Hungry as the Sea (21 page)

“We’ve done it, Christ, we’ve done it,” howled Baker, but it was too soon for self-congratulation. As
Golden Adventurer
came free of the ground and gathered sternway under
Warlock’s
tow, so her rudder bit and swung her tall stern across the wind.

She swung, exposing the enormous windage of her starboard side to the full force of the storm. It was like setting a mainsail, and the wind took her down swiftly on the rocky headland with its sentinel columns that guarded the entrance to the bay.

Nick’s first instinct was to try and hold her off, to oppose the force of the wind directly and he flung
Warlock
into the task, relying on her great diesels and the two anchors to keep the liner from going ashore again – but the wind toyed with them, it ripped the anchors out of the pebble bottom and
Warlock
was drawn stern first through the water, straight down on the jagged rock of the headland.

“Chief, get those anchors up,” Nick snapped into the microphone. “They’ll never hold in this.”

Twenty years earlier, bathing off a lonely beach in the Seychelles, Nick had been caught out of his depth by one of those killer currents that flow around the headlands of oceanic islands, and it had sped him out into the open sea so that within minutes the silhouette of the land was low and indistinct on his watery horizon. He had fought that current, swimming directly against it, and it had nearly killed him. Only in the last stages of exhaustion had he begun to think, and instead of battling it, he had ridden the current, angling slowly across it, using its impetus rather than opposing it.

The lesson he had learned that day was well remembered, and as he watched Baker bring
Golden Adventurer’s
dripping anchors out of the wild water. He was driving
Warlock
hard, bringing her around on her cable so the wind was no longer in her teeth, but over her stern quarter.

Now the wind and
Warlock’s
screws were no longer opposed, but
Warlock
was pulling two points off the wind, as fine a course as Nick could judge barely to clear the most seaward of the rocky sentinels; now the liner’s locked rudder was holding her steady into the wind – but opposing
Warlock’s
attempt to angle her away from the land.

It was a problem of simple vectors of force, that Nick tried to work out in his head and prove in physical terms, as he delicately judged the angle of his tow and the direction of the wind, balancing them against the tremendous leverage of the liner’s locked rudder, the rudder which was dragging her suicidally down upon the land.

Grimly, he stared ahead to where the black rock cliffs were still hidden in the white nothingness. They were invisible, but their presence was recorded on the cluttered screen of the radar repeater. With both wind and engines driving them, their speed was too high, and if
Golden Adventurer
went on to the cliffs like this, her hull would shatter like a water melon hurled against a brick wall.

It was another five minutes before Nick was absolutely certain they would not make it. They were only two miles off the cliffs now, he glanced again at the radar screen, and they would have to drag
Golden Adventurer
at least half a mile across the wind to clear the land. They just were not going to make it.

Helplessly, Nick stood and peered into the storm, waiting for the first glimpse of black rock through the swirling eddies of snow and frozen spray, and he had never felt more unmanned tired and in his entire life as he moved to the shear button ready to cut
Golden Adventurer
loose and let her go to her doom.

His officers were silent and tense around him, while under his feet
Warlock
shuddered and buffeted wildly, driven to her mortal limits by the sea and her own engines, but still the land sucked at them.

“Look!” David Allen shouted suddenly, and Nick spun to the urgency in his voice. For a moment he did not understand what was happening. He knew only that the shape of
Golden Adventurer’s
stern was altered subtly.

“The rudder,” shouted David Allen again. And Nick saw it revolving slowly on its stock as the ship lifted on another big sea.

Almost immediately, he felt
Warlock
making offing from under that lee shore, and he swung her up another point into the wind,
Golden Adventurer
answering her tow with a more docile air, and still the rudder revolved slowly.

“I’ve got power on the emergency steering gear now!” said Baker.

“Rudder amidships,” Nick ordered.

“Amidships it is,” Baker repeated, and now he was pulling her out stern first, almost at right angles across the wind. Through the white inferno appeared the dim snow-blurred outline of the rock sentinels, and the sea broke upon them like the thunder of the heavens.

“God, they are close,” whispered David Allen. So close that they could feel the backlash of the gale as it rebounded from the tall rock walls, moderating the tremendous force that was bearing them down – moderating just enough to allow them to slide past the three hungry rocks, and before them lay three thousand miles of wild and tumultuous water, all of it open sea room.

“We made it. This time we really made it!” said Baker, as though he did not believe it was true, and Nick pulled back the throttle controls taking the intolerable strain off her engines before they tore themselves to pieces.

“Anchors and all,” Nick replied. It was a point of honour to retrieve even the anchors. They had taken her off clean and intact - anchors and all.

“Chief,” he said, “instead of sitting there hugging yourself, how about pumping her full of Tannerax?” The anti-corrosive chemical would save her engines and much of her vital equipment from further sea-water damage, adding enormously to her salvaged value.

“You just never let up, do you?” Baker answered accusingly.

“Don’t you believe it,” said Nick, he felt stupid and frivolous with exhaustion and triumph. Even the storm that still roared about them seemed to have lost its murderous intensity. “Right now I’m going down to my bunk to sleep for twelve hours - and I’ll kill anybody who tries to wake me!”

He hung the mike on its bracket and put his hand on David Allen’s shoulder. He squeezed once, and said: “You did well – you all did very well. Now take her, Number One, and look after her.” Then he stumbled from the bridge.

Chapter 11

It was eight days before they saw the land again. They rode out the storm in the open sea, eight days of unrelenting tension and heart-breaking labour.

The first task was to move the tow-cable to
Golden Adventurer’s
bows. in that sea, the transfer took almost 24 hours, and three abortive attempts before they had her head-on to the wind. Now she rode more easily, and
Warlock
had merely to hang on like a drogue, using full power only when one of the big icebergs came within dangerous range, and it was necessary to draw her off.

However, the tension was always there and Nick spent most of those days on the bridge, watchful and worried, nagged by the fear that the plug in the gashed hull would not hold. Baker used timbers from the ship’s store to shore up the temporary patch, but he could not put steel in place while
Golden Adventurer
plunged and rolled in the heavy seas, and Nick could not go aboard to check and supervise the work.

Slowly, the great wheel of low pressure revolved over them, the winds changed direction, backing steadily into the west, as the epicentre matched on down the sea lane towards Australasia – and at last it had passed. Now
Warlock
could work up towing speed. Even in those towering glassy swells of black water that the storm had left them as a legacy, she was able to make four knots.

Then one clear and windy morning under a cold yellow sun, she brought
Golden Adventurer
into the sheltered waters of Shackleton Bay. It was like a diminutive guide dog leading a blinded colossus.

As the two ships came up into the still waters under the sheltering arm of the bay, the survivors came down from their encampment to the water’s edge, lining the steep black pebble beach, and their cheers and shouts of welcome and relief carried thinly on the wind to the officers on
Warlock’s
bridge.

Even before the liner’s twin anchors splashed into the clear green water, Captain Reily’s boat was puttering out to Warlock, and when he came aboard, his eyes were haunted by the hardship and difficulties of these last days, by the disaster of a lot command and the lives that had been ended with it. But when he shook hands with Nick, his grasp was firm.

“My thanks and congratulations, sir!” He had known Nicholas Berg as chairman of Christy Marine, and, as no other, he was aware of the magnitude of this most recent accomplishment. His respect was apparent.

“Quite good to see you again,” Nick told him. “Naturally you have access to my ship’s communications to report to your owners.”

Immediately he turned back to the task of manoeuvring the lock alongside, so that the steel plate could be swung up from her salvage holds to the liner’s deck; it was another hour before Captain Reilly emerged from the radio room.

“Can I offer you a drink, Captain?” Nick led him to his day cabin, and began with tact to deal with the hundred details which had to be settled between them. It was a delicate situation, for Reilly was no longer master of his own ship. Command had passed to Nicholas as salvage master.

“The accommodation aboard
Golden Adventurer
is still quite serviceable, and, I imagine, a great deal warmer and more comfortable than that occupied by your passengers at present.” Nick made it easier for him while never for a moment letting him lose sight of his command position, and Reilly responded gratefully. Within half an hour, they had made all the necessary arrangements to transfer the survivors aboard the liner.

Levoisin on
La Mouette
had been able to take only one hundred and twenty supernumeraries on board his little tug. The oldest and weakest of them had gone and Christy Marine was negotiating for a charter from Cape Town to Shackleton Bay to take off the rest of them. Now that charter was unnecessary, but the cost of it would form part of Nick’s claim for salvage award.

“I won’t take more of your time.” Reilly drained his glass and stood. “You have much to do.” There were another four days and nights of hard work.

Nick went aboard
Golden Adventurer
and saw the cavernous engine room lit by the eye-scorching blue glare of the electric welding flames, as Baker placed his steel over the wound and welded it into place. Even then, neither he nor Nick was satisfied until the new patches had been shored and stiffened with baulks of heavy timber. There was a hard passage through the roaring forties ahead of them, and until they had
Golden Adventurer
safely moored in Cape Town docks, the salvage was incomplete.

They sat side by side among the greasy machinery and the stink of the anti-corrosives, and drank steaming Thermos coffee laced with Bundaberg rum.

“We get this beauty into Duncan Docks – and you are going to be a rich man,” Nick said.

“I’ve been rich before. With me it never lasts long – and it’s always a relief when I’ve spent the stuff.” Beauty gargled the rum and coffee appreciatively, before he went on, shrewdly. “So you don’t have to worry about losing the best goddamned engineer afloat.” Nick laughed with delight. Baker had read him accurately. He did not want to lose him.

With this Nick left him and went to see to the trim of the liner, studying her carefully and using the experience of the last days to determine her best points of tow, before giving his orders to David allen to raise her slightly by the head.

Then there was the transfer from the liner’s bunkers of sufficient bunker oil to top up
Warlock’s
own tanks against the long tow ahead, and Bach Wackie in Bermuda kept the telex clattering with relays from underwriters and Lloyd’s, with the first tentative advances from Christy Marine; already Duncan Alexander was trying out the angles, manoeuvring for a liberal settlement of Nick’s claims, without, as he put it, the expense of the arbitration court.

“Tell him I’m going to roast him,” Nick answered with grim relish. “Remind him that as Chairman of Christy Marine I advised against underwriting our own bottoms and now I’m going to rub his nose in it.”

The days and nights blurred together, the illusion made complete by the imbalance of time down here in the high latitudes, so that Nick could often believe neither his senses nor his watch when he had been working eighteen hours straight and yet the sun still burned, and his watch told him it was three o’clock in the morning.

Then again, it did not seem part of reality when his senior officers, gathered around the mahogany table in his day cabin, reported that the work was completed – the repairs and preparation, the loading of fuel, the embarkation of passengers and the hundred other details had all been attended to, and
Warlock
was ready to drag her massive charge out into the unpredictable sea, thousands of miles to the southernmost tip of Africa.

Nick passed the cheroot-box around the circle and while the blue smoke clouded the cabin, he allowed them all a few minutes to luxuriate in the feeling of work done, and done well.

“We’ll rest the ship’s company for twenty-four hours,” he announced in a rush of generosity. “And take in tow at 0800 hours Monday. I’m hoping for a two speed of six knots – twenty-one days to Cape Town, gentlemen.”

When they rose to leave, David Allen lingered selfconsciously. “The wardroom is arranging a little Christmas celebration tonight, sir, and we would like you to be our guest.” The wardroom was the junior officers, club from which, traditionally, the Master was excluded. He could enter the small panelled cabin only as an invited guest, but there was no doubt at all about the genuine warmth of the welcome they gave him. Even the Trog was there. They stood and applauded him when he entered, and it was clear that most of them had made an early start on the gin.