by Peter Tonkin
As they topped the last crest and looked down on the ship, it seemed that they were already far too late. Right along her whole length Atropos was ablaze.
*
Sam Larkman had the hands of a wet nurse when it came to dealing with machinery. He had moved the propeller yesterday, when Atropos had rocked sideways under its weight, and he was in charge of it this morning when the ship was stuck fast. Errol was sitting beside him on the bench seat in the crane’s cab, the walkie-talkie pressed to his face, keeping up a constant dialogue with Robin on the bridge and the officers overseeing the long banks of flame. Sam was effectively working blind, by feel. The swan’s neck of the crane was extended fully and rotated to the port side so that it projected over the port railings. The falls were tight round the broken propeller, and stretching with the gathering stress of trying to lift it. Sam knew what was happening by the mystic way that forces could transfer news of themselves through inanimate objects. He could see nothing except the walls of smoke which were painted across the window pane in front of him.
‘It’s coming up,’ Sam told Errol.
‘Okay. No movement of the hull though.’
‘I know. I’ll hold it there. It’s maybe a metre up off the ice. I don’t want to go swinging it around any.’
‘Captain, Sam says the propeller’s about a metre off the ice,’ Errol reported into the walkie-talkie, then he was overcome by convulsive coughing as the acrid smoke began to seep into the cab.
On the bridge, Robin said, ‘Tell him to hold it there, Errol. It’s at its optimum position. Mr Hogg, how’re the port-side crew doing?’
‘Catch twenty-two, Captain,’ said Hogg’s voice lugubriously. ‘The more the flames catch hold here, the more the ice melts and soaks the wood. It’s nowhere near as hot as we need it. Is the ballast melting at least?’
‘Chief?’ asked Robin, her voice tense with strain. ‘Any joy with the pumps? Is the ballast melting yet?’
‘Nothing yet, Captain. I daren’t go to full pressure, though. If they suck too hard on solid ice, they’ll just break down altogether.’
‘I know. We’ll just have to wait and hope.’
‘Captain? This is Walt Hogg.’
‘Yes?’
‘It’s those people from yesterday. People called Ross.’
‘What about them?’
‘They’re just coming down the slipway now.’
‘Keep them there with you. There’s no way for them to come aboard at the moment until we move down the slope or until the fires die down.’
‘Yes, Captain. Oh. One other thing.’
‘Yes?’ She tried to keep the irritation out of her voice but she failed. The strain was really starting to get to her. ‘I don’t know if you’d noticed, Captain, but it’s snowing.’
*
Richard stood on the port bridge wing of Clotho looking north. Behind him, through the open door into the wheelhouse, he could hear Bill Christian’s courteous repetition, ‘No, I’m sorry the captain is too busy to speak to you just at the moment. No, I’m afraid it will be impossible for him to call you back. No, I’m afraid you cannot come aboard just at the moment. Yes, madam, I do know who you are and yes, I do realise you have come a long way and I do know how close you are but ...’
It had been going on since before first light. Richard was wild with frustration. What the good people of the press didn’t seem to realise just at the moment was that their overwhelming attempts to communicate with him were making it impossible for him to communicate with anyone else. With Robin, for instance. And he particularly wanted to talk to her. The binoculars crushed freezingly under the overhanging jut of his frowning brows showed him the distant column of smoke climbing up the still air in the distance. It was a thick column and would have been plain to see — for all that it was just a darker shade of grey than the rest of the scene before him — even had he not known exactly where to look. The press on Northern Lights had seen it too, with the result that the traffic Bill was having to deal with had redoubled.
As Richard looked steadfastly northwards, the column of smoke was suddenly no longer all there was to see. One moment the view was quite clear, the next, as though it had always been there, caught in the act of swirling between the black sky and the dull grey ice, a great blizzard of fat white snowflakes confronted him. And, as the first of them brushed down his face like the kiss of a dozen slugs and he realised not only how big they were but how wet, he saw the distant dark column jerk, writhe and explode into tatters in the air, so that even before he felt it on the chilled skin of his face, he knew that the wind had arrived.
*
‘It’s no good, Captain,’ yelled Yasser Timmins. ‘The wind’s getting the flames up but the snow’s just damping them down again. We got to give it up. It’s getting pretty bad out here and if we don’t get moving it’ll be too late.’
Hogg was in command of the fires along the port side in the relative shelter of the cliff, but Timmins and his men were on the starboard, out on the more exposed side, where the sudden squally wind was roaring down the funnel of the slipway from the roiling black north-west. Even as he spoke, jamming the walkie-talkie against the thin material of his hood to hear Robin’s reply, another gust swept down upon him and the billowing brightness of the long flames before him was lost in an impenetrable fog of large, wet snowflakes. He staggered, trying to keep his feet.
Robin seemed to be whispering to him from a long way away. ‘Okay. Come back aboard.’
He turned. The two figures of their visitors still stood at the back of the ship, halfway between his team and Hogg’s. He gestured to them to go up and they understood. The scaffolding around the new propeller had been left in place precisely for this reason. It was dispensable if the ship moved down the slipway, but if she did not, then it was an easy, safe route on and off. The plan now was that they go aboard, join the teams which were already told off, changed, ready and waiting to abandon, then come out onto the ice and go for safety. If these Ross people knew their way around, then they could take the lead. Otherwise, it would be LeFever, who had at least proved he knew his way around an iceberg, and the Cable woman who had proved she was lucky, if nothing else. Robin hadn’t told Timmins what she proposed to do herself. In fact, she hadn’t told anyone. Timmins wondered if she actually knew what she was going to do now.
He saw the last of his team up and went round the stern to make sure that Hogg and his men knew what was going on. They were halfway down the ship’s length, near the propeller which Larkman in the crane seemed still to be trying to move. No chance of that now, thought Timmins, and he put his walkie-talkie to his lips again. ‘Walt? Walt, can you hear me?’
As he spoke, another gust of wind took him and he staggered forward a couple of steps before leaning back into the fierce blast of it. But even as he regained some kind of stability, at once he lost it again. This time it was not the wind which was in violent motion. It was the ice. The whole berg heaved and rolled. On the far side of the high ice mountains, the power of the storm had arrived and the whole floating massif answered its implacable force.
The sound was incredible. It overpowered Timmins and came close to deafening him. He was actually thrown into the air as he had been when the lead had opened up beneath him and he thought for an awful moment that he was falling into another ice cave. But when he landed it was on solid ground. Solid, but heaving and twisting in the most terrifying manner. The scaffolding! he thought, and had the presence of mind to scrabble away up the slope. And the scaffolding did in fact fall — or some of it at least. The sound of its collapse was drowned in the thunder of heaving, grinding ice.
But at last the noise began to quieten and the motion began to ease and Timmins could scramble into a sitting position. He just had time to notice that the main steps had survived and the figures clinging precariously to them all seemed to be all right when the rumbling started once again. Timmins spread himself out like a starfish, expecting the ground to heave again.
But it remained firm. This time it was the sky which was falling in.
*
‘Avalanche!’ yelled Errol into his walkie-talkie, but there was so much noise going on that he doubted the captain heard him. He and Sam had a grandstand view of it. Indeed, they seemed to be in the middle of it. The whole cliff side was in motion scant yards in front of the window of the gantry’s cab. It did not curl over and cascade like a breaking wave; it seemed to start about the middle of the slope and settle down along a vertical plane, what had once been a whole wall of ice breaking into individual blocks and sliding almost tiredly down against the ship. Everything that the men could see was sliding downwards. Everything level with them, everything below them and, most terrifyingly of all, everything above them as well. Their whole world, everything they could see, was tearing itself to pieces and sliding down around their ears.
The cab jerked and both of them were flung off the seat. Errol rolled forward to smash his head against the toughened glass. As he did so, a black snake came whipping upwards against the thin pane as though trying to break in at him. There was the sound of a massive gong, struck once and instantly muffled. He yelled at the top of his voice and jerked back into Sam’s strong arms. ‘What was that?’
‘The rope. The propeller’s gone!’
The fact that they could hear what they were saying suddenly struck them. They looked up. Everything was still. Silent.
Safe again. For the time being.
Robin was out through the port bridge wing door as soon as the avalanche stopped. She ran out into a brighter world where the overhang above her head now lay beneath her feet. The wall of the cliff, which had been so sheer and so close, was now a gentler slope further back at its crest, but piled against the ship’s side at its foot. The air was full of ice dust. Not snow, but frozen water dust mixed with enough real dust to crunch between her teeth. She skidded over the liberal sprinkling of it on the deck beneath her feet and fetched up against the forward rail, looking down, scarcely able to believe the change a few seconds had brought about. Where there had been fire, there was ice. Where there had been a propeller, there was now a slope. Where there had been Walter Hogg and his team, there was nothing. Nothing at all.
*
‘We got to dig in, Mr Timmins. We got to look at least.’
‘They’re dead, O’Brien. I saw it all. The propeller came down on top of them and then the fucking mountain came down on it! They’re gone, believe me, all of them. And if we don’t get a move on, we’ll all be joining them.’
The walkie-talkie squawked and he answered it in the same brutal, panicky tone he had used on the crewman.
Robin didn’t even notice. ‘Timmins! How many are left down there?’
‘All of my team. None of Hogg’s.’
‘My God ...’
‘I saw it all quite clearly, Captain. They went under. The propeller came down on them. All that ice pinned them down as it came up against the side of the ship. And the old girl didn’t move an inch. Not an inch, Captain.’
‘I know. I would have felt —’
‘I think we got to give it up now. I think we got to get onto the ice and look for safety.’
‘I know.’ And she was gone.
But O’Brien was still there, pulling at his sleeve. ‘It was impossible to see. You couldn’t have seen that much, Timmins. We got to dig. We got to look. There may be somebody still alive.’
‘Well, fuck them, O’Brien,’ screamed the terrified officer. ‘And fuck you too.’
*
Colin and Kate found Robin still on the bridge wing and the three of them looked at each other in desperate silence. Then Robin said, ‘I know. We’ve just run out of time.’
‘The scaffolding at the back’s still standing,’ said Colin. ‘You can still get everyone down it if you’re quick. Then Kate and I can get them all across the barrier. It’ll be risky but possible. Then with luck we can get them onto Clotho.’
She was nodding at once. ‘There’s another ship there now, a cruise liner. They should have room aboard her too.’
‘Right. Let’s do it.’
Robin nodded again. ‘Right, Joe. Sound “Abandon Ship”.’
The big crewman hit the alarm. It was a prearranged signal and, as with lifeboat drill, everyone knew exactly what to do. The silent ship suddenly filled with bustle as two crews — what was left of them — prepared to go down onto the ice.
They heard Harry Stone’s voice trying to break through to Bill Christian with the news.
‘At least that lurch has made that bit easier at any rate,’ observed Kate suddenly.
‘What do you mean?’ Robin still sounded preoccupied.
‘Well, take a look for yourself.’
Robin crossed to the inmost edge of the bridge wing and looked south. The bay was gone. The slipway led down to little more than a puddle. There was a wall of ice cutting right across Atropos’s bows. That last lurch had swung the iceberg round through nearly forty-five degrees and it was now grinding up against the hard ice of the barrier. Robin had been so preoccupied with the avalanche that she simply hadn’t realised. Even had she been able to launch her ship, there was nowhere much for it to go any more.
Nevertheless, under the astonished eyes of the ice experts, Robin suddenly strode into the wheelhouse and pressed the tannoy button. ‘This is the captain,’ she said quietly. ‘Leave the ship in the way we have discussed and be prepared to follow Mr and Mrs Ross across the ice barrier. Before you go, however, I have two things to request. Firstly, Chief Engineer, please leave the alternators running. I still want power. Secondly, would any volunteers to stay aboard report to me on the bridge at once. We have a team of men buried out here and I’m not going anywhere until we’ve tried to dig them out. Good luck the rest of you; good luck and God speed.’
36 - The Last Day
Tuesday, 1 June 12:00
‘What!’ said Richard, simply awed. ‘She’s doing what?’
‘She’s down there now, sir, digging them out,’ answered Harry Stone distantly. ‘She’s got a team of volunteers with her. Dr Ross has stayed as well. If they find anyone alive she’ll almost certainly be needed. If they don’t, then she can lead us all across the barrier after her husband and the rest of the crew.’
‘Just let me get this clear, Harry. The captain won’t leave until she’s found these men or some proof of their death. In the meantime everyone else has abandoned and is on their way across the barrier led by Mr Ross?’
‘That’s it, sir.’
‘So who’s still there?’
‘Me, the captain, Dr Ross. Miss Cable. The three general purpose seamen, Larkman, Edwards and Jones. Chief Lethbridge and Don Taylor are here too. The chief’s looking after the engineering sections but Don’s down on the ice.’
‘Is that enough? It doesn’t sound many.’
‘They’re digging off the top of the pile, trying to uncover the propeller. The idea is to reattach the falls from the crane and pull it upright again. The missing men are underneath it. As soon as I’ve finished this contact, I’ll be gone. I’ll leave the channel open and go down to help them.’
‘But what if we need to contact you?’
‘I’ll send one of the others up — whoever needs a rest most. Not so much for your benefit, though, but to keep in contact with the people on the ice until they get within walkie-talkie range of you.’
‘Why didn’t they bring a radio from a lifeboat?’
‘Too heavy to be worth it. The ice barrier looks as though it’s beginning to come apart under the pressure from the berg. It’s changing in nature this side, at any rate. It seems to be getting narrower as the berg pushes the thin stuff at the edge out of the way but it’s also that much more dangerous to walk on. Why carry a heavy radio? Who’s going to come when you call in any case? They’ve got walkie-talkies if they need help from us and to warn you when they’re on their way in. That’s all they really need.’
‘Okay. I won’t hold y
ou up any more. Good luck over there. Give my love to my wife.’
‘Who?’ asked Harry. He looked at the radio with a frown, wondering for a moment who Richard Mariner was talking about. He had stopped thinking about her as even being a woman, let alone a wife. She was the captain, and the best chance of survival they had. He broke the contact, set the radio and got up. He wanted to get down onto the ice as quickly as he could. They needed able-bodied diggers down there.
He ran down the internal stairway rather than using the lift because he wasn’t about to rely on the power under these circumstances even with the chief in the engine room. He paused on the threshold of the bulkhead door out onto the main deck to readjust his cold-weather gear. He settled his gloves on tight and pulled his hood up. Then he stepped out onto the deck and stopped. The first snow-laden squall had passed. There was a quieter wind out here now. It was less blustery but much more forceful; it was gathering strength even as he paused, his senses suddenly alert. It was exactly the kind of wind that would drive the berg against the barrier with unremitting force. And it was full of huge, wet, warm drops of rain.