Redcap

by Philip McCutchan

  The Staff Commander said warningly, “It’s not going to be easy to get the boats away safely in this sea, sir. It’ll be tricky to off-load REDCAP, too.”

  “I know that, Stanford.” The Captain passed a hand across his eyes, trying to still the shake in his fingers as he did so. He looked very old and tired, Stanford thought. “We’ll just have to do our best—and pray. Pray for all we’re worth. There’s nothing else we can do, Stanford—unless Shaw gets that charge away in time.”

  “I understand, sir. Are there any further orders?”

  Sir Donald nodded. “Get the boats swung out right away and see them lowered to the embarkation deck. I’ll speak to the passengers and ship’s company myself over the tannoy. When they’re all at stations, close all watertight and firescreen doors. I don’t suppose it’ll do much good, but I’ll try to contain any explosion as much as humanly possible within the ship. Pass the word to all heads of departments that I’m going to abandon in ten minutes. They’ve got that much time to detail the absolute minimum of men who’ll be essential to off-load that crate and then steam the ship out. Those men will stand fast when the order’s passed to abandon.”

  The Staff Commander saluted, turned silently away. Sir Donald Mackinnon, his face quite expressionless, walked over to the broadcaster and pressed the switch down.

  Shaw had been taken below, right to the bottom of the ship. He had found the Chief Engineer going down the manhole leading into the double bottoms beneath the engine-room. He said, “Chief, I’m going.”

  The Chief glanced up at Shaw. “One of my own engineers put the thing there, so they tell me,” he said quietly. “It’s my job to get it out.”

  “No!” Shaw’s voice was urgent. “I know about these things. Chief, I’ve got the better chance. You’ve got to believe that, for everyone’s sake. You’ve got to.”

  Their eyes met again; the Chief said, “Well—all right, if you really think so.”

  “I do.”

  The Chief hauled himself up and Shaw went forward, squeezed his body through the small opening into a coffinlike steel space, a space so low that he could barely even move on hands and knees for the lack of headroom. The best way, he found, was to go along on his stomach, squirming snake-like. The compartment stank to high heaven, close and fetid even though fresh air was seeping in from the open manhole, was now in fact being blown in by a fan. Here—thirty-odd feet below the waterline—he had but one thin steel shell of bottom plating between him and the sea; above him was the whole fifty thousand tons, all the many decks of the New South Wales. As he squirmed along he knew that if anything should happen now he would be utterly unaware of it, that there could be no excape for him whoever else might survive. The narrow place closed him in as he wriggled painfully forward, trailing an electric-light bulb on a wandering lead, forcing his aching body through a tight aperture in the ship’s steel ribs, one of a series which crossed the double bottoms at close intervals. It was a nightmarish place to be in; Shaw’s hands were sticky and slippery with sweat and grease as he edged along, his heart pumping away. The atmosphere down there was beginning to affect him badly, making his head ache worse than ever, a pain so abominable now that lights seemed to flicker across his eyes. His whole body trembled.

  And then, just as he came up to the second rib aperture and raised his body to go through the hole into the next section, his head struck some projection in the steel decking above, and he felt a burning pain. Edging backwards, he shone the electric bulb on to the deckhead. He saw a metal fitting, and he heard a curious humming noise, quite faint but very steady.

  Karstad’s box . . . it must be Karstad’s box!

  It fitted the description. It was a smallish square of metal adhering to the deckhead, a box which somehow looked as though it wasn’t meant to be here in Number Five tank.

  It was the one all right.

  Shaw reached out, touched it, gave a gasp of pain. The thing was hot, had blistered his skin. Now he could hear the noise a little more loudly. He set his teeth, reached out again, grasped the thing firmly and tugged. He bit down on his lips and gave a low groan as the heat sank into his flesh, and he had to let go.

  He simply couldn’t move the thing.

  Twisting over on to his back with difficulty, he ripped at his shirt, tore off strips which he wrapped round his hands. Then he laid hold of the box again and wrenched.

  He went on and on but it just wouldn’t move. It was just as though it was part of the very structure, an integral part of the ship’s fittings, built in by the shipyard. Sweat had broken out all over his body now, was rolling into his eyes, blinding him. He sucked greedily at the air reaching him from the hatch. He tugged and twisted and wrenched at the box, felt the intense heat through the shirting.

  The great liner was emptying now. After the port side boats had got away, Sir Donald turned his ship to give the starboard boats a lee. The remaining passengers, wet and cold and frightened, had manned the lifeboats, patiently shepherded by the crew, and were being lowered from the first-class and tourist embarkation decks, the falls letting them down carefully on to the crests of the waves while the sailors bore off from the ship’s side. The moment each boat was in the water, its crew pulled away, heading in for the entrance to meet the naval launches hurrying out to take the tow. Everything went smoothly; this was the very kind of thing that the ship’s company had drilled in at set intervals throughout all their seagoing lives, and they knew what they were about. There were no serious casualties at all, though a few people had bumps and bruises and were quite badly shaken up as the boats took the water. Up on his bridge Sir Donald, watching anxiously, heaved a sigh of relief, his lips moving a little as though in prayer. Already now he could see a big dumb-lighter towed by high-speed tugs coming along the East Channel towards Middle Head, where she would turn for the entrance and come out to take REDCAP from the liner’s waiting derricks. Things were being done fast now. Back in the harbour, loudspeaker vans were patrolling the vantage points, calling warning messages to disperse the crowds. At Pyrmont, where the people had waited in the greatest numbers, lining the Darling Harbour bridge and all around, the place grew strangely silent. The military band had moved away from the jetty and the galleries were deserted now. Only the trucks and the trailer, the troops and the armed M.P.s still waited, phlegmatically, to take delivery of the crate and hurry REDCAP to Bandagong if and when the lighter returned with its load.

  The authorities did not know how far the blast from the liner’s reactor would carry if the worst should happen, but they were taking no chances even as far up harbour as Pyrmont itself, and the areas around the Heads were being totally evacuated as fast as possible.

  Shaw edged back along the short distance to the manhole. Thrusting his head through, he gasped: “Chief, it’s no damn good, I’ve found it but I can’t shift it.” He wiped at his streaming face and neck. “We’ll have to chisel it free.”

  The Chief’s face seemed to go whiter. “That may send it up, man! Any sudden jolt like that—”

  “Yes, I know, but we’ll have to chance that now,” Shaw broke in tautly. “Somehow I don’t think there’s very long left anyway. Let’s have that chisel, Chief. And I’d better have a good length of some kind of line, something with a metal clip at the end, to drag the thing back with—it’s too hot to handle.” He held up his blistered hands, and the men at the hatch drew in their breath sharply.

  The Chief said, “You’ll do no good with hands like those—”

  “Yes, I will. Have you got something—a pair of thick gloves, anything like that? And hurry, for God’s sake!”

  The Chief Engineer gave him a shrewd look, saw the determination in his eyes. He turned to one of the hands and snapped an order. The man went away, was back in a moment with a chisel and hammer, and a length of codline with a snap-hook, and a pair of thick, oily gloves which Shaw pulled on, wincing with agony as he did so, trying to stop the shake in his hands.

  The Chief said, “I’m com
ing down with you, this time. I know there’s not much room for two to work, but there may be something I can do to help.”

  Shaw nodded; there was no time to argue now. He eased himself down the manhole again, began the ghastly crawl back towards the box with the Chief behind him now. That short crawl was just about the worst, the most hair-raising nightmare journey he’d ever made. When he got there, he turned on to his back and placed the chisel against the rim of the box where it met the deckhead above him, where it lay so hard and flat against the steel. The shake of his fingers increased, the chisel seemed to dance a little tattoo on the rim. Shaw set his teeth hard, forced his screaming nerves to be still. Vital seconds, minutes, were being lost ... he got the chisel firmly into position at last, and then, very gently to begin with, he started tapping with the hammer. Then he stopped, listened. The humming note hadn’t changed—that was a relief. But the box hadn’t shifted either. A little flake of the stuff came away, drifted down on to his face, and that was all.

  In the silence of the double bottom, a silence broken only by the sound of the sea washing past the plating, he started again.

  Tap . . . tap . . . tap . . . tap . . . metal on metal, inches from the sea. On and on and on, patiently, with his nerves tearing at him . . . tap . . . tap . . . tap . . . echoing along the girders.

  It was months, years later it seemed and Shaw was still tapping at the chisel, when a voice called urgently down the manhole and he heard the Chief answering. There was a throb in his ears now, in his brain, drowning the tap-tap on the steel, but through it he knew the Chief was speaking to him.

  He said dully, “What is it?”

  “Message for you from the bridge. The lighter’s away with some of the cargo, the—military stores. And all boats are well clear now.”

  “Thank God for that.”

  Shaw went on tapping. He felt in his bones that he hadn’t much longer; but at least REDCAP was in the clear and he’d done his job that far. The liner was under way now and coming up quickly to her full speed, her emergency maximum. Shaw could feel that in the thunder from the screws, in the tremendous engine beat, in the vibration and the rasp of the sea just beneath his body. She went forward faster and faster, away from Sydney Heads and out into the Pacific, a near-empty shell, a flying metal coffin for those still aboard, with the wind streaming over her, life and laughter gone from her decks, her bars and lounges deserted and suddenly forlorn, chilling. Down below that tapping went on and on . . . and then, very suddenly, the chisel slipped in and the box shifted just a little.

  “Done it!”

  Shaw’s shout was triumphant; he heard the intake of breath from the Chief Engineer—and then something quite unexpected, something horrifying, happened.

  A tiny tongue of white-hot flame licked out, curled along the deckhead, died away, and then came back, edging out like a snake. Shaw squirmed away on his back as something dropped past his ear and hissed on to the steel deck. He bumped into the Chief. The chisel was still inserted where he had let go of it, in the minute gap between the box and the ship’s structure on the side away from the two men. Shaw reached out for it, called as he did so:

  “Look out, Chief. Go aft a bit . . . she’s coming, but God knows what we’re going to find when she comes right away. Ready?”

  “Ready!” The Chief’s voice was high, cracking.

  His heart hammering away and his nerves tingling, Shaw gripped the chisel hard and pulled sharply downwards, holding his gloved left hand ready to catch the box. It came away very suddenly, and he missed it; it hit his hand, jerked away above his head, clattered down on the steel rib, and fell over through the hole into the next for’ard section of the double bottom. Shaw pushed himself away quickly. A small jet of blinding, white-hot flame shot out and seared the bulkhead, and molten droplets of metal dripped and sizzled down from the steel where the box had been fixed, only just missing Shaw.

  Light flickered eerily off the bulkheads of the double bottom.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  “The line, Chief—quick!”

  The Chief Engineer passed the end of the codline to Shaw. Shaw, who had edged forward again, reached through the hole, keeping one hand across his eyes. He jabbed the box over on to the side from which the flame was coming, smelt the burning material of the thick glove even from so brief a contact with the superheated metal. That flame, though small still, seemed to be getting bigger. He took up the line, using both hands now, leaned through the hole as the flame, projected downward, spread flatly instead of flaring up, and got the snap-hook over the base rim of the box.

  Then he called to the Chief Engineer. “I can manage this—you’d better go back and organize a bucket of water.”

  “Right.”

  He heard the Chief pulling himself backwards to the hatch as his blistered fingers fumbled with the line. He gave it a jerk, and the hook held. He edged backwards, heaved. The box, with the flame spitting out just a little farther now, rose to the top of the rib. Shaw went backwards to the next cross-section and got through before he pulled at the line again. The box came over, clanged to the deck. At once Shaw jerked, freeing the bight of the line from the flame. He dragged it aft again with the jet shooting out away from him. The short journey back seemed interminable; but at last he found himself beneath the manhole. Urgent hands lifted him through quickly, and he came up with the end of the codline.

  He snapped, “Stand clear. Just leave me with the bucket.”

  He heaved in on the line as men with scared white faces pressed back. The box came up, the flame stabbing down into the double bottom as it came clear. Quickly Shaw dropped it into the bucket and it sank into the water.

  But—the flame didn’t go out.

  If anything it seemed to increase, boiled up through the water and sent hissing bullets of piping-hot liquid zipping through the compartment. Steam swept into Shaw’s face scaldingly. The Chief ran up with a shovelful of sand, dropped it into the bucket in the hope of stifling the flaming horror. That helped a little. Shaw ran with the bucket for a nearby ladder leading upwards to the decks, flame and steam licking at him. As he climbed he felt that raw heat, felt the

  bucket itself heating up. When he reached the top, the handle was biting into his palm and the bucket itself was going a kind of dullish, whitey-red colour.

  He ran along an alley way, asked a startled seaman the quickest way to the open deck. Grey-faced, the man swung the handwheel of a watertight door, let him through. Shaw raced on, reached the liner’s tourist end. Dirty, blackened and sweat-streaked, he went to the rail and pitched the bucket in. The liner was well clear of the Heads now and going fast for the open sea.

  The bucket sank immediately, taking its extraordinary contents with it. But still the box flared away, grotesquely, sending a violently increased jet of flame apparently from out of the very sea itself. That originally tiny flame grew larger and larger and then, as Shaw, clinging to the rail, watched almost in fascination, the jet suddenly, horribly, burst roaring and steaming through the water until something like a square foot of sea was thrust aside to allow the jet to escape to the air; from the surface of that water, that great spearhead of flame jabbed up and rose level with the liner’s open decks, towered and stayed there and spread wide and wider, steam mushrooming at its top like smoke, rearing now above the receding land like some monstrous finger of doom which even from a distance sent its tremendous, roaring heat over the ship. Paintwork blistered; a boiling, hissing rain began to fall on the decks. It seemed as though the ship was herself on fire, was moving through a sea of flame and steam.

  Shaw stared in horror, almost paralysed at the thought of what would have happened if that jet had reached its maximum down in the double bottom.

  A moment later the jet faltered, died away, retreated back very suddenly into the sea. Almost at once there was a hollow booming noise, followed by a sharp crack like close thunder. The water behind the ship rose up in a mound, green, translucent, steamy and foam-capped. It bro
ke towards the New South Wales and a blast of hot air hit her, rocked her, The water boiled up around, and a heavy swell surged out past her hull, out into the Pacific.

  Wearily, blindly, filthy dirty and shaking, Shaw stumbled up the ladders and along the decks, making for the bridge. Silently, a handful of men in scattered groups watched him go.

  Sir Donald ran down the ladder to meet him.

  Shaw said, “It’s all right now, sir.” Then everything seemed to catch up with him, and his eyes went hazy, and he felt as though the deck was coming up to hit him. Sir Donald caught him just before he fell.

  The signal went at once to the Captain of the Port and the A. and P. offices that the New South Wales was safe though somewhat leaky from the underwater blast, and was coming in, and somehow or other that news spread like lightning, beating even the official loudspeaker vans to it. And by the time the liner had turned back for the Heads, and then was coming down the West Channel and making up to come between St George’s Head and the Sow and Pigs reef, the crowds had returned and so had many of the little boats.

  The New South Wales moved inwards in nothing short of bedlam. The people of Sydney went mad that afternoon as they streamed back to the shores of the harbour and waved and yelled and cheered, backed up by the passengers from the boats. The liner moved on, came beneath the great structure of the Bridge. On that huge span, the traffic was stilled; people crowded to the side. A storm of cheering swept down on to the vessel’s near-empty decks. That deep storm of cheering was taken up and tossed by a gusty wind, came to the men grouped on the liner’s navigating bridge in short, loud bursts of sound. Girls waved frantically, blew kisses. Sir Donald Mackinnon, his face still stiff and grey with strain, replied by giving a brief, formal salute as his ship moved so slowly on, her high mast, just abaft where he was standing, appearing as though its truck must cleave through the spider’s-web above.