Atlantic Fury

CHAPTER THREE

(October 21–22)

A few minutes later Stratton came in, his duffel coat sodden. ‘Raining again.’ He went straight to the barometer, tapped it and entered the reading in the log. ‘And McGregor’s dead. They’re bringing his body on board now.’ His face was pale and haggard-looking in the wheelhouse lights.

I passed Cliffs message on to him, but all he said was, ‘We’re dried out for two-thirds the length of the ship and I can’t change the tides.’ His mind was preoccupied, wound up like a clock, waiting for zero hour. He went to his room and shortly afterwards a macabre little procession came in through the open tunnel of the loading doors — McDermott and the camp doctor, and behind them two orderlies carrying a stretcher. All work stopped and the men stood silent. A few moved to help hand the stretcher up one of the vertical steel ladders on the port side. The body on the stretcher was wrapped in an oiled sheet. It glistened white in the lights. Once it slipped, sagging against the tapes that held it in place. The orderlies stopped to re-arrange it and then the procession moved aft along the side decking. I could see their faces then, the two officers’ white and shaken, the orderlies’ wooden. They passed out of sight, moving slowly aft. They were taking the body to the tiller flat, but I only learned that later when death was facing us too.

I went back into the wardroom and ten minutes later McDermott came in followed by Captain Fairweather.

They looked old and beaten, grey-faced and their hands trembling. They didn’t speak. They had a whisky each and then McDermott went to his bunk, Captain Fairweather back to the camp to get his kit.

By two-thirty the tank deck was clear, a wet steel expanse emptied of all vehicles. By three the incoming tide was spilling white surf as far as the loading ramp. The glass stood at 971, falling. No further contact with Cliff Morgan. Nothing from Coastal Command. And the wind still driving out of the north, straight over the beached bows. Pinney was arguing with Stratton in the wheelhouse. ‘Christ, man, what do you think we are? The men are dead beat. And so am I.’ The decks were deserted now, all the men swallowed up in the warmth of the ship, and Stratton wanted them ashore. ‘My orders were to embark my men and all the equipment I could. We got the stuff on board and then you order it to be taken off again. And when we’ve done that … “

‘It’s for their own good.’ Stratton’s voice was weary, exhausted by tension.

‘Like hell it is. What they want is some sleep.’

‘They won’t get much sleep if this depression …’

‘This depression! What the hell’s got into you? For two hours now you’ve been worrying about it. The forecast doesn’t mention it. You’ve no confirmation of it from Coastal Command, from anybody. All you’ve got is the word of one man, and he’s guessing on the basis of a single contact with some trawler.’

‘I know. But the glass is falling-’

‘What do you expect it to do in this sort of weather — go sailing up? All that matters is the wind direction. And the wind’s north. In just over two hours now …’

It went on like that, the two of them arguing back and forth, Stratton’s voice slow and uncertain, Pinney’s no longer coming gruff out of his big frame, but high-pitched with weariness and frustration. He was a soldier and his men came first. Stratton’s concern was his ship and he had a picture in his mind, a picture conjured by the falling glass and Cliff Morgan’s warning and that information I had passed on about a faint voice calling Mayday on the International Distress frequency. But even in these circumstances possession is nine-tenths of the law. Pinney’s men were on board. They had their oilskins off and hammocks slung. They were dead beat and they’d take a lot of shifting. Stratton gave in. ‘On your own head then, John.’ And he gave the orders for the ramp to be raised and the bow doors shut.

Thirty-three men, who could have been safe ashore, were sealed into that coffin of a ship. The time was three-fourteen. Just over one and a half hours to go. Surely it would hold off for that short time. I watched figures in oilskins bent double as they forced their way for’ard and clambered down to the tank deck. The open gap, with its glimpse of the beach and the blurred shape of vehicles standing in the rain, gradually sealed itself. The clamps were checked. The half gate swung into place. Now nobody could leave the ship. And as if to underline the finality of those doors being closed, messages began to come through.

Coastal Command first: Trawler ‘Viking Fisher’ in distress. Anticipate possibility of very severe storm imminent your locality. Winds of high velocity can be expected from almost any direction. Report each hour until further notice. Then Cliff crashed net frequency to announce contact with Faeroes and weather ship India. Faeroes report wind southerly force 10. Barometer 968, rising. ‘W/S India’: wind north-westerly force 9 or 10. Barometer 969, falling rapidly. Very big seas. CCN again with a supplementary forecast from the Meteorological Office: Sea areas Hebrides, Bailey, Faeroes, South-East Iceland — Probability that small, very intense depression may have formed to give wind speeds of hurricane

force locally for short duration. Storm area will move southwards with the main northerly air stream, gradually losing intensity. The outside world stirring in its sleep and taking an interest in us. Stratton passed the messages to Pinney without comment, standing at the chart table in the wheelhouse. Pinney read them and then placed them on top of the log book. He didn’t say anything. There wasn’t anything to say. The moment for getting the men ashore was gone half an hour ago. Waves were breaking up by the bows and occasionally a tremor ran through the ship, the first awakening as the stern responded to the buoyancy of water deep enough to float her. And in the wheelhouse there was an air of expectancy, a man at the wheel and the engine-room telegraph at stand-by.

The time was twelve minutes after four.

The radio operator again. Base asking for Captain Pinney on the R/T. Pinney went out and an unusual quiet descended on the wheelhouse, a stillness of waiting. In moments like this, when a ship is grounded and you are waiting for her to float again, all sensitivity becomes concentrated on the soles of the feet, for they are in contact with the deck, the transmitters of movement, of any untoward shock. We didn’t talk because our minds were on our feet. We were listening by touch. Perhaps that’s why our ears failed to register how quiet it had become.

Through my feet, through the nerves that ran up my legs, connecting them to my brain, I could feel the tremor, the faint lifting movement, the slight bump as she grounded again. It all came from the stern. But it was a movement that was changing all the time, growing stronger, so that in a moment a slight shock preceded the lift and there was a surge running the length of the ship. It was different. Definitely a change in the pattern and it puzzled me. I glanced at Stratton. He was frowning, watching a pencil on the chart table. It had begun to roll back and forth at each surge. The bumps as we grounded were more noticeable now, a definite shock.

Wentworth came in. ‘What is it? I told you to stay on the quarter-deck with the Bos’n.’ Stratton’s voice was irritable, his nerves betraying him. ‘Well?’

‘There’s quite a swell building up.’ The youngster’s face looked white. ‘You can see it breaking on the skerries of Sgeir Mhor. It’s beginning to come into the bay. And the wind’s gone round.’

‘Gone round?’

‘Backed into the west.’

Stratton went to the door on the port side and flung it open again. No wind came in. The air around the ship was strangely still. But we could hear it, roaring overhead. The first grey light of dawn showed broken masses of cloud pouring towards us across the high back of Keava. The moon shone through ragged gaps. It was a wild, grey-black sky, ugly and threatening. Stratton stood there for a moment, staring up at it, and then he came back into the wheelhouse, slamming the door behind him. ‘When did it start backing? When did you first notice it?’

‘About ten minutes ago. I wasn’t certain at first. Then the swell began to …’

‘Well, get back to the after-deck, Number One. If it goes round into the south …’ He hesitated. ‘If it does that, it’ll come very quickly now. Another ten minutes, quarter of an hour. We’ll know by then. And if it does — then you’ll have to play her on the kedge like a tunny fish. That hawser mustn’t break. Understand? I’ll back her off on the engines. It’ll be too much for the winch. Your job is to see she doesn’t slew. Slack off when you have to. But for Christ’s sake don’t let her stern swing towards the beach. That’s what happened to Kelvedon.’

‘I’ll do my best.’

Stratton nodded. ‘This swell might just do the trick. If we can get her off before the wind goes right round….’

But Wentworth was already gone. He didn’t need’ to be told what would happen if the wind backed southerly — wind and waves and the breaking strain on that hawser a paltry forty-five tons. And as though to underline the point, Stratton said to me, ‘One of the weaknesses of these ships, that winch gear only rates about ten horse-power.’ He picked up the engine-room telephone. ‘Stevens? Oh, it’s you, Turner. Captain here. Give me the Chief, will you.’

He began giving instructions to the engine-room and I pushed past him, out on to the wing bridge and up the steel ladder to the open deck above. The lookout was standing on the compass platform staring aft, his face a pallid oval under his sou’wester. A ragged gap in the clouds showed stars, a diamond glitter with the outline of Tarsaval sharp and black like a cut-out; a glimpse of the moon’s face, and the wind tramping overhead, driving a black curtain of cloud across it. I went aft down the flag deck where the tripod structure of the mainmast stood rooted like a pylon, and a moment later Stratton joined me. ‘Any change?’

‘West sou’west, I think.’ I couldn’t be sure, but there was a definite swell. We could see it coming in out of the half-darkness and growing in the ship’s lights as it met the shallows. It slid under the stern and then broke seething along the length of the sides, lifting the stern and snapping the anchor hawser taut. Across the bay we could see spray bursting against the dim, jagged shape of the skerries. The wind was definitely south of west. I could feel it sometimes on my face, though the force of it and the true direction was masked by the bulk of Keava. Raindrops spattered on my face.

But it was the swell that held us riveted, the regular grind and bump as the ship was lifted. And then one came in higher, breaking earlier. It crashed against the stern. Spray flung a glittering curtain of water that hung an instant, suspended and then fell on us, a drenching cascade. But it wasn’t the water so much as the ship herself that alarmed us, the sudden shock of impact, the way she lifted, and slewed, the appalling snap of the hawser as it took the full weight, the thudding crash as she grounded again, grinding her bottom in the backwash.

‘I hope to God he remembers to slip the winch out of gear,’ Stratton murmured, speaking to himself rather than to me. ‘All that weight on it…. We’ve stripped the gears before now. I’d better remind him.’ He turned to go, but then he stopped, his gaze turned seaward. ‘Look!’ He was pointing to the other LCT, a cluster of lights in the grey darkness of the bay. ‘Lucky beggar.’ She had her steaming lights on and was getting her anchor up; and I knew what Stratton was thinking — that he might have been out there, safe, with room to manoeuvre and freedom to do so.

A blast of air slapped rain in my face. South — southwest. Again I couldn’t be sure. But into the bay; that was definite. Stratton had felt it, too. He went at once to the compass platform. I stayed an instant longer, watching the men on the after-deck immediately below me. Wentworth was standing facing the stern, with two men by the winch on the starboard quarter, their eyes fixed on him, waiting for his signal. The sea seethed back, white foam sliding away in the lights, and out of the greyness astern came a sloping heap of water that built rapidly to a sheer, curving breaker. The winch drum turned, the cable slackened; the wave broke and thudded, roaring against the stern. The men, the winch, the whole after-deck disappeared in a welter of white water. The ship lifted under me, swung and then steadied to the snap of the hawser. The thud as we hit the bottom again jarred my whole body. I saw the mast tremble like a tree whose roots are being attacked, and when I looked over the rail again, the stern was clear of water, the men picking themselves up.

The wind was on my face now. It came in gusts, and each gust seemed stronger than the last. L4400 had got her anchor; she was turning head-to-sea, steaming out of the bay.

I went for’ard to the bridge, wondering how long it would be before the hawser snapped or the men on the afterdeck were swept overboard. The deck under my feet was alive now, the engine-room telegraph set to slow astern and the screws turning. Stratton was on the open side deck, trying to keep an eye on stern and bow at the same time. If only she could shake herself free. I could feel it when she lifted, the way she was held by the bows only; for just a moment, when the wave was right under her, you could almost believe she was afloat.

Pinney came up. I don’t think anyone saw him come. He just seemed to materialise. ‘Would you believe it? The Old Man’s countermanded Braddock’s orders. Said we’d no business to be pulling out….’ There was more of it but that’s all I can remember — that, and the fact that he looked tired and shaken. Nobody said anything. Nobody was listening. We had other things on our minds. Pinney must have realised this, for he caught hold of my arm and said angrily, ‘What’s happening? What’s going on?’

‘The wind,’ I said. ‘The wind’s gone round.’

I could see it now, blowing at Stratton’s hair, whipping the tops off the combers and sending the spray hurtling shorewards in flat streamers of white spindrift. We were no longer sheltered by Keava. God, how quickly that wind had shifted, blowing right into the bay now — thirty, maybe forty knots. I went down to the wheelhouse. The barometer was at 969, down another two points. Quick fall, quick rise — that was the old saying. But how far would it fall before it started to rise? Cliff had mentioned 960, had talked of a near vertical fall of pressure. That was what we were getting now. I hadn’t seen a glass fall like that since I’d sailed into a cyclone in the Indian Ocean. I tapped it and it fell to 968.

‘Full astern both engines.’ Stratton’s voice from the bridge above came to me over the helmsman’s voice pipe. The telegraph rang and the beat of the engines increased as the stern lifted to slam down again with a deep, rending crash that jolted my body and set every moveable thing in the wheelhouse rattling. ‘Stop both engines.’

I was gripping hold of the chart table, every nerve taut. Gone was the silence, that brief stillness of waiting; all was noise and confusion now. ‘Full astern both.’ But he was too late, the stern already lifting before the screws could bite. Stop both and the jar as she grounded, the bows still held and the hawser straining. Spray hit me as I went back to the bridge. The wind was pitched high in the gusts, higher and higher until it became a scream.

The phone that linked us to the after-deck buzzed. There was nobody to answer it so I picked it up and Wentworth’s voice, sounding slight and very far away, said, ‘We took in half a dozen turns on the winch that time. Either the anchor’s dragging …’ I lost the rest in the crash of a wave. And then his voice again, louder this time: ‘Three more turns, but we’re getting badly knocked about.’ I passed the information to Stratton. ‘Tell him,’ he shouted back, ‘to take in the slack and use the brakes. I’m holding the engines at full astern. If we don’t get off now …’ A gust of wind blew the rest of his words away. The phone went dead as the ship heaved up. The crash as she grounded flung me against the conning platform.

I was clinging on to the phone wondering what was happening to those poor devils aft and trying to think at the same time. The wind was south or perhaps sou’-west; it would be anti-clockwise, whirling round the centre of that air depression and being sucked into it at the same time. I was trying to figure out where the centre would be. If it was north of us…. But north of us should give us a westerly wind. It depended how much the air currents were being deflected in towards the centre. I was remembering Cliffs message: the Faeroes had reported barometric pressure 968, rising, with winds southerly, force 10. Our barometer was now showing 968. If the storm centre passed to the west of us, then this might be the worst of it. I decided not to go down and fiddle with the glass again.

‘We made several yards.’ Wentworth’s voice was shrill in the phone. ‘But the winch is smoking. The brakes. They may burn out any minute now. Keep those engines running for God’s sake.’

I glanced at Stratton but I didn’t need to ask him. I could feel the vibration of the screws through my whole body. ‘Engines at full astern,’ I said. ‘Keep winching in.’

I put the phone down and dived across the bridge to yell the information in Stratton’s ear. The weight of the wind was something solid now. I felt the words sucked out of my mouth and blown away into the night. ‘Christ! If the winch packs up now…. Stay on the phone, will you.’ Stratton’s face was white. I was lip-reading rather than hearing the words. Below him white water glistened, a seething welter of surf sucking back along the ship’s side. A shaggy comber reared in the lights, curled and broke. Spray went whipping past and ectoplasmic chunks of foam suds.

The ship moved. I could feel it, a sixth sense telling me that we were momentarily afloat. And then the shuddering, jarring crash. I was back at the phone and Wentworth’s voice was yelling in my ears — something about the winch gears. But his voice abruptly ceased before I could get what it was he was trying to tell me. And then Stratton grabbed the phone from my hand. ‘Oil,’ he said. ‘There’s an oil slick forming.’ He pressed the buzzer, the phone to his ear. ‘Hullo. Hullo there. Number One, Wentworth.’ He looked at me, his face frozen. ‘No answer.’ There was a shudder, a soundless scraping and grating that I couldn’t hear but felt through the soles of my feet.

And then it was gone and I felt the bows lift for the first time. ‘Winch in. Winch in.’ Stratton’s voice was yelling into the phone as a wave lifted the stern, running buoyant under the ship. There was no grounding thud this time as we sank into the trough and glancing for’ard I saw the bows riding high, rearing to the break of the wave. ‘Wentworth. Do you hear me? Winch in. Wentworth.’ His hand fell slack to his side, still holding the phone. ‘There’s no answer,’ he said. His face was crusted with salt, a drop of moisture at the end of his slightly up-turned nose. His eyes looked bleak.

‘You look after the ship,’ I told him. ‘I’ll go aft and see what’s happened.’

He nodded and I went out on to the flag deck. Clear of the bridge the full weight of the wind hit me. It was less than half an hour since I’d stood there and felt that first blast of the storm wind in my face. Now, what a difference! I had to fight my way aft, clinging to the deck rail, my eyes blinded by salt spray, the wind driving the breath back into my lungs. Fifty, sixty knots — you can’t judge wind speeds when they reach storm force and over. It shook me to think that this perhaps was only the beginning. But we’d be round Malesgair then, sheltered under its lee — I hoped. By God, I hoped as I fought my way to the after-rail and clung there, looking down to the tiny stern platform with its spare anchor and its winch gear.

Wentworth was there. He was bending over the winch. His sou’wester had gone and his fair hair was plastered to his head. He looked drowned and so did the two men with him. They were all of them bent over the winch and the drum was stationary. A broken wave-top streaming spray like smoke from its crest reared up in the lights, a shaggy, wind-blown monster, all white teeth as it slammed rolling against the stern. It buried everything, a welter of foam that subsided to the lift of the ship, water cascading over the sides, the men still gripping the winch like rocks awash. I yelled to Wentworth, but my shout was blown back into my mouth and he didn’t hear me. The winch remained motionless and the hawser, running through two steel pulleys and out over the stern, just hung there, limp.

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 anticlockwise 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 Learg 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 as 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 hatch. 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 alternatively 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 north-east. 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.

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 your 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 steels 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 Beaching 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 wheelhouse. ‘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.

The nearest ship was L4400, lying hove-to on the far side of Malesgair, a mere four miles away. But it might just as well have been four hundred miles. She didn’t dare leave the shelter of those cliffs. In any case, she’d never have reached us in time. Nothing could reach us. It was pointless putting out a distress call. The ship lurched. I slipped from the supporting wall and was pitched into Stratton’s cabin. I fetched up on the far side, half-sprawled across his bunk. A girl’s face in a cheap frame hung on the wall at a crazy angle — dark hair and bare shoulders, calm eyes in a pretty face. She looked a million miles away. I don’t know why, but I suddenly remembered Marjorie Field’s eyes, blue and serious, the wide mouth smiling. And other girls in other lands…. Would it have made any difference to Stratton that he was married? When it comes to the point you’re alone, aren’t you, just yourself to make the passage across into the unknown?

It wasn’t easy, sprawled on that bunk, to realise that in a few short minutes this cabin would be a shattered piece of wreckage tossed in the surf of breaking waves. I closed my eyes wearily. I could hear the wind and the sea, but the full blast of it was muffled, and I couldn’t see it — that was the point. It made it difficult to visualise the end; flesh torn to pieces on the jagged rocks, the suffocation of drowning. And yet I knew that was the reality; disembowelment perhaps or going out quickly with the skull smashed to pulp.

Hell! Lie here like a rat in a trap, that was no way to go. I forced myself to my feet, hauled my body up into the alleyway crowded now with men. They lay along the wall, big-chested with their life jackets, their faces white. But no panic, just leaning there, waiting. It was all very ordinary, this moment of disaster. No orders, nobody screaming that they didn’t want to die. And then it came to me that all these men saw were the steel walls of the ship. They were wrapped in ignorance. They hadn’t seen the storm or the rocks. Exhausted, their senses dulled with sea-sickness, they waited for orders that would never come.

When we struck, the ship would roll over. That’s what I figured, anyway. There was only one place to be then — out in the open. In the open there was just a chance. Wentworth had seen that, too. With two of the crew he was struggling to force the door to the deck open. I moved to help him, others with me, and under our combined efforts it fell back with a crash, and a blast of salt air, thick with spray, hit us. The Quartermaster was the first through. ‘You next.’ Wentworth pushed me through, calling to the men behind him.

Out on the side deck I saw at a glance that we were only just in time. Sgeir Mhor was very close now; grey heaps of rock with the sea slamming against them. Stratton was climbing out of the wheelhouse, the log book clutched in his hand. I shouted to him, and then I went down the ladder to the main deck, my body flattened against it by the wind. It was awkward going down that ladder, my body clumsy in the bulk of my life-jacket. I wondered when I’d put it on. I couldn’t remember doing so. The Quartermaster followed me. ‘Out to the bows,’ he yelled in my ear, and hand over hand, clinging to the rail, we worked our way along the side of the ship. Clear of the bridge housing there would be nothing to fall on us. A big sea struck the ship and burst right over us. It tore one man from the rail and I saw him sail through the air as though he were a gull. And then we went on, working our way out above the tank deck. Only two men followed us. The rest clung in a huddle against the bridge.

Another sea and then another; two in quick succession and all the breath knocked out of me. I remember clinging there, gasping for air. I was about halfway along the ship. I can see her still, lying right over with water streaming from her decks, the sea roaring in the tilted tank hold and all her port side submerged. And broadside to her canted hull, Sgeir Mhor looming jagged and black and wet, an island of broken rock in a sea of foam with the waves breaking, curved green backs that smoked spray and crashed like gunfire exploding salt water fragments high into the air.

And then she struck. It was a light blow, a mere slap, but deep down she shuddered. Another wave lifted her. She tilted, port-side buried in foam, and Sgeir Mhor rushed towards us, lifted skywards, towering black.

I don’t remember much after that — the detail is blurred in my mind. She hit with a bone-shaking impact, rolled and butted her mast against vertical rock. Like a lance it broke. Half the bridge housing was concertinaed, men flung to the waves. And then from where I clung I was looking down, not on water, but on bare rock — a spine running out like the back of a dinosaur. It split the ship across the middle; a hacksaw cutting metal couldn’t have done it neater. A gap opened within feet of me, widening rapidly and separating us from all the after part of the ship. Rocks whirled by. White water opened up. For a moment we hung in the break of the waves, grating on half-submerged rocks. I thought that was the end, for the bows were smashing themselves to pieces, the steel plates beaten into fantastic shapes. But then the grating and the pounding ceased. We were clear — clear of the submerged rocks, clear of the tip of Sgeir Mhor. We were in open water, lying right over, half-submerged, but still afloat. Buoyed up by the air trapped behind the bulkheads in her sides, she was being driven across Shelter Bay, buried deep in a boiling scum of foam and spray. I didn’t think of this as the end, not consciously. My brain, my body, the whole physical entity that was me, was too concentrated on the struggle to cling on. And yet something else that was also me seemed to detach himself from the rest, so that I have a picture that is still clear in my mind of my body, bulky in clothes and life jacket, lying drowned in a turmoil of broken water, sprawled against the steel bulwarks, and of the front half of the shattered ship rolling like a log, with the sea pouring over it.

People came and went in my mind, faces I had known, the brief ephemeral contacts of my life, giving me temporary companionship at the moment of death. And then we grounded in the shallows east of the camp, not far from the ruined Factor’s House. But by then I was half-drowned, too dazed to care, mind and body beaten beyond desire for life. I just clung on to the bulwark because that was what I had been doing all the time. There was no instinct of self-preservation about it. My hands seemed locked on the cold, wet steel.

It was a long time before I realised that the wind had died away; probably because the seas, no longer flattened by its weight, were bigger then. The remains of the bows lay just where the waves were breaking. They beat upon the hollow bottom like giant fists hammering at a steel drum. Boom … Boom … Boom — and the roar of the surf. Fifty thousand express trains in the confines of a tunnel couldn’t have made so great a noise.

And then that, too, began to lessen. My senses struggled back to life. The wind had gone round. That was my first conscious thought. And when I opened my eyes it was to a lurid sun glow, an orange, near-scarlet gash, like the. raw slash of a wound, low down behind Sgeir Mhor. The toppling waves stood etched in chaos against it and all the cloud above me was a smoke-black pall of unbelievable density. There was no daylight on the shore of Shelter Bay, no real daylight; only darkness lit by that unearthly glow. The crofts of the Old Village, the roofless church, the cleits dotting the slopes of Tarsaval high above me — none of it was real. The light, the scene, the crazy, beat-up sea — it was all weird, a demon world.

So my mind saw it, and myself a sodden piece of flotsam washed up on that shore, too battered and exhausted to realise I was alive. That knowledge came with the sight of a fellow creature moving slowly like a spider, feeling his way down the jagged edges of what had been the tank deck.

I watched him fall into the backwash of a wave, beating at the surf with his arms. I closed my eyes, and when I looked again, he was ashore, lying spread-eagled among the boulders.

That was when the instinct for self-preservation stirred in me at last.

I moved then, wearily, each movement a conscious effort, a desperate aching struggle — down the jagged edges of deck plates twisted like tin-foil, down into the surf, falling into it as the other had done and fighting my way ashore, half-drowned, to lie panting and exhausted on the beach beside him.

It wasn’t the Quartermaster; I don’t know what had happened to him. This was a small man with a sandy moustache and tiny, frightened eyes that stared at me wildly. He’d broken his arm and every time he moved he screamed, a febrile rabbit sound that lost itself in the wind’s howl. There was blood on his hair. Blood, too, on the stones where I lay, a thin bright trickle of my own blood, from a scalp wound.

‘Shut up,’ I said as he screamed again. ‘You’re alive.

What more do you want?’ I was thinking of all the others, the picture of the ship crushed against the rocks still vivid in my mind.

My watch had gone, torn from my wrist. How long had it been? I didn’t know. Leaning up on one elbow I stared out across the bay. The orange glow had vanished and Sgeir Mhor was a shadowy outline, a grey blur masked by a rain squall. I forced myself to my feet and was immediately knocked down, beaten flat by a violent down-draught. That was when I realised the wind had gone right round. It was blowing from the other side of the island now, whipping across the Saddle between Malesgair and Tarsaval and down into Shelter Bay, cutting great swathes across it, the water boiling in its wake, a flattened, seething cauldron.

I made the grass above the beach, half crawling, and staggered past the Factor’s House, up towards the Old Village and the camp. Daylight was a mockery, drab as a witch, and the wind screamed hell out of the confused masses of cloud that billowed above my head. And when I finally reached the camp I barely recognised it, the whole place laid waste and everything weighing less than a ton whirled inland and scattered across the slopes of Tarsaval. And down on the beach, the trailers we’d off-loaded in haste all gone, the trucks, too — only the bulldozer remained lying in the surf like a half-submerged rock. Wreckage was everywhere. The roof of one of the huts was gone, blown clean away, the walls sagging outwards, and where the latrines had been there was nothing but a row of closets standing bare like porcelain pots.

Pinney’s hut was still intact. I turned the handle and the wind flung the door open with a crash, the walls shaking to the blast. It took the last of my strength to get it shut and in the relative peace of the hut’s interior I collapsed on to the nearest bed.

How long I lay there I do not know. Time is relative, (a mental calculation that measures activity. I was inactive then, my brain numbed, my mind hardly functioning. It might have been only a minute. It might have been an hour, two hours. I didn’t sleep. I’m certain of that. I was conscious all the time of the shaking of the hut, of the battering, ceaseless noise of the wind; conscious, too, that there was something I had to do, some urgent intention that had forced me to struggle up from the beach. I dragged myself to my feet, staggering vaguely through the hut until I came to the radio, drawn to it by some action of my subconscious.

I realised then why I’d made the effort. The outside world. Somebody must be told. Help alerted. I slumped into the operator’s chair, wondering whether there was any point, still that picture in my mind of the bridge crushed against sheer rock and the waves pounding. Could any of the crew have survived, any of those men huddled like sheep awaiting slaughter in the narrow alleyway out of which I’d clawed my way? But the wind had changed and they’d be under the lee. There was just that chance and I reached out my hand, switching on the set. I didn’t touch the tuning. I just sat there waiting for the hum that would tell me the set had warmed up. But nothing happened. It was dead and it took time for my brain to work that out — the generator silent and no current coming through. There were emergency batteries below the table and by following the cables back I was able to cut them in.

The set came alive then and a voice answered almost immediately. It was thin and faint. ‘

We’ve been calling and calling. If you’re still on Laerg why didn’t you answer before?’

He didn’t give me a chance to explain. ‘I’ve got Glasgow on the line for you. They’ve found Mrs McGregor. Hold on.’ There was a click and then silence, and I sat there, helpless, the salt taste of sea water on my mouth. Fifty men battered to pieces on the rocks of Sgeir Mhor and they had to fling Mrs McGregor at me. Why couldn’t they have waited for me to tell them what had happened? ‘You’re through.’ The police first, and then a woman’s voice, soft and very Scots, asking for news of her son. I felt almost sick, remembering what had happened, the tiller flat flooded and the poor devil’s body tombed up there. ‘I’m sorry, Mrs McGregor. I can’t tell you anything yet.’ And I cut her off, overcome by nausea, the sweat out all over me and my head reeling.

When I got them again, my brother was there. Recognising his voice I felt a flood of instant relief. ‘Iain. Iain, thank God!’ I was back on Ardnamurchan, crying to my elder brother for help — a rock to cling to in moments of desperation.

But this was no rock. This was a man as sick and frightened as myself. ‘Major Braddock here.’ His voice, strained and uneasy, had the snap of panic in it.

‘Iain,’ I cried again. ‘For God’s sake. It’s Donald.’ But the appeal was wasted and his voice when it came was harsh and grating.

‘Braddock here. Who’s that? What’s happened?’ The time was then 08.35 and Braddock had been almost six hours in the Movements Office, waiting for news. God knows what he must have been feeling. Flint said he’d paced up and down, hour after hour, grey-faced and silent, whilst the periodic reports came through from our own radio operator and from the man on L4400. Up to the moment when disaster overtook us Movements had a fairly clear picture of what was happening. And then suddenly that Mayday call, and after that silence. ‘Get them,’ Braddock had shouted at the Signals operator. ‘Christ man! Get them again.’ But all the operator could get was L4400 announcing flatly that they were in the storm centre steaming for the shelter of the other side of the island.

‘It’s Eight-six-one-o I want,’ Braddock had almost screamed. ‘Get them, man. Keep on trying.’

He’d had far too little sleep that night and the interview he’d had with Standing at two-thirty in the morning cannot have been a pleasant one. Standing had been roused from his bed by a duty driver at twelve-forty, and Ferguson described him as literally shaking with rage when he realised what Braddock had done. The first thing he did was to speak to Stratton on the R/T and then he walked across to the quarters and saw Cliff Morgan. ‘White-faced he was, man,’ was the way Cliff put it. ‘Calling me all sorts of names for interfering. But when I’d explained the situation, he calmed down a bit. He even thanked me. And then he went out, saying it was all Braddock’s fault and if anything went wrong he’d get the bloody man slung out of the Service.’

Standing had gone straight to his office and sent for Braddock. There was nobody else present at that meeting so that there is no record of what passed between them. But immediately afterwards Braddock had teleprinted BGS direct, giving his reasons for ordering an immediate evacuation on his own responsibility. And after that he’d remained in the Movements Office waiting for news; and when our Mayday call went out, it was he, not Standing, who had alerted Scottish Command and set the whole emergency machinery in motion. At hah0 past eight he’d walked over to the Met. Office. He was with Cliff Morgan for about ten minutes and it was during those ten minutes that I called Base. A relief operator had just taken over, which was why I was given the Glasgow call instead of being put straight through either to Braddock at the Met. Office or Standing, who was waiting alone in his office.

Probably if I’d got Standing his reaction would have been as slow as my brother’s, for neither of them could have any idea of the appalling ferocity of that storm or the magnitude of the disaster. He didn’t seem able to understand at first. ‘You and one other chap. …? that all? Are you certain?’ I wasn’t certain of anything except the memory of the ship on her beam ends and the waves driving her against the rocks. ‘If you’d seen the seas…. It was Sgeir Mhor she hit.’

‘Jesus Christ, Donald?’ It was the first time he’d used my name and it made a deep impression. ‘Jesus Christ! There must be others. There’ve got to be others.’ But I didn’t think there could be then. ‘I’ve told you, the whole bridge deck was concertinaed in a matter of seconds. They can’t possibly …’

‘Well, have a look. Go and find out.’ ‘The wind,’ I said wearily. ‘Don’t you realise? You can’t stand.’

‘Then crawl, laddie — crawl. I must know. I must be certain. Surely to God it can’t be as bad as you say.’ He was almost screaming at me. And then his voice dropped abruptly to a wheedling tone. ‘For my sake, laddie — please. Find out whether there are any other survivors.’ His voice. It was so strange — it was Iain’s voice now, my own brother’s, and the accent Scots. The years fell away … ‘All right, Iain. I’ll try.’ It was Mavis all over again — Mavis and all the other times. ‘I’ll try,’ I said again and switched the set off, going down the hut and out into a blast that whipped the door from my hand and knocked me to the ground.

I met the other fellow coming up from the beach, crawling on his hands and knees and crying with the pain of his broken arm. He called to me, but I heard no sound, only his mouth wide open and his good arm pointing seaward. But there was nothing there, nothing but the seething waters of the bay churned by the wind; all the rest was blotted out by rain and Sgeir Mhor a vague blur. ‘What is it?’ I yelled in his ear and I almost fell on top of him as the wind came down, a solid, breath-taking wall of air.

‘The rocks, sir. Sgeir Mhor. I thought I saw …’ I lost the rest. It was almost dark, a grey gloom with the clouds racing, and so low I could almost have reached up and touched them.

, ‘Saw what?’ I shouted. ‘What did you think you saw?’

‘It was clear for a moment, and there were figures — men. I could have sworn….’ But he wasn’t certain. You couldn’t be certain of anything in those conditions. And your eyes played tricks.

I lay there beside him till the rain squall passed. But even then I couldn’t see what he still swore he’d seen. Cloud, forced low by the down-draughts, obscured all the upper half of Sgeir Mhor. There was only one thing to do. I told him to go to the hut, and then I started out along the beach road alone. But it was impossible. The weight of the wind was too great. It caught me as I was crossing the Bailey bridge that spanned the burn and it threw me against the girders as though I were a piece of paper. The sheer weight of it was fantastic. If it hadn’t been for the girders I think I should have been whirled into the air and flung into the bay. I turned back then, and when I reached the hut I collapsed on Pinney’s bed and immediately lost consciousness.

How long I was out I don’t know. My whole body ached and there was a pain in my side. The cut in my head had opened again and the pillow was dark with blood. Lying there with my eyes open, slowly struggling back to life, I found myself staring at Pinney’s locker. Either my eyes didn’t focus immediately or else it took a long time for me to realise that a pair of binoculars might save me the long walk out to Keava and up its steep grass slopes. There they were, lying on a shelf, tucked in between some books and an old khaki jersey. It was much lighter in the hut; quite bright, in fact. And the noise of the wind was less.

I picked up the binoculars and staggered stiffly to the door. And when I opened it I was looking out on to a changed world. The clouds, torn to shreds by the wind, were ragged now. And they had lifted so that all the great spine of Keava was visible and I could see the sheer gap that separated it from Sgeir Mhor, could see all the rocks and caves and patches of grass on Sgeir Mhor itself. The air was clear, washed clean by the rain. Only Tarsaval and the very top of Creag Dubh remained shrouded in gloom, the clouds clinging to their drenched slopes, billowing and swirling among the crags. Seaward, shafts of brighter light showed white water tossed in frightful confusion. I slipped into the lee of the hut and with my back braced against its sodden wall, I focused the glasses on Sgeir Mhor.

Seen suddenly at close vision, isolated like that from the rest of the island, it looked like some massive medieval fortress. All it lacked was a drawbridge spanning the narrow gut that separated it from the Butt of Keava. With the change of wind, the seas no longer exploded against it in plumes of white, but the foam of the waves that had wrecked us lay in banks like snow over all the piled-up battlements of rock. In that clean air I could see every detail and nothing moved. The place was dead; just a great heap of rock and not a living thing. How could there be? Like the cliffs of Keava, it had taken the full brunt of the storm.

I lowered the glasses. Just the two of us. All the rest dead; gone, buried, drowned under masses of water, battered to pulp, their bodies for the fish, for the lobsters and crabs that scuttled in the holes and crevices of submarine rock terraces. Stratton, Wentworth, Pinney — all the faces I had known so briefly on board the ship.

Can you will people alive? Was I God-given that I could stand there and pray so desperately, and then on the instant conjure movement? It seemed like that, for I looked again, hoping against hope, and there in the twin circles of magnification something stirred, a man stood for a moment etched against the luminosity of clouds thinning. Or was it my imagination? Flesh and blood amongst that waste of rock. It seemed impossible, and yet one knows the extraordinary indestructibility of the human body.

•Countless instances leapt to my mind — things I had read about, things I had been told, things I had actually seen during the war; all things that had really happened, and not so much the indestructibility of the human body as the unwillingness, almost the inability of the human spirit to accept defeat. And here, now, I was gazing at the impossible, and it was no figment of the imagination. This, too, was real; there was a man, off the sky-line now and crawling down the rocks, trying to reach sea level, and another following close behind him.

How many were still alive I didn’t know. I didn’t care. It was enough that there were survivors on Sgeir Mhor, and I rushed back into the hut and switched on the radio. Base answered my call immediately. ‘Hold on.’ And then a voice, not my brother’s this time, asking urgently for news.

It was Colonel Standing, and when I told him I’d seen two figures moving on Sgeir Mhor, he said ‘Thank God!’ in a voice that was like a beaten man grasping at the faint hope of recovery. ‘If there are two, there may be more.’ He wanted me to find out. But two or twenty — what difference did it make? The problem of rescuing them remained the same. Could I launch a boat? That was his first suggestion and I found myself laughing inanely. I was tired. God! I was tired. And he didn’t understand. He’d no idea of the weight of wind that had hit the island. ‘There are no boats,’ I told him. ‘And if there were, there’s only myself and a chap with a broken arm.’ It was like talking to a child. I found I had to explain in simple terms what the storm had been like — all the trailers gone and a heavy thing like the bulldozer sucked into the sea, the camp a wreck and everything movable shattered or”whirled away, the slopes of Tarsaval littered with the Army’s debris. I described it all to him — the fight seaward, the engines packing up, the way she’d struck Sgeir Mhor and how the bows had stayed afloat and been driven ashore in Shelter Bay. I talked until my voice was hoarse, my mind too tired to think. Finally, I said, ‘What we need is men and equipment — a boat with an outboard motor or rocket rescue apparatus to bridge the gut between Keava and Sgeir Mhor. Where’s the other LCT? She could come into the bay now the wind is northerly again.’

But L4400 was twenty miles south-west of Laerg, running before a huge sea, her bridge deck stove in and her plates strained, a wreck of a boat that might or might not get back to port. Weather Ship India had left her station and was steaming to intercept her. The nearest ship was the Naval tug, but still twenty-four hours away in these conditions. Something my grandfather had told us came sluggishly to the surface of my mind, something about landing on Sgeir Mhor, the sheerness of the rocks. ‘I don’t think a boat would help,’ I said. ‘The only landing place on Sgeir Mhor is on the seaward side. And that’s not possible except in flat calm weather.’

It took time for that to sink in. He didn’t want to believe it. How did I know? Was I absolutely certain? Surely there must be rock ledges up which a skilful climber … ‘Check with my … with Major Braddock,’ I said. ‘Check with him.’ This man arguing, questioning. I wished to God he’d get off the line and give me Iain again. Iain would understand. ‘I’d like to have a word with Major Braddock.’

‘I’m handling this.’ The voice was curt. ‘Major Braddock’s caused enough trouble already.’ ‘I’d still like to speak to him.’

‘Well, you can’t.’ ‘Why not?’

A pause. And then: ‘Major Braddock is under arrest.’ God knows what I said then. I think I cursed — but whether I cursed Standing or the circumstances, I don’t know. The futility of it! The one man who could help, who had a grasp of the problem, and this stupid fool had had him arrested. ‘For God’s sake,’ I pleaded. ‘Give me Braddock. He’ll know what to do.’ And sharp and high-pitched over the air came his reply — unbelievable in the circumstances. ‘You seem to forget, Mr Ross, that ‘I’m the commanding officer here, and ‘I’m perfectly capable of handling the situation.’ ‘Then handle it,’ I shouted at him, ‘and get those men off Sgeir Mhor.’ And I switched off, realising that I was too tired now to control my temper. I just sat there then, thinking of Iain. Poor devil! It was bad enough — the loss of life, the shipwreck, but to be under arrest, sitting inactive with no part in the rescue, with nothing to do but mull over in his mind what had happened. Didn’t Standing realise? Or was he a sadist? Whichever it was, the effect on Iain would be the same. The bloody, sodding swine, I thought. The cruel, stupid bastard.

‘Mr Ross! Mr Ross, sir — you’re talking to yourself.’

I opened my eyes, conscious of a hand shaking my shoulder. The fellow with the broken arm was standing there, staring at me with a worried frown. He no longer looked frightened. He even had a certain stature standing there proffering me a steaming mug. ‘It’s only Bovril,’ he said. ‘But I fort some’ing ‘ot after our bathe….’ He was Cockney. False teeth smiled at me out of a funny little screwed-up face. ‘When you drunk it, you better change them clothes. Catch yer deaf if yer don’t. Borrow off of Captain Pinney; ‘e won’t mind.’ This little runt of a man trying to mother me and his broken arm still hanging limp. My heart warmed to him. The lights were on and a new sound — the hum of the generator audible between the gusts.

‘You’ve got the lights going.’

He nodded. ”Ad ter — all electric ‘ere, yer see. Wiv’at the generator yer can’t cook. I got some bangers on and there’s bacon and eggs and fried bread. That do yer?’ I asked him his name then and he said, ‘Alf Cooper. Come from Lunnon.’ He grinned. ‘Flippin’ long way from Bow Bells, ain’t I? Fort I’ card ‘em once or twice when we was in the flaming water, an’ they weren’t playin’ ‘ymn toons neither.’

As soon as we’d had our meal I set his arm as best I could, and after that I showed him how to work the radio. I felt stronger now and perhaps because of that the wind seemed less appalling as I tried again to get a closer look at Sgeir Mhor. This time I was able to cross the bridge, but in the flat grassland below the old lazy beds the wind caught me and pinned me down. A bird went screaming close over my head. I crawled to the shelter of a cleit and with my back to the ruins of its dry-stone wall, I focused the glasses on Sgeir Mhor.

Visibility was better now. I could see the rocks falling sheer to the turbulence of the sea, the cracks and gullies, and a figure moving like a seal high up on a bare ledge. There were others crouched there, sheltering from the swell that still beat against the farther side, covering the whole mass with spray. I counted five men lying tucked into crevices, the way sheep huddle for protection against the elements.

Five men. Perhaps there were more. I couldn’t see. Just five inert bodies and only one of them showing any signs of life, and now he lay still. I started back then, keeping to the edge of the beach which rose steeply and gave me a little shelter. The burn forced me up on to the bridge and as I entered the camp a blast hit me, flung me down, and a piece of corrugated iron went scything through the air just above my head to hit the sea and go skimming across its flattened surface.

Back in the hut I called Base and was immediately put through to Colonel Standing.