by Wilbur Smith
of the Chartres cathedral, staring up in awe. The pain in his chest
subsided, the need to breathe passed, but he did not recognize that as
the sign of mortal danger, nor the images that formed before his eyes as
the fantasy of a brain deprived of oxygen and slowly dying.
Chantelle's face was before him then, glowing hair soft and thick and
glossy as a butterfly's wing, huge dark eyes and that wide mouth so full
of the promise of delight and warmth and love.
I loved you/ he thought. I really loved you.
And again the image changed. He saw again the incredible slippery
explosive liquid burst with which his son was born, heard that queruous
cry as a dripping an wet and hairless from the rubber-gloved hand, and
felt again the soul-consuming wonder and joy.
A drowning man - Nick recognized at last what was happening to him. He
knew then he was dying, but the panic had passed, as the cold had passed
also, and the terror. He swam on, dreamlike, into the green mists. Then
he realized that his own legs were no longer moving; he lay relaxed not
breathing, not feeling, and it was Baker's body that was thrusting and
working against him.
Nick peered into the glass visor still only inches from his eyes, and he
saw that Baker's face was set and determined. He was gulping the pure
sweet oxygen and gained strength with each breath, driving on strongly.
You beauty/ whispered Nick dreamily, and felt the water shoot into his
throat, but there was no pain.
Another image formed before him, an Arrow head-class yacht with
spinnaker set, running free across a bright Mediterranean sea, and his
son at the tiller, the dense tumble of curls that covered his small neat
head fluttering in the wind, and the same velvety dark eyes as his
mother's in the sun-tanned oval of his face as he laughed.
Don't let her run by the lee, Peter/ Nicholas wanted to shout to his
son, but the image faded into blackness. He thought for a moment that
he had passed into unconsciousness, but then he realized suddenly that
it was the black rubber bottom of the Zodiac only inches from his eyes,
and that the rough hands that dragged him upwards, lifting him and
tearing loose the fastening of his helmet, were not part of the fantasy.
Propped against the pillowed gunwale of the Zodiac, held by the two
boatmen from falling backwards, the first breaths of sub-zero air were
too rich for his starved lungs, and Nick coughed and vomited weakly down
the front of his suit.
Nick came out of the shower cabinet. The cabin was thick with steam,
and his body glowed dull angry red from the almost boiling water. He
wrapped the towel around his waist as he stepped through into his night
cabin.
Baker slouched in the armchair at the foot of his bunk.
He wore fresh overalls, his hair stood up in little damp spikes around
the shaven spot where Angel's cat-gut stitches still held the scabbed
wound closed. One of the side frames of his spectacles had snapped
during those desperate minutes below Golden Adventurer's stern, and
Baker had repaired it with black insulating tape.
He held two glasses in his left hand, and, a big flat brown bottle of
liquor in the other. He poured two heavy slugs into the glasses as Nick
paused in the bathroom door, and the sweet, rich aroma smelled like the
sugar-cane fields of northern Queensland.
Baker passed a glass to Nick, and then showed him the bottle's yellow
label.
Bundaberg rum/ he announced, the dinky die stuff, sport!
Nick recognized both the offer of liquor and the salutation as probably
the highest accolade the chief would ever give another human being. Nick
sniffed the dark honey-brown liquor and then took it in a single toss,
swirled it once around his mouth, swallowed, shuddered like a spaniel
shaking off water droplets, exhaled and said: It's still the finest rum
in the world. Dutifully, he said what was expected of him, and held out
his glass.
The Mate asked me to give you a message, said Baker as he poured another
shot for each of them. Glass hit 103,5 and now it s diving like a dingo
into its hole - back to 102,0 already. It's going to blow - is it ever
going to blow!
They regarded each other over the rims of the glasses.
We've wasted almost two hours Beauty,, Nick told him, and Baker blinked
at the unlikely name, then grinned crookedly as he accepted it.
How are you going to plug that hull?
I've got ten men at work already. We are going to fother a sail into a
collision mat. Baker blinked again, then shook his head in disbelief.
That's Hornblower stuff The Witch of Endor/ Nick agreed. So you can
read?
You haven't got pressure to drive it home/ Baker objected. The trapped
air from the engine room will blow it out., I'm going to run a wire down
the ventilation shaft of the engine room and out through the gash. We'll
fix the collision mat outside the hull and winch it home with the wire.
Baker stared at him for five seconds while he examined the proposition.
A sail was fothered by threading the thick canvas with thousands of
strands of unravelled oakum until it resembled a huge shaggy doormat.
When this was placed over an aperture below a ship's waterline, the
pressure of water forced it into the hole, and the water swelled the
mass of fibre until it formed an almost watertight plug.
However, in Golden Adventurer's case the damage was extensive and as the
hull was already flooded, there was no pressure differential to drive
home the plug. Nick proposed to beat that by using an internal wire to
haul the plug into the gash.
It might work. Beauty Baker was noncommittal.
Nick took the second rum at a gulp, dropped the towel and reached for
his working gear laid out on the bunk.
Let's get power on her before the blow hits us/ he suggested mildly, and
Baker lumbered to his feet and stuffed the Bundaberg bottle into his
back pocket.
Listen, sport/ he said. All that guff about you being a Pommy, don't
take it too seriously. I won't/ said Nick. Actually, I was born and
educated in Blighty, but my father's an American. So that makes me one
also. ,Christ., Beauty hitched disgustedly at his waist with both
elbows. of there's anything worse than a bloody Pom, it's a goddamned
Yank. Now that Nick was certain that the bottom of the bay was clean
and free of underwater snags, he handled Warlock boldly but with a
delicately skilful touch which David Allen watched with awe.
Like a fighting cock, the Warlock attacked the thicker ice line along
the shore, smashing free huge lumps and slabs, then washing them clear
with the propellers, giving herself space to work about Golden
Adventurer's stern.
The ominous calm of both sea and air made the work easier,™™™ although
the vicious little current working below Adventurer's stern complicated
the transfer of the big alternator.
Nick had two Yokohama fenders slung from Warlocks side, and the bloated
plastic balloons cushioned the contact of steel against steel as Nic
k
laid Warlock alongside the stranded liner, holding her there with
delicate adjustments of power and rudder and screw pitch.
Beauty Baker and his working party, swaddled in heavy Antarctic gear,
were already up on the catwalk of Warlock's forward gantry, seventy feet
above the bridge and overlooking Adventurer's sharply canted deck.
As Nick nudged Warlock in, they dropped the steel boarding-ladder across
the gap between the two ships and Beauty led them across in single file,
like a troop of monkeys across the limb of a forest tree.
All across/ the Third Officer confirmed for Nick, and then added, 'Glass
has dropped again, sir. Down to 1005 Very well, Nick drew Warlock
gently away from the liner's stern, and held her fifty feet off. Only
then did he flick his eyes up at the sky. The midnight sun had turned
into a malevolent jaundiced yellow, while the sun itself was a ball of
dark satanic red above the peaks of Cape Alarm, and it seemed that the
snowfields and glaciers were washed with blood.
It's beautiful. Suddenly the girl was beside him. The top of her head
was on a level with his shoulder, and in the ruddy light, her thick
roped hair glowed like newly minted sovereigns in red gold. Her voice
was low and a little husky with shyness, and touched a chord of response
in Nick, but when she lifted her face to him he saw how young she was.
I came to thank you, she said softly. It's the first chance I've had.
She wore baggy, borrowed men's clothing that made her look like a little
girl dressing up, and her face, free of cosmetics, had that waxy plastic
glow of youth, like the polished skin of a ripe apple.
Her expression was solemn and there were traces of her recent ordeal
beneath her eyes and at the corners of her mouth. Nick sensed the
tension and nervousness in her.
Angel wouldn't let me come before/ she said, and suddenly she smiled.
The nervousness vanished and it was the direct warm unselfconscious
smile of a beautiful child that has never known rejection. Nick was
shocked by the strength of his sudden physical desire for her, his body
moved, clenching like a fist in his groin, and he felt his heart pound
furiously in the cage of his ribs.
His shock turned to anger, for she looked but fourteen or fifteen years
of age; almost she seemed as young as his own son, and he was shamed by
the perversity of his attraction. since the good bright times with
chantelle, he had not experienced such direct and instant involvement
with a woman. At the thought of Chantelle, his emotions collapsed in a
disordered tangle, from which only his lust and his anger emerged
clearly.
He cupped the anger to him, like a match in a high wind, it gave him
strength again. Strength to thrust this aside, for he knew how
vulnerable he still was and how dangerous a course had opened before
him, to be led by this child woman. Suddenly he was aware that he had
swayed bodily towards the girl and had been staring into her face for
many long seconds, that she was meeting his gaze steadily and that
something was beginning to move in her eyes like cloud shadow across the
sunlit surface of a green mountain lake. Something Was happening which
he could not afford, could not chance - and then he realized also that
the two young deck officers were watching them with undisguised
curiosity, and he turned his anger on her.
Young lady/ he said. "You have an absolute genius for being in the
wrong place at the wrong time., And his tone was colder and more remote
than even he had intended it.
Before he turned away from her, he saw the moment of her disbelief turn
to chagrin, and the green eyes misted slightly. He stood stiffly
staring down the fore-dec where David Allen's team was opening the
forward salvage hold.
Nick's anger evaporated almost at once, to be replaced by dismay. He
realized clearly that he had completely alienated the girl and he wanted
to turn back to her and say something gracious that might retrieve the
situation, but he could think of nothing and instead lifted the hand
microphone to his lips and spoke to Baker over the VFH radio.
How's it going, Chief?
There were ten seconds of delay, and Nick was very conscious of the
girl's presence near him.
Their emergency generator has burned out, it win need two days work to
get it running again. We'll have to take on the alternator, Beauty told
him.
We are ready to give it to you, Nick told him, and then called David
Allen on the fore-dec.
Ready, David? All set. Nick began edging Warlock back towards the
finer's towering stern, and now at last he turned back to the girl.
Unaccountably, he now wanted her approbation, so his smile was ready -
but she had already gone, taking with her that special aura of
brightness.
Nick's voice had a jagged edge to it as he told David Allen, 'Let's do
this fast and right, Number One., Warlock nuzzled Adventurer's stern,
the big black Yokoharna fenders gentling her touch, and on her fore-dec
the winch whined shrilly, the lines squealing in their blocks and from
the open salvage hatch the four-ton alternator swung out. It was
mounted on a sledge for easy handling.
The diesel tanks were charged and the big motor primed and ready to
start It rose swiftly, dangling from the tall gantry, and a dozen men
synchronized their efforts, in those critical moments when it hung out
over Warlock's bows. A nasty freaky little swell lifted the tug and
pushed her across, for the dangling burden was already putting a slight
list on her, and it would have crashed into the steel side of the liner,
had not Nick thrown the screws into reverse thrust and given her a burst
of power to hold her off. The instant the swell subsided, he closed
down and slid the pitch to fine forward, pressing the cushioned bows
lightly back against Adventurer's side.
He's good! David Allen watched Nicholas work. He's better than old Mac
ever was. Mackintosh, Warlock's previous skipper, had been careful and
experienced, but Nicholas Berg handled the ship with the flair and
intuitive touch that even Mac's vast experience could never have
matched.
David Allen pushed the thought aside and signalled the winch man. The
huge dangling machine dropped with the control of a roosting seagull on
to the liner's deck. Baker's crew leapt on it immediately, releasing
the winch cable and throwing out the tackle, to drag it away on its
sledge.
Warlock drew off, and when Baker's crew was ready, she went in to drop
another burden, this time one of the highspeed centrifugal pumps which
would augment Golden Adventurer's own machinery - if Baker could get
that functioning. It went up out of Warlock's forward hold, followed
ten minutes later by its twin.
Both pumps secured. Baker's voice had a spark of jubilation in it, but
at that moment a shadow passed over the ship, as though a vulture
wheeled above on wide-spread pinions, and as Nick glanced up he saw the
men on the fore-dec lift
their heads also.
It was a single cloud seeming no bigger than a man's fist, a thousand or
fifteen hundred feet above them, but it had momentarily obscured the
lowering sun, before scuttling on furtively down the peaks of Cape
Alarm.
There is still much to do/ Nick thought, and he opened the bridge door
and stepped out on to the exposed wing.
There was no movement of air, and the cold seemed less intense although
a glance at the glass confirmed that there were thirty degrees still of
frost. No wind here, but high up it was be wind. Number One/ Nick
snapped into the microphone.
What's going on down there - do you think this is your daddy's yacht?
And David Allen's team leapt to the task of closing down the forward
hatch, and then tramped back to the double salvage holds on the long
stern quarter.
I am transferring command to the stern bridge. Nick told his deck
officers and hurried back through the accommodation area to the second
enclosed bridge, where every control and navigational aid was
duplicated, a unique feature of salvage-tug construction where so much
of the work took place on the afterdeck.
This time from the aft gantries, they lifted the loaded ballets of
salvage gear on to the liner's deck, another eight tons of equipment
went aboard Golden Adventurer. Then they pulled away and David Allen
battened down again.
When he came on to the bridge stamping and slapping his own shoulders,
red-cheeked and gasping from the cold, Nick told him immediately .
Take command, David, I'm going on board. Nick could not bring himself
to wait out the uncertain period while Beauty Baker put power and pumps
into action.
Anything mechanical was Baker's responsibility, as seamanship was
strictly Nick's, but it could take many hours yet, and Nick could not
remain idle that long.
From high on the forward gantry, Nick looked out across that satiny
ominous sea. It was a little after midnight now and the sun was half
down behind the mountains, a two dimensional disc of metal heated to
furious crimson. The sea was sombre purple and the ice-bergs were
sparks of brighter cherry red. From this height he could see that the
surface- of the sea was crenellated, a small regular swell spreading
across it like ripples across a pond, from some disturbance far out