by Peter Tonkin
Richard finished his soup and stood up. Angling himself carefully so as not to be thrown by the motion of the ship, he crossed to the chart table where Ben was carefully plotting their course, matching it to the course and reported size of the storm. 'We'll be in the eye in ninety minutes, maybe two hours,' Ben yelled, though they were close together. 'We should be about here by then.' He pointed to a spot further south and west than Richard would have expected. Ben saw his frown. 'Yes,' be yelled. 'It's pushing us over pretty fast. Lucky you gave us the extra searoom earlier. Be a bit embarrassing if we bumped into Africa!'
'Damn right! We'd better come to port a few more degrees.' He went across to Robin by the helm to check on their exact heading. The compass read almost due south. They were at slow ahead, making nearly five knots, if the instruments could be trusted in this. Their heading and speed were only notional anyway. The storm, pushing on their port quarter, was moving them west almost as fast as they were beading south. The Agulbas current under their keel was in motion too, the whole mass of water moving like a river towards the Cape. And the hurricane wind above, of course, was using their massive superstructure like a sail.
He turned to his Third Mate. 'Come to ...'
He never finished what he was saying. Even as he spoke to her, in a ghastly sort of slow-motion Robin sank to her knees. 'What ...' He went over to her and went down on one knee beside her. Her arms were crossed on her belly, her fingers buried in the taut flesh under her ribs, knuckles white. As he reached her, she rocked forward, obviously in acute pain. She was white as chalk, her eyes huge and wide with shock. 'Robin ...'
She vomited as he said her name, folding forward with the wrenching effort, smashing her forehead on the deck. He reached for her, but she could not straighten, her stomach obviously locked in a cramp. As he tried to lift her she vomited again.
He looked desperately over his shoulder. John was still by the Collision Alarm Radar, his own face looking pretty ghastly in the green glow from the dish. 'John!' he yelled.
The Manxman had taken two steps when the stomach cramps hit him too and he lost his footing.
During the next minute they. all went down, as though this were some kind of virulent plague spreading among them. One moment the bridge was functioning normally, the next they were all in foetal positions, puking helplessly on the floor. Even the helmsman slid down, the tiny wheel slipping from his numb fingers. The agony hit Richard too, a massive shock which warned of severe damage to the system. From solar plexus to pubis, the muscles of his belly spasmed. Vomit flooded out of his throat, washing into the sensitive passages behind his nose, burning there and blinding him with tears. When he blinked them away, he found himself on the floor beside Robin, just behind the helmsman.
His whole body spasmed again, raising the hurt to the realms of agony, muscles tearing themselves as they wrenched beyond control. Yet they could not be beyond control. His mind, alert even under these circumstances, knew he must overcome this mutiny in his body and force it to his will, or they were lost. And yet even to stand seemed an impossibility. He forced himself half erect, only to throw up and fall down again. Once more - like some simian ancestor in Darwinian theory - he straightened his back and stood erect.
Three steps towards the helm console. Another spasm. He slipped in the mess and crashed forward, landing with his elbows on the icy metal of the console top. There was a microphone here. When the dry heaving had stopped, he bent the metal stalk until the wire mouthpiece touched his lips. He pressed the button. 'Engine room,' he whispered. He flipped to receive.
The noise of the answer confirmed his worst fears. But at least it was Martyr's voice. 'Captain? It's bad down here. We're all sick.'
'Here too. Keep going as best you can.'
He pressed the button again. 'Sparks ... Tsirtos ...'
The sound of helpless puking answered him. It caused his gorge to rise again. He controlled himself, feeling the effort draining him. God! He was weak!
'Tsirtos!'
'Cap ...Captain ...'
'Can you radio for help?'
'...Try ...'
A hand fell on his shoulder and he actually jumped with the shock. He turned so quickly that his grip on the console slipped and he crashed to the floor again.
It was Robin. She had pulled herself up, obviously with as much grim effort as himself, and she stood now, filthy, agonised, sick unto death. Simply refusing to give in.
Richard rose, inch by inch, until they were in a position to collapse against each other. Breathlessly, speaking almost in shorthand, sentences - often words - broken by bouts of heaving, they discussed what they should do.
She must take the helm and try to keep Prometheus's head around into the storm, away from the dangers of the African coast. He must go below and check on the others. Tsirtos must be made to call for help. Anyone with any strength at all must be made ready to act when that help arrived.
In many ways, the most difficult bit was simply making it to the door. The atmosphere on the bridge was so foul now that he had to stop every few steps, find something to cling to and puke weakly. Once or twice the cramps hit him again and he fell down. It was impossible to bend and check on his other officers. He looked down on them with a rigid back as they lay curled on the floor, beyond help at the moment. Even Ben was curled like a baby, clutching his belly. At the door he looked back, just in time to see Robin fold forward, start to go down, and pull herself erect again, using the helm to support her. He could not express how proud that made him feel.
In the corridor, things were marginally better. He could at least breathe out without being overcome with nausea. He blessed whoever had retained the old-fashioned strong wooden railings along the corridor walls. Without these to cling to, his progress would have been slow indeed. As it was, he simply leaned upon them and collapsed forward into a staggering half-run. This way, as long as his arms could bear him he made progress and, although he was weaker than a sickly child, he hardly fell down at all. The retching got worse, of course, now that his stomach was empty and dry.
The atmosphere in the radio shack set him off again. He found it hard to breathe, such was the twisting and heaving of his stomach, and he stood crucified in the doorway, choking and sobbing for breath. Tsirtos was lying on his chest, backside just out of his filthy chair, chin just above his filthy desk, speaking into his radio like a ghost. Every once in a while - Richard stood there long enough to perceive a pattern in it - Sparks's left hand would depress the receive button, and Richard would hear a whisper of conversation from the headphones Tsirtos was wearing. Miraculously, the sick man was in communication with somebody. Hope and relief gave Richard added strength, though the simple good luck of the circumstances almost beggared belief. North and west of them, altering course even as they spoke, a mere three hours distant at the top of the green, were two South African ocean-going salvage tugs. If they could get their lines aboard in the relative calm of the storm's eye, they would take Prometheus back to the safety of Durban.
But there would have to be someone in the fo'c'sle head to take the lines aboard.
Three hours. Automatically, Richard looked at his watch. As soon as his hand came away from the doorframe, his legs gave out again, but he had made the calculation. They would be here at 22.30.
He crawled out of the doorway and over to the nearest wall. He pulled himself erect and leaned on the railing once more, gasping as though he had just run a marathon. He was going to have to find himself some help.
The crew's quarters were as bad as the bridge - was there no one aboard who hadn't eaten that accursed soup? - but, just as on the bridge, the strongest were up and about. Salah Malik and Kerem Khalil met him at the door.
In the event, although three hours seemed like a long time, they only just made it.
First, the three of them - they didn't feel like splitting up again - went down to the engine room to try to drum up another recruit or two. They were luckier here. McTavish had been in his bunk
when the soup came and had only taken a sip or two before the others became ill. Martyr had used the relatively strong young Scot as a sort of workhorse to help and support the rest so that the engine room, though it reeked disgustingly like everywhere else, was comparatively orderly. The gaunt American, like the Captain, had simply refused to give in, so he was still in charge.
Rice was beginning to come out of it, so Martyr agreed to keep the Welshman and release the one strong man aboard to join the deck party. McTavish himself was less than enthusiastic about doing on deck - and who could blame him? - but it had to be done and these were not the circumstances to ask for volunteers. The four of them went off like intrepid paraplegics to get their wet-weather gear.
Their strength did not return miraculously. They did not stop feeling sick; the stomach cramps did not abate. Nothing got easier. But they did what had to be done, inch by inch, little by little; knowing there was no alternative and therefore never pausing to count the cost.
By the time they had got themselves ready it was nearly ten o'clock. There was no real question of checking further on the others; it was enough to ride up a couple more decks than necessary, check with Tsirtos that the tugs were on schedule, then ride back down again in the blessed lift.
They took it for granted that the helm was - at the very least - still in the hands of the indomitable Robin. With luck, they reckoned, someone else up there would have pulled themselves together by now. And, indeed, it seemed so: for as they exited the port A deck bulkhead doorway into the terrible night, all the deck lights came on.
Out of the massive howling blackness, there still tumbled gigantic seas, rearing out of the shadows, foam-webbed but slick like the backs of mythical monsters. The cloud-cover was gone, however, save for a high, light scud; and the moon and stars were out. Once in a while, at random points all around the compass card, great bolts of lightning would plunge down, defining the inner edges of the storm. On a level that was almost subliminal, below the occasional noises close by, they could hear the insane cacophony of it - like Armageddon all around them; in the distance and coming closer.
From side to side, the storm covered more than a thousand miles. A thousand miles of towering clouds reaching from wave top to troposphere in unbroken columns of swirling air thirty thousand feet high; a thousand miles of banshee winds gusting to 150 mph; a thousand miles of waves whipped up from abyssal trough to mountainous crest.
But at the middle of the circle, at the hub of this madly whirling wheel, there was a column of calm over a hundred miles across: the eye.
Around the outer edges of the eye the black battlements of cloud rose up. Through them the wild winds raved. Down them jumped the lightning. Out of their foundations ran the tall, tall seas. But within them there was calm.
Down the centre of Prometheus's deck, among the pipes, fifteen feet in the unquiet air, three feet wide with railings four feet high, nine hundred feet long, there was a catwalk. There were eight steep steps up to it from the restless, foamwashed deck. Up these they went, in Indian file, Richard first and McTavish last, all hanging on to the railings for dear life. Although the wind had dropped, and the rain and clouds had gone for the time being, the sea was still running murderously high and the combination of movement and slipperiness was fatally dangerous to their weak legs and uncertain feet. Time and again one or other of them would go forward, back, to one side or the other with bone-shaking force. Elbows and knees had the flesh on them bashed away. Ribs were bruised, welted; cracked. Every few yards someone would turn and retch helplessly on to the deck.
There was little conversation until they reached the fo'c'sle head. Then Richard said, 'If they're not here in twenty minutes or so, we'd better head back. If that lot catches us out here in this condition, we're dead.'
Nobody had the energy to point out that if they went back without securing the tugs' lines, then everyone aboard was as good as dead anyway.
As it turned out, they had no real wait at all. The tugs came scudding down from the north almost at once, exploding out of the storm-wall and igniting huge halogen searchlights visible for miles.
Time was relative, especially to the men on the fo'c'sle head. One moment it seemed that the tugs were distant; the next they were all but alongside. One moment their great searchlights were mere beams against the horizon like a distant anti-aircraft battery searching for bombers high above; the next they were illuminating every nut and bolt nearby, turning their faces into eyeless death masks carved in ice.
Lines came aboard. Light lines caught, eventually, secured to the winches and pulled until the towing cables rose like serpents from the sea. When the fat, strong hawsers writhed up on to the deck, they had to be secured. And so they were. It was impossible, but it was necessary. And so it was done.
How it was done, no one could ever clearly remember. But there came a time when the lines were secure and the tugs, like tiny horses towing a huge barge, began to turn Prometheus's head. A time when the men stumbled back up the catwalk and into the warm with the outriders of the returning storm threatening to overwhelm them at each faltering, exhausted step.
There was a time when McTavish returned to the engine room and Richard - via the shack where he referred laconic tug captains to the Owner - to the bridge. When Salah and Kerem joined Ho and his men, beginning to tidy up.
There came a time, now the storm had returned, when Richard and Robin stood side by side at the helm while intrepid shadows moved behind them, clearing the bridge and taking the stricken down to their bunks.
There came a dream-time when the storm was gone and men with broad South African accents teemed out of helicopters on the deck and took over the running of the ship, but still the Captain and his Third Mate would not leave the helm; nor would the Chief leave the engine room.
There came a bright, winter-clear morning, brilliant after rain; and out of the heart of the morning came South Africa, and Durban, where they could safely rest at last.
ATLANTIC
Chapter Fifteen
Sometimes, when conditions are right, off Cape Agulhas where Africa comes to its southernmost point, forming a wedge between the oceans, there is a cliff of water. Ships going west must step down into the Atlantic. It is there because at this point the warm Agulhas Current, which sweeps constantly down the east coast, meets the cold Benguela Current, spawn of the perpetual West Wind Drift, which flows forever up the west coast to the Equator.
At dawn on 17th August, ten days after she had been towed into Durban, Prometheus crashed forward over the twenty-foot sheer drop and he sprang awake, knowing the movement well. He rolled his solid body out of the bunk and crossed to the porthole. Africa was hidden by the starboard section of the bridge. He looked forward along the long deck at the glass-green swells of the Cape rollers coming at him in a majestic series: all that separated him from South America, Buenos Aires and the River Plate. He struck the metal rim of the porthole with his fist, overcome like a child with the simple joy of being back.
Half an hour later, when he was washed and dressed, there came a discreet knock at the door. The wise-eyed girl who passed for Third Mate among this strange crew stood there. 'Captain Mariner will see you now, sir,' she said.
Levkas nodded, looking her slowly up and down, and smiling like a wolf.
The two of them met formally on the bridge, Richard sitting in his big black chair, Levkas standing at his ease close by.
These were the closing moments of John's watch and Robin was ready to relieve him. Ben had found it necessary to fiddle about with the Sat Nav. Salah was at the helm. Ho hung around with a tray of cooling coffee which nobody seemed to want.
Levkas knew he was on trial here, and was only surprised that his jury should have been welded into so close a team so quickly by this quiet-looking Englishman.
In fact, they had met briefly last night just after Levkas had stepped off the helicopter, when he had handed over the papers Demetrios had given him, then retired quickly to bed pleadin
g convalescent weakness: he had been very close to death, after all. And he had wanted to put off this moment for a time, while he tested the water; prepared his lies.
He had always meant to come back aboard. There was too much unfinished business here to let things lie. As soon as he had discovered, much to his surprise, that he was not dead but in intensive care in Abadan, he had plotted his return. Kostas Demetrios, occasional visitor to his bedside, had proved unexpectedly supportive. Suspiciously so. There could be no question of him resuming command, of course, but it would be no problem to appoint him Owner's Representative and allow him to complete the trip. In fact, of course, it would be of great benefit to Demetrios to have someone aboard who knew exactly what was going on.
Levkas knew there had to be at least one other person aboard - conceivably more - who also knew the Owner's plans; but he had no real desire to know who they were. He had matters of his own to settle. And, because of his strange position aboard, he would have nothing with which to fill his time except what the Americans called 'snooping'.
He put on his most innocent expression and began to lie. 'The Owner is a superstitious man, Captain Mariner. He has bought, he thinks, an unlucky ship. Look at her record, and how many have died or come close to death in such a short time. He is actually beginning to wonder whether she is not trying to destroy anyone who comes aboard her.'
Ho gave a quiet grunt, almost of agreement. Much the same sentiments had been expressed by some of his stewards. He had had trouble getting one or two of them back aboard.