dying. It took ten minutes before I stopped shaking and another ten until my breathing and my heartbeat returned to normal. But they did, and I looked around me and began to think about my position. The first thing I had to do was get out of the water. Our equatorial seas are warm, but they still rob your body of its heat if you stay in them a long time and don't keep moving. It was worse for a kid than a grown-up, especially a skinny thing like me. So I did my capsize drill. I worked my way hand over hand along the mast until I reached its base in the hull, where I pulled the centreboard down to its end stop and tied it back. Normally you have to take the sails down when you recover from a capsize - at least I do - but I'd already done that before I passed over the barrage, so I only had to tie the boom down with one end of the mainsheet to stop it swinging about. OK, now I had to swim around to the other side of the hull. The centreboard was sticking out from the keel, more or less at water level. I needed to be careful here. It's easy to snap the 'board off if you step on it too hard. Putting as little pressure on it as I could I crouched up onto the centreboard and rested my feet on it where it met the bottom of the hull, with my hands reaching up to hold the gunwale. Then I arched my back and pushed with my legs, so that my weight was thrown away from Albatross, while still holding on like grim death to the gunwale. I knew from experience that this was a chancy manoeuvre. A heavier sailor than me could have counterbalanced the mast and righted the boat with ease, but I had all the leverage of a gnat and a heavy weight to lift. To begin with nothing happened, so I crouched back down and then forced myself out again. Albatross moved slightly and then subsided. The surface tension of the water was gluing the mast down. What to do? Maybe if I swam back around to the other side and unstepped the mast, I'd be able to right my boat readily enough, but I doubted I'd be strong enough to put it back in its slot afterwards. Albatross was an old boat and her mast wasn't hinged at the base as it would have been on a more recent craft. I'd have to lift the mast, and the boom, and the sails up a foot and drop them into their socket. I knew I'd never be able to do that. What I needed was more leverage. I returned to the other side of the boat and took hold of the other end of the mainsheet - the end that wasn't securing the boom and threw it over to the far side.

This was it. My last chance to save the mast. If I couldn't raise sail I would have to abandon the mast and the boom and the sails and use the paddle to move my boat, and I wasn't sure I could manage that - not for miles on end. I planted my feet once more against the base of the centreboard and wrapped my wrist around the dangling end of the mainsheet. Then I lunged outwards so that my body, with my arms pulling on the mainsheet, had the maximum leverage on Albatross's hull. For a moment nothing happened. I crouched down and threw myself outwards again, wrenching my wrists painfully on the rope. And slowly, oh so slowly, the hull began to rotate. The mast was lifting! I took a couple of turns on the mainsheet and launched myself one last time. With a groan from the base of the mast and an ominous cracking sound from the centreboard Albatross eased herself upright. I'd done it! I pulled the rope in and held on to the gunwale while I got my breath back. Then I swam round to the stern and squirmed over the transom and back inside the hull. No sense in going over the side and risking tilting Albatross over again!

There was at least a foot of water swilling around inside the hull. Dealing with that was my next job. I grabbed the bailer and, pint by pint, emptied her out, not knowing whether the planks hadn't sprung a leak. If so, my efforts would have been in vain, but I still had to try. Of course, any sailor who wants to get over their first capsize without having to call for help and hide their head in shame for ever after knows to attach their bailer and paddle with a length of line to stop them drifting away. Both of them were safe and after an eternity of splashing I got all but a couple of inches of water out. If I'd been moving I could have opened the automatic bailers I'd bought the previous year and got her completely dry, but it's hard to move a boat when she's full of salt water and her sails are down, isn't it?

And so, nearly an hour after I had flown over the edge of the world, I had time to stop and think. Firstly, where was I? The fog was still hanging over the water, but thinning slowly. Even so, I couldn't see the Ring. My best chance of survival now was to stay where I was and as soon as the mist cleared, make my way to the Ring as quietly as I could and attempt to moor Albatross to the outer slope. The tide would still be going out, so before long I would be high and dry and safe. All I would have to do then was sit tight and wait for the tide to come back in. It would lift me up the slope and I would be able to paddle inwards and upwards until either I found the lock or the tide washed me clean over the barrage and back to the safety of the Inner Sea. That was simple and, once I had reached the land, free of risk. The worst danger would be boredom while I waited for the flood tide.

But I couldn't do that, could I? I had to rescue Roy, if he could be rescued. And to do that I had to sail away from the Ring in the direction the flushing tide had carried me, further out into the ocean and all the dangers it held. I wish I could say how easy that choice was; how fearless, brave, heroic Annie, casting all thoughts of her own safety aside and risking everything to save her adversary's life, set her sights to the open sea and strove valiantly in the cause of what she knew was right, but I can't. All I could think was, this was how my Daddy must have died. And in the end it was only the knowledge of how awful I'd feel for the rest of my life if I didn't at least try to save Roy and a voice, that may have been Dad's remembrance and may have been something else (you'll see), that told me to set my course a point to starboard of the Blessèd sun and keep my eyes open to port, that shook me out of the spell of indecision that I had fallen under. Another voice - my own - had some more practical advice. Get dry. So I took my things off and wrung them out over the side. I put my trousers on the foredeck to dry and got a spare sweater out of the foredeck locker, grateful for the impulse that had lead me to seal its door with a strip of caoutchouc. There was a bottle of water there too, and half a loaf of bread with some dried fish besides. I took a bite of one and a swig of the other and soon felt much better. Before long I had the sails hoisted back up and the tiller and mainsheet in my hands and for a moment, before the deadliness of my situation forced itself back upon me, I felt adventurous and optimistic.



What chance was there that Roy was still alive? I couldn't tell. For a start, I had no idea how strong his boat was. Because he'd reached the barrage before me, when the tide had been going out for less time, he would have fallen a shorter distance. His boat… was she built purely for speed? Her performance in the races suggested she was. And there was still the chance that Roy had been knocked out, or held captive underwater by the sails and drowned. Or to put it another way; how long should I spend looking for him? Every minute I was in the open sea increased the chance that I would be spotted. I might be killed while looking for someone who had died hours earlier, and then there would be two deaths instead of one, both of them pointless.

Doubts beset me, wiping out my earlier mood of confidence. I looked around. The Blessèd sun was a hazy presence in front of me and slightly to the right. I was perhaps two miles - probably more - from the outside of the Ring and proceeding at about three knots away from it, into greater peril. I was doing something that was utterly stupid, totally insane and completely senseless. Roy was long dead. I was probably dead as well. There was little left to lose. So, in a last act of foolishness I stood up, cupped my hands and shouted, 'Roy! Roy!'

No answer; as if I should have expected one. OK, another try. 'Roy! Roy! Where the bloody hell are you?'

Nothing. Nothing at all. So I turned Albatross around. I told myself I'd tried. I'd had a go. I'd done… not exactly my best, but enough. Probably. With the wind on my right cheek I sailed back towards the Ring. I nearly changed mt mind again. Twice, I found myself tugging on the tiller to go back and make another attempt at finding Roy, but each time my nerve failed me and I carried on, while the Blessèd sun moved eastwards over Albatross's sails.

And then there came the bump against the bow that I had been dreading, and I knew I was doomed. They had found me. A Beast had sensed my boat and me as we splashed our noisy way through the water and had come to shatter us to pieces, to kill us, to devour us. I screamed out aloud. 'No! No! No!' But the reply was not what I had expected. No claws, no thrashing tail, no grasping tentacles, but a voice. A boy's voice - slightly alarmed and distinctly annoyed.

'I say! You don't have to run a chap down, you know!'

'Roy?'

'Who else? Stars above, but you took your time, didn't you?'