The Triangle and The Mountain: A Bermuda Triangle Adventure Read Online Free PDF Page B

at the beginning? He tried to remember
from TV programmes what a Viking boat looked like. He looked out over the
shimmering seascape and saw a wooden vessel with a high bow and high stern,
about the same length as his own, the moonlight reflecting off a square sail,
running before the breeze.
    He dreaded the night for its long hours of boredom but it
turned out not to be so bad. Mostly, it was because of the phosphorous effects.
On their journey across the Atlantic he could remember perhaps two nights that
were this spectacular. The yacht left a sparkling trail so bright that it
competed with the night sky. He could be sailing amongst the stars for all that
brightness. Also, all around him the sea came to life. On the port side fiery
loops approached and threatened the boat. Were these dolphins? Probably. On the
starboard side another set of pyrotechnics developed, round and round. These
were big fishes chasing smaller fishes, the experienced hands explained. He
looked over the side into the water and could see an occasional comet with a
tail of sparks pass in the depths several metres below. Probably a shark. Or
another dolphin. He looked for tell-tale sparks of fishes that were following
the yacht like they had done in the doldrums of the Southern Atlantic but saw
nothing. They were going just a bit too fast for that.
    The effects of the phosphorescence all around gave him a
sense of the wildlife in the sea. It was far from a watery salt desert but a
complete world in itself. As a sailor he travelled on the intersect, where one
world met another. He thought about dipping into the world on which they sailed.
He had several fishing rods stashed in their covers and he knew where to find
the lures in the tackle box. He enjoyed the spectacle around him so much,
however, that he decided against it. Rather, he’d try to put some of his
observations down in the log. He got hold of the notebook that he used,
recorded their departure time and the conditions, which were most favourable and
thought about something memorable to say that would remind him of this balmy
night. It took him several hours to pen a few sentences. No, he was not a
writer.
    At about twelve o’ clock he was tired of writing and walked
up to the pulpit for a better look ahead. There was only moonlit sea. He wondered
what John, his former skipper, would have said if he saw him sailing in the
middle of the night with the sea directly to starboard. He was always the one
who warned against the surprise wave. “You don’t know what has happened behind
the horizon,” he liked to say. “Sometimes a wave just climbs on top of another
and it will throw you on your beam ends before you know it.” He must have had a
few experiences like that in the Atlantic before, though not on their trip
together. It was a pretty uneventful journey during which nothing hit them but
normal sized seas and a steady south-easterly trade wind.
    There was plenty sea-craft that John had imparted to him
while he was working on his own skipper’s licence. The man was his mentor in a
very real sense. The problem was that he was now completely shocked in this
guy. If he was untrustworthy, what about his teaching? Perhaps he was just
lucky to have passed his final examination for the skipper’s licence two months
after arriving at St Martin. What the heck. He was just happy to be out here,
in charge of his own boat for the very first time.
    Thinking about his former skipper had prompted a question,
however, which did not quite go away. He surveyed the rollers coming in from
the east with renewed interest. The yacht went up and down in a sleepy rhythm
as they passed below. Surely nothing bad could come from that direction. To
make sure, he made his way to the navigation station and downloaded a fax with
the latest weather forecast onto a laptop. Nothing but mildness for now, with a
steady wind from the east, varying from south-east to east. The trade winds
ruled. In his favour. He decided to