Hungry as the Sea (20 page)

The wind had dropped to a gentle force four, a moderate steady breeze that blew for twenty minutes, just long enough for the crests of the waves to stop breaking over on themselves. Then slowly, it veered north — and without any further warning, it was upon them.

It came roaring like a ravening beast, lifting the surface of the sea away in white sheets of spray that looked as though red-hot steel had been quenched in it, It laid
Warlock
right over, so that her port rail went under and she was flung up so harshly on her main cable that her stern was pulled down sharply, water pouring in through her stern scuppers.

It took David by surprise, so that she paid off dangerously before he could slam open the port throttle and throw the starboard screw into full reverse thrust. As she came up, he hit the call to the Captain’s suite, watching with rising disbelief as the mad world dissolved around him.

Nick heard the call from far away, it only just penetrated to his fatigue-drugged brain, and he tried to respond, but it felt as though his body was crushed under an enormous weight and that his brain was slow and sluggish as a hibernating reptile.

The buzzer insisted, a tinny, nagging whine and he tried to force his eyes open, but they would not respond. Then dimly, but deeply, he felt the wild anguished action of his ship and the tumult that he believed at first was in his own ears, but was the violent uproar of the storm about the tug’s superstructure.

He forced himself up on one elbow, and his body ached in every joint. He still could not open his eyes but he groped for the handset.

“Captain to the after bridge!” He could hear something in David Allen’s voice that forced him to his feet.

When Nick staggered on to the after navigation bridge, the First Officer turned gratefully to him.

“Thank God you’ve come, sir.”

The wind had taken the surface off the sea, had stripped it away, tearing each wave to a shrieking fog of white spray and mingling it with the sleet and snow that drove horizontally across the bay. Nick glanced once at the dial of the wind anemometer, and then discounted the reading. The needle was stuck at the top of the scale.

It made no sense, a wind-speed of 120 miles an hour was too much to accept, the instrument had been damaged by the initial gusts of this wind, and he refused to believe it; to do so now would be to admit disaster, for nobody could salvage an ocean-going liner in wind velocities right off the Beaufort scale.

Warlock stood on her tail, like a performing dolphin begging for a meal, as the cable brought her up short and the bridge deck became a vertical cliff down which Nick was hurled. He crashed into the control panel and clung for purchase to the foul-weather rail.

“We’ll have to shear the cable and stand out to sea.” David Allen’s voice was pitched too high and too loud, even for the tumult of the wind and the storm.

There were men on board
Golden Adventurer
, Baker and sixteen others, Nick thought swiftly, and even her twin anchors could not be trusted to hold in this. Nick clung to the rail and peered out into the storm.

Frozen spray and sleet and impacted snow drove on the wind, coming in with the force of buckshot fired at point blank range, cracking into the armoured glass of the bridge and building up in thick clots and lumps that defeated the efforts of the spinning clear vision panels.

He looked across a thousand yards and the hull of the liner was just visible, a denser area in the howling, swirling, white wilderness.

“Baker?” he asked into the hand microphone. “What is your position?”

“The wind’s got her, she’s slewing. The starboard anchor is dragging.” And then, while Nick thought swiftly, “you’ll not be able to take us off in this.” It was a flat statement, an acceptance of the fact that the destinies of Baker and his sixteen men were inexorably linked to that of the doomed ship.

“No,” Nick agreed. “We won’t be able to get you off.” To approach the stricken ship was certain disaster for all of them.

“Shear the cable and stand off,” Baker advised. “We’ll try to get ashore as she breaks up.” Then, with a hangman’s chuckle, he went on, “Just don’t forget to come and fetch us when the weather moderates — that is if there is anybody to fetch.”

Abruptly Nick’s anger came to the surface through the layers of fatigue, anger at the knowledge that all he had risked and suffered was now to be in vain, that he was to lose
Golden Adventurer
, and probably with her sixteen men, one of whom had become a friend.

“Are you ready to heave on the anchor winches?” he asked. We are going to pull the bitch off.”

“Jesus!” said Baker. “She’s still half flooded.”

“We will have a lash at it, cobber,” said Nick quietly.

“The steering-gear is locked, you won’t be able to control her. You’ll lose
Warlock
as well as —” but Nicholas cut Baker short.

“Listen, you stupid Queensland sheep-shagger, get on to those winches.”

As he said it,
Golden Adventurer
disappeared, her bulk blotted out completely by the solid, white curtains of the Engine room, Nick spoke crisply to the Second Engineer. “Disengage the override, and give me direct control of both power and pitch.”

“Control transferred to bridge, sir,” the Engineer confirmed, and Nick touched the shining stainless-steel levers with fingers as sensitive as those of a concert pianist.

Warlock’s
response was instantaneous. She pivoted, shrugging aside a green slithering burst of water which came in over her shoulder and thundered down the side of her superstructure.

“Anchor winches manned.” Beauty Baker’s tone was almost casual.

“Stand by,” said Nick, and felt his way through that white inferno. It was impossible to maintain visual reference, the entire world was white and swirling, even the surface of the sea was gone in torn streamers of white; the very pull of gravity, that should have defined even a simple up or down, was confused by the violent pitch and roll of the deck.

Nick felt his exhausted brain begin to lurch dizzily in the first attacks of vertigo. Swiftly he switched his attention to the big compass and the heading indicator.

“David,” he said, “take the wheel.” He wanted somebody swift and bright at the helm now.

Warlock plunged suddenly, so viciously that Nick’s bruised ribs were brought in brutal contact with the edge of the control console. He grunted involuntarily with the pain.
Warlock
was feeling her cable, she had come up hard.

“Starboard ten,” said Nick to David, bringing her bows up into that hideous wind.

“Chief,” he spoke into the microphone, his voice still ragged with the pain in his chest. “Haul starboard winch, full power.”

“Full power starboard.” Nick slid pitch control to fully fine, and then slowly nudged open the throttles, bringing in twenty-two thousand horse-power.

Held by her tail, driven by the great wind, and tortured by the sea, lashed by her own enormous propellers,
Warlock
went berserk. She corkscrewed and porpoised to her very limits, every frame in her hull shook with the vibration of all her screws as her propellers burst out of the surface and spun wildly in the air.

Nick had to clench his jaws as the vibration threatened to crack his teeth, and when he glanced across at the forward and lateral speed-indicators, he saw that David Allen’s face was icy white and set like that of a corpse.

Warlock was slewing down on the wind, describing a slow left-hand circle at the limit of the cable as the engine torque and the wind took her around.

“Starboard twenty,” Nick snapped, correcting the turn, and despite the rigour of his features, David Allen’s response was instantaneous.

“Twenty degrees of starboard wheel on, sir!”

Nick saw the lateral drift stop on the ground speedindicator, and then with a wild lurch of elation he saw the forward speed-indicator flicked into green. Its electronic digital read out, changing swiftly — they were moving forward at 150 feet a minute.

“We are moving her,” Nick cried aloud, and he snatched up the microphone.

“Full power both winches.”

““Still full and holding,” answered Baker immediately.

And Nick glanced back at the forward speed across the ground, 150, to 75 feet a minute,
Warlock’s
forward impetus slowed, and Nick realized with a slide of dismay that it was merely the elasticity of the nylon spring that had given them that reading. The spring was stretching out to its limit. For two or three seconds, the dial recorded a zero rate of speed.

Warlock was standing still, the cable drawn out to the full limit of her strength, then abruptly the dial flicked into vivid red; they were gong backwards, as the nylon spring exerted pressures beyond that of the twin diesels and the big bronze screws —
Warlock
was being dragged back towards that dreadful shore.

For another five minutes, Nick kept both clenched fists on the control levers, pressing them with all his strength to the limit of their travel, sending the great engines shrieking, driving the needles up around the dials, deep into the red never exceed sectors. He felt tears of anger and frustration scalding his swollen eyelids, and the ship shuddered and shook and screamed under him, her torment transmitted through the soles of his feet and the palms of his hands.

Warlock was held down by cable and power, so she could not rise to meet the seas that came out of the whiteness. They tumbled aboard her, piling up on each other, so she burrowed deeper and more dangerously.

“For God’s sake, sir,” David Allen was no longer able to contain himself. His eyes looked huge in his bone-white face. “You’ll drive her clean under.”

“Baker,” Nick ignored his Mate, “Are you gaining?”

“No recovery either winch,” Beauty told him. “She is not moving.” Nick pulled back the stainless steel levers, the needles sank swiftly back around their dials, and
Warlock
reacted gratefully, shaking herself free of the piled waters.

“You’ll have to shear the tow.” Baker’s disembodied voice was muted by the clamour of the storm. “We’ll take our chances, sport.”

Beside him, David Allen reached for the red-painted steel box that housed the shear button. It was protected by the box from accidental usage; David Allen opened the box and looked expectantly, almost pleadingly at Nick.

“Belay that!” Nick snarled at him, and then to Baker, “I’m shortening tow. Be ready to haul again, when I am in position.” David Allen stared at him, his right hand still on the open lid of the red box.

“Close that bloody thing,” Nick said, and turned to the main cable controls. He moved the green lever to reverse, and felt the vibration in the deck as below him in the main cable room the big drums began to revolve, drawing the thick ice-encrusted cable up over
Warlock’s
stern.

Fighting every inch of the way like a wild horse on a head halter,
Warlock
was drawn in cautiously by her own winches , and the officers watched in mounting horror as out of the white terror of the blizzard emerged the mountainous ice-covered bulk of
Golden Adventurer
.

She was so close that the main cable no longer dipped below the surface of the sea, but ran directly from the liner’s stern to the tug’s massive fairleads on her stern quarter.

“Now we can see what we are doing,” Nick told them grimly. He could see now that much of
Warlock’s
power had been wasted by not exerting a pull on exactly the same plane as
Golden Adventurer’s
keel. He had been disoriented in the white-out of the blizzard, and had allowed
Warlock
to pull at an angle. It would not happen now.

“Chief,” he said. “Pull, pull all, pull until she bursts her guts!” And again he slid the throttle handles fully home.

Warlock flung up against the elastic yoke, and Nick saw the water spurt from the woven fibres and turn instantly to ice crystals as it was whipped away on the shrieking wind.

“She’s not moving, sir,” David cried beside him.

“No recovery either winch,” Baker confirmed almost immediately. “She’s solid!”

“Too much water still in her!” said David, and Nick turned on him as though to strike him to the deck.

“Give me the wheel,” he said, his voice cracking with his anger and frustration.

With both engines boiling the sea to white foam, and roaring like dying bulls, Nick swung the wheel to full port lock. Wildly
Warlock
dug her shoulder in, water pouring on board her as she rolled, instantly Nick spun the wheel to full starboard lock and she lurched against the tow, throwing an extra ton of pressure on to it.

Even above the storm, they heard
Golden Adventurer
groan, the steel of her hull protesting at the weight of water in her and the intolerable pressure of the anchor winches and
Warlock’s
tow cable.

The groan became a crackling hiss as the pebble bottom gave and moved under her.

“Christ, she’s coming!” shrieked Baker, and Nick swung her to full port lock again, swinging
Warlock
into a deep trough between waves, then a solid ridge of steaming water buried her, and Nick was not certain she could survive that press of furious sea. It came green and slick over the superstructure and she shuddered wearily, gone slow and unwieldy.

Then she lifted her bows and, like a spaniel, shook herself free, becoming again quick and light.

“Pull, my darling, pull,” Nick pleaded with her.

With a slow reluctant rumble,
Golden Adventurer’s
hull began to slide over the holding, clinging bottom.

“Both winches recovering,” Baker howled gleefully, and
Warlock’s
ground speed-indicator flicked into the green, its little angular figures changing in twinkling electronic progression as
Warlock
gathered way.

They all saw
Golden Adventurer’s
stern swinging to meet the next great ridge of water as it burst around her.

 She was floating, and for moments Nick was paralysed by the wonder of seeing that great and beautiful ship come to life again, become a living, vital sea creature as she took the seas and rose to meet them.