Hungry as the Sea (4 page)

While he waited, Nicholas worried. The decision to go would mean abandoning the Esso oil-rig tow. The tow fee had been a vital consideration in his cash flow situation. Two hundred and twenty thousand sterling, without which he could not meet the quarterly interest payment due in sixty days time - unless, unless … He juggled figures in his head, but the magnitude of the risk involved was growing momentarily more apparent - and the figures did not add up. He needed the Esso tow. God, how badly he needed it!

“Bach Wackie are replying,” called the Trog above the chatter of the telex receiver, and Nick spun on his heel.

He had appointed Bach Wackie as the agents for Ocean Salvage because of their proven record of quick and aggressive efficiency. He glanced at his Rolex Oyster and calculated that it was about two o’clock in the morning local time in Bermuda, and yet his request for information on the disposition of all his major competitors was now being answered within minutes of receipt.

FOR MASTER
WARLOCK
FROM BACH WACKIE LATEST REPORTED POSITIONS. JOHN ROSS DRY DOCK DURBAN. WOLTEMA WOLTERAAD ESSO TOW TORRES STRAITS TO ALASKA SHELF

That took care of the two giant Safmarine tugs; half of the top opposition was out of the race.

WITTEZEE SHELL EXPLORATION TOW GALVESTON TO NORTH SEA. GROOTEZEE LYING BREST

That was the two Dutchmen out of it. The names and positions of the other big salvage tugs, each of them a direct and dire threat to
Warlock
, ran swiftly from the telex and Nicholas chewed his cheroot ragged as he watched, his eyes slitted against the spiralling blue smoke, feeling the relief rise in him as each report put another of his competitors in some distant waters, far beyond range of the stricken ship.

La Mouette.

Nick’s hands balled into fists as the name sprang on to the white paper sheet,

LA MOUETTE
DISCHARGED BRAZGAS TOW GOLFO SAN JORGE ON 14TH REPORTED ENROUTE BUENOS AIRES.

Nick grunted like a boxer taking a low blow, and turned away from the machine. He walked out on to the open wing of the bridge and the wind tore at his hair and clothing. 
La Mouette
, the sea-gull, a fanciful name for that black squat hull, the old-fashioned high box of superstructure, the traditional single stack; Nick could see it clearly when he closed his eyes. There was no doubt in his mind at all. Jules Levoisin was already running hard for the south, running like a hunting dog with the scent hot in its nostrils. Jules had discharged in the southern Atlantic three days ago. He would certainly have hunkered at Cornodoro. Nick knew how Jules mind worked, he was never happy unless his bunkers were bulging.

Nick flicked the stub of his cigar away, and it was whisked far out into the harbour by the wind. He knew that
La Mouette
had refitted and installed new engines eighteen months before. With a nostalgic twinge, he had read a snippet in lloyd’s List. But even nine thousand horsepower couldn’t push that tubby hull at better than eighteen knots, Nick was certain of that. Yet even with Warlock‘s superior speed,
La Mouette
was better placed by a thousand miles. There was no room for complacency. And what if
La Mouette
had set out to double Cape Horn instead of driving north up the atlantic? If that had happened, and with Jules Levoisin’s luck it might just have happened, then
La Mouette
was a long way inside him already.

Anybody else but Jules Levoisin, he thought, why did it have to be him? And oh God, why now? Why now when I am so vulnerable - emotionally, physically and financially vulnerable. Oh God, why did it come now?

He felt the false sense of cheer and well-being, with which he had buoyed himself that morning, fall away from him like a cloak, leaving him naked and sick and tired again. I am not ready yet, he thought; and then realized that it was probably the first time in his adult life he had ever said that to himself. He had always been ready, good and ready, for anything. But not now, not this time.

Suddenly Nicholas Berg was afraid, as he had never been before. He was empty, he realized, there was nothing in him, no strength, no confidence, no resolve. The depth of his defeat by Duncan Alexander, the despair of his rejection by the woman he loved, had broken him. He felt his fear turn to terror, knowing that his wave had come, and would sweep by him now, for he did not have the strength to ride it. Some deep instinct warned him that it would be the last wave, there would be nothing after it. The choice was go now, or never go again. And he knew he could not go, he could not go against Jules Levoisin, he could not challenge the old master. He could not go — he could not reject the certainty of the Esso tow, he did not have the nerve now to risk all that he had left on a single throw. He had just lost a big one, he couldn’t go at risk again. The risk was too great, he was not ready for it, he did not have the strength for it.

He wanted to go to his cabin and throw himself on his bunk and sleep — and sleep. He felt his knees buckling with the great weight of his despair, and he hungered for the oblivion of sleep. He turned back into the bridge, out of the wind. He was broken, defeated, he had given up. As he went towards the sanctuary of his day cabin, he passed the long command console and stopped involuntarily. His officers watched him in a tense, electric silence.

His right hand went out and touched the engine telegraph, sliding the pointer from “off” to “stand by”.

“Engine Room,” he heard a voice speak in calm and level tones, so it could not be his own.

“Start main engines,” said the voice. Seemingly from a great distance he watched the faces of his deck officers bloom with unholy joy, like old-time pirates savouring the prospect of a prize.

The strange voice went on, echoing oddly in his ears, “Number One, ask the Harbour Master for permission to clear harbour immediately — and, Pilot, course to steer for the last reported position of
Golden Adventurer
, please.” From the corner of his eye, he saw David Allen punch the Third Officer lightly but gleefully on the shoulder before he hurried to the radio telephone.

Nicholas Berg felt suddenly the urge to vomit. So he stood very still and erect at the navigation console and fought back the waves of nausea that swept over him, while his officers bustled to their sea-going stations.

“Bridge. This is the Chief Engineer,” said a disembodied voice from the speaker above Nick’s head. “Main engines running.” A pause and then that word of special Aussie approbation. “Beauty!” — but the Chief pronounced it in three distinct syllables, “Be-yew-dy!”

Warlock’s
wide-flared bows were designed to cleave and push the waters open ahead of her and in those waters below latitude 40 she ran like an old bull otter, slick and wet and fast for the south. Uninterrupted by any land-mass, the cycle of great atmospheric depressions swept endlessly across those cold open seas, and the wave patterns built up into a succession of marching mountain ranges. Warlock was taking them on her starboard shoulder, bursting through each crest in a white explosion that leapt from her bows like a torpedo strike, the water coming aboard green and clear over her high fore-dec, and sweeping her from stern to stern as she twisted and broke out, dropping sheer into the valley that opened ahead of her.

Her twin ferro-bronze propellers broke clear of the surface, the slamming vibration instantly controlled by the sophisticated variable-pitch gear, until she swooped forward and the propellers bit deeply again, the thrust of the twin Mirrlees diesels hurtling her towards the slope of the next swell. Each time it seemed that she could not rise in time to meet the cliff of water that bore down on her. The water was black under the grey sunless sky. Nick had lived through typhoon and Caribbean hurricane, but had never seen water as menacing and cruel as this. It glittered like the molten slag that pours down the dump of an iron foundry and cools to the same iridescent blackness.

In the deep valleys between the crests, the wind was blanketed so they fell into an unnatural stillness, an eerie silence that only enhanced the menace of that towering slope of water. In the trough, Warlock heeled and threw her head up, climbing the slope in a gut-swooping lift, that buckled the knees of the watch. As she went up, so the angle of her bridge tilted back, and that sombre cheerless sky filled the forward bridge windows with a vista of low scudding cloud. The wind tore at the crest of the wave ahead of her, ripping it away like white cotton from the burst seams of a black mattress, splattering custard-thick spume against the armoured glass. Then Warlock put her sharp steel nose deeply into it. Gouging a fat wedge of racing green over her head twisting violently at the jarring impact, dropping sideways over the crest, and breaking out to fall free and repeat the cycle again.

Nick was wedged into the canvas Master’s seat in the corner of the bridge. He swayed like a camel-driver to the thrust of the sea and smoked his black cheroots quietly, his head turning every few minutes to the west, as though he expected at any moment to see the black ugly hull of
La Mouette
come up on top of the next swell. But he knew she was a thousand miles away still, racing down the far leg of the triangle which had at its apex the stricken liner.

“If she is running,” Nick thought, and knew that there was no doubt.
La Mouette
was running as frantically as was Warlock— and as silently.

Jules Levoisin had taught Nick the trick of silence. He would not use his radio until he had the liner on his radar scan. Then he would come through in clear, “I will be in a position to put a line aboard you in two hours. Do you accept ‘Lloyd’s Open Form’?” The Master of the distressed vessel, having believed himself abandoned without succour, would over-react to the promise of salvation, and when
La Mouette
came bustling up over the horizon, flying all her bunting and with every light blazing in as theatrical a display as Jules could put up, the relieved master would probably leap at the offer of  ‘Lloyd’s Open Form’ — a decision that would surely be regretted by the ship’s owners in the cold and unemotional precincts of an Arbitration court.

When Nick had supervised the design of Warlock, he had insisted that she look good as well as being able to perform. The master of a disabled ship was usually a man in a highly emotional state. Mere physical appearance might sway him in the choice between two salvage tugs coming up on him. Warlock looked magnificent; even in this cold and cheerless ocean, she looked like a warship. The trick would be to show her to the master of
Golden Adventurer
before he struck a bargain with
La Mouette
.

Nick could no longer sit inactive in his canvas seat. He judged the next towering swell and, with half a dozen quick strides, crossed the bridge deck in those fleeting moments as Warlock steadied in the trough. He grabbed the chrome handrail above the Decca computer. On the keyboard he typed the function code that would set the machine in navigational mode, coordinating the transmissions she was receiving from the circling satellite stations high above the earth. From these were calculated Warlock‘s exact position over the earth’s surface, accurate to within twenty-five yards.

Nick entered the ship’s position and the computer compared this with the plot that Nick had requested four hours previously. It printed out quickly the distance run and the ship’s speed made good. Nick frowned angrily and swung round to watch the helmsman. In this fiercely running cross sea, a good man could hold Warlock on course more efficiently than any automatic steering device. He could anticipate each trough and crest and prevent the ship paying off across the direction of the swells, and then kicking back violently as she went over, wasting critical time and distance. Nick watched the helmsman work, judging each sea as it came aboard, checking the ship’s heading on the big repeating compass above the man’s head. After ten minutes, Nick realized that there was no wastage; Warlock was making as good a course as was possible in these conditions.

The engine telegraph was pulled back to her maximum safe power-setting, the course was good and yet Warlock was not delivering those few extra knots of speed that Nick Berg had relied on when he had made the critical decision to race
La Mouette
for the prize. Nick had relied on twenty-eight knots against the Frenchman’s eighteen, and he was not getting it. Involuntarily, he glanced out to the west as Warlock came up on the top of the next crest. Through the streaming windows, from which the spinning wipers cleared circular areas of clean glass, Nick looked out across a wilderness of black water, forbidding and cold and devoid of other human presence.

Abruptly Nick crossed to the R/T microphone.

“Engine Room confirm we are top of the green.”

“Top of the green, it is, Skipper.” The Chief’s casual tones floated in above the crash of the next sea coming aboard.

Top of the green’was the maximum safe power-setting recommended by the manufacturers for those gigantic Mirrlees diesels. It was a far higher setting than top economical power, and they were burning fuel at a prodigious rate. Nick was pushing her as high as he could without going into the red, danger area above eighty percent of full power, which at prolonged running might permanently damage her engines. Nick turned away to his seat, and wedged himself into it. He groped for his cheroot case, and then checked himself, the lighter in his hand. His tongue and mouth felt furred over and dry. He had smoked without a break every waking minute since leaving cape Town, and God knows he had slept little enough since then. He ran his tongue around his mouth with distaste before he returned the cheroot to his case, and crouched in his seat staring ahead, trying to work out why Warlock was running slow.

Suddenly he straightened and considered a possibility that brought a metallic green gleam of anger into Nick’s eyes. He slid out of his seat, nodded to the Third Officer who had the deck and ducked through the doorway in the back of the bridge into his day cabin. It was a ploy. He didn’t want his visit below decks announced, and from his own suite he darted into the companionway.