The Munich Dilemma
by Sinbad

Chapter 13

On the other side of the dock, this activity was watched by the captain of the big container cargo vessel. He loved to see the old sailing ships, he thought them beautiful and he rather hoped the two boys he'd met earlier had been successful. A deck hand interrupted his reverie, apparently there was someone asking to speak to him. He followed his crewman to the gangplank where a rather well-dressed young woman was waiting.

“What can I do for you?” he asked in German, with an English accent which he had never been able to eradicate.

In perfect German, with perhaps the trace of a Bavarian accent, she replied: “Two boys, perhaps eighteen years old, came on board here earlier. May I ask if they will be sailing with you, and when you are due to set sail?”

The captain stroked his beard. “May I ask why you want to know?”

“I work for the Excise authorities, they are suspected of smuggling contraband. Are they shipping with you, and when do you leave? I can impound your ship if I do not receive a satisfactory answer, Captain!”

Still stroking his beard, hoping it was annoying her, he pondered. He knew the regular Excise officer, but he didn't know everyone who worked in the Bremerhaven office. She might be telling the truth. On the other hand if the Excise were looking for smugglers they would likely keep that close to their chests. He glanced at her rather impressive chest and smirked momentarily. She caught the glance and coloured, irritated. No, on balance, he decided that this woman was not what she seemed. And therefore that she probably was not acting in the interests of the boys. He remembered the two well-mannered young men who had told him a perfectly plausible story and had thanked him for his help, although he had done no more than point them to old Pieter van Kemp.

In the fine old tradition of sea Captains for centuries, he decided to act as though he was the ultimate authority on board his vessel, which, of course, he was.

“I am sorry, madam, you must have made a mistake. I have taken on no new crew members for this trip, I do not recognise the visit you describe, you are not welcome on board my ship. Leave now or I'll have you forcibly removed.”

“You are not taking these boys with you?”

“What boys, madam? If I meet any boys I will be sure to telephone the Excise office and let my friend Martien de Gruys there know about it. Now get off my ship!”

She scuttled off down the gangplank, her high heels hampering her significantly. He felt pleased with the encounter. He was more and more sure that she was up to no good, but he wondered how he might be able to find out more. He returned to his cabin.

He lit his pipe, a process that took quite a while and gave him time to deliberate. He had developed the habit of doing this whenever he needed to take stock, and his first mate had often had to wait two or three minutes while his boss fussed over the wad of tobacco in the bowl of his pipe, or tried to get it to light in a wind.

He cleaned the pipe out and pressed a fresh plug of tobacco into the bowl. Then he shielded the bowl from force of habit although in his cabin with neither the door or the porthole open there was no wind, and lit his petrol lighter before holding it over the edge of the bowl and sucking air through it. It lit, successfully, first time, and he sat in his armchair, his favourite place to smoke. And realised he had made a decision. He reached for the telephone, grateful not for the first time for the technology which enabled him to make phone calls from on board ship.

Five minutes later, he put the phone down and sat back in his chair, the pipe still glowing in his hand. Smiling, he knew he had done what he could. Martien would be alerting the harbour police that there was a fake customs officer around, and she would be arrested on sight. He didn't think she would escape the vigilant German authorities for long.

He didn't know Kamille Blumfeld, though.

If Ricky or Chris had been party to the Captain's conversation they might have been able to give much more information about the woman with the long dark hair. They might have suggested that the Bremerhaven Excise office get in touch with a certain aristocrat at the British Foreign Office. But the boys were blissfully unaware of all of this. The had no idea that there was any need to worry. They were on board the Sea Horse, enjoying themselves immensely sailing the sturdy little ship, and thinking that Kamille Blumfeld and the danger she represented were left far behind.

The Sea Horse was ploughing through the waves, well beyond the shelter of Bremerhaven harbour. The rhythmic movement of the boat was different from what they had become used to on the Malcolm Miller. She was a smaller vessel and in the long swell of the English Channel she ran down each wave, then up again to summit the next before running down again. So life below decks was a bit of a challenge. Gloria didn't seem to mind, but Ricky and Chris both found that they preferred life up on deck. Pieter had given them oilskins, canvas jackets with a wax coating to make them waterproof, and they were glad of these when the spray hit them, and for the protection from the wind that they gave.

“Is it always like this?” called Ricky, shouting to be heard above the wind.

“The North Sea is usually rough, and we're well away from the shelter of land here. We have a westerly wind, like we usually do in this part of the world, and when we get closer to Britain the wind will be calmer and the waves shorter, because we'll be sheltered by the land. At this rate we'll be passing the estuary of the Thames by morning. I reckon you'll be on land in England tomorrow!”

Pieter seemed to be enjoying himself, not in the least bit troubled by the bucking of the little ship. Ricky noticed that there were reef points at two levels on the sail, but the ship was heeling over only a little, much less than their dinghy did in quite gentle breezes. He realised that these ships were designed for stability and seaworthiness, while his dinghy was designed for speed and excitement, and occasionally for knocking the helmsman unconscious and overboard. There's a lot to be said for a loose-footed mainsail, he thought.

Gloria, imperturbable, came up the companionway and in a stentorian voice which shook the boys called: “Food! Come and get your food, you men!”

Ricky's back straightened a little, it was nice to be referred to as a man rather than a boy. And he felt very much a man, standing on deck, feet planted firmly apart watching the sail and listening for orders from his Captain. Chris was feeling much the same, unbeknown to his friend.

Gloria passed something hot wrapped in a cloth tied at the corners up the companionway and Pieter, as helmsman in charge of the tiller, motioned to Ricky to take it from her. He unwrapped it and found an enormous pasty for each of them. Excellent food for the circumstances, they could eat with one hand and continue their activities. And the heat of the pasty was very helpful to warm cold fingers. Ricky wondered where the oven was, he hadn't been aware of one when they'd been shown around in dock.

They hadn't long finished their meal when Gloria again appeared and passed mugs of hot chocolate up to them. The light was just beginning to fail and Pieter sent Chris down the companionway to ask Gloria to help set the lanterns. She opened one of the overhead lockers and drew out three big metal paraffin lamps with coloured lenses and showed Chris how to light them. Then she clambered up on deck and took one of the lit lamps from him, beckoning him to follow her. With amazing sure-footedness she led the way forward along the heaving deck to the shrouds, the fixed rigging that supported and braced the mast. About two metres above the deck, attached to the shrouds, was a wooden frame. Chris couldn't quite reach it from the deck. To his amazement, Gloria swung herself up onto the gunwale, hanging on to the shroud, and lifted the lantern up to the frame and hooked it firmly in place. Chris stood on deck, not sure what to do, so he stood with his arms out in case she slipped and he hoped to catch her. But she came back down with no mishap.

“Did you see how it's done? You hook the lantern into the groove in the wooden frame, and then fasten it in place by twisting these two catches into the ends of the frame. You need to be sure you've got it fastened right, or it can come loose and then it'll fall into the sea and be lost. If you lose a lantern you'd best keep out of Pieter's way for a bit!

“Now, come back and get the starboard side lantern, and you can fix that one in place.”

He trotted back along deck behind her, marvelling at her mastery of the undulating surface. He was still stumbling from side to side as the boat pitched and yawed through the swell, but Gloria stumped onwards as though the boat wasn't moving at all. They got back to the deckhouse and Gloria climbed backwards down the companionway. Chris went to follow her, but she waved him back and handed the green-lensed lantern up to him.

“Get going with that one and then come back for the for'ard lantern.”

He made his way back towards the bows, taking great care that when he was thrown sideways by the motion of the ship he didn't accidentally bash the lantern against anything. At the starboard shrouds, he looked up and saw the frame not far above him. The heeling of the boat, however, meant that the shrouds were almost vertical, and the gunwale was a lot nearer to the water's surface than the port side. He remembered watching Gloria, and, taking a firm grip on one of the shrouds he put his foot up on the gunwale and swung himself up. Once he was up, standing on the gunwale, he found to his surprise he couldn't get his balance – to stand upright he would have needed to be just where the shroud ropes were. With the lantern in his other hand, then, he couldn't climb any higher without falling off the boat. He was considerably taller than Gloria, though, and by taking great care he found he could bring the lantern up where he was, and manoeuvre it into position. He checked it twice, not wanting to make a mistake, and then turned the security catches to lock it in place. And he dropped back onto the deck, pleased with what he had achieved. And a little relieved that he hadn't come to grief over it. There were no safety harnesses like they'd worn on the Malcolm Miller on the Sea Horse.

He worked his way back to the deckhouse and Gloria passed him the forward lantern, which was easier to mount, being fixed to a frame which was mounted on the mast. Chris could stand in front of it on the deck and fit it in place. Then there was a halyard which he hauled on, which raised the lantern, frame and all, about three metres up the mast, running in a pair of tracks screwed to the mast for the purpose.

Back at the deckhouse, Pieter called both boys to him and showed them the compass and the tiller and the winch and cleat for controlling the mainsheet. In turn, he got each boy to take a turn steering with the tiller, feeling the ship and practising changing direction a little and then coming back on course. Once he was satisfied that both could do it, he sent Ricky down to get some sleep and told Chris to stand lookout. They would serve watches, just like on the Malcolm Miller except that they didn't bother with the two hour dog watches. So Ricky would sleep for four hours and Pieter and Chris would be on duty. Then Chris would get four hours sleep and Ricky and Pieter would be on duty. Then Pieter would get his turn and Chris and Ricky would be on their own in charge of the boat. Pieter said that by then Gloria would be up and if they needed her she would be available to help.

Chris was quite glad not to be asked to take the helm, it was a bit daunting to be steering such a big vessel. Pieter explained that the English Channel is the busiest shipping lane in the world, so keeping a sharp lookout was essential all the time. As it became completely dark, Chris found that instead of looking for ghostly shapes on the horizon, he was looking for lights. And there were always several visible, Pieter said they were fishing vessels mostly. He enjoyed himself until Pieter announced that he needed the lavatory, and Chris was left alone on deck for a minute or two, leaning on the tiller and watching the compass, peering frequently into the gloom ahead of them to see any new light becoming visible ahead of them.

At midnight Pieter was still fresh, but Chris was beginning to find it hard to maintain concentration. The old man nudged him, and told him to go down and get some sleep, but to send Ricky up for his watch first. He was very glad to obey, and prodded at Ricky until he sat up, before dropping into his sleeping bag across the room from Ricky and sinking into a deep sleep almost immediately.

Ricky woke from a deep sleep, disorientated, and it took a while to come to terms with the bed rocking and swaying, and, when he worked out the cause of that, being on board ship. Chris mumbled: “It's your watch. Get up and out, Pieter's waiting for you on deck!” before turning over and pushing his face into the space between his pillow and the bulkhead. He was asleep before Ricky had his shoes on.

The next four hours were a challenge. There was not a great deal for Ricky to do, but he couldn't afford to lose concentration. It was the middle of the night and he'd been awoken from a much needed sleep too soon to get up and stand watch. His body wanted to lie down, his eyes wanted to close, but he had to stay awake and alert for four solid hours through the night. The wind had dropped a little and the waves were smaller, so the movement of the ship became gentler. Ricky marvelled at Pieter, who hadn't had any sleep, and whose concentration seemed limitless. He stood at the tiller still, his eye always on the compass except for moments when he scanned his little ship, making sure all was well. Two hours into the watch, in other words at two in the morning, Pieter decided to take a short break and handed the tiller to Ricky, who was glad of the change of activity and excited to have the privilege. Pieter went below, and five minutes later came up with two mugs of hot chocolate for them. He left Ricky at the helm while he drank his very hot, then took the tiller to give the boy a chance to drink his before it got cold. Ricky was pleased to find that his drink was still piping hot, and wondered about the old man's ability to drink his even hotter. He was glad to wrap his cold hands around the mug, too. And it made a break from the monotony of the night watch.

At four in the morning, Pieter finally went below deck and woke Chris to go and join Ricky, who was on his own at the helm, with no lookout to help him. Chris stumbled blearily up on deck and smiled at Ricky ruefully before taking his position beside him and looking around at the twinkly lights all around them in the distance. Fishing vessels bobbing at anchor, or motoring slowly through the water pulling drift nets behind them.

A few minutes after Chris joined Ricky, Gloria came up and checked on the boys. She had a wooden box with her, and set it down on the deck beside her and opened it, and took out a complex brass contraption that Ricky recognised as a sextant, although he'd never seen one except in pictures. She held it in one hand and put her eye to it, pointing it at the horizon, and turning a wheel at the bottom. Then she read a measurement off a scale and repeated the exercise pointing in a different direction. And she did it a third time, noting down the readings on a scrap of paper before packing the instrument away in its box.

“Give me five minutes and then one of you can come down into the cabin and I'll show you where we are on the chart!” She eased herself down the companionway and lifted the sextant in its case down after her. The boys were once again left alone on deck.

Chris took over at the tiller, and five minutes later Ricky climbed down the companionway to find the cabin brightly lit, with a Tilley pressure lantern swinging from a hook in the ceiling above the big table. Gloria was sitting at the table with a big chart spread out in front of her, and a pencil and ruler by her side. She beckoned him over and he sat down, and then scooted along the bench so that he could see to read the chart.

“I took bearings with the sextant off three different stars and used the readings to plot our position on the chart. Have you used a sextant?”

Ricky shook his head. “I don't really know how a sextant works or even what it does.”

She reached behind her to the open locker on the bulkhead and pulled the wooden box out onto the table. And then she took the sextant out. It was a beautifully engineered brass object, all angles and surfaces. There was a perforated plate the shape of a large cake slice, and at the tip of it was fixed in a bearing a flat rod which ran all the way to the outer edge of the cake slice, so that the rod could swing from the left edge of the cake slice around to the right edge. There was a scale along the cake slice and a pointer on the rod so that you could read out whreabouts on the slice the rod was set, and there was a lever to lock it in place and a little wheel which could be engaged to move it in tiny increments, to make fine adjustments to its setting. At the end of the rod where it was attached to the bearing was a mirror stood on its edge, which moved with the rod, and there was another mirror fixed to the cake segment about a third of the way along one straight edge, and a little telescope about a third of the way along the other straight edge, pointing at the mirror.

“When you look through the telescope, you see a view split in two. On one side you look straight out, and you point the telescope at the horizon. On the other side your view is reflected by the mirror to the moveable mirror, and you see something up in the sky, whatever the mirror is pointing to. You use the rod to adjust the angle of the moveable mirror until you are looking at some recognisable object in the sky, like the North Star, or in daylight the sun, and then you adjust the rod carefully until the object appears parallel to the horizon in the other half of your view. Then you read off the angle on the scale at the bottom of the instrument and it tells you at what angle you are seeing the object. How high in the sky the object is, in other words.

“Now, the North Star is always North, no matter where you are in the world, but how high in the sky it appears depends upon how far North or South you are – at what Latitude you are. So if you know how to convert the angle that the sextant gives you to a Latitude you can mark your latitude as a line on the chart just from your reading off the North Star. And I have tables, here, which make that easy.”

She tapped a well-thumbed book beside her.

“The tables let you work out your position on the earth's surface relative to the star you sighted, and with reference to the time when you made the sighting. The stars move around so the measurement needs to be compared to the time to get the result. That's what the tables are for.

“Then you need a reading off another object, preferably one covered in the tables, that's in a different part of the sky from the North Star. Something to the East or West, ideally, and that will give you a second line to draw on the chart, and the two lines will cross at one point, which must be where we are!”

She stabbed at the chart, showing a mark she had made, which showed them off the coast of Kent.

“If you have a third reading you can draw another line, and you usually find it doesn't cross the other two lines exactly where they cross each other. So you're left with a little triangle. That's the potential error. You can be sure you're somewhere in the triangle if you've done your measurement and your sums right.”

She paused for a minute, and Ricky stared at the chart, recognising the little triangle made by the intersection of three lines drawn very faintly on the paper. He was fascinated. It occurred to him that position finding by sighting the stars is only possible because astronomers have established the movement of stars and planets across the sky. With the exception of the north star which doesn't move much, all the other stars move around in a big sweeping arc across the sky, so the time when the measurement is made would make all the difference to the calculation of their location.

“Would you like to try doing it yourself?”

“Oh, yes, please! May I?”

“Yes you may. There is one thing you need to remember, though – the sextant is very delicate and easily damaged. It measures angles very accurately, but you need to remember that an error of one minute of arc – that's one sixtieth of a degree – will put your location out by maybe half a mile. That could put you on rocks when you think you're in deep water. So we look after our sextant with great care and handle it as precious. If you have a sextant in the warm and you take it out into the cold, the metal shifts and can buckle.

“Here, take it up with you and I'll follow.” She passed Ricky the wooden box and he gingerly carried it up the companionway on to the deck. Chris was there, on his own, steering the ship and doing lookout duty, and he looked relieved to see Ricky and then Gloria appear beside him.

Gloria took over the tiller, and explained to Chris that he and Ricky were to have a lesson in the use of the sextant.

“Take it out of its box, Ricky. That's it. See the handle on the back? Hold it firmly by the handle. Now look through the eyepiece and point it at the horizon. Tell me what you can see.”

“On the left I can see the horizon. But there's a line down the middle of the image and on the right I'm looking at stars.”

“That's right. That's the image that's defleted by the mirrors. Release the lock on the adjustment bar, and turn the wheel to move he bar along the scale.”

“Oh, the stars move up and down!”

“Now, take your eye away from the eyepiece, and look up at the sky. Can you see the North Star?”

Ricky suddenly felt stupid. “I don't know how to recognise it? Which on is it?”

“You don't know your constellations?”

“No. Sorry.”

“No matter. Look where I'm pointing. Can you see a pattern of stars that look a bit like the outline of a saucepan with a curvy handle?”

Ricky bent his head right back and stared. There it was, at a funny angle, but clearly a saucepan. “Yes, there.” he pointed.

“That's Ursa Major, which means the Great Bear. It's sometimes also called The Plough. Now, look at the last two stars, the pair that make the side of the saucepan opposite the handle. And follow the line of those two stars upwards, as it were away from the gas burner, if the saucepan was on a gas stove. There's quite a bit of clear sky, and the next star you come to in a straight line from those two is a bright star all on its own. That's the North Star. You can see it anywhere in the northern hemisphere, and it's always in a straight line from those two stars in Ursa Major.”

“Wow. I never knew about this. Wonderful!” Ricky was enthused, learning something completely new.

“Now, look through the sextant again. But this time, point it at the horizon directly below the North Star, and turn the wheel on the adjuster until you see the North Star next to the horizon in the eyepiece.”

It took Ricky a little while to accomplish this, but he eventually announced that he'd got it.

“Now, try tipping the sextant over on its side a very little bit, and then the other way. Do you see it makes a mess of your setting?”

“Yes, if it's not perfectly vertical the star isn't aligned with the horizon properly.”

“So that shows you it's important to keep it vertical. If you've got the north star aligned with the horizon in the instrument, turn the lock lever to lock the reading, and read off what the angle is.”

“I can't. There isn't enough light.”

“No, of course there isn't up here, silly! Go down and do it. But before you go, what have you forgotten?”

Chris piped up. “To note the time when the reading was taken.”

“Well done, Chris. How did you know?”

“I overheard the conversation you had in the cabin. It's quite quiet up here on my own, now the wind has dropped so much.”

Ricky glanced at Chris and beamed his best smile at him.

Gloria beckoned Ricky. “Take the tiller, Ricky, I think we've done enough for one night. Did you put the sextant back in its box down there?”

“Yes, and the box is back in the locker where it came from. I released the locking lever before I put it away, because I remembered you said about the adjustment rod buckling if it was subjected to a big change of temperature.”

“Well done! Yes I always leave it stored with the lock off. Now I'm going below and I want you boys to finish the watch, and then you can bang on our door and Pieter will come up and relieve one of you. And unless the wind drops further I think we'll be in Ipswich before lunchtime.”

She made her way back down the stairs again. A word popped into Ricky's head and wouldn't leave. The word was 'waddle'. He stifled a giggle.

There was only just over an hour left of the watch and they settled to their assignment. Chris watching the sea ahead of them, Ricky watching the compass rose.