Long Voyage Back

  He had gone less than three hundred yards back towards the sea when he heard the horses and the voices of men. The sounds came from the direction of the herd. The carcass of his kill would probably be discovered, his trail from there be easy to follow. Sadness and then fear filled him. He was still about a mile from the beach and four miles from Vagabond. He had to escape and avoid leading any pursuers to his shipmates. He had to save the meat.

  He quickly left the trail to carry the bundle across a ledge and hide it behind a boulder. Returning, he dragged a foot down the trail to imitate the track of his dragged meat and then continued down the trail. He hadn't decided what his next step would be when he heard the sound of hoofbeats and the voices of men approaching. He ran. He ran now devoid of thought or intention. He ran now out of fear.

  He plunged blindly off the trail and into the shrubs and low evergreens, but even as he did so he knew he could be spotted from two or three hundred yards in his ridiculous orange suit. The twang of a bullet ricocheting off a nearby rock and the later 'pow' of the sound of the rifle fire only verified his

  vulnerability. He tore wildly through the underbrush, heading downhill because it was easier and faster. When he came to a ridge he hesitated only a moment and then began skidding down towards the ravine, his chest already aching from his exertion, a part of him wanting to curl up and play dead. His feet went out from under him and he slid the last twenty yards to the bottom. A stream there ran east to the ocean. He staggered up and ran the last thirty feet down to it and began jogging and stumbling along its bank. Forty feet wide and only a few feet deep it rushed and tumbled rapidly over rocks on an incline towards the sea.

  Two more bullets scattered pebbles a dozen feet in front of him and he stumbled to a halt. Bent over, gasping for breath, he crooked his neck to look up to the ridge. Three men on horseback, one with a rifle and two with drawn pistols, were staring down at him. One gaucho pointed and the other two laughed. The man with the rifle shouted to him something in Spanish. Neil wanted to raise his hands in surrender but for the moment hadn't the strength. Finally he got his arms up over his head. The man shouted down at him again, frowning. Neil swayed, hands raised, still trying to catch his breath, barely able to hold his neck back to watch them.

  A pistol shot exploded and a bullet plunked into the earth two feet in front of him. The second gaucho raised his rifle. Neil, looked dismally to his right where he would have a run of Fifty feet before a bend in the ravine would give him protection. A voice shouted down at him again, presumably urging him to come up to them, or perhaps to run. Surrender, if accepted, might or might riot save his life but would mean he would never see the others again. He ran.

  Or rather he began to stumble along the edge of the stream towards the bend in the ravine, expecting at any moment a fusillade of shots to tear into him. Halfway to the bend, with an instinctive burst of energy, he leapt sideways to throw himself into the rushing water. At almost the same instant the fusillade of gunshots began. 12

  It was Jeanne who found him. She had been hiking up the trail in the late morning to meet him when she heard the shots. She'd run towards the sound, hidden when three horsemen came up out of a ravine, then gone down into it to search for Neil. Her head told her that he was dead, but her heart hoped. She found no body and began hiking downstream, calling out his name even as she assumed the killers had thrown his corpse into the torrent. After a while she began to see signs of blood and of something dragged, and she forced herself to move faster. Ten minutes later she came upon his motionless body.

  His right knee had been shattered - it was a bloody pulp -and he was unconscious. He had tied a tourniquet above his knee. She tried to revive him by splashing water on his face, but even after she got his eyes open he was too weak and exhausted to be coherent. The thought of trying to drag him back the way she'd come was too horrifying to consider. Uncertain of where it led she nevertheless began to drag Neil down the stream. She knew the tourniquet should be loosened periodically but feared for his life. Even at the expense of his leg she couldn't loosen it. She used her sweater as a harness across Neil's chest and under his arms to drag him. Every step pained her as she imagined the pain the dragging must be causing Neil. She thought of leaving him and running for help, but feared she might not be able to find her way back or that he would die while she was gone.

  There were places where she had to lift and carry him. How she found the strength she didn't know, but carry him she did. When she had collapsed beside him after getting him past a difficult outcrop of rock he regained full consciousness for the first time. His hands and face were cut and scratched and he looked at her in apparent surprise, disoriented. She put her arms around his neck and hugged him, holding her face against his. When she explained what she was doing he urged her on, assuring her they were near the sea. His alertness gave her new hope.

  When she finally reached the inlet half an hour later she saw Olly and Jim fishing near the opening to the sea and called to them. At last there was help. That night at dusk, at high tide, Vagabond was kedged off the beach into the surf and sailed back out to sea to get as far from land as they could before dawn. Earlier Jeanne and Jim had located the cache of meat where the seemingly delirious ravings of Neil had indicated.

  With Vagabond once more under sail, Jeanne, Philip and an again conscious Neil examined his knee. Their only light was a kerosene lamp and the last of their working flashlights. Neil was now in considerable pain but was insisting they hold off on a big dose of painkillers until he could help decide what they should do. After they had unwrapped the bandage and were all three staring at the bloody, shattered pulp that had been his knee, Neil suddenly spat out: 'Cut it off.'

  `No,' said Philip.

  Ìt's useless,' Neil said through gritted teeth. 'Saw it off.' Ì left the tourniquet on a long time,' Jeanne said quietly to Philip. The leg may already be lost.'

  `Cut it off!' Neil hissed.

  When no one responded and Neil closed his eyes and groaned, Jeanne, her own face twisted in pained empathy, spoke again. 'Get the hacksaw,' she said to Jim, who had come to help.

  `You're sure it's best?' Philip said to her.

  `Yes,' Jeanne said, not looking at him. Then to Jim: `Please.'

  Jim left to get the hacksaw. Philip called up Sheila who had been working on the beef in the galley. When she arrived Jeanne explained to her what was going to happen, asking her to relieve Olly at the helm so he could do the cutting. She herself prepared needle and thread to sew up the new wound and possibly the arteries. They needed also to prepare something to cauterize the arteries.

  Twenty minutes later, with Neil now heavily sedated but still in great pain, they began the operation. Everyone aboard except Skippy helped. While Jim held Neil down so his leg couldn't move, Olly took the hacksaw, its new blade heated in the kerosene flame and wiped clean with peroxide, and sawed through the skin and bone of Neil's right leg just above the knee and just below the tourniquet. Sheila sewed and Jeanne cauterized the arteries. Philip controlled the tourniquet and soaked up the blood. Jeanne was quietly instructing the others. When they were done and the tourniquet had been removed the bleeding was minor. Neil was unconscious.

  When the operation was over Olly took the severed limb over into a side cockpit and dropped it into the water.

  `The rest of him will be along later,' he whispered to the sea. As he walked back he frowned and shook his head. Much later, he thought, but tried to keep that hope to himself.

  13

  Their sailing south now seemed an act of madness. They were sailing into winter. They were sailing away from any possible medical assistance for the man they wanted to save. They were sailing down towards the fiercest winds in the world, to the Straits of Magellan, to Cape Horn. They were sailing down to the very bottom of the civilized world, to a land so barren and infer tile only the most simple and impoverished of Indians had inhabited it until barely a century before, and even now civilized man had seen fit only to
establish a small naval fuelling station. They were sailing away from man. At the possible cost of Neil's life they had replenished their food and water supplies. In addition to the beef, Olly and Jim had taken twenty pounds of fish and, in the new cold they were experiencing, they were better able to preserve both. They had gathered only a few edible greens, mostly from the sea, and no fruit except a pint of dried berries. They had a large cache of dried grasses and leaves and with the beef and fish enough protein to last a month.

  It wasn't clear whether Neil was going to live. He was pathetically weak, sleeping most of the time, sometimes having to be forced to swallow the food which, for him alone, was usually cooked. Jeanne even began chewing up the meat and then feeding him the juices from her mouth. He had lost a lot of blood; his system was adjusting to the shock of the amputation; the constant pain was weakening him. They were giving him the last seven-day supply of antibiotic to fight infection. If it failed they were helpless. On those occasions when he was conscious he seemed frighteningly dazed, and though he tried once or twice to discuss with Jeanne or Philip the ship's plans he seemed to lose the thread of the discussion.

  Vagabond sailed on essentially without him.

  They had decided to try to sail through the Straits of Magellan to the Pacific. This proposal, which would have seemed so absurd, so impossible two months before, seemed to all of them now inevitable and necessary. They had been driven south by forces beyond their control. Every time they had stopped running and tried to settle they had been driven onward. Although the rest of the planet was now silent, all their radios now silent, they sensed that where men were few and far from the holocaust, there peace might be found. To get to the islands of the South Pacific they had to round the tip of South America; thus they would round it.

  Jeanne spent most of her free time nursing Neil in her port cabin. They slept together under the sleeping bags and carpets and life jackets. She had to stand two or three twohour watches each day but had no galley duties, Philip having become full-time 'cook', while Jim and the women sailed. He and Jeanne had earlier taken charge of the rationing, deciding that they would portion out their food supply over two weeks, planning to replenish it somewhere in the Straits of Magellan.

  They had made the decision to feed themselves and hold little back because they knew that all of them were near the end of their strength. Watches had been shortened to two hours because no one had the strength to be at the helm for longer. Each person slept most of the time they weren't needed in sailing the boat. As they got further and further south the seas became bigger, the winds more fierce. Jeanne, novice, and Sheila, veteran, could each take her two-hour watch at the helm alone in twenty-or thirty-knot winds and not have to ask for advice or assistance, but they would leave duty in a state of total exhaustion.

  Despite their hardships and the dreary knowledge that they still had to pass through a barren land and endure one more confrontation with civilization before they could begin to sail towards their distant dreamed-of haven, there was no despair in Jeanne's tending of Neil. She had a fierce belief that she could make Neil live, that she would live, that Skip would live. This belief had no more basis than her earlier conviction that they would all die, but it sustained her and in its way helped sustain the others.

  For though their food intake was increased, before their landfall and food gathering they had all become perilously weak. Only slowly did they begin to regain a pound or two of weight. As they sailed south the cold became worse, the winds worse, the work more demanding. Moreover, Olly took to his bed. After standing his watch for a day and a half after their departure from land he had collapsed. All he could say was that he was 'feeling poorly' and would prefer a vacation. Although his taking to bed made everyone realize how frail and bony he had become - a laughing skeleton, Philip had called him once - his sickness was a mystery. He had a slight fever, complained of pains in his chest and belly, complained of a toothache, but what ailed him couldn't be pinned down. His illness left Jim and the three women to sail the boat alone, Lisa at last beginning to regain some strength.

  Vagabond, scarred and jury-rigged, as tired in her bones as her sailors in theirs, slashed and pounded dutifully forward, her sails tearing more often, fittings coming loose, but still forward.

  It took them a full week to sail from their landfall to Cabo Virgenes at the eastern end of the Straits of Magellan, arriving, as Philip had predicted, in a gale. It blew out their working jib; they lost a halyard up the mast; they were blown almost on to a rocky shore before they finally regained control and managed to retreat back out of the Straits to anchor in the lee of a point.

  Neil began to get better. Some colour had returned to his face and he was feeding himself now. No infection had shown itself and the best sign of all was when he began trying to give orders on how to run the ship. He still hadn't the strength to leave his berth. They had to remain four days anchored outside the Straits waiting for the gale to blow itself out. During that time they mended sail, tried unsuccessfully to catch fish on the bottom, and rested. They had time to prepare themselves for the ordeal of sailing through the Straits and having to meet or sneak by the Chilean Navy at Punta Arenas. But when the gale lessened and the wind shifted slightly they sailed on. They were proceeding almost mechanically now without real hope that they would ever see the Pacific, but sailing on because all other options were worse. They averaged only thirty miles a day over the first three days, sailing during the eight hours of daylight, anchoring at night. It snowed at the end of the third day, keeping them at anchor for thirty-six hours. They huddled below in their cabins, Olly joining the Wellingtons for body warmth in the aft cabin.

  Neil, although weak and bedridden, although frustrated at being unable to command or participate in the challenge of getting Vagabond through the Straits, nevertheless found himself strangely content. Instead of feeling alone and isolated he felt as if he were at home surrounded by a loving family. Jeanne had sawed a hole in the wall separating their cabin from the main cabin so he was able to talk to the others. He had once or twice tried shouting orders from his bunk but even as he did so he realized his contributions weren't needed. Philip and Sheila and Jim were all good multihull sailors. Instead of making him feel unneeded this awareness of his own superfluity was soothing. He could lie in his berth without the sense that unless he got himself up on deck in the bitter cold Vagabond was doomed. The only thing that occasionally frightened him about his contentment was the worry that it might be a sign that he was dying.

  The loss of his leg left him strangely unperturbed. He stared at his stump with fascination but without dread. He felt he could still be a sailor. Moving about a small boat on one leg presented no great challenge even without crutches or a wooden leg. He was so thankful that he might survive that he

  looked upon the loss of his limb as a tiny payment he had to make for the privilege of living.

  His individual survival had given him hope for the group as well. Although he knew that they would meet man at Punta Arenas, with all the potential for disaster that entailed, he felt that down so far at the bottom of the world the disease called man might have escaped the fear and violence that was destroying the more civilized world. And so, paradoxically, with the threat of starvation still looming before them; with Vagabond being imperilled every other day in the barren Straits; with Neil himself lying in bed with what might be considered a catastrophic wound; with Jeanne still weak from giving up some of her food for weeks to Skip, and having to spend four to six hours a day out in the bitter early spring winds of Tierra del Fuego; he and Jeanne yet found in the tiny haven of their cabin a quiet and calm happiness that had eluded Neil all his life. It had something to do with life being reduced to eating, keeping warm, and companionship. The violent conflicts afflicting the rest of mankind seemed distant and trivial. A conversation between Neil and Jeanne one afternoon when Vagabond was at anchor riding out the snow squalls and forty-knot winds manifested their detachment from their previ
ous world. They were lying under a pile of covers in their berth.

  `You know,' Neil said to Jeanne, 'I've been thinking about how the war started.' He paused as if still thinking about it and then went on, 'I'm not sure that the Russians fired the first salvo of missiles.'

  Holding his hand as she lay beside him, Jeanne turned to look at him in the grey light of the late afternoon.

  `You believed those Venezuelan broadcasts?' she asked, referring to programmes they'd listened to more than a month earlier in which Venezuelan spokesmen had charged that the US had started the war.

  `No, not that,' Neil replied. 'The thing that's always bothered me is that the Russians attacked American cities

  and industries and military bases. We're told they attacked missile sites too, but one station way back at the beginning said something that I've never forgotten: they suggested people flee to North and South Dakota for refuge from fallout.'

  Jeanne watched him as he paused, holding his gaze and waiting. Ì can't help concluding that if the Russians didn't hit South Dakota it was because they knew there was nothing there to hit: all our missiles based there had already been fired.'

  Ìf the Russians had struck first,' Jeanne interpreted, 'South Dakota would have been a primary target.'

  `Yes.'

  `So you think that the President ordered the beginning of a nuclear war?' she asked quietly.

  `He wanted his nation to survive,' Neil replied. 'He thought it was sit and get clobbered or strike first. He ordered the first strike for the same reasons that a Russian premier would have needed: fear that the enemy was desperate enough to do it so he'd better do it first.'

  Jeanne felt a distant sadness. She hadn't really questioned the assumption of all American radio stations that the Russians had struck first. She realized that she felt it was only natural that they would do it; Americans had been fearing their attack for years. Yet she understood that that very fear, so pervasive, so hopeless, might have led to an American government doing what Neil now speculated it had done. She felt no anger, only the distant sadness.