Atlantic Fury (20 page)

I turned and went like a leaf blown by the wind back to the open bridge and Stratton standing there, the phone in his hand and the engines still pounding at full astern. I grabbed his arm. ‘The hawser,' I yelled. ‘You'll overrun the hawser.'

He nodded, calm now and in full control of himself. ‘Gears jammed. I've told him to cut it.' And then he said something about taking her out on radar as he put the phone down and went quickly, like a crab, down the steel ladder to the wheelhouse. It was a relief just to be out of the wind. The radar was switched on, set to the three-mile range. The screen showed us half surrounded by the mass of Laerg, the shore still very close. And when he did try to turn – what then? Broadside to that sea with the weight of the wind heeling her over, anything might happen.

But that was something else. What worried me was the thought of that hawser. I could see it clear in my mind, a great loop of wire running from the stern down through the heaving waters and under the whole length of the ship to the anchor dug into the sea bed somewhere beyond our bows now. It had only to touch one of the propeller blades – it would strip the propeller then or else it would warp. And that wasn't the only hazard. Driving astern like this, backing into sea and wind, it might come taut at any moment. Then if it were fractionally off-centre our stern would swing. Or was that what Stratton was trying to do? I glanced quickly at his face. It was quite blank, his whole mind given to the ship as he stood just behind the helmsman, watching the compass and at the same time keeping an eye on the radar.

I thought I felt a jerk, a sort of shudder. ‘Stop port. Half ahead port.'

‘Port engine stopped. Port engine half ahead, sir.'

Slowly the bulk of Laerg shifted its position on the radar screen. The bows were moving to starboard, swung by the screws and the pull of the anchor against the stern. The movement slowed. A wave crashed breaking against the starboard side. The ship rolled. ‘Helm hard a'starboard. Stop starboard engine. Half ahead together.'

The beat changed. The ship shuddered as she rolled. The outline on the radar screen resumed its circling anti-clockwise movement. The bows were coming round again. A big sea crashed inboard, the tank deck awash. The ship reeled, heeling over so steeply that Pinney was flung across the wheelhouse. Slowly she righted, to be knocked down again and yet again, the weight of the wind holding her pinned at an angle, driving her shorewards. But the bows kept on swinging, kept on coming round. The helmsman's voice pipe whistled.

‘Number One reporting anchor hawser cut,' he said.

Stratton nodded.

‘He's asking permission to come for'ard.'

‘Yes. Report to me in the wheelhouse.' Stratton's whole mind was fixed on the radar. Now the bulk of Laerg was on the left-hand side of the screen, at about eight o'clock. ‘Full ahead both engines.' The telegraph rang. The shuddering was replaced by a steadier beat.

And the helmsman confirmed – ‘Both at full ahead, sir.'

‘Helm amidships.'

‘Midships.'

We were round with Laerg at the bottom of the radar screen, the two sheltering arms running up each side, and the top all blank – the open sea for which we were headed. Steaming into it, we felt the full force of the wind now. It came in great battering gusts that shook the wheelhouse. Spray beat against the steel plates, solid as shot, and the bows reared crazily, twisting as though in agony, the steel creaking and groaning. And when they plunged the lights showed water pouring green over the sides, the tank deck filled like a swimming pool.

‘Half ahead together. Ten-fifty revolutions.'

God knows what it was blowing. And it had come up so fast. I'd never known anything like this – so sudden, so violent. The seas were shaggy hills, their tops beaten flat, yet still they contrived to curve and break as they found the shallower water of the bay. They showed us a blur beyond the bows in moments when the wind whipped the porthole glass clean as polished crystal. The barometer at 965 was still falling. Hundreds of tons of water sloshed around in the tank deck and the ship was sluggish like an overladen barge.

Wentworth staggered in. He had a jagged cut above his right eye; blood on his face and on his hands, bright crimson in the lights. Beads of water stood on his oilskins, giving them a mottled effect. ‘The tiller flat,' he said.

Stratton glanced at him. ‘That cut – you all right?'

Wentworth dabbed it with his hand, staring at the blood as though he hadn't realised he was bleeding. ‘Nothing much. Fenwick has hurt his arm.' And he added, ‘They didn't secure the latch. There's a lot of water …'

‘What hatch?'

‘The tiller flat.'

But Stratton had other things to worry about. The helmsman had been caught off balance, the wheel spinning. A figure moved and caught the spokes. ‘All right, sir. I've got her.' It was the Quartermaster. A sea broke slamming on the starboard bow, but she was coming back again, swinging her bows back into the waves. God, what a sea! And I heard Stratton say, ‘What's that on your oilskins – oil? It looks like oil.'

‘There was a lot of it in the sea,' Wentworth answered. ‘Every time a wave broke …'

But Stratton had pushed past me and was staring alternately at the radar screen and out through the porthole.

It was just on five-thirty then and dawn had come; a cold, grey glimmer in the murk.

Darkness would have been preferable. I would rather not have seen that storm. It was enough to hear it, to feel it in the tortured motion of the ship. The picture then was imaginary, and imagination, lacking a basis of experience, fell short of actuality. But dawn added sight to the other senses and the full majesty of the appalling chaos that surrounded us was revealed.

I had seen pictures of storms where sea and rock seemed so exaggerated that not even artistic licence could justify such violent, fantastic use of paint. But no picture I had ever seen measured up to the reality of that morning. Fortunately, the full realisation of what we faced came gradually – a slow exposure taking shape, the creeping dawn imprinting it on the retina of our eyes like a developing agent working on a black and white print. There was no colour; just black through all shadows of grey to white, the white predominating, all the surface of the sea streaked with it. The waves, like heaped-up ranges, were beaten down at the top and streaming spray – not smoking as in an ordinary gale, but the water whipped from their shaggy crests in flat, horizontal sheets, thin layers like razor blades cutting down-wind with indescribable force. Above these layers foam flew thick as snow, lifted from the seething tops of the broken waves and flung pell-mell through the air, flakes as big as gulls, dirty white against the uniform grey of the overcast.

Close on the starboard bow the skerry rocks of Sgeir Mhor lifted grey molars streaming water, the waves exploding against them in plumes of white like an endless succession of depth charges. And beyond Sgeir Mhor, running away to our right, the sheer cliffs of Keava were a black wall disappearing into a tearing wrack of cloud, the whole base of this rampart cascading white as wave after wave attacked and then receded to meet the next and smash it to pieces, heaping masses of water hundreds of feet into the air. Not Milton even, describing Hell, has matched in words the frightful, chaotic spectacle my eyes recorded in the dawn; the Atlantic in the full fury of a storm that had lifted the wind right to the top of the Beaufort scale.

That the landing craft wasn't immediately overwhelmed was due to the almost unbelievable velocity of the wind. The waves were torn to shreds as they broke so that their force was dissipated, their height diminished. The odd thing was I felt no fear. I remember glancing at Stratton, surprised to find his face calm, almost relaxed. His eyes met mine for an instant, cool and steady. No fear there either. Fear would come later no doubt, as a reaction when the danger had lessened. Fear requires time to infect the system, and we had had no time; it had come upon us too quickly with too much to do. And panic is an instantaneous thing, a nerve storm. Men carrying out the duties for which they have been trained, straining every nerve to meet the situation, their minds entirely concentrated on the work in hand, are seldom liable to panic.

‘Have the men put their life-jackets on.' Stratton's voice was barely audible as he shouted the order to Wentworth. ‘Everyone. Understand?' He turned to Pinney. ‘Go with him. See that every one of your men has his life-jacket on.'

‘What about the tiller flat?' Wentworth asked.

‘How much water got in?'

‘I don't know. It was dark down there and I couldn't see. Quite a bit, I think.'

‘Did you fix the hatch?'

‘Yes. But it may have got in through the rudder stock housings. It may still be …'

‘All right, Number One. I'll have a word with Stevens. His engineers will get it pumped out.' He picked up the engine-room phone. ‘And have that cut seen to.'

It was after Wentworth had left that I found my bowels reacting and felt that sick void in my guts that is the beginning of fear. If I'd been in control I wouldn't have noticed it. I'd have been too busy. But I was a spectator and what I saw both on the radar screen and through the porthole was the tip of Sgeir Mhor coming closer, a gap-toothed rock half awash and the wicked white of the seas breaking across it. Stratton was keeping the bows head-on to the waves. He had no choice. To sheer away in that sea was impossible – the head of the ship would have been flung sideways by the combined thrust of wind and water and she'd have broached-to and been rolled over. But bows-on we were headed about one-ninety degrees, sometimes nearer two hundred, for the wind was just west of south. We were slowly being forced towards the rocks that formed the western arm of Shelter Bay. Some time back Stratton had realised the danger and had ordered full ahead on both engines, but even at full ahead our progress was painfully slow, the ship labouring to make up against the almost solid wall of the elements. Yard by yard we closed Sgeir Mhor and we kept on closing it. There was no shelter behind those rocks – not enough in that force of wind; our only hope was the open sea beyond.

It was six-ten by the clock above the chart table when we came abreast of Sgeir Mhor and for a full six minutes we were butting our bows into a welter of foaming surf with the last rock showing naked in the backwash of each trough less than a hundred yards on our starboard side. Every moment I expected to feel the rending of her bottom plates as some submerged rock cut into her like a knife gutting a fish. But the echo-sounder clicking merrily away recorded nothing less than 40 fathoms, and at six-sixteen we were clear, clawing our way seaward out of reach, I thought, at last.

North-westward of us now the sheer rock coast of Laerg was opening up, a rampart wall cascading water, its top vanishing into swirling masses of cloud. We were in deeper water then and Stratton was on the phone to the engine-room again, cutting the revolutions until the ship was stationary, just holding her own against the wind. ‘If the old girl can just stay in one piece,' he yelled in my ear. I didn't need to be told what he planned to do; it was what I would have done in his shoes. He was reckoning that the storm centre would pass right over us and he was going to butt the wind until it did. Nothing else he could do, for he couldn't turn. When we were into the eye of the storm there would be a period of calm. He'd get the ship round then and tuck himself tight under those towering cliffs. We'd be all right then. As the centre passed, the wind would swing round into the east or northeast. We'd be under the lee of Laerg then. But how long before that happened – an hour, two hours? Out here in the deepest water the waves no longer built up in range upon range of moving hills; they lay flat, cowed by the wind which seemed to be scooping the whole surface of the sea into the air. The noise was shattering, spray hitting the wheelhouse in solid sheets. Visibility was nil, except for brief glimpses of the chaos when a gust died. And then a squall blotting everything out and the Quartermaster quietly announcing that the wind had caught her and she wasn't answering.

‘Full astern starboard.'

The ring of the telegraph, faint and insubstantial, the judder of the screws, and the bows steadying. She'd have come back into the wind then, but a sea caught her and she heeled over. If we'd been in the shallow waters of the bay, she'd have rolled right over, but out here it was the wind more than the waves that menaced us; it held her canted at a steep angle and the man who brought Stratton his life-jacket had to crawl on his hands and knees. Stratton tossed it into the corner by the chart table. ‘Better get yours, too,' he said to me, ‘just in case.' The bows were coming round now, sluggishly. ‘Full ahead both. Starboard wheel.' And then she was round with her blunt nose bucking the seas, her screws racing as they were lifted clear in the troughs.

Even head-to-wind again it was a struggle to get down the alleyway to my quarters. McDermott lay on the floor. He had tied himself with a blanket to the bunk support and he'd been sick again, all over himself and the floor. The place was a shambles. ‘Was that the power steering packed in?' Wentworth asked me. He was clinging to the desk whilst Fairweather tried to stitch the cut on his head.

‘We were blown off,' I said.

But he didn't seem to take that in. ‘I tried to tell Stratton. They forgot to close the hatch. To the tiller flat. You remember? I told him …'

I did remember and my first reaction was a mental picture of McGregor's corpse being sloshed around in that small compartment above the rudders. My mind must have been sluggish for it was a moment before I realised what was worrying him. If the electric motors shorted … The possibility brought the sweat to my palms, a sting to the armpits that I could have sworn I smelt despite the layers of clothing. And then I remembered that the hatch was closed now and the engineers would have disposed of the water. ‘They'll have pumped it out by now,' I said.