by Wilbur Smith
high spirits of his officers. The laughter offended him, now when his
whole life hung in precarious balance. He felt the temptation to quell
them with a few harsh words, conscious of the power he had to plunge
them into instant consternation.
Nick listened to their carefree banter and felt old enough to be their
father, despite the few years difference in their ages. He was
impatient with them, irritated that they should be able to laugh like
this when so much was at stake - six hundred human lives, a great ship,
tens of millions of dollars, his whole future. They would probably
never themselves know what it felt like to put a lifetime's work at risk
on a single flip of the coin - and then suddenly, unaccountably, he
envied them.
He could not understand the sensation, could not fathom why suddenly he
longed to laugh with them, to share the companionship of the moment, to
be free of pressure for just a little while. For fifteen years, he had
not known that sort of hiatus, had never wanted it.
He stood up abruptly, and immediately the bridge was silent. Every
officer concentrating on his appointed task, not one of them glancing at
him as he paced once, slowly, across the wide bridge. It did not need a
word to change the mood, and suddenly Nick felt guilty. it was too easy,
too cheap.
Carefully Nick steeled himself, shutting out the weakness, building up
his resolve and determination, bringing all his concentration to bear on
the Herculean task ahead of him, and he paused at the door of the radio
room. The Trog looked up from his machines, and they exchanged a single
glance of understanding. Two completely dedicated men, with no time for
frivolity.
Nick nodded and paced on, the strong handsome face stern and
uncompromising his step firm and measured but when he stopped again by
the side windows of the bridge and looked up at the magnificent cliff of
ice, he felt the doubts surging up again within him.
How much had he sacrificed for what he had gained, how much joy and
laughter had he spurned to follow the high road of challenge, how much
beauty had he passed along the way without seeing it in his haste, how
much love and warmth and companionship? He thought with a fierce pang
of the women who had been his wife, and who had gone now with the child
who was his son. Why had they gone, and what had they left him with -
after all his strivings?
Behind him, the radio crackled and hummed as the carrier beam opened
Channel 16, then it pitched higher as a human voice came through in
clear.
Mayday. Mayday. Mayday. This is the Golden Adventurer! Nick spun and
ran to the radio room as the calm masculine voice read out the
coordinates of the ship's position.
We are in imminent danger of striking. We are preparing to abandon
ship. Can any vessel render assistance?
Repeat, can any vessel render assistance?
Good God/ David Allen's voice was harsh with anxiety, the current's got
them, they're going down on Cape Alarm at nine knots - she's only fifty
miles offshore and we are still two hundred and twenty miles from that
position. Where is La Mouette? growled Nick Berg. "Where the hell is
she? We'll have to open contact now, sir/David Allen looked up from the
chart. You cannot let them go down into the boats - not in this
weather, sir. It would be murder. Thank you, Number One/ said Nick
quietly. Your advice is always welcome. David flushed, but there was
anger and not embarrassment beneath the colour. Even in the stress of
the moment, Nick noted that, and adjusted his opinion of his First
Officer. He had guts as well as brains.
The Mate was right, of course. There was only one thing to consider
now, the conservation of human life.
Nick looked up at the top of the ice cliff and saw the low cloud tearing
off it, rolling and swirling in the wind, pouring down over the edge
like boiling milk frothing from the lip of a great pot.
He had to send now. La Mouette had won the contest of silence. Nick
stared up at the cloud and composed the message he would send. He must
reassure the Master, urge him to delay his decision to abandon ship and
give Warlock the time to close the gap, perhaps even reach her before
she struck on Cape Alarm.
The silence on the bridge was deepened by the absence of wind. They were
all watching him now, waiting for the decision, and in that silence the
carrier beam of Channel 16 hummed and throbbed.
Then suddenly a rich Gallic accent poured into the silent bridge, a full
fruity voice that Nick remembered so clearly, even after all the years.
Master of Golden Adventurer this is the Master of salvage tug La
Mouette. I am proceeding at best speed your assistance. Do you accept
Lloyd's Open Form "No cure no pay Nick kept his face from showing any
emotion, but his heart barged wildly against his ribs. Jules Levoisin
had broken silence.
Plot his position report/ he said quietly.
God! She's inside us/ David Allen's face was stricken as he marked La
Mouette's reported position or. the chart.
She's a hundred miles ahead of us. No/Nick shook his head, He's lying.
Sir? He's lying. He always lies. Nick lit a cheroot and when it was
drawing evenly, he spoke again to his radio officer.
Did you get a bearing? and the Trog looked up from his radio
direction-finding compass on which he was tracing La Mouette's
transmissions.
I have only one coordinate, you won't get a fix But Nick interrupted
him, We'll use his best course from Golfo San Jorge for a fix. He
turned back to David Allen. Plot that. There's a difference of over
three hundred nautical miles. Yes/ Nick nodded. 'That old pirate
wouldn't broadcast an accurate position to all the world. We are inside
him and running five knots better, we'll put a line over Golden
Adventurer before he's in radar contact. Are you going to open contact
with Christy Marine now, sir? No, Mr. Allen. 'But they will do a deal
with La Mouette - unless we bid now. I don't think so/ Nick murmured,
and almost went on to say, Duncan Alexander won't settle for Lloyd's
Open Form while he is the underwriter, and his ship is free and
floating. He'll fight for dailyy hire and bonus, and Jules Levoisin
won't buy that package. He'll hold out for the big plum. They won't do
a deal until the two ships are in visual contact - and by that time I'll
have her in tow and I'll fight the bastard in the awards court for
twenty-five percent of her value But he did not say it. Steady as she
goes, Mr. Allen/was all he said, as he left the bridge.
He closed the door of his day cabin and leaned back against it, shutting
his eyes tightly as he gathered himself.
It had been so very close, a matter of seconds and he would have
declared himself and given the advantage to La Mouette.
Through the door behind him, he heard David Allen s voice. Did you see
him? He didn't feel a thing - not a bloody thing. He was going to let
those poor bastards go into the boats. He must piss ice-wa
ter. The
voice was muffled, but the outrage in it was tempered by awe.
Nick kept his eyes shut a moment longer, then he straightened up and
pushed himself away from the door. He wanted it to begin now. It was
in the waiting and the uncertainty which was eroding what was left of
his strength.
Please God, let me reach them in time. And he was not certain whether
it was for the lives or for the salvage award that he was praying.
Captain Basil Reilly, the Master of the Golden Adventurer, was a tall
man, with a lean and wiry frame that promised reserves of strength and
endurance. His face was very darkly tanned and splotched with the dark
patches of benign sun cancer. His heavy mustache was silvered like the
pelt of a snow fox, and though his eyes were set in webs of finely
wrinkled and pouchy skin, they were bright and calm and intelligent.
He stood on the windward wing of his navigation bridge and watched the
huge black seas tumbling in to batter his helpless ship. He was taking
them broadside now, and each time they struck, the hull shuddered and
heeled with a sick dead motion, giving reluctantly to the swells that
rose up and broke over her rails, sweeping her decks from side to side,
and then cascading off her again in a tumble of white that smoked in the
wind.
He adjusted the life-jacket he wore, settling the rough canvas more
comfortably around his shoulders as he reviewed his position once more.
Golden Adventurer had taken the ice in that eight-to-midnight watch
traditionally allotted to the most junior of the navigating officers.
The impact had hardly been noticeable, yet it had awoken the Master from
deep sleep - just a slight check and jar that had touched some deep
chord in the mariner's instinct.
The ice had been a growler, one of the most deadly of all hazards.
The big bergs standing high and solid to catch the radar beams, or the
eye of even the most inattentive deck watch, were easily avoided.
However, the low ice lying awash, with its great bulk and weight almost
completely hidden by the dark and turbulent waters, was as deadly as a
predator in ambush.
The growler showed itself only in the depths of each wave trough, or in
the swirl of the current around it, as though a massive sea-monster
lurked there. At night, these indications would pass unnoticed by even
the sharpest eyes, and below the surface, the wave action eroded the
body of the growler, turning it into a horizontal blade that lay ten
feet or more below the water level and reached out two or three hundred
feet from the visible surface indications.
With the Third Officer on watch, and steaming at cautionary speed of a
mere twelve knots, the Golden Adventurer had brushed against one of
these monsters, and although the actual impact had gone almost unnoticed
on board, the ice had opened her like the knife stroke which splits a
herring for the smoking rack.
It was classic Titanic damage, a fourteen-foot rent through her side,
twelve feet below the Plinisoll line, shearing two of her watertight
compartments, one of which was her main engine room section.
They had held the water easily until the electrical explosion, and since
then, the Master had battled to keep her afloat. Slowly, step by step,
fighting all the way, he had yielded to the sea. All the bilge pumps
were running still, but the water was steadily gaining.
Three days ago he had brought all his passengers up from below the main
deck, and he had battened down all the watertight bulkheads. The crew
and passengers were accommodated now in the lounges and smoking rooms.
The ship's luxury and opulence had been transformed into the crowded,
unhygienic and deteriorating conditions of a city under siege.
It reminded him of the catacombs of the London under ground converted to
air-raid shelters during the blitz. He had been a lieutenant on
shore-leave and he had passed one night there that he would remember for
the rest of his life.
There was the same atmosphere on board now. The sanitary arrangements
were inadequate. Fourteen toilet bowls for six hundred, many of them
seasick and suffering from diarrhoea. There were no baths nor showers,
and insufficient power for the heating of water in the hand basins. The
emergency generators delivered barely sufficient power to work the ship,
to run the pumps, to supply minimal lighting, and to keep the
communicational and navigational equipment running. There was no
heating in the ship and the outside air temperature had fallen to minus
twenty degrees now.
The cold in the spacious public lounges was brutal. The passengers
huddled in their fur coats and bulky life-jackets under mounds of
blankets. There were limited cooking facilities on the gas stoves
usually reserved for adventure tours ashore. There was no baking or
grilling, and most of the food was eaten cold and congealed from cans;
only the soup and beverages steamed in the cold clammy air, like the
breaths of the waiting and helpless multitude.
The desalination plants had not been in use since the ice collision and
now the supply of fresh water was critical; even hot drinks were
rationed.
Of the 368 paying passengers, only forty-eight were below the age of
fifty, and yet the morale was extraordinary. Men and women who before
the emergency could and did complain bitterly at a dress shirt not
ironed to crisp perfection or a wine served a few degrees too cold, now
accepted a mug of beef tea as though it were a vintage ChAteau Margaux,
and laughed and chatted animatedly in the cold, shaming with their
fortitude the few that might have complained. These were an unusual
sample of humanity, men and women of achievement and resilience, who had
come here to this outlandish corner of the globe in search of new
experience. They were mentally prepared for adventure and even danger,
and seemed almost to welcome this as part of the entertainment provided
by the tour.
Yet, standing on his bridge, the Master was under no illusion as to the
gravity of their situation. Peering through the streaming glass, he
watched a work party, led by his First Officer, toiling heroically in
the bows. Four men in glistening yellow plastic suits and hoods,
drenched by the icy seas, working with the slow cold-numbed movements of
automatons as they struggled to stream a sea-anchor and bring the ship's
head up into the sea, so that she might ride more easily, and perhaps
slow her precipitous rush down onto the rocky coast. Twice in the
preceding days, the anchors they had rigged had been torn away by sea
and wind and the ship's dead weight.
Three hours before, he had called his engineering officers up from
below, where the risk to their lives had become too great to chance
against the remote possibility of restoring power to his main engines.
He had conceded the battle to the sea and now he was planning the final
moves when he must abandon his command and attempt to remove six hundred
human beings from this helpless hulk to the even great
er dangers and
hardships of Cape Alarm's barren and storm-rent shores.
Cape Alarm was one of those few pinnacles of barren black rock which
thrust out from beneath the thick white mantle of the Antarctic cap,
pounded free of ice like an anvil beneath the eternal hammering assault
of storm and sea and wind.
The long straight ridge protruded almost fifty miles into the eastern
extremity of the Weddell Sea, was fifty miles across at its widest
point, and terminated in a pair of bull's horns which formed a small
protected bay named after the polar explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton.
Shackleton Bay, with its steep purple-black beaches of round polished
pebbles, was the nesting ground of a huge colony of chin-strap penguin,
and for this reason was one of Golden Adventurer's regular ports of
call.
On each tour, the ship would anchor in the deep and calm waters of the
bay, while her passengers went ashore to study and photograph the
breeding birds and the extraordinary geological formations, sculptured
by ice and wind into weird and grotesque shapes.
Only ten days earlier, Golden Adventurer had weighed anchor in
Shackleton Bay and stood out into the Weddell Sea. The weather had been
mild and still, with a slow oily swell and a bright clear sun. Now,
before a force seven gale, in temperatures forty-five degrees colder,
and borne on the wild dark sweep of the current, she was being carried
back to that same black and rocky shore.
There was no doubt in Captain Reilly's mind - they were going to go
aground on Cape Alarm, there was no avoiding that fate with this set of
sea and wind, unless the French salvage tug reached them first.
La Mouette should have been in radar contact already, if the tug's
reported position was correct, and Basil Reilly let a little frown of
worry crease the brown parchment skin of his forehead and shadows were
in his eyes.
Another message from head office, sir. His Second Officer was beside
him now, a young man with the shape of a teddy bear swathed in thick
woollen jerseys and marine blue top coat. Basil Reilly's strict dress
regulations had long ago been abandoned and their breaths steamed in the
frigid air of the navigation bridge.
Very well. Reilly glanced at the flimsy. Send that to the tug master.
The contempt was clear in his voice, his disdain for this haggling