by Wilbur Smith
between owners and salvors, when a great ship and six hundred lives were
-at risk in the cold sea.
He knew what he would do if the salvage tug made contact before Golden
Adventurer struck the waiting fangs of rock, he would override his owner
s express orders and exercise his rights as Master by, immediately
accepting the offer of assistance under Lloyd's Open Form.
But let him come/ he murmured to himself. Please God, let him come/and
he raised his binoculars and slowly swept a long jagged horizon where
the peaks of the swells seemed black and substantial as rock. He paused
with a leap of his pulse when something white blinked in the field of
the glasses and then, with a little sick slide, realized that it was
only a random ray of sunlight catching a pinnacle of ice from the
floating bergs.
He lowered the glasses and crossed from the windward wing of the bridge
to the lee. He did not need the glasses now, Cape Alarm was black and
menacing against the sow's-belly grey of the sky. Its ridges and
valleys picked out with gleaming ice and banked snow, and against her
steep shore, the sea creamed and leapt high in explosions of purest
white.
Sixteen miles, sir/ said the First Officer, coming to stand beside him.
And the current seems to be setting a little more northerly now. They
were both silent, as they balanced automatically against the violent
pitch and roll of the deck.
Then the Mate spoke again with a bitter edge to his voice, Where is that
bloody frog? And they watched the night of Antarctica begin to shroud
the cruel lee shore in funereal cloaks of purple and sable, She was very
young, probably not yet twenty-five years of age, and even the layers of
heavy clothing topped by a man's anorak three sizes too big could not
disguise the slimness of her body, that almost coltish elegance of long
fine limbs and muscle toned by youth and hard exercise.
Her head was set jauntily on the long graceful stem of her neck, like a
golden sunflower, and the profuse mane of long hair was sun-bleached,
streaked with silver and platinum and copper gold, twisted up carelessly
into a rope almost as thick as a man's wrist and piled on top of her
head. Yet loose strands floated down on to her forehead and tickled her
nose so that she pursed her lips and puffed them away.
Her hands were both occupied with the heavy tray she carried, and she
balanced like a skilled horsewoman against the ship's extravagant
plunging as she offered it.
Come on, Mrs. Goldberg, she wheedled. It will warm the cockles of your
Turn. I don't think so, my dear/ the white-haired woman faltered.
Just for me, then/ the girl wheedled.
Well/ the woman took one of the mugs and sipped it tentatively. 'It's
good/ she said, and then quickly and furtively, Samantha, has the tug
come yet? It will be here any minute now, and the Captain is a dashing
Frenchman, just the right age for you, with a lovely tickly mustache.
I'm going to introduce you first thing. The woman was a widow in her
late fifties, a little overweight and more than a little afraid, but she
smiled and sat up a little straighter.
You naughty thing/ she smiled.
Just as soon as I've finished with this/ Samantha indicated the tray,
I'll come and sit with you. We'll play some klabrias, okay? When
Samantha Silver smiled, her teeth were very straight and white against
the peach of her tanned cheeks and the freckles that powdered her nose
like gold dust. She moved on.
They welcomed her, each of them, men and women, competing for her
attention, for she was one of those rare creatures that radiate such
warmth, a sort of shining innocence, like a kitten or a beautiful child,
and she laughed and chided and teased them in return and left them
grinning and heartened, but jealous of her going so they followed her
with their eyes. Most of them felt she belonged to them personally, and
they wanted all of her time and presence, making up questions or little
stories to detain her for a few extra moments.
There was an albatross following us a little while ago, Sam. 'Yes, I saw
it through the galley window It was a wandering albatross, wasn't it,
Sam! Oh, come on, Mr. Stewart! You know better than that.
It was Diomedea melanophris, the black-browed albatross, but still it's
good luck. All albatrosses are good luck that's a scientifically proved
fact. Samantha had a doctorate in biology and was one of the ship's
specialist guides. She was on sabbatical leave from the University of
Miami where she held a research fellowship in marine ecology.
Passengers thirty years her senior treated her like a favourite daughter
most of the time. However, in even the mildest crisis they became
childlike in their appeal to her and in their reliance on her natural
strength which they recognized and sought instinctively. She was to
them a combination of beloved pet and den-mother.
While a ship's steward refilled her tray with mugs, Samantha paused at
the entrance to the temporary galley they had set up in the cocktail
room and looked back into the densely packed lounge.
The stink of unwashed humanity and tobacco smoke was almost a solid blue
thing, but she felt a rush of affection for them. They were behaving so
very well, she thought, and she was proud of them.
well done, team, she thought, and grinned. It was not often that she
could find affection in herself for a mass of human beings. Often she
had pondered how a creature so fine and noble and worthwhile as the
human individual could, in its massed state, become so unattractive.
She thought briefly of the human multitudes of the crowded cities.
She hated zoos and animals in cages, remembering as a little girl crying
for a bear that danced endlessly against its bars, driven mad by its
confinement.
The concrete cages of the cities drove their captives into similar
strange and bizarre behaviour. All creatures should be free to move and
live and breathe, she believed, and yet man, the super-predator, who had
denied that right to so many other creatures, was now destroying himself
with the same single mindedness, poisoning and imprisoning himself in an
orgy that made the madness of the lemmings seem logical in comparison.
It was only when she saw human beings like these in circumstances like
these that she could be truly proud of them - and afraid for them.
She felt her own fear deep down, at the very periphery of her awareness,
for she was a sea-creature who loved and understood the sea - and knew
its monumental might. She knew what awaited them out there in the
storm, and she was afraid. With a deliberate effort she lifted the
slump of her shoulders, and set the smile brightly on her lips and
picked up the heavy tray.
At that moment the speakers of the public-address system gave a
preliminary squawk, and then filtered the Captain's cultured and
measured tones into the suddenly silent ship.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is your Captain speaking. I regret to inform
you that we have n
ot yet established radar contact with the salvage tug
La Mouette, and that I now deem it necessary to transfer the ship's
company to the lifeboats. There was a sigh and stir in the crowded
lounges, heard even above the storm. Samantha saw one of her favourite
passengers reach for his wife and press her silvery-grey head to his
shoulder.
You have all practised the lifeboat drill many times and you know your
teams and stations. I am sure I do not have to impress upon you the
necessity to go to your stations in orderly fashion, and to obey
explicitly the orders of the ship's officers. Samantha set down her
tray and crossed quickly to Mrs. Goldberg. The woman was weeping, softly
and quietly, lost and bewildered, and Samantha slipped her arm around
her shoulder.
Come now/ she whispered. Don't let the others see you cry.
Will you stay with me, Samantha? Of course I will. She lifted the
woman to her feet. It will be all right - you'll see. just think of
the story you'll be able to tell your grandchildren when you get home.
Captain Reilly reviewed his preparations for leaving the ship, going
over them item by item in his mind. He now knew by heart the
considerable list he had compiled days previously from his own vast
experience of Antarctic conditions and the sea.
The single most important consideration was that no person should be
immersed, or even drenched by sea water during the transfer. Life
expectation in these waters was four minutes. Even if the victim were
immediately pulled from the water, it was still four minutes, unless the
sodden clothing could be removed and heating provided. With this wind
blowing, rising eight of the Beaufort scale at forty miles an hour and
an air temperature of minus twenty degrees, the chill factor was at the
extreme of stage seven which, translated into physical terms, meant that
a few minutes exposure would numb and exhaust a man, and that mere
survival was a matter of planning and precaution.
The second most important consideration was the physiological crisis of
his passengers, when they left the comparative warmth and comfort and
security of the ship for the shrieking cold and the violent discomfort
of a life raft afloat in an Antarctic storm.
They had been briefed, and mentally prepared as much as was possible. An
officer had checked each passenger's clothing and survival equipment,
they had been fed high sugar tablets to ward off the cold, and the
life-raft allocations had been carefully worked out to provide balanced
complements, each with a competent crew. member in command. It was as
much as he could do for them, and he turned his attention to the
logistics of the transfer.
The lifeboats would go first, six of them, slung three on each side of
the ship, each crewed by a navigation officer and five seamen. While the
great drogue of the sea-anchor held the ship's head into the wind and
the sea, they would be swung outboard on their hydraulic derricks and
the winches would lower them swiftly to the surface of a sea temporarily
smoothed by the oil sprayed from the pumps in the bows.
Although they were decked-in, powered, and equipped with radio, the
lifeboats were not the ideal vehicles for survival in these conditions.
Within hours, the men aboard them would be exhausted by the cold. For
this reason, none of the passengers would be aboard them. Instead, they
would go into the big inflatable life-rafts, self-righting even in the
worst seas and enclosed with a double skin of insulation. Equipped with
emergency rations and battery powered locator beacons, they would ride
the big black seas more easily and each provide shelter for twenty human
beings, whose body warmth would keep the interior habitable, at least
for the time it took to tow the rafts to land.
The motor lifeboats were merely the shepherds for the rafts. They would
herd them together and then tow them in tandem to the sheltering arms of
Shackleton Bay.
Even in these blustering conditions, the tow should not take more than
twelve hours. Each boat would tow five rafts, and though the crews of
the motor boats would have to change, brought into the canopy of the
rafts and rested, there should be no insurmountable difficulties;
Captain Reilly was hoping for a tow-speed of between three and four
knots.
The lifeboats were packed with equipment and fuel and food sufficient to
keep the shipwrecked party for a month, perhaps two on reduced rations,
and once the calmer shores of the bay had been reached, the rafts would
be carried ashore, the canopies reinforced with slabs of packed snow and
transformed into igloo-type huts to shelter the survivors. They might
be in Shackleton Bay a long time, for even when the French tug reached
them, it could not take aboard six hundred persons, some would have to
remain and await another rescue ship.
Captain Reilly took one more look at the land. It was very close now,
and even in the gloom of the onrushing night, the peaks of ice and snow
glittered like the fangs of some terrible and avaricious monster.
All right/he nodded to his First Officer, we will begin./ The Mate
lifted the small two-way radio to his lips.
Fore-dec. Bridge. You may commence laying the oil now. From each side
of the bows, the hoses threw up silver dragon-fly wings of sprayed
diesel oil, pumped directly from the ship's bunkers; its viscous weight
resisted the wind's efforts to tear it away, and it fell in a thick
coating across the surface of the sea, broken by the floodlights into
the colour spectrum of the rainbow.
Immediately, the sea was soothed, the wind-riven surface flattened by
the weight of oil, so the swells passed in smooth and weighty majesty
beneath the ship's hull.
The two officers on the wing of the bridge could feel the sick,
waterlogged response of the hull. She was heavy with the water in her,
no longer light and quick and alive.
Send the boats away/ said the Captain, and the mate passed the order
over the radio in quiet conversational tones.
The hydraulic arms of the derricks lifted the six boats off their chocks
and swung them out over the ship's side, suspended one moment high above
the surface; then, as the ship fell through the trough, the oil-streaked
crest raced by only 6 feet below their keels. The officer of each
lifeboat must judge the sea, and operate the winch so as to drop neatly
onto the back slope of a passing swell - then instantly detach the
automatic clamps and stand away from the threatening steel cliff of the
ship's side.
In the floodlights, the little boats shone wetly with spray, brilliant
electric yellow in colour, and decorated with garlands of ice like
Christmas toys. In the small armoured-glass windows the officers faces
also glistened whitely with the strain and concentration of these
terrifying moments, as each tried to judge the rushing black seas.
Suddenly the heavy nylon rope that held the cone shaped drogue of the
sea-anchor snapped with a report like a cannon shot, and the
rope snaked
and hissed in the air, a vicious whiplash which could have sliced a man
in half.
It was like slipping the head halter from a wild stallion.
Golden Adventurer threw up her bows, joyous to be freed of restraint.
She slewed back across the scend of the sea, and was immediately pinned
helplessly broadside, her starboard side into the wind, and the three
yellow lifeboats still dangling.
A huge wave reared up out of the darkness. As it rushed down on the
ship, one of the lifeboats sheared her cables and fell heavily to the
surface, the tiny propeller churning frantically, trying to bring her
round to meet the wave but the wave caught her and dashed her back
against the steel side of the ship.
She burst like a ripe melon and the guts spilled out of her; from the
bridge they saw the crew swirled helplessly away into the darkness.
The little locator lamps on their lifejackets burned feebly as
fire-flies in the darkness and then blinked out in the storm.
The forward lifeboard was swung like a door-knocker against the ship,
her forward cable jammed so she dangled stern upmost, and as each wave
punched into her, she was smashed against the hull. They could hear the
men in her screaming, a thin pitiful sound on the wind, that went on for
many minutes as the sea slowly beat the boat into a tangle of wreckage.
The third boat was also swung viciously against the hull. The releases
on her clamps opened, and she dropped twenty feet into the boil -and
surge of water, submerging completely and then bobbing free like a
yellow fishing float after the strike. Leaking and settling swiftly,
she limped away into the clamorous night.
Oh, my God! whispered Captain Reilly, and in the harsh lights of the
bridge, his face was suddenly old and haggard. In a single stroke he
had lost half his boats. As yet he did not mourn the men taken by the
sea, that would come later - now it was the loss of the boats that
appalled him, for it threatened the lives of nearly six hundred others.
The other boats - the First Officer's voice was ragged with shock -'the
others got away safely, sir. In the lee of the towering hull, protected
from both wind and sea the other three boats had dropped smoothly to the
surface and detached swiftly. Now they circled out in the dark night,