by Peter Tonkin
The gantry lurched forward at that moment, controlled by the master system on the bridge, to fine-tune the balance of Clotho’s angle in the water, and the saboteur went over the back of the seat and smashed her head open on the floor of the cab behind. Had her sleeping bag not been there, she would have died at once.
*
When the tow began again towards the end of Rupert Biggs’s midday watch, there was only a skeleton crew left aboard Clotho. This consisted of the captain, the first, second and third deck officers, the chief, the second engineer, and the cadet who had been an insistent volunteer. Last man off apart from these was the chef who had remained until the bitter end, preparing pile after pile of sandwiches, as well as soup and coffee which only needed microwaving to heat. Andrew McTavish and Harry Piper had come back across on one of the boats transferring everyone else the other way because, as Andrew had put it, ‘No one other than me and my men will look after my propulsion system running backwards, by God.’
There was no need for any GP seamen as there was really no more deck work to be done and the helm would be best controlled by laying in a direct course for the southern tip of Greenland and running it in reverse on the automatic pilot. Equally, as everyone aboard proposed to camp in the wheelhouse and its immediate environs, there was no need for any of the stewards to stay to look after them. But it proved impossible to get Sam Larkman to desert his ship. And where Sam went, Joe and Errol followed. Robin was prepared to be indulgent. Three more first-rate men were a heartening buttress against the unexpected.
To begin with, the tow went very well. It was strange to be on the bridge looking backwards through the clear-view, seeing Atropos following doggedly out of the darkening afternoon, her lights coming into brighter focus as the day began to die. It was an odd sensation to be studying the reverse angles of the collision alarm radar to see what dangers lay behind their slowly reversing ship. Robin went outside and stood at the back of the bridge wing, wrapped warmly and dryly against the gathering north-easter, looking over the stern towards the invisible cliffs and fjords of what has been called the world’s largest island coming towards them at five knots once more.
As night fell, the threatened storm arrived and the conditions of the tow deteriorated dangerously. In the engine room, Andrew and Harry kept a careful watch on the revolutions of the propeller as it rose and fell increasingly sharply through wildly varying water pressures and even began to threaten to tear itself out of the sea altogether.
The steepening waves put more and more strain on the rope and on the two windlasses securing it between the ships. One moment both hulls would be pointing down together into the same trough as Clotho climbed carefully down the back of one wave while Atropos was on the rushing face of the next. Then they would be thrown apart, separated by the crest of the same wave. Luckily the waves were not yet big enough to throw a destructive strain on the all too fragile arrangement, but the night was young and the worst of the weather was yet to come.
*
Ann Cable and Henri LeFever sat facing each other over a table in the officers’ dining room. It was late and under normal circumstances Atropos’s chef would have closed up shop, black eye or no black eye. But the presence of Clotho’s complement, and her galley staff and stewards, had put all of Atropos’s men on their mettle and so there was food. Good food, too. Both Ann and Henri were vegetarians and so far this voyage they had subsisted in mutually supportive misery on salads which would hardly have been suited to the arctic conditions even had they been fresh. Tonight, however, they were in seventh heaven, despite the worsening weather conditions. The galley had produced a curry. Onion bahjees and vegetable samosas were crowded together on plates encrusted with jewels of chutney and pickle. Piles of naan and stuffed parathas sat fragrantly steaming beside a crazy tower of golden poppadoms surrounded by more condiments compounded of tomatoes, coconuts, chillies, cucumbers and yogurt.
A vegetable vindaloo was in prospect, to be served on pilau rice flavoured with coriander, cardamom, bay and cinnamon bark, and accompanied by a saag of spinach decorated with toasted almonds, mushroom and sweet pepper bahjees and a thick dahl of red lentils. Although they both avoided meat of all kinds, neither was particularly self-sacrificing in the matter of the grape or the grain, and they accompanied this feast, as was only right and proper, with glasses of Carlsberg’s golden Elephant beer so cold that only its high alcohol content kept it from freezing.
Their conversation wandered, as it often did, over the concerns which were closest to their hearts: conservation and animal welfare. It had come as a pleasant surprise to her to discover that the scientist shared so many of her attitudes of mind. They had both donated much time and money to protect the world’s dwindling populations of various endangered species. But, given that they were afloat in one of the great traditional hunting grounds, it was perhaps inevitable that their discussion should turn most urgently on the protection of whales. She explained how much of her income from The Leper Ship was being given to Greenpeace and how she was planning a book called The Whaling Ship as soon as she had finished writing up her current work, The Sister Ships: the unexpectedly exciting tale of this voyage so far.
Henri had never struck her as a boastful man but now he smiled and a fleeting look of superiority came and went across his face. He folded a delicate wing of paratha and dipped it in dali ratha. All through the main course, he told her of a long fight he had pursued across the southern ocean as a crewman on an anti-whaling vessel chasing a Russian factory ship and her fleet of lethal whalers. It was a tale guaranteed to appeal to her, full of hair’s-breadth escapes and dangerous encounters. They had harried the Russian fleet, forcing themselves between the harpoons and the humpbacks. When they failed to spoil the aim or arrived too late to interfere, they filmed what was going on, and she remembered having seen the films that he’d shot. He rolled back his sleeve to show her the scar left by a harpoon which had come too close. ‘But if you really want to see something impressive,’ he joked, ‘come to my cabin later and I’ll show you what I lost to the frostbite.’
And so, in fact, she did. It was the atmosphere, the food, the story and the magnetism of the man, combined with the worm of jealousy sown in her trusting breast by Jamie Curtis’s poisonous words about her Nico and his blonde-haired grey-eyed captain: mistress and mate. Henri had a bottle of bourbon in his cabin and he poured them both a glass. They sat on armchairs about a metre apart and watched each other speculatively. ‘So, what’s this about frostbite?’ she asked, in a tense attempt at levity.
Henri gave a bark of laughter and slipped off his left boot and sock. The little toe was missing its top joint. ‘Lost to the cause,’ he said. ‘I’m a Goddamned hero.’
It was the first time she had heard him swear. And it suddenly occurred to her that she did not really know this man all that well. But when she looked up at him, his face was so full of wry, self-deprecating amusement that her thoughts turned again to how attractive he was.
‘I’ve never met anyone who would die to save the whales before,’ she said.
‘Die?’ he laughed. ‘Hell, I’d kill to save the whales.’
When he stood, the powerful fluidity of the movement seemed to make him seem even taller. Still with one shoe off, he took a step and stooped. Rock solid, even on the pitching deck, he stood above her, silently daring her to tell him to stop. When she remained silent, he suddenly swooped. As though she were a child, he lifted her, and the amusement remained in the laugh lines at the corners of his eyes as he held her, feet dangling, her lips level with his. The palms of his hands cradled her ribs, fingers across her shoulder bones reaching towards her spine. His thumbs rose towards her collar bones and the heels of his hands closed gently into the softness of her breasts. She could feel her heart beating importunately against the steady pulses in his wrists. It was not only his grip which made it so difficult for her to breathe. He smelt of Bourbon and coriander and there was a little blue devil in the back of his e
yes which laughed and danced and told her this would be fun.
But then there was something more within those merry depths and the lines on his handsome face were no longer a smile but a frown. As easily as he had swept her up, he put her down. ‘No,’ he said. ‘This isn’t right.’
She said nothing. Truth to tell, she felt cheapened by his assumption of moral authority. Who was he to tell her what was right or not?
‘Look,’ he said quietly, revealing a hesitant side to himself she hadn’t seen before. ‘I don’t know about you, but I think this has got a lot to do with being far away from the folk we really love and drinking a little too much beer. I think it would be just dandy to go to bed with a woman like you ... No, hell, to go to bed with you, Ann, but it wouldn’t be right for me. I’m in a relationship right now, you see, and it’s the best thing that ever happened to me. Does that sound corny? Yes, I guess it does. But it’s true.’
‘She’d never know,’ temporised Ann, thinking — distantly — of Nico, but carried away with desire.
‘I guess not, but I’d know. Don’t get me wrong, though. This isn’t some kind of nineties man angst thing with me — Gee, but it’s hard to be sensitive if you’ve got balls, if you see what I mean. No. It’s just that I’m in love. Totally. Completely. Utterly. Madly. And not with you. And no matter how you look at it, that has to carry some weight.’
She stood there, looking up into his reasonable, gentle, concerned, sensitive face and she thought what he had said was just about the sexiest thing she had ever heard. She really hoped Nico would have the strength to say something similar in the same circumstances. In the meantime, there was a little devil burning in her loins which said with irresistible force that any man this good deserved every sexual pleasure she could possibly afford him.
At first she thought the crashing coming from the cabin next door was a result of the storm. But it went on after the tossing waves of the squall had stopped. Long enough to bring a frown between those delicately curved eyebrows of his.
‘That’s the Wide Boy’s cabin,’ he said, more to himself than to her. ‘There shouldn’t be anyone in there.’
‘Henri ...’ She sounded, in her own ears, as though she had just run a marathon.
Disregarding her entirely, he opened the door of his cabin. She had no choice but to follow when he went out.
Together they stole out into the corridor and along to the next door, which was standing wide as though it had been torn open with desperate force. The lights were on, so this was hardly some secret burglary. Nevertheless, they went in side by side as though expecting something nefarious to be going on. The cabin was an utter wreck. Hardly anything remained whole. The bed was strewn over the floor and the contents of Reynolds’ wardrobe and clothing drawers lay on top of it. As they entered, the late third officer’s bedside cabinet joined the mess, torn bodily off the wall. A washbag spilled out of it, only to be caught up at once by white, shaking hands.
‘It’s in here, it has to be,’ said Captain Black, though it was by no means clear who he was talking to. The washbag burst open, shaving equipment falling hither and yon. ‘He promised,’ screamed the captain in scarcely sane frustration. ‘He swore.’
He swung round to face them, the movement of his head spraying spittle from his thin white lips into Ann’s astonished face. ‘Enough for the whole voyage. Enough to keep me going! HE SWORE!’
And on the last word he flung himself at Henri like a wild man. The big scientist, more by instinct than design, drove his fist into his assailant’s face. There was a sharp crack and the captain flew back into a heap on top of Reynolds’ possessions. The force of the blow rolled him backwards to smack his right temple against the low side of the bunk. He rebounded forward and then lay there, still as death. With the welt across his forehead rapidly darkening and blood seeping from the sag of his jaw, he would not have made a pretty picture even had he been dressed as punctiliously as usual. But, in a crumpled shirt, half buttoned, with the sleeves rolled to expose pale, pocked arms, and crumpled uniform trousers which had all too obviously been slept in, the corpse-like captain looked almost as untidy as the dead drug dealer’s things.
A voice from the doorway screamed, ‘Captain! What’ll we do? Oh sweet Jesus, what’ll we do?’
The erstwhile would-be lovers swung round to see the terrified, indecisive face of Yasser Timmins, first officer and acting master of the good ship Atropos, hovering in the doorway. ‘What the fuck are we going to do now?’ he asked again.
*
‘You’ll have to go across, Captain,’ said Nico quietly.
‘There’s nothing else for it. Two full crews, but no competent deck officers left. You’re the only person who can sort it out.’
‘I think you’re right,’ said Robin. ‘All of our people are aboard her. I can’t risk anything going wrong.’
‘Anything else going wrong,’ amended Nico.
She gave a bark of laughter at his unregenerate superstition and it never entered her mind that only a fortnight ago she, too, had been expecting the worst in every situation she faced. Now that the danger was so massive and so immediate, she was back to her old self: cool and confident. ‘No sense hanging about. The weather’s getting worse. I won’t be able to go soon.’
‘It’ll have to be the lifeboat.’
‘I know. And I’ll have to take the three musketeers, I’m afraid. There’s no way I can do it on my own.’
‘You’re welcome to them. They’d only make me feel inadequate. I’ll be all right with Sullivan, Biggs and Jamie, if he’ll stay. And the engineers, of course.’
‘Okay. Look on the bright side — there’ll be twice as many sandwiches for you.’
‘Be still, my beating heart.’
It took her scant minutes to prepare. She had no intention of wasting time by packing a bag. She would take what she was wearing and what would fit in her pockets. Sam, Joe and Errol took an equally unsentimental view of their possessions. The increasing savagery of the squall gusts focused their minds wonderfully. They took the forward starboard lifeboat, tethered on a long line. Once it was in the water and released from its falls, Rupert Biggs and Jamie Curtis walked down the deck, holding the line, until they could pay it out from the wreck of the forecastle by the creaking, straining windlass and let the bobbing boat ride back through the darkness towards Atropos.
While all this was going on, Nico was in contact with the crippled ship, alerting them that the lifeboat was on its way. Hogg and Henri LeFever prepared to get the lifeboat aboard as soon as it came alongside, and there were willing hands in plenty when Clotho’s crew heard who was aboard.
The exchange was made safely and Robin was on Atropos’s bridge long before the full fury of the north-westerly struck.
*
‘There were some really strange noises down there, though,’ persisted Jamie.
Nico nodded. ‘Rupert, what do you think? Worth checking?’
Biggs shrugged. ‘What could we do?’
‘Warn the captain, of course.’
A squall raved against the bridge windows. Biggs crossed to his satellite weather equipment and pressed a button. A weather map printed itself out and rolled onto the desk. It was a diagram based on what the weather satellite immediately above them could see. He held the black and white paper up for Nico to see.
Nico took it from him. ‘Another nasty little depression whipping through. If it wedges against that Greenland high pressure ridge like the last one, it’ll just get worse and worse. But if it takes the southern track, it’ll be here today, and gone tomorrow. In any case, if we’re going to have a look at the bow and the cable, then now is the best time to do it.’ He consulted the paper for a second or two more. ‘Well, not so much the best as the least worst. It’s going to get rougher very soon indeed. And while you’re down there,’ he added innocently, ‘you might as well check in the number one hold.’
*
‘This is all your fault, you little moron
,’ grumbled Biggs all the way along the pitching, soaking deck.
‘But there is a strange noise.’
‘Strange noise. Look at you, been at sea for ten minutes and you know it all already.’
‘Look, Rupert, do you want me to go down into the hold instead?’
‘Don’t be an idiot. And it’s Lieutenant Biggs to you. Or Number Three.’
‘But if Niccolo is acting captain now, doesn’t that make you Number Two?’
‘Yes, you’re right. I suppose it does. Number Two.’
‘When I was a kid,’ said Jamie, apparently apropos of nothing, ‘my parents had this kind of code so I could tell them if I needed to use the bathroom. When we were in public, you know? Number One was code for pee.’ He slowed and unhitched his safety clip, to put himself beyond Biggs’s reach. ‘And Number Two was crap!’ he yelled at the top of his voice.
Biggs’s reaction was muted. The wind was almost strong enough to knock them both off their feet out here and the blustery rain was making the deck slippery. Biggs was no fool; this was not the time or place to give the young cadet the thumping he deserved. ‘Clip back on,’ he barked, and Jamie was wise enough to obey. Then the two of them stood side by side in the stormy darkness and listened. ‘Damned if you weren’t right,’ said Biggs at last. ‘I’ll be buggered if that isn’t a funny sound.’ He put his walkie-talkie to his lips. ‘Can we have some light down here, please, Number One?’
Clotho swooped and staggered. Even this way round, the bow still took a powerful thumping from the sea. The lights came on and dazzled them. So bright were they that Atropos was lit by them, though they cast no illumination on the sky or sea. They checked the windlass and the buckled bow. They checked the forward radio mast which stood dangerously close to the damaged area. But there was nothing to be seen. ‘Right,’ said Biggs at last. ‘I’ll go down into the hold for a look-see. Give me a hand with the hatch, would you?’