Coasts of Cape York (58 page)

Mr Marshall and Capt Proctor both agreed with that. “Wind has shifted too,” Mr Marshall added. “It is coming in from the North West.”

“We moved just in time,” Capt Proctor said.

Half an hour went by. Willy felt so battered and numb he wanted it all to end. ‘I don't think I can stand much more,' he thought. But he also felt sure that the wind was not shrieking as loudly and that the ship was not pitching as much.

Capt Proctor confirmed this at about 0500. “I think the worst of it is over,” he said to Mr Marshall.”

Mr Marshall nodded. He looked grey with strain but took the wheel again, relieving Graham. “We are damned lucky the cyclone went to the south of us,” he said. “If it had gone to the north I doubt if we would have survived.”

This was Capt Proctor's opinion as well. “We would have been goners I reckon. But we are alright now. Cyclones quickly lose their puff when they move over land; and this one has been nearly twelve hours ashore.”

“Why is that sir?” Willy asked, as much for something to say as anything.

“Cyclones depend on a continual supply of moisture. They need to be over warm ocean to pick up the evaporation. It is the transfer of energy when the humid air condenses that provides the heat to move the air so rapidly upwards. Once they go over land their fuel supply is cut off.”

Mr Marshall added, “The mountains and hills rip the bottom out too and they get disorganized and lose their pure circular air flow.”

Willy looked out and suddenly realized that he could see the waves without the aid of lightning.  With something of a shock he saw that it was the first grey of dawn. ‘Daylight! I have survived!' he thought. The relief was immense and he almost collapsed as the tension began to ease out of him.

By 0600 there was no doubt the worst of the storm was over. The weather report placed the eye of the cyclone 75 km to their south west and said that the cyclone had been downgraded to a Category 3. The wind had definitely dropped and the rain and lightning all but ceased. With the coming of the pale grey dawn the whole situation appeared altogether different. Willy began to flex his stiff and frozen muscles.

An hour later the first watery rays of sunlight peeked through the rapidly thinning layers of cloud. The wind died even more and the rain stopped completely. Patches of blue began to appear high up to the North West.

Capt Proctor ordered them all below to have a hot breakfast. This time Willy went without too much concern. He was surprised at himself. ‘What a weakling and coward I am when things go wrong!' he berated himself.

The deckhand and bosun went up to the wheelhouse and the cook was set to work by Mr Marshall. Willy slumped into a corner of the saloon settee next to Carmen and Andrew. Graham and Mr Marshall sat opposite. Then Julia and Jacob appeared from a cabin. Both looked bedraggled and haggard but Willy could see that they were all looking very dishevelled. The brother and sister joined them.

“Is it over?” Jacob croaked.

“Apparently,” Andrew replied.

“I hope my Mum and Dad are alright,” Graham commented.

That gave Willy a jolt and he realized he had been selfishly pre-occupied with his own fears and fate. Only now did he start to think about others. Worry about his father came first. Then he said to Julia, “I wonder if your yacht is still afloat?”

“Hopefully,” Julia answered. She looked exhausted and miserable.

“Cheer up! You are still alive,” Carmen said.

“Yes, but we may have lost our boat and all our money and now we won't even get the treasure to compensate us,” Julia responded.

That gave Willy another jolt. He had completely forgotten about the two crooks. “My word yes! I wonder what has happened to the
Saurian
,” he said.

“I hope they got drowned!” Julia snapped with quite venomous force.

“If they weren't in good shelter they probably have been,” Andrew said.

Willy thought about that. The last time he had seen the
Saurian
, the motor launch had been rounding the other side of Flinders Island and heading north. ‘That is out towards the Great Barrier Reef and the open ocean,' he mused. He said, “So where is the wreck of the ‘Dornier' supposed to be?”

Jacob stared back at him, his face a hostile mask. “That's our secret,” he muttered.

That really annoyed Willy. “No it's not!” he cried. “Your mates Gator and Corey know where it is. And we have a right to know. You owe us. We have helped save your life twice. So give.”

“No.”

“Oh for heaven's sake!” Willy snorted. “Even if you don't give us the exact location we know the story. We are much more likely to find it before you. We can at least navigate- and we've got the ships. Besides, you can't possibly think you can keep any of this treasure. If it is the crown jewels of Makassang then they are state property and there will be a lot of government officials from both countries very interested. So you may as well tell us and at least share in the discovery.”

Jacob still looked stony-faced and defiant but Julia nodded and said, “Willy's right Jacob. We won't be allowed to keep any treasure.”

Willy went on, “Besides, if people died in the wreck of the Dornier then it is a war grave. We will probably be breaking all sorts of laws if we touch it. This needs to be done the right way.”

Carmen now spoke. “Jacob, the only chance you have of making any money out of this now is to be able to sell your story to newspapers and magazines. If we find the plane and the treasure then you will get some of the credit.”

Julia nodded. “Carmen's right Jacob. Tell them please, or I will.”

Jacob scowled and then snapped with very bad grace, “Alright. I think the wreck is on a reef named Crab Reef. It is about twenty five kilometres north of the Clack Islands.”

“Thank you,” Willy said.

Andrew stood up and put down his hot drink. “I'll get a chart,” he said. He hurried up to the wheelhouse. Willy occupied the embarrassing silence by drinking and then wolfing down some toast and scrambled eggs. Two minutes later Andrew was back, carrying a sodden and torn sea chart.

“Sorry, but it got a bit wet,” he said. “Capt Proctor said we can have this one.”

“Has he got another?” Julia asked.

“Yes. He's securing it to the chart table now,” Andrew replied. He spread the torn and soaked chart on the table and they all moved to look at it. It only took a minute for Carman to place her finger on one of a dozen reefs that littered the Coral Sea north of the Flinders Group.

“Here it is,” she said.

Andrew studied it and then shook his head. “If those two crooks went that way in that little launch then I don't like their chances of having survived, not unless they got onto one of the islands before the wind got up.”

“Good!” Jacob said.

Having discovered the location the talk shifted to how to get there and how to recover any treasure. Carmen reminded them again that there were serious legal and ethical issues and suggested that the first thing they had to do was inform the relevant authorities.

“We need a radio to do that,” Andrew said.

Julia looked aghast. “Don't we have one?”

Carmen shook her head. “Not a transmitter. Water got into it. But I will have a go at fixing it after breakfast. Now, let's eat,” she replied.

So they did. Willy sat in silence, reliving the terror and imagining what the cyclone might have been like for the two crooks in a tiny boat in among coral reefs in the dark. ‘They would have no hope at all,' he thought.

After breakfast there was nothing for him to do. Already the seas had dropped- from five metre waves to three metre waves. By then the cyclone's centre was another 30km away- over 100 km to the South West. Capt Proctor informed them that he was not moving until the seas had gone down further so they may as well get some rest. They were shown to cabins and given pillows and blankets. Willy lay down on a sofa in Mr Marshall's cabin and was asleep within minutes.

He was woken at midday for lunch. Despite protesting that he was too tired he was ordered to get up by Mr Marshall. “You need the energy,” he was told. “If the weather worsens again you will be no use if you are weak from hunger. You can sleep again afterwards.”

So Willy washed his face and stumbled to the saloon. On the way he noted that the sun was shining and that the waves had gone down even more. Now they looked to be fairly normal one or two metre waves. During lunch he learned that the cyclone was now nearly 200km inland to the South West and was weakening further. It surprised him how quickly it all seemed to subside back to normal.

“We were lucky,” Capt Proctor told them. “According to the radio some of the places south of the eye have taken a real battering: Hopevale Aboriginal Community, Cooktown and Laura. There has been heavy rain and severe flooding all the way south to Cairns.”

“I thought we didn't have a radio?” Julia queried.

“We don't, not a transmitter. But we have several little receivers. They give us the news and weather forecasts. Young Carmen is working on the transmitter and thinks she will have it going soon.”

She did have. By 12:30 pm she was able to gain contact with the Marine Radio in Cairns. They all crowded into the wheelhouse to listen while she relayed the news that
Bonthorpe
was safe.

An anxious looking Graham at once asked her, “See if they have any news of
Wewak.
”

Carmen asked but the control had no news. Carmen told them where they had last been seen and was told that the authorities would send search planes as soon as they had dealt with the more urgent situations being caused by flooding down the coast.

Carmen then tried calling both
Wewak
and
Dyfken
but there was no response. Each time she called Willy saw a look of anguish in Graham's eyes and he felt very sorry for him. ‘He might have lost his Mum and his Dad and his sister, and the family might have been financially ruined by the cyclone,' he thought. That his own father might also be dead he tried to not think about.

After three failed attempts Graham turned to Capt Proctor. “Sir, can we use your boat to try to go and see what has happened?”

Capt Proctor shook his head. “Sorry son, but the boat is gone. She was torn loose and went overboard sometime during the night. But we can move closer and then try to find a way ashore. We will take ourselves to near the mouth of the Normanby River.”

Everyone except Capt Proctor and Mr Marshall were ordered off the bridge. The ship then got under way, shaping a course South West through the Rattlesnake Channel.  This brought them out into more open water and into bigger waves. The wave pattern was very confused and it was rough going but Willy was so worn out he felt no fear. Instead he went below and lay down again. So tired was he that he was again asleep within minutes.

The
Bonthorpe
came to anchor about a mile off the mouth of the Normanby River at 1:45pm. The noise of the anchor chain roaring down the hawse pipe woke Willy and snatches of conversation penetrated his fuddled mind. Waking himself and rubbing gummed up and sore eyes he went to look. He was surprised to see that the sea had now subsided to mere ripples. The wind was now just a pleasant breeze from the north.

Between them and the shore was a huge area of shallows and sand bars and he could see why Capt Proctor had not wanted to take such a deep draught vessel closer to the shore. But how to get ashore to check?

Willy joined an anxious and distressed Graham on the deck aft of the superstructure. Carmen and Andrew joined them. They stared glumly at the intervening shoals and water and puzzled over how to get in.

“One thing is for sure, this ship won't be going in,” Graham said. “She draws seven metres and it is hours before the tide is up.”

Willy puzzled over the problem. He was deeply worried about his own father but could see that not knowing was tearing Graham apart emotionally. ‘His parents might have been dead before the storm,' he thought. ‘The crooks might have shot them.' But how to find out?  He could see that ideas such as rafts were absurd. Not only was there the danger of crocodiles but the river appeared to be in flood and large quantities of debris: logs, trees and grass, were washing out.

Then a sound reached his ears that sent his hopes soaring. “An aircraft,” he said, looking around. The plane was coming from the north and he shielded his eyes from the glare and squinted in that direction. After a minute's fruitless search he suddenly spotted a tiny dark shape. Even as he detected it his brain registered the silhouette.

“That is the
Pterodactyl
!” he cried.

It was. The flying boat came straight towards them, flying at about a thousand feet. As it reached them it went into a banking turn circling them. Willy suddenly became agitated. “Carmen, quickly! Radio the
Pterodactyl
and ask them to search up the river. Quick!”

There was a rush for the wheelhouse. Willy emerged on the bridge panting and excited. ‘A plane is just what we need,' he thought happily. He arrived to find Capt Proctor already talking to the aircraft. Carmen danced with impatience and then requested politely that she be allowed to use the radio. A puzzled Capt Proctor nodded. Carmen sat down at the table and grabbed the handpiece. “They are friends of ours,” she explained.

She quickly called
Pterodactyl
, using the plane's name rather than its registration call sign. It was Mr Jemmerling who answered. “Who is that? Over,” he replied.

“Carmen, Carmen Collins. I am here with my brother Andrew and with Willy Williams and Graham Kirk. Over,” she replied.

“What are you doing on that ship? I thought you were all on the
Wewak
. Over,” Mr Jemmerling answered.

“We were on the
Wewak.
It is a long story, one that you will want to hear. Please sir, can you fly south up the Normanby River and see if the
Wewak
is still there, with a yacht. Over,” Carmen said.