Hungry as the Sea

by Wilbur Smith

  Jules Levoisin had warned him it was going to be a screamer.

  Did you read the last met from Gough Island?

  They have 1005 falling, and the wind at 3200 and thirty-five knots.

  Lovely/ said Nick. We've got a big blow coming. And through the visor

  of his helmet he looked up at the pale and beautiful sun. It was not

  bright enough to pain the eye, and now it wore a fine golden halo like

  the head of a saint in a medieval painting.

  Skipper, this is as close as we can get, Vin Baker told him, and slipped

  the motor into neutral. The Zodiac coasted gently into a small open

  pool in the ice-pack, fifty yards from Golden Adventurers stern.

  A solid sheet of compacted ice separated them, and Nick studied it

  carefully. He had not taken the chance of working Warlock in closer

  until he could get a look at the bottom here. He wanted to know what

  depth of water he had to manoeuvre in, and if there were hidden snags,

  jagged rock to rip through the Warlock's hull, or flat shingle on which

  he could risk a bump.

  He wanted to know the slope of the bottom, and if there was good holding

  for his ground-tackle, but most of all, he wanted to inspect the

  underwater damage to Golden Adventurer's hull.

  Okay, Chief? he asked, and Vin Baker grinned at him through the visor.

  Hey, I just remembered - my mommy told me not to get my feet wet.

  I'm going home. Nick knew just how he felt. There was thick sheet ice

  between them and Adventurer, they had to go down and swim below it.

  God alone knew what currents were running under the ice, and what

  visibility was like down there.

  A man in trouble could not surface immediately, but must find his way

  back to open water. Nick felt a claustrophobic tightening of his belly

  muscles, and he worked swiftly, checking out his gear, cracking the

  valve on his oxygen tank to inflate the breathing bag, checking the

  compass and Rolex Oyster on his wrist and clipping his buddy line on to

  the Zodiac, a line to return along, like Theseus in the labyrinth of the

  Minotaur.

  Let's go/ he said, and flipped backwards into the water.

  The cold struck through the multiple layers of rubber and cloth and

  Polyurethane almost instantly, and Nick waited only for the Chief

  Engineer to break through the surface beside him in a cloud of swirling

  silver bubbles.

  . God, I Vin Baker's voice was distorted by the earphones, it's cold

  enough to crack the gooseberries off a plaster saint., Paying out the

  line behind him, Nick sank down into the hazy green depths, looking for

  bottom. It came up dimly, heavy shingle and pebble, and he checked his

  depth gauge - almost six fathoms - and he moved in towards the beach.

  The light from the surface was filtered through thick ice, green and

  ghostly in the icy depths, and Nick felt unreasonable panic stirring

  deep in him. He tried to thrust it aside and concentrate on the job,

  but it flickered there, ready to burst into flame.

  There was a current working under the ice, churning the sediment so that

  the visibility was further reduced, and they had to fill hard to make

  headway across the bottom, always with the hostile ceiling of sombre

  green ice above them, cutting them off from the real world.

  Suddenly the Golden Adventurer's hull loomed ahead of them, the twin

  propellers glinting like gigantic bronze wings in the gloom.

  They moved in within arm Is length of the steel hull and swam slowly

  along it. It was like flying along the outer wall of a tall apartment

  block, a sheer cliff of riveted steel plate - but the hull was moving.

  The Golden Adventurer was hoggmg on the bottom, the stern dipping and

  swaying to the pulse of the sea, the heaving ground-swell that came in

  under the ice; her stern bumped heavily on the pebbly bottom, like a

  great hammer beating time to the ocean.

  Nick knew that she was settling herself in. Every hour now was making

  his task more difficult and he drove harder with his swim fins, pulling

  slightly ahead of Vin Baker. He knew exactly where to look for the

  damage.

  Reilly had reported it in minute detail to Christy Marine, but he came

  across it without warning.

  It looked as though a monstrous axe had been swung horizontally at the

  hull, a clean slash, the shape of an elongated teardrop. The metal

  around it had been depressed, and the pain smeared away so that the

  steel gleamed as though it had been scoured and polished.

  At its widest, the lips of the fifteen-foot rent gaped open by three

  feet or a little more, and it breathed like a living mouth - for the

  force of the ground-swell pushing into the gap built up pressure within

  the hull, then as the swell subsided the trapped water was forcibly

  expelled, sucking in and out with tremendous pressure.

  It's a clean hole/ Vin Baker's voice squawked harshly.

  But it's too long to pump with cement. He was right, of course, Nick

  had seen that at once.

  Liquid cement would not plug that wicked gash, and anyway, there wasn't

  time to use cement, not with weather coming. An idea began forming in

  his mind.

  I'm going to penetrate. Nick made the decision aloud, and beside him

  the Chief was silent for long incredulous seconds, then he covered the

  edge of fear in his voice with, Listen, cobber, every time I've ever

  been into an orifice shaped like that, it's always meant big trouble.

  Reminds me of my first wife. Cover for me/ Nick interrupted him. If

  I'm not out in five minutes. I'm coming with you/ said the Chief. I've

  got to take a look at her engine room. This is good a time as any. Nick

  did not argue with him.

  I'll go first/he said and tapped the Chief's shoulder. Do what I do.

  Nick hung four feet from the gash, finning to hold himself there against

  the current.

  He watched the swirl of water rushing into the opening, and then gushing

  out again in a rash of silver bubbles.

  Then, as she began to breathe again, he darted forward.

  The current caught him and he was hurled at the gap, with only time to

  duck his helmeted head and cover the fragile oxygen bag on his chest

  with both arms.

  Raw steel snagged at his leg; there was no pain, but almost instantly he

  felt the leak of sea water into his suit.

  The cold stung like a razor cut, but he was through into the total

  darkness of the cavernous hull. He was flung into a tangle of steel

  piping, and he anchored himself with one arm and groped for the

  underwater lantern on his belt.

  You okay? The Chief Is voice boomed in his headphones.

  Fine. Vin Baker's lantern glowed eerily in the dark waters ahead of

  him.

  Work fast/ instructed Nick. I've got a tear in my suit. Each of them

  knew exactly what to do and where to go.

  Vin Baker swam first to the water-tight bulkheads and checked all the

  seals. He was working in darkness in a totally unfamiliar engine room,

  but he went unerringly to the pump system, and checked the

  valve-settings; then he rose to the surface, feeling his way up the

  massive blocks of the main engines.

&nbs
p; Nick was there ahead of him. The engine room was flooded almost to the

  deck above and the surface was a thick stinking scum of oil and diesel,

  in which floated a mass of loose articles, most of them undefinable, but

  in the beam of his lantern Nick recognized a gumboot and a grease pot

  floating beside his head. The whole thick stinking soup rose and fell

  and agitated with the push of the current through the rent.

  The lenses of their lanterns were smeared with the oily filth and threw

  grotesque shadows into the cavernous depths, but Nick could just make

  out the deck above him, and the dark opening of the vertical ventilation

  shaft. He wiped the filth from his visor and saw what he wanted to see

  and the cold was spreading up his leg. He asked brusquely, Okay, Chief?

  Let's get the hell out of here. There were sickening moments of panic

  when Nick thought they had lost the line to the opening. It had sagged

  and wrapped around a steam pipe. Nick freed it and then sank down to

  the glimmer of light through the gash.

  He judged his moment carefully, the return was more dangerous than the

  entry, for the raw bright metal had been driven in by the ice, like the

  petals of a sunflower - or the fangs in a shark's jaw. He used the suck

  of water and shot through without a touch, turning and finning to wait

  for Vin Baker.

  The Australian came through in the next rush of water, but Nick saw him

  flicked sideways by the current, and he struck the jagged opening a

  touching blow. There was instantly a roaring rush of escaping oxygen

  from his breathing bag, as the steel split it wide, and for a moment the

  Chief was obscured in the silver cloud of gas that was his life's

  breath.

  Oh God, I'm snagged/ he shouted, clutching helplessly at his empty bag

  plummeting sharply into the green depths at the drastic change in his

  buoyance. The heavily leaded belt around his waist had been weighted to

  counter the flotation of the oxygen bag, and he went down like a gannet

  diving on a shoal of sardine.

  Nick saw instantly what was about to happen. The current had him - it

  was dragging him down under the hull, sucking him under that hammering

  steel bottom, where he would be crushed against the stony beach by

  twenty-two thousand tons of pounding steel.

  Nick went head down, finning desperately to catch the swirling body

  which tumbled like a leaf in high wind. He had a fleeting glimpse of

  Baker's face, contorted with terror and lack of breath, the glass visor

  of his helmet already swamping with icy water as the pressure spurted

  through the non-return valve. The Chief's headset microphone squealed

  once and then went dead as the water shorted it out.

  Drop your belt/yelled Nick, but Baker did not respond; he had not heard,

  his headset had gone and instead he fought ineffectually in the swirling

  current, drawn inexorably down to brutal death.

  Nick got a hand to him and threw back with all his strength on his fins

  to check their downward plunge, but still they went down and Nick's

  right hand was clumsy with cold and the double thickness of his mittens

  as he groped for the quick-release on the Chief's belt.

  He hit the rounded bottom of the great hull with his shoulder, and felt

  them dragged under to where clouds of sediment blew like smoke from the

  working of the keel.

  Locked together like a couple of waltzing dancers, they swung around and

  he saw the keel, like the blade of a guillotine, rise up high above

  them. He could not reach the Chief's release toggle.

  There were only micro-seconds in which to go for his one other chance.

  He hit his own release and the thick belt with thirty-five pounds of

  lead fell away from Nick's waist; with it went the buddy line that would

  guide them back to the waiting Zodiac, for it had been clipped into the

  back of the belt.

  The abrupt loss of weight checked their downward plunge, and fighting

  with all the strength of his legs, Nick was just able to hold them clear

  of the great keel as it came swinging downwards.

  Within ten feet of them, steel struck stone with a force that rang in

  Nick's eardrum like a bronze gong but he had an armlock on the Chief's

  struggling body, and now at last his right hand found the release toggle

  on the other man's belt.

  He hit it, and another thirty-five pounds of lead dropped away. They

  began to rise, up along the hogging steel hull, faster and faster as the

  oxygen in Nick's bag expanded with the release of pressure. Now their

  plight was every bit as desperate, for they were racing upwards to a

  roof of solid ice with enough speed to break bone or crack a skull.

  Nick emptied his lungs, exhaling on a single continuous breath, and at

  the same time opened the valve to vent his bag, blowing away the

  precious life-giving gas in an attempt to check their rise - yet still

  they went into the ice with a force that would have stunned them both,

  had Nick not twisted over and caught it on his shoulder and outflung

  arm. They were pinned there under the ice by the cork-like buoyancy of

  their rubber suits and the remaining gas in Nick's bag.

  With mild and detached surprise Nick saw that the lower side of the ice

  pack was not a smooth sheet, but was worked into ridges and pinnacles,

  into weird flowing shapes like some abstract sculpture in pale green

  glass. It was only a fleeting moment that he looked at it, for beside

  him Baker was drowning.

  His helmet was flooded with icy water and his face was empurpled and his

  mouth contorted into a horrible rictus; already his movements were

  becoming spasmodic and uncoordinated, as he struggled for breath.

  Nick realized that haste would kill them both now. He had to work fast

  but deliberately - and he held Baker to him as he cracked the valve on

  his steel oxygen bottle, reinflating his chest bag.

  With his right hand, he began to unscrew the breathing pipe connection

  into the side of Baker's helmet. It was slow, too slow. He needed

  touch for this delicate work.

  He thought, This could cost me my right hand, and he stripped off the

  thick mitten in a single angry gesture. Now he could feel - for the few

  seconds until the cold paralysed his fingers. The connection came free

  and while he worked, Nick was pumping his lungs like a bellows,

  hyperventilating, washing his blood with pure oxygen until he felt

  light-headed and dizzy.

  One last sweet breath, and then he unscrewed his own hose connection;

  icy water flooded through the valve but he held his head at an angle to

  trap oxygen in the top of his helmet, keeping his nose and eyes clear,

  and he rescrewed his own hose into Baker's helmet with fingers that no

  longer had feeling.

  He held the Chief's body close to his chest, embracing like lovers, and

  he cracked the last of the oxygen from his bottle. There was just

  sufficient pressure of gas left to expunge the water from Baker's

  helmet. It blew out with an explosive hiss through the valve, and Nick

  watched carefully with his face only inches from Baker's.

  The Chief was choking and coughing, gulp
ing and gasping at the rush of

  cold oxygen, his eyes watery and unseeing his spectacles blown awry and

  the lenses obscured by, sea water, but then Nick felt his chest begin to

  swell and subside. Baker was breathing again, which is more than I am

  doing Nick thought grimly - and then suddenly he realized for the first

  time that he had lost the guide line with his weight belt.

  He did not know in which direction was the shore, nor which way to swim

  to reach the Zodiac. He was utterly disorientated, and desperately he

  peered through his half flooded visor for sight of the Golden

  Adventurer's hull to align himself. She was not there, gone in the

  misty green gloom - and he felt the first heave of his lungs as they

  demanded air. And as he denied his body the driving need to breathe, he

  felt the fear that had flickered deep within him flare up into true

  terror, swiftly becoming cold driving panic.

  A suicidal urge to tear at the green ice roof of this watery tomb almost

  overwhelmed him. He wanted to try and rip his way through it with bare

  freezing hands to reach the precious air.

  Then, just before panic completely obliterated his reason, he remembered

  the compass on his wrist. Even then his brain was sluggish, beginning

  to starve for oxygen, and it took precious seconds working out the

  reciprocal of his original bearing.

  As he leaned forward to read the compass, more sea water spurted into

  his helmet, spiking needles of icy cold agony into the sinuses of his

  cheeks and forehead, making the teeth ache in his jaws, so he gasped

  involuntarily and immediately choked.

  Still holding Baker to him, linked by the thick black umbilical cord of

  his oxygen hose, Nick began to swim out on the reciprocal compass

  heading. Immediately his lungs began to pump, convulsing in involuntary

  spasms, like those of childbirth, craving air, and he swam on.

  With his head thrown back slightly he saw that the sheet of ice moved

  slowly above him; at times, when the current held them it moved not at

  all, and it required all his selfcontrol to keep finning doggedly, then

  the current relaxed its grip and they moved forward again, but achingly

  slowly.

  He had time then to realize how exquisitely beautiful was the ice roof;

  translucent, wonderously carved and sculptured - and suddenly he

  remembered standing hand in hand with Chantelle beneath the arched roof