The Forest - Edward Rutherfurd [137]
They made slow progress: a hundred yards; another hundred. They had gone about a quarter-mile when they saw the Southampton boat emerge behind them.
The larger boat took a different course. Laying its prow directly into the wind, staying close to the shore, its crew began to row lustily eastwards. Their plan was evidently to get as far up the coast as they could before the wind got stronger, and then make the whole crossing by sail, dashing with the wind half behind them straight for the Lymington entrance. The Southampton master’s bet was no doubt that Seagull would be blown too far west and be unable to get back in the increasingly bad weather. He might well be right.
‘We’ll raise the sail now,’ called Alan Seagull.
At first it seemed to be working. Using a minimum of canvas, with the boat nearly athwart the wind but aiming for the eastern edge of the Lymington estuary, he was able to supplement the oars. Every so often a squall would catch the sail and roll the boat so strongly that the oarsmen lost their stroke, but they pressed on. There was more and more spray, but from his occasional glances back to the island Seagull knew they were making progress. He could see the Southampton boat, following its steady path along the coast. Meanwhile, he was nearly a mile out and still in line with the harbour entrance. He scanned the clouds. The veil of rain was approaching quicker than he had expected.
‘Ship oars.’ The men, surprised, started to pull the oars in. Willie looked at him questioningly. In reply, he only shook his head. ‘More sail,’ he called out. The crew obeyed. The boat lurched. ‘All hands to starboard.’ They would need as much weight as possible to counterbalance the sail. ‘Here we go, then,’ he muttered to himself.
The effect was dramatic. The boat shuddered, creaked, and plunged forward. There was nothing else for it. The storm was coming in too fast to do anything now but try to run across, as far as they could, before it really struck. As the prow rose and dipped he watched the northern shoreline. He was going to be driven west, of course; the question was, how far? Rolling and pitching, fighting to keep his line, the mariner guided his vessel out towards the middle of the Solent.
And then the storm struck. It came with a roar and a cascade of rain, and a terrible engulfing darkness, as though it meant to deny the existence of everything but itself to those it had swallowed in its maw. The island vanished; the mainland vanished; the clouds above vanished; everything vanished except the spray and the sweeping sheets of rain and the billowing swell, which soon grew so high that the waves towered over the boat, which sank into troughs so deep it seemed a miracle it ever rose again. Frantically the crew trimmed the sail and Seagull eased the tiller. There was nothing to do but to run before the wind with a small sail and hope it would bring them swiftly to the edge of this watery abyss.
The two boys, holding fast to the rail at its edge, were sitting just in front of him on the deck. He wondered if either would be sick and whether to send them into the body of the ship. And thinking of his decision about what to do with Jonathan, the boy who knew his secret, it occurred to him that the circumstances could never be better than now. A shove with his foot when no one was looking and he’d be overboard in a trice. The chances of saving him in that sea? Minimal.
He could not see the shore, but he estimated that since the gale must now blow them almost due west, it should take them either to Keyhaven or the long spit of gravel and sand that came out across the Solent’s entrance. Either way, this would drive them on to a shore where they could safely beach the boat. Thank God there were no rocks.
He did not know how much time passed after this. It seemed a little eternity, but he was too busy on the tiller, as the