like mint humbugs.
‘I didn’t go in. I thought I might be able to find alittle place, a little corner tucked in St Finian’s Bay here, where I could get some shelter from the wind. In behind there. And of course it was getting late now and you couldn’t see much. I had the chart too, you know, and I was looking for this corner here, but in the end, no, there was nothing for it, I just had to anchor off the coast, here somewhere,’ he said moving his hand across a wide swathe of the Irish shore.
‘I put my two anchors out, at an angle like this, a V of them, and I rode out the night with them. I could not sleep, of course. The whole night we were rocking like this’ - he did a dance with his hands in front of him - ‘and I was praying for the morning. I was praying to the Virgin and to St Anne, the Virgin’s mother. She is a saint for the Bretons, and I heard her answer my prayer. She was with me and it was her who saved me. She was with me in the night. But of course as the tide started to ebb again in the morning, the surf at the foot of the cliffs, which had been behind me all night, started to move out towards me. The waves were soon breaking just astern of me, just here, and then, with the strain of a bigger one I suppose, one of my anchor lines broke and the boat swung round right into the surf. The anchor was outside the surf but theboat was in it and I could hear the rocks in the edge of the sea grinding against each other like footballs. That is when I was down on my knees and I knew I would die. I have prayed to St Anne. I have been in a position not very different before. I did not want to die but if I die, I die. It is not the end of the world!’
Almost every one of these fluid sentences tumbling out of him down in the cabin of the
Auk
was accompanied by a sigh and a smile, a sweet ease in his face swept over at the next moment by an overwhelming anxiety and exhaustion. Again and again he stroked and squeezed his forehead with thumb and forefinger.
His little boat was rolling in the surf. The sea was on the point of taking him. His life depended on the single anchor warp. How good was it? ‘It’s that rope up there,’ he said, ‘the blue one.’ He had survived thanks to the frayed blue string with which his boat was now attached to us. Had it broken, he would have been among the rocks in seconds, more likely battered to death than drowned.
At first light, a fishing boat from Port Magee, the
Ocean Star,
saw him and came to his aid. But he was so far inshore that, although they tried again and again, they could not get a line to him. The Valentialifeboat, the
John & Margaret Doig,
had been called and eventually, after Herve had died and been born again half a dozen times, it arrived. It was of shallower draught than the fishing boat and was able to come in close enough to get a line to Herve and take him in tow, a hair-raising act of everyday courage by Seanie Murphy, the Valentia coxswain.
Even the way back had been hard. The lifeboat had tried to tow him around the north side of Valentia Island but it had been rough on the point and they had been forced back into the channel leading to Port Magee. There, Herve had been taken through the steep tidal overfalls, under tow this time, from which he had turned back the night before, gripped again by the anxiety that every time a wave would come in, his one remaining pump would fail and his boat would go down. Then he was through and approaching Port Magee, and tied up by the lifeboatmen against us. They, understandably enough, had been severe and reproachful with him. What had he been thinking of, going out in a wind like that, on such a shore, with a boat so ill found?
That had been George’s and my first reaction, too, seeing this piece of inhabited wreckage dragged in, asif by the scruff of its neck like a vagrant dog. But in the warmth of the
Auk
that morning, with Ben gazing down from his bunk, and the rest of us gathered round, and Herve so
‘I didn’t go in. I thought I might be able to find alittle place, a little corner tucked in St Finian’s Bay here, where I could get some shelter from the wind. In behind there. And of course it was getting late now and you couldn’t see much. I had the chart too, you know, and I was looking for this corner here, but in the end, no, there was nothing for it, I just had to anchor off the coast, here somewhere,’ he said moving his hand across a wide swathe of the Irish shore.
‘I put my two anchors out, at an angle like this, a V of them, and I rode out the night with them. I could not sleep, of course. The whole night we were rocking like this’ - he did a dance with his hands in front of him - ‘and I was praying for the morning. I was praying to the Virgin and to St Anne, the Virgin’s mother. She is a saint for the Bretons, and I heard her answer my prayer. She was with me and it was her who saved me. She was with me in the night. But of course as the tide started to ebb again in the morning, the surf at the foot of the cliffs, which had been behind me all night, started to move out towards me. The waves were soon breaking just astern of me, just here, and then, with the strain of a bigger one I suppose, one of my anchor lines broke and the boat swung round right into the surf. The anchor was outside the surf but theboat was in it and I could hear the rocks in the edge of the sea grinding against each other like footballs. That is when I was down on my knees and I knew I would die. I have prayed to St Anne. I have been in a position not very different before. I did not want to die but if I die, I die. It is not the end of the world!’
Almost every one of these fluid sentences tumbling out of him down in the cabin of the
Auk
was accompanied by a sigh and a smile, a sweet ease in his face swept over at the next moment by an overwhelming anxiety and exhaustion. Again and again he stroked and squeezed his forehead with thumb and forefinger.
His little boat was rolling in the surf. The sea was on the point of taking him. His life depended on the single anchor warp. How good was it? ‘It’s that rope up there,’ he said, ‘the blue one.’ He had survived thanks to the frayed blue string with which his boat was now attached to us. Had it broken, he would have been among the rocks in seconds, more likely battered to death than drowned.
At first light, a fishing boat from Port Magee, the
Ocean Star,
saw him and came to his aid. But he was so far inshore that, although they tried again and again, they could not get a line to him. The Valentialifeboat, the
John & Margaret Doig,
had been called and eventually, after Herve had died and been born again half a dozen times, it arrived. It was of shallower draught than the fishing boat and was able to come in close enough to get a line to Herve and take him in tow, a hair-raising act of everyday courage by Seanie Murphy, the Valentia coxswain.
Even the way back had been hard. The lifeboat had tried to tow him around the north side of Valentia Island but it had been rough on the point and they had been forced back into the channel leading to Port Magee. There, Herve had been taken through the steep tidal overfalls, under tow this time, from which he had turned back the night before, gripped again by the anxiety that every time a wave would come in, his one remaining pump would fail and his boat would go down. Then he was through and approaching Port Magee, and tied up by the lifeboatmen against us. They, understandably enough, had been severe and reproachful with him. What had he been thinking of, going out in a wind like that, on such a shore, with a boat so ill found?
That had been George’s and my first reaction, too, seeing this piece of inhabited wreckage dragged in, asif by the scruff of its neck like a vagrant dog. But in the warmth of the
Auk
that morning, with Ben gazing down from his bunk, and the rest of us gathered round, and Herve so
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