chance to replan the operation, thinking his way around the problems he
had found down there; now the work seemed to fall more readily into
place, though he had lost all sense of time alone in the infernal
resounding cavern of steel and he was not sure of the hour, or the phase
of the day, when at last he was ready to carry the messenger out through
the gap.
Send it down/ he ordered into his headset, and the reel of light line
came down, swinging and circling under the glaring floodlights to the
ship's motion and throwing grotesque shadows into the far corners of the
engine room.
The line was of finely plaited Dacron, with enormous strength and
elasticity in relation to its thinness and tightness. One end was
secured on the deck high above, and Nick threaded it into the sheave
blocks carefully, so that it was free to run.
Then he clamped the reel of line on to his belt, riding it on his hip
where it could be protected from snagging when he made the passage of
the gap.
He realized then how close to final exhaustion he was, and he considered
breaking off the work to rest again, but the heightened action of the
sea into the hull warned him against further delay. An hour from now
the task might be impossible, he had to go, and he reached for the
reserve of strength and purpose deep inside himself, surprised to find
that it was still there - for the icy chill of the water seemed to have
penetrated his suit and entered his soul, dulling every sense and
turning his very bones brittle and heavy.
It must be day outside, he realised, for light came through the gash of
steel, pale light further obscured by the filthy muck of mixed oil and
water contained in the hull.
He clung to one of the engine-room stringers, his head seven feet from
the opening, breathing in the slow, even rhythm of the experienced scuba
diver, feeling the ebb and flow through the hull, and trying to find
some pattern in the action of the water. But it seemed entirely random,
a hissing, bubbling ingestion followed by three or four irregular and
weak inflows, then three vicious exhalations of such power that they
would have windmilled a swimming man end over into those daggers of
splayed steel.
He had to choose and ride a middling-sized swell, strong enough to take
him through smoothly, without the dangerous power and turbulence of
those viciously large swells.
I'm ready to go now, David/ he said into his helmet.
Confirm that the work boat is standing by for the pick-up outside the
hull. We are all ready. David Allen's voice was tense and sharp.
Here we go/ said Nick, this was his wave now. There was no point in
waiting longer.
He checked the reel on his belt, ensuring that the line was free to run,
and watched the gash suck in clean green water, filled with tiny bright
bubbles, little diamond chips that flew past his head to warn him of the
lethal speed and power of that flood.
The in flow slowed and stopped as the hull filled to capacity, building
up great pressures of air and water, and then the flow reversed abruptly
as the swell on the far side subsided, and trapped water began to rush
out again.
Nick released his grip on the stringer and instantly the water caught
him. There was no question of being able to swim in that mill-race, all
he could hope for was to keep his arms at his sides and his legs
straight together to give himself a smoother profile, and to steer with
his fins.
The accelerating speed appalled him as he was flung head first at that
murderous steel mouth, he could feel the nylon line streaming out
against his leg, the reel on his belt racing as though a giant marlin
had struck and hooked upon the other end.
The rush of his progress seemed to leave his guts behind him as though
he rode a fairground roller-coaster, and then a flick of the current
turned him, he felt himself beginning to roll - and he fought wildly for
control just as he hit.
He hit with a numbing shock, so his vision starred in flashing colour
and light. The shock was in his shoulders and left arm, and he thought
it might have been severed by that razor steel.
Then he was swirling, end over end, completely disorientated so he did
not know which direction was up. He did not know if he was still inside
Golden Adventurer's hull, and the nylon line was wrapping itself around
his throat and chest, around the precious air tubes and cutting off his
air supply like a stillborn infant strangled by its own umbilical cord.
Again he hit something, this time with the back of his head, and only
the cushioning of his helmet saved his skull from cracking. He flung
out his arms and found the rough irregular shape of ice above him.
Terror wrapped him again, and he screamed soundlessly into his mask, but
suddenly he broke out into light and air, into the loose scum of slush
and rotten ice mixed with bigger, harder chunks, one of which had hit
him.
Above him towered the endless steel cliff of the liner's side and beyond
that, the low bruised wind-sky, and as he struggled to disentangle
himself from the coils of nylon, he realized two things. The first was
that both his arms were still attached to his body, and still
functioning, and the second was that Warlock's work boat was only twenty
feet away and butting itself busily through the brash of rotten broken
ice towards him.
The collision mat looked like a five-ton Airedale terrier curled up to
sleep in the bows of the work boat, just as shaggy and shapeless, and of
the same wiry, furry brown colour.
Nick had shed his helmet and pulled an Arctic cloak and hood over his
bare head and suited torso. He was balanced in the stern of the work
boat as she plunged and rolled and porpoised in the big swells; chunks
of ice crashed against her hull, knocking loose chips off her paintwork,
but she was steel-hulled, wide and sea-kindly. The helmsman knew his
job, working her with calm efficiency to Nick's hand-signals, bringing
her in close through the brash ice, under the tall sheer of Golden
Adventurer's stern.
The thin white nylon line was the only physical contact with the men on
the liner's towering stack of decks, the messenger which would carry
heavier tackle. However it was vulnerable to any jagged piece of
pancake ice, or the fangs of that voracious underwater steel jaw.
Nick paid out the line through his own numbed hands, feeling for the
slightest check or jerk which could mean a snag and a break-off.
With hand-signals, he kept the work boat positioned so that the line ran
cleanly into the pierced hull, around the sheave blocks he had placed
with such heart-breaking labour in the engine room, from there up the
tall ventilation, out of the square opening of the stack and around the
winch, beside which Beauty Baker was supervising the recovery of the
messenger.
The gusts tore at Nick's head so that he had to crouch to shield the
small two-way radio on his chest, and Baker
's voice was tinny and thin
in the buffeting boom of wind.
Line running free. Right, we are running the wire now/ Nick told him.
The second line was as thick as a man's index finger, and it was of the
finest Scandinavian steel cable. Nick checked the connection between
nylon and steel cable himself, the nylon messenger was strong enough to
carry the weight of steel, but the connection was the weakest point.
He nodded to the crew, and they let it go over the side; the white nylon
disappeared into the cold green water and now the black steel cable ran
out slowly from the revolving drum.
Nick felt the check as the connection hit the sheave block in the engine
room. He felt his heart jump. If it caught now, they would lose it
all; no man could penetrate that hull again, the sea was now too
vicious. They would lose the tackle, and they would lose Golden
Adventurer, she would break up in the seas that were coming.
Please God, let it run,, Nick whispered in the boom and burst of sea
wind. The drum halted, made a half turn and jammed. somewhere down
there,, the cable had snagged and Nick signalled to the helmsman to take
the work boat in closer, to change the angle of the line into the hull.
He could almost feel the strain along his nerves as the winch took up
the pull, and he could imagine the fibres of the nylon messenger
stretching and creaking.
Let it run! Let it run! prayed Nick, and then Suddenly he saw the drum
begin to revolve again, the cable feeding out smoothly, and streaming
down into the sea.
Nick felt light-hearted, almost dizzy with relief, as he heard Baker's
voice over the VHF, strident with triumph.
Wire secured. Stand by/ Nick told him. We are connecting the two inch
wire now. AgAin the whole laborious, touchy, nerve-scouring Process as
the massive two-inch steel cable was drawn out by its thinner, weaker
forerunner - and it was a further forty vital minutes, with the wind and
sea rising every moment, before Baker shouted, Main cable secured, we
are ready to haul! Negative, I Nick told him urgently. Take the strain
and hold. If the collision mat in the bows hooked and held on the work
boat's gunwale, Baker would pull the bows under and swamp her.
Nick signalled to his crew and the five of them shambled up into the
bows, bulky and clumsy in their electric-yellow oilskins and work boots.
With hand-signals, Nick positioned them around the shaggy head-high pile
of the collision mat before he signalled to the helmsman to throw the
gear in reverse and pull back from Golden Adventurer's side.
The mass of unravelled oakum quivered and shook as the two-inch cable
came up taut and they struggled to heave the whole untidy mass
overboard.
There was nearly five tons of it and the weight would have been
impossible to handle were it not for the reverse pull of the work boat
against the cable. Slowly, they heaved the mat forward and outward, and
the work boat took on a dangerous list under the transfer of weight. She
was down at the bows and canting at an angle of twenty degrees, the
diesel motor screaming angrily and her single propeller threshing
frantically, trying to pull her out from under her cumbersome burden.
The mat slid forward another foot, and snagged on the gunwale, sea water
slopped inboard, ankle-deep around their rubber boots as they strained
and heaved at the reluctant mass of coarse fibre.
Some instinct of danger made Nick look up and out to sea. Warlock was
lying a quarter of a mile farther out in the bay, at the edge of the
ice, and beyond her, Nick saw the rearing shape of a big wave alter the
fine of the horizon.
It was merely a forerunner of the truly big waves that the storm was
running before her, like hounds before the hunter, but it was big enough
to make Warlock throw up her stern sharply, and even then the sea
creamed over the tug's bows and streamed from her scuppers.
it would hit the exposed and hampered work boat in twenty-five seconds,
it would hit her broadside while her bows were held down and anchored by
mat and cable.
When she swamped, the five men who made up her crew would die within
minutes-, pulled down by their bulky clothing, frozen by the icy green
water.
Beauty, I Nick's voice was a scream in the microphone, heave all - pull,
damn you, pull. Almost instantly the cable began to run, drawn in by
the powerful winch on Golden Adventurer's deck; the strain pulled the
work boat down sharply and water cascaded over her gunwale.
Nick seized one of the oaken oars and thrust it under the mat at the
point where it was snagged, and using it as a lever he threw all his
weight upon it.
Lend a hand/ he yelled at the man beside him, and he strained until he
felt his vision darkening and the fibres of M his back-muscles creaking
and popping.
The work boat was swamping, they were almost kneedeep now and the wave
raced down on them. It came with a great silent rush of irresistible
power, lifting the mass of broken ice and tossing it carelessly aside
without a check.
Suddenly, the snag cleared and the whole lumpy massive weight of oakum
slid overboard. The work boat bounded away, relieved of her intolerable
burden, and Nick windmilled frantically with both arms to get the
helmsman to bring her bows round to the wave.
They went up the wave with a gut-swooping rush that threw them down on
to the floorboards of the half-flooded work boat, and then crashed over
the crest.
it with an explosion of white and furious water that turned to white
driven spray in the wind.
The helmsman already had the work boat pushing heavily through the
pack-ice, back towards the waiting Warlock.
Stop/Nick signalled him. Back up.
Already he was struggling out of his hood and oilskins, as he staggered
back to the stern.
He shouted in the helmsman's face, I'm going down to check/ and he saw
the disbelieving, almost pleading, expression on the man's face.
He wanted to get out of there now, back to the safety of Warlock, but
relentlessly Nick resettled the diving helmet and connected his air
hose.
The collision mat was floating hard against Golden Adventurer's side,
buoyant with trapped air among the mass of wiry fibre.
Nick positioned himself beneath it twenty feet from the maelstrom
created by the gashed steel.
It took him only a few seconds to ensure that the cable was free, and he
blessed Beauty Baker silently for stopping the winch immediately it had
pulled the mat free of the work boat. Now he could direct the final
task.
She's looking good,, he told Baker. But take her up slowly, fifty feet
a minute on the winch. Fifty feet, it is! Baker confirmed.
And slowly the bobbing mat was drawn down below the surface.
Good, keep it at that. It was like pressing a field-dressing into an
open bleeding wound. The outside pressure of water drove it deep into
the gash, while from the inside the two-inch cable plugged it deeper
into place. The wound was staunched almost instantly and Nick finned
down, and swam carefully over it.
The deadly suck and blow of high pressure through the gap was killed
now, and he detected only the lightest movement of water around the
edges of the mat; but the oakum fibres would swell now they were
submerged and, within hours the plug would be watertight.
It's done/ said Nick into his microphone. Hold a twenty-ton pull on the
cable - and you can start your pumps and suck the bitch clean. It was a
measure of his stress and relief and fatigue that Nick called that
beautiful ship a bitch, and he regretted the word as it was spoken.
Nick craved sleep, every nerve, every muscle shrieked for surcease, and
in his bathroom mirror his eyes were inflamed, angry with salt and wind
and cold; the smears of exhaustion that underlined them were as lurid as
the fresh bruises and abrasions that covered his shoulders and thighs
and ribs.
His hands shook in a mild palsy with the need for rest and his legs
could hardly carry him as he forced himself back to Warlock's navigation
bridge.
Congratulations, sir/ said David Allen, and his admiration was
transparent.
How's the glass, David? Nick asked, trying to keep the weariness from
showing.
994 and dropping, sir. Nick looked across at Golden Adventurer. Below
that dingy low sky, she stood like a pier, unmoved by the big swells
that marched on her in endless ranks, and she shrugged aside each burst
of spray, hard aground and heavy with the water in her womb.
However, that water was being flung from her, in solid white sheets.
Baker's big centrifugals were running at full power, and from both her
port and starboard quarters the water poured.
It looked as though the flood gates had been opened on a concrete dam,
so powerful was the rush of expelled water.
The oil and diesel mixed with that discharge formed a sullen, iridescent
slick around her, sullying the ice and the pebble beach on which she
lay. The wind caught the jets from the pump outlets and tore them away
in glistening plumes, like great ostrich feathers of spray.
Chief/ Nick called the ship. What's your discharge rate? We are moving
nigh on five hundred thousand gallons an hour. Call me as soon as she
alters her trim! he said, and then glanced up at the pointer of the