Hungry as the Sea (17 page)

“I’m glad,” Angel nodded. “He’s not a very nice person, you can see by those ferrety eyes of his —”

“He has beautiful eyes —” she flared at him, and then stopped abruptly, saw the cunning in his grin, faltered and then collapsed weakly on the bench beside him, with a cracked egg in one hand.

“Oh, Angel, you are a horrible man and I hate you. How can you make fun of me now?” He saw how close she was to tears, and became brisk and businesslike.

“First of all, you better know something about him,” and he began to tell her, giving her a waspish biography of Nicholas Berg, embellished by a vivid imagination and a wicked sense of humour, together with a quasi-feminine love of gossip, to which Samantha listened avidly, making an occasional exclamation of surprise.

“His wife ran away with another man, she could be out of her mind, don’t you think?”

“Dearie, a change is like two weeks at the seaside. Or asking a question. He owns this ship, actually owns it? Not just Master?  He owns this ship, and its sister, and the company. They used to call him the Golden Prince. He’s a high flyer, dearie, didn’t you recognize it?”

“I didn’t.”

“Of course you did. You’re too much woman not to. There is no more powerful aphrodisiac than success and power, nothing like the clink of gold to get a girl’s hormones revving up, is there?”

“That’s unfair, Angel. I didn’t know a thing about him. I didn’t know he was rich and famous. I don’t give a damn for money.”

“Ho! Ho?” Angel shook his curls and the diamond studs flashed in his ears. But he saw her anger flare again. “All right, dearie, I’m teasing. But what really attracts you is his strength and air of purpose. The way other men obey, and follow and fear him. The air of command, of power and with it, success.”

“I didn’t know.”

“Be honest with yourself, love. It was not the fact he saved your life, it wasn’t his beautiful eyes nor the lump in his jeans.”

“You’re crude, Angel.”

“You’re bright and beautiful, and you just can’t help yourself. You’re like a nubile little gazelle, all skittish and ready, and you have just spotted the herd bull. You can’t help yourself, dearie, you’re just a woman.”

“What am I going to do, Angel?”

“We’ll make a plan, love, but one thing is certain, you’re not going to trail around behind him, dressed like an escapee from a junk shop, breathing adoration and hero worship. He’s doing a job. He doesn’t need to trip over you every time he turns. Play hard to get.”

Samantha thought about it for a moment. “Angel, I don’t want to play it that hard that I never get around to being got — if you follow me.”

Beauty Baker had the work in hand, well organized and going ahead as fast as even Nick, in his overwhelming impatience, could expect. The alternator had been manhandled through the double doors into the superstructure on B deck, and it had been secured against a steel bulkhead and lashed down.

“As soon as I have power, we’ll drill the deck and bolt her down,” he explained to Nick.

“Have you got the lines in?”

I“‘ll by-pass the main junction box on C deck, and I will select from the temporary box.”

“But you’ve identified the foredeck winch circuit, and the pumps?”

“Jesus, sport, why don’t you go sail your little boat and leave me to do my work?”

On the upper deck one of Baker’s gangs was already at work with the gas welding equipment. They were opening access to the ventilation shaft of the main engine room. The gas cutter hissed viciously and red sparks showered from the steel plate of the tall dummy smoke stack. The stack was merely to give the
Golden Adventurer
the traditional rakish lines, and now the welder cut the last few inches of steel plating. It fell away into the deep, dark cavern, leaving a roughly square opening six feet by six feet which gave direct access into the half-flooded engine room fifty feet below.

Despite Baker’s advice, Nick took command here, directing the rigging of the winch blocks and steel wire cable that would enable a cable to be taken down into the flooded engine room and out again through that long, viciously fanged gash in the ship’s side. When he looked at his Rolex oyster again, almost an hour had passed. The sun had gone and a luminous green sky filled with the marvelous pyrotechnics of the Aurora Australis turned the night eerie and mysterious.

“All right, bosun, that’s all we can do now. Bring your team up to the bows.”

As they hurried forward along the open foredeck, the wind caught them, a single shrieking gust that had them reeling and staggering and grabbing for support, then it was past and the wind settled down to nag and whine and pry at their clothing as Nick directed the work at the two huge anchor winches; but he heard the rising sea starting to push and stir the pack-ice, making it growl and whisper menacingly.

They catted the twin sea-anchors and with two men working over
Adventurer’s
side. They secured collars of heavy chain to the crown of each anchor.
Warlock
would now be able to drag those anchors out, letting them bump along the bottom, but in the opposite direction to that in which they had been designed to drag, so that the pointed flukes would not be able to dig in and hold. Then, when the anchors were out to the full reach of their own chains,
Warlock
would drop them, the flukes would dig in and hold. This was the ground-tackle which might resist the efforts of even a force twelve wind to throw
Golden Adventurer
further ashore. When Baker had power on the ship, the anchor winches would be used to kedge
Golden Adventurer
off the bank.

Nick placed much reliance on these enormously powerful winches to assist
Warlock’s
own engines, for even as they worked, he could feel through the soles of his feet how heavily grounded the liner was.

It was a tense and heavy labour, for they were working with enormous weights of dead-weight steel chain and shackles. The securing shackle, which held the chain collar on the anchor crown, alone weighed three hundred pounds and had to be manhandled by six men using complicated tackle.

By the time they had the work finished, the wind was rising force six, and wailing in the superstructure. The men were chilled and tired, and tempers were flashing.

Nick led them back to the shelter of the main superstructure. His boots seemed to be made of lead, and his lungs pumped for the solace of cheroot smoke, and he realized irrelevantly that he had not slept now for over fifty hours since he had fished that disturbing little girl from the water. Quickly he pushed the thought of her aside, for it distracted him from his purpose, and, as he stepped over the door-sill into the liner’s cold but wind-protected accommodation, he reached for his cheroot-case.

Then he arrested the movement and blinked with surprise as suddenly garish light blazed throughout the ship deck lights and internal lights, so that instantly a festival air enveloped her and from the loudspeakers on the deck above Nicholas, head wafted soft music as the broadcasting equipment switched itself in. It was the voice of Donna Summer, as limpid and ringing clear as fine-leaded crystal.

The sound was utterly incongruous in this place and in these circumstances.

“Power is on!” Nick let out a whoop and ran through to B deck. Beauty Baker was standing beside his roaring alternator and hugging himself with glee.

“Howzat, sport?” he demanded. Nick punched his shoulder.

“Right on, Beauty.” He wasted a few moments and a cheroot by placing one of the precious black tubes between Baker’s lips and flashing his lighter. The two of them smoked for twenty seconds in close and companionable silence.

“Okay!” Nick ended it. “Pumps and winches.”

“The two emergency portables are ready to start, and I’m on my way to check the ship’s main pumps.”

“The only thing left is to get the collision mat into place.”

“That is your trick,” Baker told him flatly. “You’re not getting me into the water again, ever. I’ve even given up bathing.”

“Yeah, did you notice I’m standing upwind?” Nick told him. “But somebody has got to go down again to pass the line.”

“Why don’t you send Angel?” Baker grinned evilly.

Excuse me, cobber - I’ve got work to do. He inspected the cheroot. “After we’ve pulled this dog off the ground, I hope you will be able to afford decent gaspers.” And he was gone into the depths of the liner, leaving Nick with the one task he had been avoiding even thinking about.

Somebody had to go down into that engine room. He could call for volunteers, of course, but then it was another of his own rules to never ask another man to do what you are afraid to do yourself.

I can leave David to lay out the ground-tackle, but I can’t let anybody else put the collision mat in. He faced it now. He would have to go down again, into the cold and darkness and mortal danger of the flooded engine room.

The ground-tackle that David Allen had laid was holding
Golden Adventurer
handsomely, even in the aggravated swell which was by now pouring into the open mouth of the bay, driven on by the rising wind that was inciting it to wilder abandon.

David had justified Nick’s confidence in the seamanlike manner in which he had taken the
Golden Adventurer’s
twin anchors out and dropped them a cable’s length offshore, at a finely judged angle to give the best purchase and hold.

Beauty Baker had installed and test-run the two big centrifugals and he had even resuscitated two of the liner’s own forward pump assemblies which had been protected by the watertight bulkhead from the sea break-in. He was ready now to throw the switch on this considerable arsenal of pumps, and he had calculated that if Nick could close that gaping rent in the hull, he would be able to pump the liner’s hull dry and clean in just under four hours.

Nick was in full immersion kit again, but this time he had opted for a single bottle Drager diving-set; he was off oxygen sets for life, he decided wryly.

Before going down, he paused on the open deck with the diving helmet under his -arm. The wind must be rising seven now, he decided, for it was kicking off the tops of the waves in bursts of spray and a low scudding sky of dirty grey cloud had blotted out the rising sun and the peaks of Cape Alarm. It was a cold dark dawn, with the promise of a wilder day to follow.

Nick took one glance across at Warlock. David Allen was holding her nicely in position, and his own team was ready, grouped around that ugly black freshly burned opening in
Adventurer’s
stack. He lifted the helmet on to his head, and while his helpers closed the fastenings and screwed down the hose connections, he checked the radio.

“Warlock, do you read me?”

Allen’s voice came back immediately, acknowledging and confirming his readiness, then he went on, “the glass just went through the floor, Skipper, she’s 996 and going down. Wind’s force six rising seven and backing. It looks like we are fair in the dangerous quadrant of whatever is coming.”

“Thank you, David!” Nick replied. “You warm my heart.”

He stepped forward, and they helped him into the canvas bosun’s chair. Nick checked the tackle and rigging, that once-more-for-luck check, and then he nodded.

The interior of the engine room was no longer dark, for Baker had rigged floodlights high above in the ventilation shaft, but the water was black with engine oil, and as Nick was lowered slowly down, with legs dangling from the bosun’s chair, it surged furiously back and across like some panic-stricken monster trying to break out of its steel cage.

That wind-driven swell was crashing into
Golden Adventurer’s
side and boiling in through the opening, setting up its own wave action, forming its own currents and eddies which broke and leaped angrily against the steel bulkheads.

“Slower,” Nick spoke into the microphone. “Stop!” His downward progress was halted ten feet above the starboard main engine block, but the confined surge of water broke over the engine as though it were a coral reef, covering it entirely at one instant, and then sucking back and exposing it again at the next. The rush of water could throw a man against that machinery with force enough to break every bone in his body, and Nick hung above it and studied the purchases for his blocks.

“Send down the main block,” he ordered, and the huge steel block came down out of the shadows and dangled in the floodlights.

“Stop.” Nick began directing the block into position. “Down two feet. Stop!”

Now waist-deep in the oily, churning water, he struggled to drive the shackle pin and secure the block to one of the main frames of the hull. Every few minutes a stronger surge would hurl the water over his head, forcing him to cling helplessly, until it relinquished its grip, and his visor cleared sufficiently to allow him to continue his task. He had to pull out and rest after forty minutes of it.

He sat as close as he could to the heat-exchangers of the running diesel engine of the alternator, taking warmth from them and drinking Angel’s strong sweet Thermos coffee. He felt like a fighter between rounds, his body aching, every muscle strained and chilled by the efforts of fighting that filthy churned emulsion of sea water and oil, his flanks and ribs bruised from harsh contact with the submerged machinery. But after twenty minutes, he stood up again.

“Let’s go,” he said and resettled the helmet. The hiatus had given him a chance to replan the operation, thinking his way around the problems he had found down there; now the work seemed to fall more readily into place, though he had lost all sense of time alone in the infernal resounding cavern of steel and he was not sure of the hour, or the phase of the day, when at last he was ready to carry the messenger out through the gap.

“Send it down,” he ordered into his headset, and the reel of light line came down, swinging and circling under the glaring floodlights to the ship’s motion and throwing grotesque shadows into the far corners of the engine room. The line was of finely plaited Dacron, with enormous strength and elasticity in relation to its thinness and tightness. One end was secured on the deck high above, and Nick threaded it into the sheave blocks carefully, so that it was free to run. Then he clamped the reel of line on to his belt, riding it on his hip where it could be protected from snagging when he made the passage of the gap.