by Wilbur Smith
Nicholas joined him at the screen.
The sweeping arm lit a swirling mass of sea clutter, and the strange
ghost echoes thrown up by electrical discharges within the approaching
storm. The outline of the Florida mainland and of the nearest islands
of the Grand Bahamas bank were firm and immediately recognizable. They
reminded Nicholas yet again of how little sea-room there was in which to
manoeuver his tugs and their monstrous prize.
Then, in the trash of false echo and sea clutter, his trained eye picked
out a harder echo on the extreme limits of the set's range. He watched
it carefully for half a dozen revolutions of the radar's sweep, and each
time it was constant and clearer.
Radar contact, he said. Tell Golden Dawn we are in contact, range
sixty-five nautical miles. Tell them we will take on tow before
midnight. And then, under his breath, the old sailor's qualifications,
"God willing and weather permitting. The lights on Warlock's bridge had
been rheostatted down to a dull rose glow to protect the night vision of
her officers, and the four of them stared out to where they knew the
tanker lay.
Her image on the radar was bright and firm, lying within the two mile
ring of the screen, but from the bridge she was invisible.
In the two hours since first contact, the barometer had gone through its
brief peak as the trough passed, and then fallen steeply.
From 100s it had crashed to goo and was still plummeting, and the
weather coming in from the east was blustering and squalling. The wind
mourned about them on a forever rising note, and torrential rain
obscured all vision outside an arc of a few hundred yards. Even
Warlock's twin searchlights, set seventy feet above the main deck on the
summit of the fire-control gantry, could not pierce those solid white
curtains of rain.
Nicholas groped like a blind man through the rain fog, using pitch and
power to close carefully with Golden Dawn, giving his orders to the helm
in a cool impersonal tone which belied the pale set of his features and
the alert brightness of his eyes as he reached the swirling bank of
rain.
Abruptly another squall struck Warlock. With a demented shriek, it
heeled the big tug sharply and shredded the curtains of rain, ripping
them open so that for a moment Nicholas saw Golden Dawn.
She was exactly where he had expected her to be, but the wind had caught
the tanker's high navigation bridge like the mainsail of a tall ship,
and she was going swiftly astern.
All her deck and port lights were burning, and she carried the twin red
riding lights at her stubby masthead that identified a vessel drifting
out of control. The following sea driven on by the rising wind piled on
to her tank decks, smothering them with white foam and spray, so that
the ship looked like a submerged coral reef.
Half ahead both/ Nicholas told the helmsman. Steer for her starboard
side. He closed quickly with the tanker, staying in visual contact now;
even when the rain mists closed down again, they could make out the
ghostly shape of her and the glow of her riding lights.
David Allen was looking at him expectantly and Nicholas asked, 'What
bottom? without taking his eyes from the stricken ship.
One hundred sixteen fathoms and shelving fast. They were being blown
quickly out of the main channel, on to the shallow ledge of the Florida
littoral.
I'm going to tow her out stern first, said Nicholas, and immediately
David saw the wisdom of it. Nobody would be able to get up into her
bows to secure a tow-line, the seas were breaking over them and sweeping
them with ten and fifteen feet of green water.
I'll go aft -'David began, but Nicholas stopped him.
No, David. I want you here - because I'm going on board Golden Dawn!
Sir, David wanted to tell him that it was dangerous to delay passing the
towing cable - with that lee shore waiting.
This will be our last chance to get passengers off her before the full
hurricane hits us, said Nicholas, and David saw that it was futile to
protest. Nicholas Berg was going to fetch his son.
From the height of Golden Dawn's towering navigation bridge, they could
look directly down on to the main deck of the tug as she came alongside.
Peter Berg stood beside his mother, almost as tall as she was. He wore
a full life-jacket and a corduroy cap pulled down over his ears.
It will be all right, he comforted Chantelle. Dad is here.
It will be'just fine now. And he took her hand protectively.
Warlock staggered and reeled in the grip of wind as she came up into the
tanker's lee, rain blew over her like dense white smoke and every few
minutes she put her nose down and threw a thick green slice of sea water
back along her decks.
In comparison to the tug's wild action, Golden Dawn wallowed heavily,
held down by the oppressive weight of a million tons of crude oil, and
the seas beat upon her with increasing fury, as if affronted by her
indifference. Warlock edged in closer and still closer.
Duncan Alexander came through from the communications room at the rear
of the bridge. He balanced easily against Golden Dawn's ponderous
motion but his face was swollen and flushed with anger.
Berg is coming on board/ he burst out. He's wasting valuable time. I
warned him that we must get out into deeper water. Peter Berg
interrupted suddenly and pointed down at Warlock, Look" he cried.
Nicholas checked himself, studied him for a long moment, and then smiled
mirthlessly.
Nobody ever called you a coward/ he nodded reluctantly. Other things -
but not a coward. Stay if you will, we might need an extra hand/ Then
to Peter, Come, my boy. And he led him towards the elevator.
At the quarter-deck rail, Nicholas hugged the boy, holding him in his
arms, their cheeks pressed tightly together, and drawing out the moment
while the wind cannoned and thrummed about their heads.
I love you, Dad. And I love you, Peter, more than I can ever tell you
but you must go now. He broke the embrace and lifted the child into the
deep canvas bucket of the bosun's chair, stepped back and windmilled his
right arm. Immediately, the winch party in Warlock's upperworks swung
him swiftly out into the gap between the two ships and the nylon cable
seemed as fragile and insubstantial as a spider's thread.
As the two ships rolled and dipped, so the line tightened and sagged,
one moment dropping the white canvas bucket almost to the water level
where the hungry waves snatched at it with cold green fangs, and the
next, pulling the line up so tightly that it hummed with tension,
threatening to snap and drop the child back into the sea, but at last it
reached the tug and four pairs of strong hands lifted the boy clear.
For one moment, he waved back at Nicholas and then he was hustled away,
and the empty bosun's chair was coming back.
only then did Nicholas become aware that Chantelle was clinging to his
arm and he looked down into her face.
Her eyelashes were dewed and stuck together with the
flying raindrops.
Her face ran with wetness and she seemed very small and childlike under
the bulky oilskins and life-jacket. She was as beautiful as she had
ever been but her eyes were huge and darkly troubled.
Nicholas, I've always needed you/ she husked. But never as I need you
now. Her existence was being blown away on the wind, and she was
afraid. % You and this ship are all I have left. No, only the ship/ he
said brusquely, and he was amazed that the spell was broken. That soft
area of his soul which she had been able to touch so unerringly was now
armoured against her. With a sudden surge of relief, he realized he was
free of her, for ever. It was over; here in the storm, he was free at
last.
She sensed for the fear in her eyes changed to real terror.
Nicholas, you cannot desert me now. Oh Nicholas, what will become of me
without you and Christy Marine? I don't know/ he told her quietly, and
caught the bosun's chair as it came in over Golden Dawn's rail. He
lifted her as easily as he had lifted his son and placed her in the
canvas bucket.
And to tell you the truth, Chantelle, I don't really care, he said, and
stepping back, he windmilled his right arm.
The chair swooped out across the narrow water, swinging like a pendulum
in the wind. Chantelle shouted something at him but Nicholas had turned
away, and was already going aft in a lurching run to where the three
volunteers were waiting.
He saw at a glance that they were big, powerful, competent-looking men.
Quickly Nicholas checked their equipment, from the thick leather
gauntlets to the bolt cutters and jemmy bars for handling heavy cable.
You'll do, he said. We will use the bosun's tackle to bring across a
messenger from the tug - just as soon as the last man leaves this ship.
Working with men to whom the task was unfamiliar, and in rapidly
deteriorating conditions of sea and weather, it took almost another hour
before they had the main cable across from Warlock secured by its thick
nylon spring to the tanker's stern bollards - yet the time had passed so
swiftly for Nicholas that when he stood back and glanced at his watch,
he was shocked. Before this wind they must have been going down very
fast on the land. He staggered into the tanker's stern quarters, and
left a trail of sea water down the passageway to the elevators, On the
bridge, Captain Randle was standing grim-faced at the helm, and Duncan
Alexander snapped accusingly at him.
You've cut it damned fine. A single glance at the digital print-out of
the depth gauge on the tanker's control console bore him out. They had
thirty-eight fathoms of water under them now, and the GoldenDawnls
swollen belly sagged down twenty fathoms below the surface. They were
going down very swiftly before the easterly gale winds. It was damned
fine, Nicholas had to agree, but he showed no alarm or agitation as he
crossed to Randle's side and unhooked the hand microphone.
David/ he asked quietly, are you ready to haul us off? Ready, sir/
David Allen's voice came from the speaker above his head.
I'm going to give you full port rudder to help your turn across the
wind/ said Nicholas, and then nodded to Randle. Full port rudder. Forty
degrees of port rudder on/ Randle reported.
They felt the tiny shock as the tow-cable came up taut, and carefully
Warlock began the delicate task of turning the huge ship across the
rising gusting wind and then dragging her out tail first into the deeper
water of the channel where she would have her best chance of riding out
the hurricane.
It was clear now that Golden Dawn lay directly in the track of Lorna,
and the storm unleashed its true nature upon them. Out there upon the
sane and rational world, the sun was rising, but here there was no dawn,
for there was no horizon and no sky. There was only madness and wind
and water, and all three elements were so intermingled as to form one
substance.
An hour - which seemed like a lifetime - ago, the wind had ripped away
the anemonmeter and the weather-recording equipment on top of the
navigation bridge, so Nicholas had no way of judging the wind's strength
and direction.
Out beyond the bridge windows, the wind took the top off the sea; it
took it off in thick sheets of salt water and lifted them over the
navigation bridge in a shrieking white curtain that cut off visibility
at the glass of the windows.
The tank deck had disappeared in the racing white emulsion of wind and
water, even the railing of the bridge wings six feet from the windows
was invisible.
The entire superstructure groaned and popped and whimpered under the
assault of the wind, the pressed aluminium bulkheads bulging and
distorting the very deck flexing and juddering at the solid weight of
the storm.
Through the saturated, racing, swirling air, a leaden and ominous grey
light filtered, and every few minutes the electrical impulses generated
within the sixty-thousand foot-high mountain of racing, spinning air
released themselves in shattering cannonades of thunder and sudden
brilliance of eye-searing white lightning.
There was no visual contact with Warlock. The massive electrical
disturbance of the storm and the clutter of high seas and almost solid
cloud and turbulence had reduced the radar range to a few miles, and
even then was unreliable.
Radio contact with the tug was drowned with buzzing squealing static. It
was possible to understand only odd disconnected words from David Allen.
Nicholas was powerless, caged in the groaning, vibrating box of the
navigation bridge, blinded and deafened by the unleashed powers of the
heavens. There was nothing any of them could do.
Randle had locked the ultra-tanker's helm amidships, and now he stood
with Duncan and the three seamen by the chart-table, all of them
clinging to it for support, all their faces pale and set as though
carved from chalk.
Only Nicholas moved restlessly about the bridge; from the stern windows
where he peered down vainly, trying to get a glimpse of either the
tow-cable and its spring, or of the tug's looming shape through the
racing white storm, then he came forward carefully, using the
foul-weather rail to steady himself against the huge ship's wild and
unpredictable motion, and he stood before the control console, studying
the display of lights that monitored the pod tanks and the ship's
navigational and mechanical functions.
None of the petroleum tanks had lost any crude oil and in all of them
the nature of the inert gas was constant, there had been no ingress of
air to them; they were all still intact then, One of the reasons that
Nicholas had taken the tanker in tow stern first was so that the
navigation tower might break the worst of wind and sea, and the fragile
bloated tanks would receive some protection from Yet desperately he
wished for a momentary sight of the tank deck, merely to reassure
himself. There could be malfunction in the pump control instruments,
the storm could have clawed one of the pod tanks open, and even now
Golden Dawncould be bleeding her Poison into the sea. But there was no
view of the tank decks through the storm, and Nick stooped to the
radarscope. The screen glowed and danced and flickered with ghost
images and trash - he wasn't too certain if even Warlock's image was
constant, the range seemed to be opening, as though the tow-line had
parted. He straighten up and stood balanced on the balls of his feet,
reassuring himself by the feel of the deck that Golden Dawnwas still
under tow- He could feel by the way she resisted the wind and the sea
that the tow was still good.
Yet there was no means of telling their Position. The satellite
navigational system was completely blanketed the radio waves were
distorted and diverted by tens of thousands of feet of electrical storm,
and the same forces were blanketing the marine radio beacons on the
American mainland.
The only indication was the ship's electronic log which gave Nicholas
the speed of the ship's hull through the water and the speed across the
sea bottom, and the depth finder which recorded the water under her
keel.
For the first two hours of the tow, Warlock had been able to pull the
ship back towards the main channel at three and a half knots, and slowly
the water had become deeper until they had i 5o fathoms under them.
Then as the wind velocity increased, the windage of GoldenDawnls
Superstructure had acted as a vast mainsail and the storm had taken
control. Now, despite all the power in Warlock's big twin propellers,
both tug and tanker were being pushed once more back towards the
100-fathom line and the American mainland.
Where is Sea Witch? I Nicholas wondered, as he stared helplessly at the
gauges. They were going towards the shore at a little over two knots,
and the bottom was shelving steeply. Sea Witch might be the ace that
took the trick, if she could reach them through these murderous seas and
savage winds, and if she could find them in this wilderness of mad air
and water.
Again, Nicholas groped his way to the communications room, and still
clinging to the bulkhead with one hand he thumbed the microphone.
Sea Witch. Sea Witch. This is Warlock. Calling Sea Witch. He
listened then, trying to tune out the snarl and crackle of static,