Hungry as the Sea (14 page)

“All revoir, Jules. Come and watch me in the awards court.”

“I still think that’s a whore-house, not a tug you are sailing. You can send over a couple of blondes and a bottle of wine.”

“Goodbye, Jules.”

“Good luck, mon vieux.”

“Hey, Jules - you say ‘good luck’ and it’s the worst possible luck. You taught me that.”

“Oui, I know.”

“Then good luck to you also, Jules.”

For a minute Nick looked after the departing tug. It waddled away over the oily swells, small and fat-bottomed and cheeky, for all the world like its Master and yet there was something dejected and crestfallen about her going. He felt a prick of affection for the little Frenchman, he had been a true and good friend as well as a teacher, and Nick felt his triumph softening to regret.

He crushed it down ruthlessly. It had been a straight, hard but fair run, and Jules had been careless. Long ago, Nick had taught himself that anybody in opposition was an enemy, to be hated and beaten, and when you had done so, you despised them. You did not feel compassion, it weakened your own resolve.

He could not quite bring himself to despise Jules Levoisin. The Frenchman would bounce back, probably snatching the next job out from under Nick’s nose, and anyway he had the lucrative contract to ferry the survivors from Shackleton Bay. It would pay the costs of his long run southwards and leave some useful change over.

Nick’s own dilemma was not as easily resolved. He put Jules Levoisin out of his mind, turning away before the French tug had rounded the headland and he studied the ice-choked bay before him with narrow eyes and a growing feeling of concern. Jules had been right this was going to be a screaming bastard of a job.

The high seas that had thrown
Golden Adventurer
ashore had been made even higher by the equinoctial spring tides. Both had now abated and she was fast. The liner’s hull had swung also, so she was not aligned neatly at right angles to the beach.
Warlock
would not be able to throw a straight pull on to her. She would have to drag her sideways. Nick could see that now as he closed.

Still closer, he could see how the heavy steel hull, half filled with water, had burrowed itself into the yielding shingle. She would stick like toffee to a baby’s blanket.

Then he looked at the ice, it was not only brash and pancake ice, but there were big chunks, bergie bits, from rotten and weathered icebergs, which the wind had driven into the bay, like a sheep dog with its flock.

The plunging temperatures had welded this mass of ice into a whole; like a monstrous octopus, it was wrapping thick glistening tentacles around
Adventurer’s
stern. The ice had not yet had sufficient time to become impenetrable, and
Warlock’s
bows were ice-strengthened for just such an emergency - yet Nick knew enough not to underestimate the hardness of ice. White ice is soft ice was the old adage, and yet here there were big lumps and hummocks of green and striated glacial ice in the mass, like fat plums in a pudding, any one of which could punch a hole through
Warlock
‘s hull.

Nick grimaced at the thought of having to send Jules Levoisin a Mayday.

He spoke to the helmsman quietly. “Starboard five midships,” lining
Warlock
up for a fracture-line in the ice pack. It was vital to come in at a right angle, to take the ice fully on the stern; a glancing blow could throw the bows off line and bring the vulnerable hull in contact with razor ice.

“Stand by, engine room,” he alerted them, and
Warlock
bore down on the ice at a full ten knots and Nick judged the moment of impact finely. Half a ship’s length clear, he gave a crisp order. “Both half back.” 
Warlock
checked, going up on to the ice as she decelerated, but still with a horrid rasping roar that echoed through the ship. Her bows rose, riding up over the ice. It gave with a rending crackle, huge slabs of ice up-ending and tumbling together.

“Both full back.”

The huge twin propellers changed their pitch smoothly into reverse thrust, and the wash boiled into the broken ice, sweeping it clear, as
Warlock
drew back into open water and Nick steadied her and lined her up again.

“Both ahead full.” 
Warlock
charged forward, checking at the last moment, and again thick slabs of white ice broke away, and grated along the ship’s side. Nick swung her stern first starboard then port, deftly using the twin screws to wash the broken ice free, then he pulled
Warlock
out and lined up again. Butting and smashing and pivoting,
Warlock
worked her way deeper into the bay, opening a spreading web of cracks across the white sheet of ice.

David Allen was breathless, as he burst on to the bridge. “All gear checked and ready, sir.”

“Take her,” said Nick. “She’s broken it up now - just keep it stirred up.” He wanted to add a warning that the big variable-pitch propellers were
Warlock’s
 most vulnerable parts, but he had a high enough opinion now of his Mate’s ability, so he went on instead, “I’m going down now to kit up.”

Vin Baker was in the aft salvage hold ahead of him, he had already half finished the tray of rich food and Angel hovered over him, but, as Nick came down the steel ladder, he lifted the cover off another steaming tray.

“It’s good, said Nick,” although he could hardly force himself to swallow. The nerves in his stomach were bunched up too tightly. Yet food was one of the best defences against the cold.

“Samantha wants to talk to you, skip.”

“Who the hell is Samantha?”

“‘The girl — she wants to thank you.”

“Use your head, Angel, can’t you see I have other things on my mind.” Nick was already pulling on the rubber immersion suit over a full-length woollen undersuit. He needed the assistance of a seaman to enter the opening in the chest of the suit. He had already forgotten about the girl as they closed the chest opening of the suit with a double ring seal, and then over the watertight bootees and mittens went another full suit of polyurethane.

Nick and Vin Baker looked like a pair of fat Michelin men, as their dressers helped them into the full helmets, with wrap-around visors, built-in radio microphones and breathing valves.

“Okay, Chief?” Nick asked, and Vin Baker’s voice squawked too loudly into his headphones.

“Clear to roll.”

Nick adjusted the volume, and then shrugged into the oxygen rebreathing set. They were not going deeper than thirty feet, so Nick had decided to use oxygen rather than the bulky steel compressed-air cylinders.

“Let’s go,” he said, and waddled to the ladder.

The Zodiac sixteen-foot inflatable dinghy swung overboard with the four of them in it, two divers and two picked seamen to handle the boat. Vin pushed one of them aside and primed the outboard himself.

“Come on, beauty,” he told it sternly, and the big Johnson Seahorse fired at the first kick. Gingerly, they began to feel their way through an open lead in the ice, with the two seamen poling away small sharp pieces that would have ripped the fabric of the Zodiac.

In Nick’s radio headset, David Allen’s voice spoke suddenly. “Captain, this is the First Officer. Barometric pressure is 1102 — it looks like it’s going through the roof.”

The pressure was bouncing, as Nick had predicted. What goes up, must come down - and the higher she goes, the lower she falls. Jules Levoisin had warned him it was going to be a screamer.

“Did you read the last met from Gough Island?”

“They have 1005 falling, and the wind at 3200 and thirty-five knots.”

“Lovely,” said Nick. “We’ve got a big blow coming.” And through the visor of his helmet he looked up at the pale and beautiful sun. It was not bright enough to pain the eye, and now it wore a fine golden halo like the head of a saint in a medieval painting.

“Skipper, this is as close as we can get,” Vin Baker told him, and slipped the motor into neutral. The Zodiac coasted gently into a small open pool in the ice-pack, fifty yards from
Golden Adventurer
s stern.

A solid sheet of compacted ice separated them, and Nick studied it carefully. He had not taken the chance of working
Warlock
in closer until he could get a look at the bottom here. He wanted to know what depth of water he had to manoeuvre in, and if there were hidden snags, jagged rock to rip through the
Warlock’s
 hull, or flat shingle on which he could risk a bump.

He wanted to know the slope of the bottom, and if there was good holding for his ground-tackle, but most of all, he wanted to inspect the underwater damage to
Golden Adventurer’s
hull.

“Okay, Chief?” he asked, and Vin Baker grinned at him through the visor.

“Hey, I just remembered — my mommy told me not to get my feet wet. I’m going home.”

Nick knew just how he felt. There was thick sheet ice between them and Adventurer, they had to go down and swim below it. God alone knew what currents were running under the ice, and what visibility was like down there. A man in trouble could not surface immediately, but must find his way back to open water.

Nick felt a claustrophobic tightening of his belly muscles, and he worked swiftly, checking out his gear, cracking the valve on his oxygen tank to inflate the breathing bag, checking the compass and Rolex Oyster on his wrist and clipping his buddy line on to the Zodiac, a line to return along, like Theseus in the labyrinth of the minotaur.

“Let’s go,” he said, and flipped backwards into the water.

The cold struck through the multiple layers of rubber and cloth and polyurethane almost instantly, and Nick waited only for the Chief engineer to break through the surface beside him in a cloud of swirling silver bubbles.

“God!” Vin Baker’s voice was distorted by the earphones, “it’s cold enough to crack the gooseberries off a plaster saint.” Paying out the line behind him, Nick sank down into the hazy green depths, looking for bottom. It came up dimly, heavy shingle and pebble, and he checked his depth gauge - almost six fathoms - and he moved in towards the beach.

The light from the surface was filtered through thick ice, green and ghostly in the icy depths, and Nick felt unreasonable panic stirring deep in him. He tried to thrust it aside and concentrate on the job, but it flickered there, ready to burst into flame. There was a current working under the ice, churning the sediment so that the visibility was further reduced, and they had to fill hard to make headway across the bottom, always with the hostile ceiling of sombre green ice above them, cutting them off from the real world.

Suddenly the
Golden Adventurer’s
hull loomed ahead of them, the twin propellers glinting like gigantic bronze wings in the gloom. They moved in within arm Is length of the steel hull and swam slowly along it. It was like flying along the outer wall of a tall apartment block, a sheer cliff of riveted steel plate - but the hull was moving.

The
Golden Adventurer
was hoggmg on the bottom, the stern dipping and swaying to the pulse of the sea, the heaving ground-swell that came in under the ice; her stern bumped heavily on the pebbly bottom, like a great hammer beating time to the ocean.

Nick knew that she was settling herself in. Every hour now was making his task more difficult and he drove harder with his swim fins, pulling slightly ahead of Vin Baker. He knew exactly where to look for the damage.

Reilly had reported it in minute detail to Christy Marine, but he came across it without warning. It looked as though a monstrous axe had been swung horizontally at the hull, a clean slash, the shape of an elongated teardrop. The metal around it had been depressed, and the pain smeared away so that the steel gleamed as though it had been scoured and polished.

At its widest, the lips of the fifteen-foot rent gaped open by three feet or a little more, and it breathed like a living mouth - for the force of the ground-swell pushing into the gap built up pressure within the hull, then as the swell subsided the trapped water was forcibly expelled, sucking in and out with tremendous pressure.

“It’s a clean hole,” Vin Baker’s voice squawked harshly. “But it’s too long to pump with cement.” He was right, of course, Nick had seen that at once. Liquid cement would not plug that wicked gash, and anyway, there wasn’t time to use cement, not with weather coming.

An idea began forming in his mind.

“I’m going to penetrate.” Nick made the decision aloud, and beside him the Chief was silent for long incredulous seconds, then he covered the edge of fear in his voice with, “Listen, cobber, every time I’ve ever been into an orifice shaped like that, it’s always meant big trouble. Reminds me of my first wife.”

“Cover for me,” Nick interrupted him. “If I’m not out in five minutes —”

“I’m coming with you,” said the Chief. “I’ve got to take a look at her engine room. This is good a time as any.” Nick did not argue with him.

“I’ll go first,” he said and tapped the Chief’s shoulder. “Do what I do.”

Nick hung four feet from the gash, finning to hold himself there against the current. He watched the swirl of water rushing into the opening, and then gushing out again in a rash of silver bubbles. Then, as she began to breathe again, he darted forward.

The current caught him and he was hurled at the gap, with only time to duck his helmeted head and cover the fragile oxygen bag on his chest with both arms. Raw steel snagged at his leg; there was no pain, but almost instantly he felt the leak of sea water into his suit. The cold stung like a razor cut, but he was through into the total darkness of the cavernous hull. He was flung into a tangle of steel piping, and he anchored himself with one arm and groped for the underwater lantern on his belt.

“You okay?” The Chief Is voice boomed in his headphones.

“Fine.” Vin Baker’s lantern glowed eerily in the dark waters ahead of him.

“Work fast,” instructed Nick. “I’ve got a tear in my suit.” Each of them knew exactly what to do and where to go.

Vin Baker swam first to the water-tight bulkheads and checked all the seals. He was working in darkness in a totally unfamiliar engine room, but he went unerringly to the pump system, and checked the valve-settings; then he rose to the surface, feeling his way up the massive blocks of the main engines.