Atlantic Fury (21 page)

He nodded. ‘Yes. Yes, of course. I remember now.' He seemed dazed, staring at me wide-eyed. ‘But that oil. What do you think it was, Mr Ross?' Staring at me like that, the whites of his eyes beginning to show, I began to wonder.

‘What oil?' I said.

‘It was all round the stern and every time a sea broke … Look at my hair.' He leaned his head forward, ignoring the Doc's warning. ‘See? It's oil. Diesel oil.'

‘Don't worry,' I said. ‘Another couple of hours …' I ducked out of the cabin. I wanted fresh air, the confidence that only men doing something to preserve themselves can inspire. Was Wentworth scared, or was it me? All I knew was that something like a contagious disease had touched me in that sour cabin full of the sick smell of vomit. That oil … I remembered when he'd first come up to the wheelhouse, how his oilskin had been mottled with it, and Stratton asking about it.

The wheelhouse steadied me. There was Stratton smoking a cigarette, the Quartermaster at the wheel, everything going on as, before and the bows headed slap into the wind. The radar screen showed Sgeir Mhor dead astern of us less than a mile away. I dropped my life-jacket beside Stratton's. Should I remind him about the oil, or just forget about it? I decided to keep silent. Nothing to be done about it. What was the point? And yet … I lit a cigarette and saw my hand was trembling. Hell! ‘What's under the tank deck?' I heard myself ask. ‘Water and fuel oil, I think you said.'

‘Yes, fuel oil.' Stratton's voice had an edge to it and he added, ‘Something on your mind?' He was staring at me hard and I realised suddenly that he knew – knew we'd damaged the bottom plates getting off.

‘No, nothing,' I said, and I left it at that, happier now that the knowledge was shared. Perhaps he was, too, for he smiled. ‘Keep your fingers crossed,' he said.

But keeping my fingers crossed doesn't mend steel plates, and it doesn't prevent fuel oil seeping out through the cracks and rents in those battered plates. I stayed with him until I'd finished my cigarette and then I made some excuse and slipped out. There was only one way of finding out. I went down the companion ladder to the deck below, unclamped the steel door leading to the side deck and, leaning out, grabbed hold of the rail. I was just in time, for the force of the wind swept my legs from under me. I was left clinging there, my body flattened along the deck and my lungs filled to bursting with the pressure of air forcing its way into mouth and nostrils.

The power of that wind was demoniac. It forced my eyeballs back against the membranes with a stabbing pain. It tore at my hair and clothing. And the sheet spray flung against my face had the cutting power of sand. Raw and shaken I held on till there was a slight lull, and then I hurled myself back through the door. It took me quite a time to get it shut and the clamps in place. I was wet to the skin and panting with the effort, but I now knew – I had seen the surface of the water sheened with a film of oil, the surface spray held static by the viscosity of it.

When I got back to the wheelhouse Wentworth was there, clinging to the chart table, fresh plaster covering the cut on his forehead. Stratton glanced at me, a slight lift to his brows as he saw the state of my clothes. He knew where I'd been so I just gave a slight confirmatory nod. ‘Bad?' he asked.

‘Impossible to tell.'

He nodded.

‘What's bad?' Wentworth asked. ‘Where've you been?' His voice was slightly slurred and the whites of his eyes … I didn't like that tendency for the whites to show.

‘I've just been sick,' I said.

He accepted that. ‘So've I.' He said it quite cheerfully, the beginning of a smile lighting up his face. He couldn't have been more than twenty-two; much too young, I thought, to face a storm like this. It was the sort of storm you only expect to face once in a lifetime, and then only if you've been all your life at sea. I wondered whether I could paint it. Could any artist get it down on canvas – this soul-destroying, brain-numbing battering, this violence that went beyond the limits of experience?'

And the fact that we existed, that the ship still held her blunt bows head-to-wind, battling against the driving planes of water, made it somehow marvellous, the little oasis of the wheelhouse a miracle. In the midst of chaos, here within the tight frame of fragile steel walls, there was the reassurance of familiar things – the radar, the charts, the burly Quartermaster quite unperturbed, orders being given, messages coming in – particularly the messages. L4400 signalling that she was under the lee of Malesgair and riding it out, safe for the moment at any rate. Coastal Command asking us whether we needed assistance, relaying to us the information that the Admiralty tug was now waiting instructions in Lochmaddy. First Braddock and then Standing asking for news of us – how many men had we embarked, what stores and equipment, obviously quite oblivious of the magnitude of the storm. The last contact with Cliff before he went on duty had given the wind locally as south, approximately fifty knots. Fifty knots, when out here it was blowing eighty, ninety, a hundred – God knows what force it was. And at six forty-five the shipping forecast:
A local depression of great intensity may affect parts of sea areas Faeroes, Hebrides.… Winds cyclonic and temporarily reaching hurricane force
.… I think that was the most extraordinary part of it – the sense of still being in contact with the outside world when all our own world was being blown to bits by the wind, the whole surface of the sea apparently disintegrating and being forced up into the atmosphere.

And then suddenly our little oasis of ordered security crashed about our ears. The engine-room phone had probably been buzzing for some time. But nobody had heard it. The din was too great. It was the ring of the telegraph that informed us and the Quartermaster's voice: ‘Port engines losing power, sir.' The spokes of the wheel were turning under his hand, turning until he had full starboard helm on. Again he reached for the brass handle of the port telegraph, gave it two sharp rings and jammed it back at full ahead. Stratton leapt to the engine-room telephone. ‘It's all right now, sir.' The Quartermaster was bringing the wheel back amidships. But I was watching Stratton. His face was white, his body rigid. ‘… Sea water, you say? … Yes, I knew about the leak.… Well, can't you drain it off? … I see. Well, that must have happened when we were broadside on in the bay … All right, Stevens. Do what you can.… Yes, we'll try. But we can't hold her any steadier. There's quite a sea … Well, give me warning when the other engines start cutting out.' He put the phone back on its hook. His face looked bleak.

‘What is it?' Wentworth demanded. ‘What's happened?'

‘Main tank's leaking and we've been pumping sea water into the ready-use tank. Only the port engine's affected so far, but …' He turned to the Quartermaster. ‘Think you can hold her on starboard engines alone?'

‘I'll try, sir.'

The Cox'n came in then. His flat, broad face was smeared with oil. ‘Port outer engine starting to cut out, sir. Chief asked me to tell you he's afraid …' Something in Stratton's face stopped the breathless rush of his words. In a quieter voice he added, ‘I was going round the mess decks. I could feel there was something wrong so I slipped down to the engine-room. Chief said he couldn't get you on the phone.'

‘Thank you, Cox'n. I've just had a word with him. The starboard engines are all right, I gather?'

‘For the moment, sir. But he's afraid the ready-use tank may be …'

‘I've had his report on that.' Stratton's voice, quiet and controlled, stilled the suggestion of panic that had hung for a moment over the wheelhouse.

‘There's another thing, sir. The tiller flat. Bilge pumps not working. Chief think's they're choked. Anyway, there's a lot of water …'

‘All right, Cox'n. Have some men closed up on the tiller flat, will you – just in case.'

‘Very good, sir.' And as he went out Wentworth, close at my side, said, ‘I had a feeling about the tiller flat. Ever since I found the hatch unfastened. We must have taken a hell of a lot of water through it when we were getting off the beach.' His manner was quite different now, almost calm, as though he'd braced himself against the urgency of the situation. He reached for the log book and began entering it up.

Everything normal again, the ship headed into the wind, the beat of the engines steady under our feet. But even with both engines at full ahead she was making little or no headway against the moving masses of air and water that seemed fused into a solid impenetrable wall. The shape of Laerg on the radar screen came and went, fuzzed by the thickness of the atmosphere. The Quartermaster shifted his stance at the wheel, gripped the spokes tighter. And in the same instant I felt it through the soles of my feet, a change of beat, a raggedness. The wheel spun. Full starboard helm and the beat steadier again, but not so strong. ‘Port engines both stopped, sir.'

Stratton was already at the phone. He held it to his ear, waiting. ‘Good … Well, if you can drain off all the sea water.… Yes, we'll try and hold her bows-on … All right. Now what about the tiller flat? … You've got a man working on it? Fine … Yes, we'll just have to hope for the best.' He put the phone down, glanced at the radar screen and then at me. His lips moved stiffly in a smile. ‘Hell of a time you picked to come for a sail with us.' He glanced at the helm. The wheel was amidships again. ‘Answering all right, Quartermaster?' he asked.

‘Pretty fair, sir.'

But we weren't making headway any longer and Sgeir Mhor a bare mile away, directly down-wind of us. Stratton produced his packet of cigarettes and we stood there, braced against the violence of the movement, smoking and watching the radar screen. And then, suddenly, the Quartermaster's voice announcing that the helm had gone dead. ‘Full starboard helm and not answering, sir.'

Wentworth was already at one of the phones. ‘Cox'n reports steering motors shorted. There's a lot of water …'

‘Emergency steering.' Stratton rapped the order out and I saw the Quartermaster lean down and throw across a lever at the base of the steering pedestal.

A sea broke thundering inboard. A solid sheet of spray crashed against the wheelhouse. And as the porthole cleared I saw the bows thrown off and sagging away to leeward. It had taken a bare ten seconds to engage the hand steering, but in those ten seconds the weight of sea and wind combined had caught hold of the bows and flung them off to port.

‘Emergency steering not answering, sir.'

The ship staggered to another blow and began to heel as the wind caught her on the starboard bow. She was starting to broach-to. And the Quartermaster's voice again, solid and unemotional: ‘Hand steering's all right, sir. But not enough power on the engines.'

Only two engines out of four and the bows swinging fast now. Stratton was at the engine-room phone, but I could see by his face that no one was answering. ‘Keep your helm hard a'starboard. You may be able to bring her up in a lull.'

But there wasn't a lull. The ship heeled further and further, and as she came broadside-on to wind and sea we were spilled like cattle down the sloping deck to fetch up half-lying along the port wall of the wheel-house. ‘Any chance,' I gasped, ‘of getting the other engines going?' And Stratton looked at me, the sweat shining under the stubble of his beard: ‘How can they possibly – do anything – down there?' I realised then what it must be like in the engine-room, cooped up with that mass of machinery, hot oil spilling and their cased-in world turning on its side. ‘We're in God's hands, now,' he breathed. And a moment later, as though God himself had heard and was denying us even that faint hope, I felt the beat of those two remaining engines stagger, felt it through my whole body as I lay against the sloped steel of the wall.

I have said that panic is a nerve storm, an instinctive, uncontrollable reaction of the nervous system. I had experienced fear before, but not panic. Now, with the pulse of the engines dying, something quite uncontrollable leapt in my throat, my limbs seemed to dissolve and my whole body froze with apprehension. My mouth opened to scream a warning, but no sound came: and then, like a man fighting to stay sober after too much drink, I managed to get a grip of myself. It was a conscious effort of will and I had only just succeeded when the beat of the engines ceased altogether and I felt the ship dead under me. A glance at the radar showed the screen blank, half white, half black, as the sweep light continued to circle as if nothing had happened. We were heeled so far over that all the radar recorded was the sea below us, the sky above.

It was only the fact that we had such a weight of water on board that saved us. If the ship had been riding high, fully buoyant, she'd have turned right over. It was that and the terrific weight of the wind that held the seas flat.

The time was seven twenty-eight and Sgeir Mhor much less than a mile away now, the wind blowing us broadside towards it. Engines and steering gone. There was nothing we could do now and I watched as Stratton fought his way up the slope of the deck, struggling to reach the radio shack. In less than two minutes the operator was calling
Mayday
. But what the hell was the good of that? In those two minutes the velocity of the wind had blown us almost quarter of a mile. And it wasn't a case of the ship herself being blown – the whole surface of the sea was moving down-wind, scooped up and flung north-eastward by the pressure of the air.

Mayday, Mayday, Mayday
.

I, too, had scrambled up the slope and into the alleyway. Through the open door of the radio shack I saw the operator clinging to his equipment, could hear him saying that word over and over again into the mike. And then he was in contact, reporting to the world at large that our engines had packed up and we were being driven down on to the southernmost tip of Laerg, on to the rocks of Sgeir Mhor.