Hungry as the Sea

his head was smeared with engine grease, and he had recovered all the

bounce and swagger that Nick had banged out of him against the

engine-room windows.

Jesus! he said. I hear you just flipped. I hear you blew your mind

and jumped overboard - and when they fished you out, you up and went

Open Form on a bomber that's beating herself to death on Cape Alarm. I'd

explain it to you offered Nick solemnly, only I don't know enough words

of one syllable. The Chief Engineer grinned wickedly at that and Nick

went on quickly, Just believe me when I tell you that I'm playing with

someone else's chips. I'm not risking anything I haven't lost already.

That's good business/ the Australian agreed handsomely, and helped

himself to one of Nick's precious cheroots.

Your share of 21.2% of daily hire is peanuts and apple jelly/Nick went

on.

Too right/Vin Baker agreed, and hoisted at his waistline with his

elbows.

But if we snatch Golden Adventurer and if we can plug her and pump her

out, and if we can keep her afloat for three thousand miles, there will

be a couple of big lim'sil and that's beef and potatoes. You know

something/ Vin Baker grunted. For a Pommy, I'm beginning to like the

sound of your voice. He said it reluctantly and shook his head, as if

he didn't really believe it.

All I want from you now, Nick told him, are your plans for getting power

on to Golden Adventurer's pumps and anchor-winch. If she's up on the

beach, we will have to kedge her off and we won't have much time.

Kedging off was the technique of using a ship's own anchor and power

winch to assist the pull of the tug dragging her off a stranding.

Vin Baker waved the cheroot airily. Don't worry about that, I'm here.

And at that moment the Trog put his head through the doorway again, this

time without knocking.

I have an urgent and personal for you, Skipper. He brandished the telex

flimsy like a royal flush in spades.

Nick glanced through it once, then read it aloud:'

Master of Warlock from Christy Marine. Your offer Lloyd's Open Form "No

cure no pay" accepted. Stop.

You are hereby appointed main salvage contractor for wreck of Golden

Adventurer. ENDS. Nick grinned with that rare wide irresistible flash

of very white teeth. And so, gentlemen, it looks as though we are still

in business - but the devil knows for just how much longer. Warlock

rounded the headland, where the three black pillars of serpentine rock

stood into a lazy green sea, across which low oily swells marched in

orderly ranks to push in gently against the black cliffs.

They came round to the sudden vista of the wide, ice choked bay.

The abandoned hulk of Golden Adventurer was so majestic, so tall and

beautiful that not even the savage mountains could belittle her. She

looked like an illustration from a child's book of fairy tales, a lovely

ice ship, glistening and glittering in the yellow sunlight.

She's a beauty/ whispered the Chief Engineer, and his voice captured the

sorrow they all felt for a great ship in mortal distress.

To every single man on the bridge of Warlock, a ship was a living thing

for which at best they could feel love and admiration; even the dirtiest

old tramp roused a grudging affection. But Golden Adventurer was like a

lovely woman. She was something rare and special, and all of them felt

it.

For Nick Berg, the bond was much more deeply felt. She was child of his

inspiration, he had watched her lines take shape on the naval

architect's drawing-board, he had seen her keel laid and her bare

skeleton fleshed out with lovingly worked steel, and he had watched the

woman who had once been his wife speak the blessing and then smash the

bottle against her bows, laughing in the sunlight while the wine spurted

and frothed.

She was his ship, and now, as he would never have believed possible, his

destiny depended upon her.

He looked away from her at last to where La Mouette waited in the mouth

of the bay at the edge of the ice. In contrast to the liner, she was

small and squat and ugly, like a wrestler with all the weight in his

shoulders. Greasy black smoke rose straight into the pale sky from her

single stack, and her hull seemed to be painted the same greasy black,

Through his glasses, Nick saw the sudden bustle of activity on her

bridge as Warlock burst into view. The headland would have blanketed La

Mouette's radar and, with Nicks strict radio silence this would be the

first time Jules Levoisin knew of Warlock's presence. Nick could

imagine the consternation on her navigation bridge, and he noted wryly

that Jules Levoisin had not even gone through the motions of putting a

line on to Golden Adventurer. He must have been completely sure of

himself, of his unopposed presence. In maritime law, a line on to a

prize's hull bestowed certain rights, and Jules should have made the

gesture.

Get La Mouette in clear/ he instructed, and picked up the hand

microphone as the Trog nodded to him.

Salut Jules, 9a va? You pot-bellied little pirate, haven't they caught

and hung you yet? Nick asked kindly in French, and there was a long

disbelieving silence on Channel 16 before the fruity Gallic tones boomed

from the overhead speaker.

Admiral James Bond, I think? and Jules chuckled, but unconvincingly. Is

that a battle-ship or a floating whorehouse? You always were a fancy

boy, Nicholas, but what kept you so long? I expected to get a better run

for MY money. Three things you taught me, mon brave: the first was to

take nothing for granted; the second was to keep your big yap shut tight

when running for a prize; and the third was to put a line on it when you

got there - you've broken your own rules, Jules. The line is nothing. I

am arrived. And I old friend, am arrived also. But the difference is

that I am Christy Marine's contractor. ITU ri goles! You are joking!

Jules was shocked. I heard nothing of this! I am not joking! Nick

told him.

My James Bond equipment lets me talk in private. But go ahead, call

Christy Marine and ask them - and while you are doing it, move that

dirty old greaser of yours out the way. I've got work to do. Nick

tossed the microphone back to the Trog. Tape everything he sends/ he

instructed, and then to David Allen, We are going to smash up that ice

before it grabs too tight a hold on Golden Adventurer. Put your best

man on the wheel Nick was a man transformed, no longer the brooding,

moody recluse, agonizing over each decision, uncertain of himself and

reacting to each check with frustrated and undirected anger.

When he starts moving - he really burns it up, thought David Allen, as

he listened to Nick on the engine-room intercom.

I want flank power on both, Chief. We are going to break ice.

Then I want you in full immersion with helmet, we are going on board her

to take a peek at her engine room. He swung back to David Allen.

Number One, you can stand by to take command. The man of action

glorying in he end to inactivity, he almost seemed to dance upon his two

feet, like a fighter at the first bell. Tell Angel I want a hot meal

for us before we go into the cold, plenty of sugar in it., I'll ask the

steward/ said David, Angel is no good at the moment. He's playing dolls

with the lass you pulled out the water. God, he'll be dressing her up

and wheeling her around in a pram You tell Angel, I want food and good

food/ growled Nick, and turned away to the window to study the ice that

blocked the bay, or I'll go down personally and kick his backside. He'd

probably enjoy that/ muttered David, and Nick rounded on him.

How many times have you checked out the salvage gear since we left Cape

Town? Four times. Make it five. Do it again. I want all the diesel

auxiliaries started and run up, then shut down for freezing and rigged

to be swung out. I want to have power on Adventurer by noon tomorrow.

,Sir., But before he could go, Nick asked, What is the barometric

reading? I don't know. From now until the end of this salvage, you

will know, at any given moment, the exact pressure and you will inform

me immediately of any variation over one millibar. 'Reading is 8. David

checked hastily.

It's too high/ said Nick. And it's too bloody calm.

Watch it. We are going to have a pressure bounce. Watch it like an

eagle scout.

I thought I asked you to check the gear. The Trog called out, 'Christy

Marine has just called La Mouette and confirmed that we are the main

contractor but Levoisin has accepted daily hire to pick up a full load

of survivors from Shackleton Bay and ferry them to Cape Town. Now he

wants to speak to you again.

Tell him I'm busy. Nick did not take his attention from the ice-packed

bay, then he changed his mind. No, I'll talk to him. He took the hand

microphone. Jules?

You don't play fair, Nicholas. You go behind the back of an old friend,

a man who loves you like a brother., I'm a busy man. Did you truly call

to tell me that, I think you made a mistake, Nicholas. I think you

crazy to go Lloyd's Open on this one. That ship is stuck fast and the

weather! Did you read the met from Gough Island?

You got yourself a screaming bastard there, Nicholas. You listen to an

old man. Jules, I've got twenty-two thousand horses running for me I

still think you made a mistake, Nicholas. I think you're going to burn

more than just your fingers. All revoir, Jules. Come and watch me in

the awards court. I still think that's a whore-house, not a tug you are

sailing. You can send over a couple of blondes and a bottle of wine

Goodbye, Jules. Good luck, mon vieux. Hey, Jules - you say "good luck"

and it's the worst possible luck. You taught me that. 'Oui, I know.

Then good luck to you also, Jules. For a minute Nick looked after the

departing tug. It waddled away over the oily swells, small and

fat-bottomed and cheeky, for all the world like its Master and yet there

was something dejected and crestfallen about her going.

He felt a prick of affection for the little Frenchman, he had been a

true and good friend as well as a teacher, and Nick felt his triumph

softening to regret.

He crushed it down ruthlessly. It had been a straight, hard but fair

run, and Jules had been careless. Long ago, Nick had taught himself

that anybody in opposition was an enemy, to be hated and beaten, and

when you had done so, you despised them. You did not feel compassion,

it weakened your own resolve.

He could not quite bring himself to despise Jules Levoisin. The

Frenchman would bounce back, probably snatching the next job out from

under Nick's nose, and anyway he had the lucrative contract to ferry the

survivors from Shackleton Bay. It would pay the costs of his long run

southwards and leave some useful change over.

Nick's own dilemma was not as easily resolved. He put Jules Levoisin

out of his mind, turning away before the French tug had rounded the

headland and he studied the ice-choked bay before him with narrow eyes

and a growing feeling of concern. Jules had been right this was going

to be a screaming bastard of a job.

The high seas that had thrown Golden Adventurer ashore had been made

even higher by the equinoctial spring tides. Both had now abated and

she was fast.

The liner's hull had swung also, so she was not aligned neatly at right

angles to the beach. Warlock would not be able to throw a straight pull

on to her. She would have to drag her sideways. Nick could see that

now as he closed.

Still closer, he could see how the heavy steel hull, half filled with

water, had burrowed itself into the yielding shingle. She would stick

like toffee to a baby's blanket.

Then he looked at the ice, it was not only brash and pancake ice, but

there were big chunks, bergie bits, from rotten and weathered icebergs,

which the wind had driven into the bay, like a sheep dog with its flock.

The plunging temperatures had welded this mass of ice into a whole; like

a monstrous octopus, it was wrapping thick glistening tentacles around

Adventurer's stern. The ice had not yet had sufficient time to become

impenetrable, and Warlock's bows were ice-strengthened for just such an

emergency - yet Nick knew enough not to underestimate the hardness of

ice. White ice is soft ice was the old adage, and yet here there were

big lumps and hummocks of green and striated glacial ice in the mass,

like fat plums in a pudding, any one of which could punch a hole through

Warlock's hull.

Nick grimaced at the thought of having to send Jules Levoisin a Mayday.

He spoke to the helmsman quietly. Starboard five midships/ lining

Warlock up for a fracture-line in the ice pack. It was vital to come in

at a right angle, to take the ice fully on the stern; a glancing blow

could throw the bows off line and bring the vulnerable hull in contact

with razor ice.

Stand by, engine room/ he alerted them, and Warlock bore down on the ice

at a full ten knots and Nick judged the moment of impact finely. Half a

ship's length clear, he gave a crisp order.

Both half back. Warlock checked, going up on to the ice as she

decelerated, but still with a horrid rasping roar that echoed through

the ship. Her bows rose, riding up over the ice. It gave with a

rending crackle, huge slabs of ice up-ending and tumbling together.

Both full back. The huge twin propellers changed their pitch smoothly

into reverse thrust, and the wash boiled into the broken ice, sweeping

it clear, as Warlock drew back into open water and Nick steadied her and

lined her up again.

Both ahead full. Warlock charged forward, checking at the last moment,

and again thick slabs of white ice broke away, and grated along the

ship's side. Nick swung her stern first starboard then port, deftly

using the twin screws to wash the broken ice free, then he pulled

Warlock out and lined up again.

Butting and smashing and pivoting, Warlock worked her way deeper into

the bay, opening a spreading web of cracks across the white sheet of

ice.

David Allen was breathless, as he burst on to the bridge.

All gear checked and ready, sir. Take her/ said Nick. She's broken it

up now - just keep it stirred up. He wanted to add a warning that the

big variable-pitch propellers were Warlock's most vulnerable parts, but

he had a high enough opinion now of his Mate's ability, so he went on

instead, I'm going down now to kit UP.

Vin Baker was in the aft salvage hold ahead of him, he had already half

finished the tray of rich food and Angel hovered over him, but, as Nick

came down the steel ladder, he lifted the cover off another steaming

tray.

It's good/ said Nick, although he could hardly force himself to swallow.

The nerves in his stomach were bunched up too tightly. Yet food was one

of the best defences against the cold.

Samantha wants to talk to you, skip. Who the hell is Samantha? 'The

girl - she wants to thank you. Use your head, Angel, can't you see I

have other things on my mind, Nick was already pulling on the rubber

immersion suit over a full-length woollen undersuit. He needed the

assistance of a seaman to enter the opening in the chest of the suit.

He had already forgotten about the girl as they closed the chest opening

of the suit with a double ring seal, and then over the watertight

bootees and mittens went another full suit of polyurethane.

Nick and Vin Baker looked like a pair of fat Michelin men, as their

dressers helped them into the full helmets, with wrap-around visors,

built-in radio microphones and breathing valves.

Okay, Chief? Nick asked, and Vin Baker's voice squawked too loudly into

his headphones.

Clear to roll. Nick adjusted the volume, and then shrugged into the

oxygen rebreathing set. They were not going deeper than thirty feet, so

Nick had decided to use oxygen rather than the bulky steel

compressed-air cylinders.

Let's go/ he said, and waddled to the ladder.

The Zodiac sixteen-foot inflatable dinghy swung overboard with the four

of them in it, two divers and two picked seamen to handle the boat. Vin

pushed one of them aside and primed the outboard himself.

Come on, beauty/he told it sternly, and the big Johnson Seahorse fired

at the first kick. Gingerly, they began to feel their way through an

open lead in the ice, with the two seamen poling away small sharp pieces

that would have ripped the fabric of the Zodiac.

In Nick's radio headset, David Allen's voice spoke suddenly.

Captain, this is the First Officer. Barometric pressure is 11 02 I - it

looks like it's going through the roof. The pressure was bouncing, as

Nick had predicted. What goes up, must come down - and the higher she

goes, the lower she falls.

Jules Levoisin had warned him it was going to be a screamer.

Did you read the last met from Gough Island?

They have 1005 falling, and the wind at 3200 and thirty-five knots.

Lovely/ said Nick. We've got a big blow coming. And through the visor

of his helmet he looked up at the pale and beautiful sun. It was not

bright enough to pain the eye, and now it wore a fine golden halo like

the head of a saint in a medieval painting.

Skipper, this is as close as we can get, Vin Baker told him, and slipped

the motor into neutral. The Zodiac coasted gently into a small open

pool in the ice-pack, fifty yards from Golden Adventurers stern.

A solid sheet of compacted ice separated them, and Nick studied it

carefully. He had not taken the chance of working Warlock in closer

until he could get a look at the bottom here. He wanted to know what

depth of water he had to manoeuvre in, and if there were hidden snags,

jagged rock to rip through the Warlock's hull, or flat shingle on which

he could risk a bump.

He wanted to know the slope of the bottom, and if there was good holding

for his ground-tackle, but most of all, he wanted to inspect the

underwater damage to Golden Adventurer's hull.

Okay, Chief? he asked, and Vin Baker grinned at him through the visor.

Hey, I just remembered - my mommy told me not to get my feet wet.

I'm going home. Nick knew just how he felt. There was thick sheet ice

between them and Adventurer, they had to go down and swim below it.

God alone knew what currents were running under the ice, and what

visibility was like down there.

A man in trouble could not surface immediately, but must find his way

back to open water. Nick felt a claustrophobic tightening of his belly

muscles, and he worked swiftly, checking out his gear, cracking the

valve on his oxygen tank to inflate the breathing bag, checking the

compass and Rolex Oyster on his wrist and clipping his buddy line on to

the Zodiac, a line to return along, like Theseus in the labyrinth of the

Minotaur.

Let's go/ he said, and flipped backwards into the water.

The cold struck through the multiple layers of rubber and cloth and

Polyurethane almost instantly, and Nick waited only for the Chief

Engineer to break through the surface beside him in a cloud of swirling

silver bubbles.

. God, I Vin Baker's voice was distorted by the earphones, it's cold

enough to crack the gooseberries off a plaster saint., Paying out the

line behind him, Nick sank down into the hazy green depths, looking for

bottom. It came up dimly, heavy shingle and pebble, and he checked his

depth gauge - almost six fathoms - and he moved in towards the beach.

The light from the surface was filtered through thick ice, green and

ghostly in the icy depths, and Nick felt unreasonable panic stirring

deep in him. He tried to thrust it aside and concentrate on the job,

but it flickered there, ready to burst into flame.

There was a current working under the ice, churning the sediment so that

the visibility was further reduced, and they had to fill hard to make

headway across the bottom, always with the hostile ceiling of sombre

green ice above them, cutting them off from the real world.

Suddenly the Golden Adventurer's hull loomed ahead of them, the twin

propellers glinting like gigantic bronze wings in the gloom.

They moved in within arm Is length of the steel hull and swam slowly

along it. It was like flying along the outer wall of a tall apartment

block, a sheer cliff of riveted steel plate - but the hull was moving.

The Golden Adventurer was hoggmg on the bottom, the stern dipping and

swaying to the pulse of the sea, the heaving ground-swell that came in

under the ice; her stern bumped heavily on the pebbly bottom, like a

great hammer beating time to the ocean.

Nick knew that she was settling herself in. Every hour now was making

his task more difficult and he drove harder with his swim fins, pulling

slightly ahead of Vin Baker. He knew exactly where to look for the

damage.

Reilly had reported it in minute detail to Christy Marine, but he came

across it without warning.

It looked as though a monstrous axe had been swung horizontally at the

hull, a clean slash, the shape of an elongated teardrop. The metal

around it had been depressed, and the pain smeared away so that the

steel gleamed as though it had been scoured and polished.

At its widest, the lips of the fifteen-foot rent gaped open by three

feet or a little more, and it breathed like a living mouth - for the

force of the ground-swell pushing into the gap built up pressure within

the hull, then as the swell subsided the trapped water was forcibly

expelled, sucking in and out with tremendous pressure.

It's a clean hole/ Vin Baker's voice squawked harshly.

But it's too long to pump with cement. He was right, of course, Nick

had seen that at once.

Liquid cement would not plug that wicked gash, and anyway, there wasn't

time to use cement, not with weather coming. An idea began forming in

his mind.

I'm going to penetrate. Nick made the decision aloud, and beside him

the Chief was silent for long incredulous seconds, then he covered the

edge of fear in his voice with, Listen, cobber, every time I've ever

been into an orifice shaped like that, it's always meant big trouble.

Reminds me of my first wife. Cover for me/ Nick interrupted him. If

I'm not out in five minutes. I'm coming with you/ said the Chief. I've

got to take a look at her engine room. This is good a time as any. Nick

did not argue with him.

I'll go first/he said and tapped the Chief's shoulder. Do what I do.

Nick hung four feet from the gash, finning to hold himself there against

the current.

He watched the swirl of water rushing into the opening, and then gushing

out again in a rash of silver bubbles.

Then, as she began to breathe again, he darted forward.

The current caught him and he was hurled at the gap, with only time to

duck his helmeted head and cover the fragile oxygen bag on his chest

with both arms.

Raw steel snagged at his leg; there was no pain, but almost instantly he

felt the leak of sea water into his suit.

The cold stung like a razor cut, but he was through into the total

darkness of the cavernous hull. He was flung into a tangle of steel

piping, and he anchored himself with one arm and groped for the

underwater lantern on his belt.

You okay? The Chief Is voice boomed in his headphones.

Fine. Vin Baker's lantern glowed eerily in the dark waters ahead of

him.

Work fast/ instructed Nick. I've got a tear in my suit. Each of them

knew exactly what to do and where to go.

Vin Baker swam first to the water-tight bulkheads and checked all the

seals. He was working in darkness in a totally unfamiliar engine room,

but he went unerringly to the pump system, and checked the

valve-settings; then he rose to the surface, feeling his way up the

massive blocks of the main engines.

Nick was there ahead of him. The engine room was flooded almost to the

deck above and the surface was a thick stinking scum of oil and diesel,

in which floated a mass of loose articles, most of them undefinable, but

in the beam of his lantern Nick recognized a gumboot and a grease pot

floating beside his head. The whole thick stinking soup rose and fell

and agitated with the push of the current through the rent.

The lenses of their lanterns were smeared with the oily filth and threw

grotesque shadows into the cavernous depths, but Nick could just make

out the deck above him, and the dark opening of the vertical ventilation

shaft. He wiped the filth from his visor and saw what he wanted to see

and the cold was spreading up his leg. He asked brusquely, Okay, Chief?

Let's get the hell out of here. There were sickening moments of panic

when Nick thought they had lost the line to the opening. It had sagged

and wrapped around a steam pipe. Nick freed it and then sank down to

the glimmer of light through the gash.

He judged his moment carefully, the return was more dangerous than the

entry, for the raw bright metal had been driven in by the ice, like the

petals of a sunflower - or the fangs in a shark's jaw. He used the suck

of water and shot through without a touch, turning and finning to wait

for Vin Baker.

The Australian came through in the next rush of water, but Nick saw him

flicked sideways by the current, and he struck the jagged opening a

touching blow. There was instantly a roaring rush of escaping oxygen

from his breathing bag, as the steel split it wide, and for a moment the

Chief was obscured in the silver cloud of gas that was his life's

breath.

Oh God, I'm snagged/ he shouted, clutching helplessly at his empty bag

plummeting sharply into the green depths at the drastic change in his

buoyance. The heavily leaded belt around his waist had been weighted to

counter the flotation of the oxygen bag, and he went down like a gannet

diving on a shoal of sardine.

Nick saw instantly what was about to happen. The current had him - it

was dragging him down under the hull, sucking him under that hammering

steel bottom, where he would be crushed against the stony beach by

twenty-two thousand tons of pounding steel.

Nick went head down, finning desperately to catch the swirling body

which tumbled like a leaf in high wind. He had a fleeting glimpse of

Baker's face, contorted with terror and lack of breath, the glass visor

of his helmet already swamping with icy water as the pressure spurted

through the non-return valve. The Chief's headset microphone squealed

once and then went dead as the water shorted it out.

Drop your belt/yelled Nick, but Baker did not respond; he had not heard,

his headset had gone and instead he fought ineffectually in the swirling

current, drawn inexorably down to brutal death.

Nick got a hand to him and threw back with all his strength on his fins

to check their downward plunge, but still they went down and Nick's

right hand was clumsy with cold and the double thickness of his mittens

as he groped for the quick-release on the Chief's belt.

He hit the rounded bottom of the great hull with his shoulder, and felt

them dragged under to where clouds of sediment blew like smoke from the

working of the keel.

Locked together like a couple of waltzing dancers, they swung around and

he saw the keel, like the blade of a guillotine, rise up high above

them. He could not reach the Chief's release toggle.

There were only micro-seconds in which to go for his one other chance.

He hit his own release and the thick belt with thirty-five pounds of

lead fell away from Nick's waist; with it went the buddy line that would

guide them back to the waiting Zodiac, for it had been clipped into the

back of the belt.

The abrupt loss of weight checked their downward plunge, and fighting

with all the strength of his legs, Nick was just able to hold them clear

of the great keel as it came swinging downwards.

Within ten feet of them, steel struck stone with a force that rang in

Nick's eardrum like a bronze gong but he had an armlock on the Chief's

struggling body, and now at last his right hand found the release toggle

on the other man's belt.

He hit it, and another thirty-five pounds of lead dropped away. They

began to rise, up along the hogging steel hull, faster and faster as the

oxygen in Nick's bag expanded with the release of pressure. Now their

plight was every bit as desperate, for they were racing upwards to a

roof of solid ice with enough speed to break bone or crack a skull.

Nick emptied his lungs, exhaling on a single continuous breath, and at

the same time opened the valve to vent his bag, blowing away the

precious life-giving gas in an attempt to check their rise - yet still

they went into the ice with a force that would have stunned them both,

had Nick not twisted over and caught it on his shoulder and outflung

arm. They were pinned there under the ice by the cork-like buoyancy of

their rubber suits and the remaining gas in Nick's bag.

With mild and detached surprise Nick saw that the lower side of the ice

pack was not a smooth sheet, but was worked into ridges and pinnacles,

into weird flowing shapes like some abstract sculpture in pale green

glass. It was only a fleeting moment that he looked at it, for beside

him Baker was drowning.

His helmet was flooded with icy water and his face was empurpled and his

mouth contorted into a horrible rictus; already his movements were

becoming spasmodic and uncoordinated, as he struggled for breath.

Nick realized that haste would kill them both now. He had to work fast

but deliberately - and he held Baker to him as he cracked the valve on

his steel oxygen bottle, reinflating his chest bag.

With his right hand, he began to unscrew the breathing pipe connection

into the side of Baker's helmet. It was slow, too slow. He needed

touch for this delicate work.

He thought, This could cost me my right hand, and he stripped off the

thick mitten in a single angry gesture. Now he could feel - for the few

seconds until the cold paralysed his fingers. The connection came free

and while he worked, Nick was pumping his lungs like a bellows,

hyperventilating, washing his blood with pure oxygen until he felt

light-headed and dizzy.

One last sweet breath, and then he unscrewed his own hose connection;

icy water flooded through the valve but he held his head at an angle to

trap oxygen in the top of his helmet, keeping his nose and eyes clear,

and he rescrewed his own hose into Baker's helmet with fingers that no

longer had feeling.

He held the Chief's body close to his chest, embracing like lovers, and

he cracked the last of the oxygen from his bottle. There was just

sufficient pressure of gas left to expunge the water from Baker's

helmet. It blew out with an explosive hiss through the valve, and Nick

watched carefully with his face only inches from Baker's.

The Chief was choking and coughing, gulping and gasping at the rush of

cold oxygen, his eyes watery and unseeing his spectacles blown awry and

the lenses obscured by, sea water, but then Nick felt his chest begin to

swell and subside. Baker was breathing again, which is more than I am

doing Nick thought grimly - and then suddenly he realized for the first

time that he had lost the guide line with his weight belt.

He did not know in which direction was the shore, nor which way to swim

to reach the Zodiac. He was utterly disorientated, and desperately he

peered through his half flooded visor for sight of the Golden

Adventurer's hull to align himself. She was not there, gone in the

misty green gloom - and he felt the first heave of his lungs as they

demanded air. And as he denied his body the driving need to breathe, he

felt the fear that had flickered deep within him flare up into true

terror, swiftly becoming cold driving panic.

A suicidal urge to tear at the green ice roof of this watery tomb almost

overwhelmed him. He wanted to try and rip his way through it with bare

freezing hands to reach the precious air.

Then, just before panic completely obliterated his reason, he remembered

the compass on his wrist. Even then his brain was sluggish, beginning

to starve for oxygen, and it took precious seconds working out the

reciprocal of his original bearing.

As he leaned forward to read the compass, more sea water spurted into

his helmet, spiking needles of icy cold agony into the sinuses of his

cheeks and forehead, making the teeth ache in his jaws, so he gasped

involuntarily and immediately choked.

Still holding Baker to him, linked by the thick black umbilical cord of

his oxygen hose, Nick began to swim out on the reciprocal compass

heading. Immediately his lungs began to pump, convulsing in involuntary

spasms, like those of childbirth, craving air, and he swam on.

With his head thrown back slightly he saw that the sheet of ice moved

slowly above him; at times, when the current held them it moved not at

all, and it required all his selfcontrol to keep finning doggedly, then

the current relaxed its grip and they moved forward again, but achingly

slowly.

He had time then to realize how exquisitely beautiful was the ice roof;

translucent, wonderously carved and sculptured - and suddenly he

remembered standing hand in hand with Chantelle beneath the arched roof

of the Chartres cathedral, staring up in awe. The pain in his chest

subsided, the need to breathe passed, but he did not recognize that as

the sign of mortal danger, nor the images that formed before his eyes as

the fantasy of a brain deprived of oxygen and slowly dying.

Chantelle's face was before him then, glowing hair soft and thick and

glossy as a butterfly's wing, huge dark eyes and that wide mouth so full

of the promise of delight and warmth and love.

I loved you/ he thought. I really loved you.

And again the image changed. He saw again the incredible slippery

explosive liquid burst with which his son was born, heard that queruous

cry as a dripping an wet and hairless from the rubber-gloved hand, and

felt again the soul-consuming wonder and joy.

A drowning man - Nick recognized at last what was happening to him. He

knew then he was dying, but the panic had passed, as the cold had passed

also, and the terror. He swam on, dreamlike, into the green mists. Then

he realized that his own legs were no longer moving; he lay relaxed not

breathing, not feeling, and it was Baker's body that was thrusting and

working against him.

Nick peered into the glass visor still only inches from his eyes, and he

saw that Baker's face was set and determined. He was gulping the pure

sweet oxygen and gained strength with each breath, driving on strongly.

You beauty/ whispered Nick dreamily, and felt the water shoot into his

throat, but there was no pain.

Another image formed before him, an Arrow head-class yacht with

spinnaker set, running free across a bright Mediterranean sea, and his

son at the tiller, the dense tumble of curls that covered his small neat

head fluttering in the wind, and the same velvety dark eyes as his

mother's in the sun-tanned oval of his face as he laughed.

Don't let her run by the lee, Peter/ Nicholas wanted to shout to his

son, but the image faded into blackness. He thought for a moment that

he had passed into unconsciousness, but then he realized suddenly that

it was the black rubber bottom of the Zodiac only inches from his eyes,

and that the rough hands that dragged him upwards, lifting him and

tearing loose the fastening of his helmet, were not part of the fantasy.

Propped against the pillowed gunwale of the Zodiac, held by the two

boatmen from falling backwards, the first breaths of sub-zero air were

too rich for his starved lungs, and Nick coughed and vomited weakly down

the front of his suit.

Nick came out of the shower cabinet. The cabin was thick with steam,

and his body glowed dull angry red from the almost boiling water. He

wrapped the towel around his waist as he stepped through into his night

cabin.

Baker slouched in the armchair at the foot of his bunk.

He wore fresh overalls, his hair stood up in little damp spikes around

the shaven spot where Angel's cat-gut stitches still held the scabbed

wound closed. One of the side frames of his spectacles had snapped

during those desperate minutes below Golden Adventurer's stern, and

Baker had repaired it with black insulating tape.

He held two glasses in his left hand, and, a big flat brown bottle of

liquor in the other. He poured two heavy slugs into the glasses as Nick

paused in the bathroom door, and the sweet, rich aroma smelled like the

sugar-cane fields of northern Queensland.

Baker passed a glass to Nick, and then showed him the bottle's yellow

label.

Bundaberg rum/ he announced, the dinky die stuff, sport!

Nick recognized both the offer of liquor and the salutation as probably

the highest accolade the chief would ever give another human being. Nick

sniffed the dark honey-brown liquor and then took it in a single toss,

swirled it once around his mouth, swallowed, shuddered like a spaniel

shaking off water droplets, exhaled and said: It's still the finest rum

in the world. Dutifully, he said what was expected of him, and held out

his glass.

The Mate asked me to give you a message, said Baker as he poured another

shot for each of them. Glass hit 103,5 and now it s diving like a dingo

into its hole - back to 102,0 already. It's going to blow - is it ever

going to blow!

They regarded each other over the rims of the glasses.

We've wasted almost two hours Beauty,, Nick told him, and Baker blinked

at the unlikely name, then grinned crookedly as he accepted it.

How are you going to plug that hull?

I've got ten men at work already. We are going to fother a sail into a

collision mat. Baker blinked again, then shook his head in disbelief.

That's Hornblower stuff The Witch of Endor/ Nick agreed. So you can

read?

You haven't got pressure to drive it home/ Baker objected. The trapped

air from the engine room will blow it out., I'm going to run a wire down

the ventilation shaft of the engine room and out through the gash. We'll

fix the collision mat outside the hull and winch it home with the wire.

Baker stared at him for five seconds while he examined the proposition.

A sail was fothered by threading the thick canvas with thousands of

strands of unravelled oakum until it resembled a huge shaggy doormat.

When this was placed over an aperture below a ship's waterline, the

pressure of water forced it into the hole, and the water swelled the

mass of fibre until it formed an almost watertight plug.

However, in Golden Adventurer's case the damage was extensive and as the

hull was already flooded, there was no pressure differential to drive

home the plug. Nick proposed to beat that by using an internal wire to

haul the plug into the gash.

It might work. Beauty Baker was noncommittal.

Nick took the second rum at a gulp, dropped the towel and reached for

his working gear laid out on the bunk.

Let's get power on her before the blow hits us/ he suggested mildly, and

Baker lumbered to his feet and stuffed the Bundaberg bottle into his

back pocket.

Listen, sport/ he said. All that guff about you being a Pommy, don't

take it too seriously. I won't/ said Nick. Actually, I was born and

educated in Blighty, but my father's an American. So that makes me one

also. ,Christ., Beauty hitched disgustedly at his waist with both

elbows. of there's anything worse than a bloody Pom, it's a goddamned

Yank. Now that Nick was certain that the bottom of the bay was clean

and free of underwater snags, he handled Warlock boldly but with a

delicately skilful touch which David Allen watched with awe.

Like a fighting cock, the Warlock attacked the thicker ice line along

the shore, smashing free huge lumps and slabs, then washing them clear

with the propellers, giving herself space to work about Golden

Adventurer's stern.

The ominous calm of both sea and air made the work easier,™™™ although

the vicious little current working below Adventurer's stern complicated

the transfer of the big alternator.

Nick had two Yokohama fenders slung from Warlocks side, and the bloated

plastic balloons cushioned the contact of steel against steel as Nick

laid Warlock alongside the stranded liner, holding her there with

delicate adjustments of power and rudder and screw pitch.

Beauty Baker and his working party, swaddled in heavy Antarctic gear,

were already up on the catwalk of Warlock's forward gantry, seventy feet

above the bridge and overlooking Adventurer's sharply canted deck.

As Nick nudged Warlock in, they dropped the steel boarding-ladder across

the gap between the two ships and Beauty led them across in single file,

like a troop of monkeys across the limb of a forest tree.

All across/ the Third Officer confirmed for Nick, and then added, 'Glass

has dropped again, sir. Down to 1005 Very well, Nick drew Warlock

gently away from the liner's stern, and held her fifty feet off. Only

then did he flick his eyes up at the sky. The midnight sun had turned

into a malevolent jaundiced yellow, while the sun itself was a ball of

dark satanic red above the peaks of Cape Alarm, and it seemed that the

snowfields and glaciers were washed with blood.

It's beautiful. Suddenly the girl was beside him. The top of her head

was on a level with his shoulder, and in the ruddy light, her thick

roped hair glowed like newly minted sovereigns in red gold. Her voice

was low and a little husky with shyness, and touched a chord of response

in Nick, but when she lifted her face to him he saw how young she was.

I came to thank you, she said softly. It's the first chance I've had.

She wore baggy, borrowed men's clothing that made her look like a little

girl dressing up, and her face, free of cosmetics, had that waxy plastic

glow of youth, like the polished skin of a ripe apple.

Her expression was solemn and there were traces of her recent ordeal

beneath her eyes and at the corners of her mouth. Nick sensed the

tension and nervousness in her.

Angel wouldn't let me come before/ she said, and suddenly she smiled.

The nervousness vanished and it was the direct warm unselfconscious

smile of a beautiful child that has never known rejection. Nick was

shocked by the strength of his sudden physical desire for her, his body

moved, clenching like a fist in his groin, and he felt his heart pound

furiously in the cage of his ribs.

His shock turned to anger, for she looked but fourteen or fifteen years

of age; almost she seemed as young as his own son, and he was shamed by

the perversity of his attraction. since the good bright times with

chantelle, he had not experienced such direct and instant involvement

with a woman. At the thought of Chantelle, his emotions collapsed in a

disordered tangle, from which only his lust and his anger emerged

clearly.

He cupped the anger to him, like a match in a high wind, it gave him

strength again. Strength to thrust this aside, for he knew how

vulnerable he still was and how dangerous a course had opened before

him, to be led by this child woman. Suddenly he was aware that he had

swayed bodily towards the girl and had been staring into her face for

many long seconds, that she was meeting his gaze steadily and that

something was beginning to move in her eyes like cloud shadow across the

sunlit surface of a green mountain lake. Something Was happening which

he could not afford, could not chance - and then he realized also that

the two young deck officers were watching them with undisguised

curiosity, and he turned his anger on her.

Young lady/ he said. "You have an absolute genius for being in the

wrong place at the wrong time., And his tone was colder and more remote

than even he had intended it.

Before he turned away from her, he saw the moment of her disbelief turn

to chagrin, and the green eyes misted slightly. He stood stiffly

staring down the fore-dec where David Allen's team was opening the

forward salvage hold.

Nick's anger evaporated almost at once, to be replaced by dismay. He

realized clearly that he had completely alienated the girl and he wanted

to turn back to her and say something gracious that might retrieve the

situation, but he could think of nothing and instead lifted the hand

microphone to his lips and spoke to Baker over the VFH radio.

How's it going, Chief?

There were ten seconds of delay, and Nick was very conscious of the

girl's presence near him.

Their emergency generator has burned out, it win need two days work to

get it running again. We'll have to take on the alternator, Beauty told

him.

We are ready to give it to you, Nick told him, and then called David

Allen on the fore-dec.

Ready, David? All set. Nick began edging Warlock back towards the

finer's towering stern, and now at last he turned back to the girl.

Unaccountably, he now wanted her approbation, so his smile was ready -

but she had already gone, taking with her that special aura of

brightness.

Nick's voice had a jagged edge to it as he told David Allen, 'Let's do

this fast and right, Number One., Warlock nuzzled Adventurer's stern,

the big black Yokoharna fenders gentling her touch, and on her fore-dec

the winch whined shrilly, the lines squealing in their blocks and from

the open salvage hatch the four-ton alternator swung out. It was

mounted on a sledge for easy handling.

The diesel tanks were charged and the big motor primed and ready to

start It rose swiftly, dangling from the tall gantry, and a dozen men

synchronized their efforts, in those critical moments when it hung out

over Warlock's bows. A nasty freaky little swell lifted the tug and

pushed her across, for the dangling burden was already putting a slight

list on her, and it would have crashed into the steel side of the liner,

had not Nick thrown the screws into reverse thrust and given her a burst

of power to hold her off. The instant the swell subsided, he closed

down and slid the pitch to fine forward, pressing the cushioned bows

lightly back against Adventurer's side.

He's good! David Allen watched Nicholas work. He's better than old Mac

ever was. Mackintosh, Warlock's previous skipper, had been careful and

experienced, but Nicholas Berg handled the ship with the flair and

intuitive touch that even Mac's vast experience could never have

matched.

David Allen pushed the thought aside and signalled the winch man. The

huge dangling machine dropped with the control of a roosting seagull on

to the liner's deck. Baker's crew leapt on it immediately, releasing

the winch cable and throwing out the tackle, to drag it away on its

sledge.

Warlock drew off, and when Baker's crew was ready, she went in to drop

another burden, this time one of the highspeed centrifugal pumps which

would augment Golden Adventurer's own machinery - if Baker could get

that functioning. It went up out of Warlock's forward hold, followed

ten minutes later by its twin.

Both pumps secured. Baker's voice had a spark of jubilation in it, but

at that moment a shadow passed over the ship, as though a vulture

wheeled above on wide-spread pinions, and as Nick glanced up he saw the

men on the fore-dec lift their heads also.

It was a single cloud seeming no bigger than a man's fist, a thousand or

fifteen hundred feet above them, but it had momentarily obscured the

lowering sun, before scuttling on furtively down the peaks of Cape

Alarm.

There is still much to do/ Nick thought, and he opened the bridge door

and stepped out on to the exposed wing.

There was no movement of air, and the cold seemed less intense although

a glance at the glass confirmed that there were thirty degrees still of

frost. No wind here, but high up it was be wind. Number One/ Nick

snapped into the microphone.

What's going on down there - do you think this is your daddy's yacht?

And David Allen's team leapt to the task of closing down the forward

hatch, and then tramped back to the double salvage holds on the long

stern quarter.

I am transferring command to the stern bridge. Nick told his deck

officers and hurried back through the accommodation area to the second

enclosed bridge, where every control and navigational aid was

duplicated, a unique feature of salvage-tug construction where so much

of the work took place on the afterdeck.

This time from the aft gantries, they lifted the loaded ballets of

salvage gear on to the liner's deck, another eight tons of equipment

went aboard Golden Adventurer. Then they pulled away and David Allen

battened down again.

When he came on to the bridge stamping and slapping his own shoulders,

red-cheeked and gasping from the cold, Nick told him immediately .

Take command, David, I'm going on board. Nick could not bring himself

to wait out the uncertain period while Beauty Baker put power and pumps

into action.

Anything mechanical was Baker's responsibility, as seamanship was

strictly Nick's, but it could take many hours yet, and Nick could not

remain idle that long.

From high on the forward gantry, Nick looked out across that satiny

ominous sea. It was a little after midnight now and the sun was half

down behind the mountains, a two dimensional disc of metal heated to

furious crimson. The sea was sombre purple and the ice-bergs were

sparks of brighter cherry red. From this height he could see that the

surface- of the sea was crenellated, a small regular swell spreading

across it like ripples across a pond, from some disturbance far out

beyond the horizon.

Nick could feel the fresh movement of Warlock's hull as she rode this

swell, and suddenly a puff of wind hit Nick in the face like the flit of

a bat's wing, and the metallic sheen of the sea was scoured by a

cat's-paw of wind that scratched at the surface as it passed.

He pulled the draw-suing of the hood of his anorak up more tightly under

his chin and stepped out on to the open boarding-ladder, like a

steeplejack, walking upright and balancing lightly seventy feet above

Warlock's slowly rolling fore-dec.

He jumped down on to Golden Adventurer's steeply canted, ice-glazed deck

and saluted Warlock's bridge far below in a gesture of dismissal.

I tried to warn you, dearie, said Angel gently, as she entered the

steamy galley, for with a single glance he was aware of Samantha's

crestfallen air. He tore you up, didn't he? What are you talking

about? She lifted her chin, and the smile was too bright and too quick.

What do you want me to do? You can separate that bowl of eggs, Angel

told her, and stooped again over twenty pounds of red beef, with his

sleeves rolled to the elbows about his thick and hairy arms, clutching a

butcher's knife in a fist like that of Rocky Marciano.

They worked in silence for five minutes, before Samantha spoke again.

I only tried to thank him -, And again there was a grey mist in her

eyes.

He's a lower-deck pig, Angel agreed.

He is not/ Samantha came in hotly. He's not a pig., Well, then, he's a

selfish, heartless bastard - with jumped-up ideas. How can you say that

Samantha's eyes flashed now.

He is not selfish - he went into the water to get me! Then she saw the

smile on Angel's lips and the mocking quizzical expression in his eyes,

and she stopped in confusion and concentrated on cracking the egg shells

and slopping the contents into the mixing basin.

He's old enough to be your father, Angel needled her, and now she was

really angry; a ruddy flush under the smooth gloss of her skin made the

freckles shine like gold dust.

You talk the most awful crap, Angel., God, dearie, where did you learn

that language? Well, you're making me mad. She broke an egg with such

force that it exploded down the front of her pants.

Oh, shit! she said, and stared at him defiantly. Angel tossed her a

dish-cloth, she wiped herself violently and they went on working again.

How old is he? she demanded at last. A hundred and fifty?

He's thirty-eight/ Angel thought for a moment, or thirty-nine. Well,

smart arse/ she said tartly, the ideal age is half the man's age, plus

seven., You aren't twenty-six, dearie! Angel said gently.

I will be in two years time! she told him.

You really want him badly, hey? A fever of lust and desire? 'That's

nonsense, Angel, and you know it. I just happen to owe him a rather

large debt - he saved my life, - but as for wanting him, ha! She

dismissed the idea with a snort of disdain and a toss of her head.

I'm glad/ Angel nodded. He's not a very nice person, you can see by

those ferrety eyes of his - He has beautiful eyes - she flared at him,

and then stopped abruptly, saw the cunning in his grin, faltered and

then collapsed weakly on the bench beside him, with a cracked egg in one

hand.

Oh, Angel, you are a horrible man and I hate you. How can you make fun

of me now? He saw how close she was to tears, and became brisk and

businesslike.

First of all, you better know something about him and he began to tell

her, giving her a waspish biography of Nicholas Berg, embellished by a

vivid imagination and a wicked sense of humour, together with a

quasi-feminine love of gossip, to which Samantha listened avidly, making

an occasional exclamation of surprise.

His wife ran away with another man, she could be out of her mind, don't

you think? Dearie, a change is like two weeks at the seaside. Or asking

a question. He owns this ship, actually owns it? Not just Master? I

He owns this ship, and its sister, and the company. They used to call

him the Golden Prince. He's a high flyer, dearie, didn't you recognize

it? I didn't Of course you did. You're too much woman not to.

There is no more powerful aphrodisiac than success and power, nothing

like the clink of gold to get a girl's hormones revving up, is there?

That's unfair, Angel. I didn't know a thing about him. I didn't know

he was rich and famous. I don't give a damn for money Ho!

Ho? Angel shook his curls and the diamond studs flashed in his ears.

But he saw her anger flare again. All right, dearie, I'm teasing. But

what really attracts you is his strength and air of purpose. The way

other men obey, and follow and fear him. The air of command, of power

and with it, success. I didn't knOw, be honest with yourself, love. It

was not the fact he saved your life, it wasn't his beautiful eyes nor

the lump in his jeans You're crude, Angel.

You're bright and beautiful, and you just can't help yourself. You're

like a nubile little gazelle, all skittish and ready, and you have just

spotted the herd bull. You can't help yourself, dearie, you're just a

woman., What am I going to do, Angel? We'll make a plan, love, but one

thing is certain, you're not going to trail around behind him, dressed

like an escapee from a junk shop, breathing adoration and heroworship.

He's doing a job. He doesn't need to trip over you every time he turns.

Play hard to get. Samantha thought about it for a moment. Angel, I

don't want to play it that hard that I never get around to being got -

if you follow me. Beauty Baker had the work in hand, well organized and

going ahead as fast as even Nick, in his overwhelming impatience, could

expect.

The alternator had been manhandled through the double doors into the

superstructure on B deck, and it had been secured against a steel

bulkhead and lashed down.

As soon as I have power, we'll drill the deck and bolt her down/he

explained to Nick.

Have you got the lines in? I'll by-pass the main junction box on C

deck, and I will select from the temporary box But you've identified the

fore-dec winch circuit, and the pumps? Jesus, sport, why don't you go

sail your little boat and leave me to do my work? on the upper deck one

of Baker's gangs was already at work with the gas welding equipment.

They were opening access to the ventilation shaft of the main engine

room.

The gas cutter hissed viciously and red sparks showered from the steel

plate of the tall dummy smoke stack. The stack was merely to give the

Golden Adventurer the traditional rakish lines, and now the welder cut

the last few inches of steel plating. It fell away into the deep, dark

cavern, leaving a roughly square opening six feet by six feet which gave

direct access into the half-flooded engine room fifty feet below.

Despite Baker's advice, Nick took command here, directing the rigging of

the winch blocks and steel wire cable that would enable a cable to be

taken down into the flooded engine room and out again through that long,

viciously fanged gash in the ship's side. When he looked at his Rolex

Oyster again, almost an hour had passed. The sun had gone and a

luminous green sky filled with the marvelous pyrotechnics of the Aurora

Australis turned the night eerie and mysterious.

All right, bosun, that's all we can do now. Bring your team up to the

bows. As they hurried forward along the open fore-dec, the wind caught

them, a single shrieking gust that had them reeling and. staggering and

grabbing for support, then it was past and the wind settled down to nag

and whine and pry at their clothing as Nick directed the work at the two

huge anchor winches; but he heard the rising sea starting to push and

stir the pack-ice, making it growl and whisper menacingly.

They catted the twin sea-anchors and with two men working over

Adventurer's side they secured collars of heavy chain to the crown of

each anchor. Warlock would now be able to drag those anchors out,

letting them bump along the - bottom, but in the opposite direction to

that in which they had been designed to drag, so that the pointed flukes

would not be able to dig in and hold.

Then, when the anchors were out to the full reach of their own chains,

Warlock would drop them, the flukes would dig in and hold. This was the

ground-tackle which might resist the efforts of even a force twelve wind

to throw Golden Adventurer further ashore.

When Baker had power on the ship, the anchor winches would be used to

kedge Golden Adventurer off the bank.

Nick placed much reliance on these enormously powerful winches to assist

Warlock's own engines, for even as they worked, he could feel through

the soles of his feet how heavily grounded the liner was.

It was a tense and heavy labour, for they were working with enormous

weights of dead-weight steel chain and shackles. The securing shackle,

which held the chain collar on the anchor crown, alone weighed three

hundred pounds and had to be manhandled by six men using complicated

tackle.

By the time they had the work finished, the wind was rising force six,

and wailing in the superstructure. The men were chilled and tired, and

tempers were flashing.

Nick led them back to the shelter of the main superstructure. His boots

seemed to be made of lead, and his lungs pumped for the solace of

cheroot smoke, and he realized irrelevantly that he had not slept now

for over fifty hours since he had fished that disturbing little girl

from the water. Quickly he pushed the thought of her aside, for it

distracted him from his purpose, and, as he stepped over the door-sill

into the liner's cold but wind-protected accommodation, he reached for

his cheroot-case.

Then he arrested the movement and blinked with surprise as suddenly

garish light blazed throughout the ship deck lights and internal lights,

so that instantly a festival air enveloped her and from the loudspeakers

on the deck above Nicholas, head wafted soft music as the broadcasting

equipment switched itself in. It was the voice of Donna Summer, as

limpid and ringing clear as fine-leaded crystal.

The sound was utterly incongruous in this place and in these

circumstances.

Power is on! Nick let out a whoop and ran through to B deck. Beauty

Baker was standing beside his roaring alternator and hugging himself

with glee.

Howzat, sport? he demanded. Nick punched his shoulder.

Right on, Beauty. He wasted a few moments and a cheroot by placing one

of the precious black tubes between Baker's lips and flashing his

lighter. The two of them smoked for twenty seconds in close and

companionable silence.

Okay! Nick ended it. Pumps and winches. The two emergency portables

are ready to start, and I'm on my way to check the ship's main pumps.

The only thing left is to get the collision mat into place. That is

your trick/ Baker told him flatly. You're not getting me into the water

again, ever. I've even given up bathing. Yeah, did you notice I'm

standing upwind? Nick told him. But somebody has got to go down again

to pass the line.

Why don't you send Angel? Baker grinned evilly.

Excuse me, cobber - I've got work to do. He inspected the cheroot.

After we've pulled this dog off the ground, I hope you will be able to

afford decent gaspers. And he was gone into the depths of the liner,

leaving Nick with the one task he had been avoiding even thinking about.

Somebody had to go down into that engine room. He could call for

volunteers, of course, but then it was another of his own rules to never

ask another man to do what you are afraid to do yourself.

I can leave David to lay out the ground-tackle, but I can't let anybody

else put the collision mat in. He faced it now. He would have to go

down again, into the cold and darkness and mortal danger of the flooded

engine room.

The ground-tackle that David Allen had laid was holding Golden

Adventurer handsomely, even in the aggravated swell which was by now

pouring into the open mouth of the bay, driven on by the rising wind

that was inciting it to wilder abandon.

David had justified Nick's confidence in the seamanlike manner in which

he had taken the Golden Adventurer's twin anchors out and dropped them a

cable's length offshore, at a finely judged angle to give the best

purchase and hold.

Beauty Baker had installed and test-run the two big centrifugals and he

had even resuscitated two of the liner's own forward pump assemblies

which had been protected by the watertight bulkhead from the sea

break-in. He was ready now to throw the switch on this considerable

arsenal of pumps, and he had calculated that if Nick could close that

gaping rent in the hull, he would be able to pump the liner's hull dry

and clean in just under four hours.

Nick was in full immersion kit again, but this time he had opted for a

single bottle Drager diving-set; he was off oxygen sets for life, he

decided wryly.

Before going down, he paused on the open deck with the diving helmet

under his -arm. The wind must be rising seven now, he decided, for it

was kicking off the tops of the waves in bursts of spray and a low

scudding sky of dirty grey cloud had blotted out the rising sun and the

peaks of Cape Alarm. It was a cold dark dawn, with the promise of a

wilder day to follow.

Nick took one glance across at Warlock. David Allen was holding her

nicely in position, and his own team was ready, grouped around that ugly

black freshly burned opening in Adventurer's stack. He lifted the

helmet on to his head, and while his helpers closed the fastenings and

screwed down the hose connections, he checked the radio.

Warlock, do you read me? Allen's voice came back immediately,

acknowledging and confirming his readiness, then he went on, The glass

just went through the floor, Skipper, she's 996 and going down. Wind's

force six rising seven and backing. It looks like we are fair in the

dangerous quadrant of whatever is coming. Thank you, David! Nick

replied. You warm my heart. He stepped forward, and they helped him

into the canvas bosun's chair. Nick checked the tackle and rigging,

that once-more-for-luck check, and then he nodded.

The interior of the engine room was no longer dark, for Baker had rigged

floodlights high above in the ventilation shaft, but the water was black

with engine oil, and as Nick was lowered slowly down, with legs dangling

from the bosun's chair, it surged furiously back and across like some

panic-stricken monster trying to break out of its steel cage.

That wind-driven swell was crashing into Golden Adventurer's side and

boiling in through the opening, setting up its own wave action, forming

its own currents and eddies which broke and leaped angrily against the

steel bulkheads.

Slower, Nick spoke into the microphone. Stop! His downward progress

was halted ten feet above the starboard main engine block, but the

confined surge of water broke over the engine as though it were a coral

reef, covering it entirely at one instant, and then sucking back and

exposing it again at the next.

The rush of water could throw a man against that machinery with force

enough to break every bone in his body, and Nick hung above it and

studied the purchases for his blocks.

Send down the main block/ he ordered, and the huge steel block came down

out of the shadows and dangled in the floodlights.

Stop. Nick began directing the block into position.

Down two feet. Stop! Now waist-deep in the oily, churning water, he

struggled to drive the shackle pin and secure the block to one of the

main frames of the hull. Every few minutes a stronger surge would hurl

the water over his head, forcing him to cling helplessly, until it

relinquished its grip, and his visor cleared sufficiently to allow him

to continue his task.

He had to pull out and rest after forty minutes of it.

He sat as close as he could to the heat-exchangers of the running diesel

engine of the alternator, taking warmth from them and drinking Angel's

strong sweet Thermos coffee. He felt like a fighter between rounds, his

body aching, every muscle strained and chilled by the efforts of

fighting that filthy churned emulsion of sea water and oil, his flanks

and ribs bruised from harsh contact with the submerged machinery. But

after twenty minutes, he stood up again.

Let's go/ he said and resettled the helmet. The hiatus had given him a

chance to replan the operation, thinking his way around the problems he

had found down there; now the work seemed to fall more readily into

place, though he had lost all sense of time alone in the infernal

resounding cavern of steel and he was not sure of the hour, or the phase

of the day, when at last he was ready to carry the messenger out through

the gap.

Send it down/ he ordered into his headset, and the reel of light line

came down, swinging and circling under the glaring floodlights to the

ship's motion and throwing grotesque shadows into the far corners of the

engine room.

The line was of finely plaited Dacron, with enormous strength and

elasticity in relation to its thinness and tightness. One end was

secured on the deck high above, and Nick threaded it into the sheave

blocks carefully, so that it was free to run.

Then he clamped the reel of line on to his belt, riding it on his hip

where it could be protected from snagging when he made the passage of

the gap.

He realized then how close to final exhaustion he was, and he considered

breaking off the work to rest again, but the heightened action of the

sea into the hull warned him against further delay. An hour from now

the task might be impossible, he had to go, and he reached for the

reserve of strength and purpose deep inside himself, surprised to find

that it was still there - for the icy chill of the water seemed to have

penetrated his suit and entered his soul, dulling every sense and

turning his very bones brittle and heavy.

It must be day outside, he realised, for light came through the gash of

steel, pale light further obscured by the filthy muck of mixed oil and

water contained in the hull.

He clung to one of the engine-room stringers, his head seven feet from

the opening, breathing in the slow, even rhythm of the experienced scuba

diver, feeling the ebb and flow through the hull, and trying to find

some pattern in the action of the water. But it seemed entirely random,

a hissing, bubbling ingestion followed by three or four irregular and

weak inflows, then three vicious exhalations of such power that they

would have windmilled a swimming man end over into those daggers of

splayed steel.

He had to choose and ride a middling-sized swell, strong enough to take

him through smoothly, without the dangerous power and turbulence of

those viciously large swells.

I'm ready to go now, David/ he said into his helmet.

Confirm that the work boat is standing by for the pick-up outside the

hull. We are all ready. David Allen's voice was tense and sharp.

Here we go/ said Nick, this was his wave now. There was no point in

waiting longer.

He checked the reel on his belt, ensuring that the line was free to run,

and watched the gash suck in clean green water, filled with tiny bright

bubbles, little diamond chips that flew past his head to warn him of the

lethal speed and power of that flood.

The in flow slowed and stopped as the hull filled to capacity, building

up great pressures of air and water, and then the flow reversed abruptly

as the swell on the far side subsided, and trapped water began to rush

out again.

Nick released his grip on the stringer and instantly the water caught

him. There was no question of being able to swim in that mill-race, all

he could hope for was to keep his arms at his sides and his legs

straight together to give himself a smoother profile, and to steer with

his fins.

The accelerating speed appalled him as he was flung head first at that

murderous steel mouth, he could feel the nylon line streaming out

against his leg, the reel on his belt racing as though a giant marlin

had struck and hooked upon the other end.

The rush of his progress seemed to leave his guts behind him as though

he rode a fairground roller-coaster, and then a flick of the current

turned him, he felt himself beginning to roll - and he fought wildly for

control just as he hit.

He hit with a numbing shock, so his vision starred in flashing colour

and light. The shock was in his shoulders and left arm, and he thought

it might have been severed by that razor steel.

Then he was swirling, end over end, completely disorientated so he did

not know which direction was up. He did not know if he was still inside

Golden Adventurer's hull, and the nylon line was wrapping itself around

his throat and chest, around the precious air tubes and cutting off his

air supply like a stillborn infant strangled by its own umbilical cord.

Again he hit something, this time with the back of his head, and only

the cushioning of his helmet saved his skull from cracking. He flung

out his arms and found the rough irregular shape of ice above him.

Terror wrapped him again, and he screamed soundlessly into his mask, but

suddenly he broke out into light and air, into the loose scum of slush

and rotten ice mixed with bigger, harder chunks, one of which had hit

him.

Above him towered the endless steel cliff of the liner's side and beyond

that, the low bruised wind-sky, and as he struggled to disentangle

himself from the coils of nylon, he realized two things. The first was

that both his arms were still attached to his body, and still

functioning, and the second was that Warlock's work boat was only twenty

feet away and butting itself busily through the brash of rotten broken

ice towards him.

The collision mat looked like a five-ton Airedale terrier curled up to

sleep in the bows of the work boat, just as shaggy and shapeless, and of

the same wiry, furry brown colour.

Nick had shed his helmet and pulled an Arctic cloak and hood over his

bare head and suited torso. He was balanced in the stern of the work

boat as she plunged and rolled and porpoised in the big swells; chunks

of ice crashed against her hull, knocking loose chips off her paintwork,

but she was steel-hulled, wide and sea-kindly. The helmsman knew his

job, working her with calm efficiency to Nick's hand-signals, bringing

her in close through the brash ice, under the tall sheer of Golden

Adventurer's stern.

The thin white nylon line was the only physical contact with the men on

the liner's towering stack of decks, the messenger which would carry

heavier tackle. However it was vulnerable to any jagged piece of

pancake ice, or the fangs of that voracious underwater steel jaw.

Nick paid out the line through his own numbed hands, feeling for the

slightest check or jerk which could mean a snag and a break-off.

With hand-signals, he kept the work boat positioned so that the line ran

cleanly into the pierced hull, around the sheave blocks he had placed

with such heart-breaking labour in the engine room, from there up the

tall ventilation, out of the square opening of the stack and around the

winch, beside which Beauty Baker was supervising the recovery of the

messenger.

The gusts tore at Nick's head so that he had to crouch to shield the

small two-way radio on his chest, and Baker's voice was tinny and thin

in the buffeting boom of wind.

Line running free. Right, we are running the wire now/ Nick told him.

The second line was as thick as a man's index finger, and it was of the

finest Scandinavian steel cable. Nick checked the connection between

nylon and steel cable himself, the nylon messenger was strong enough to

carry the weight of steel, but the connection was the weakest point.

He nodded to the crew, and they let it go over the side; the white nylon

disappeared into the cold green water and now the black steel cable ran

out slowly from the revolving drum.

Nick felt the check as the connection hit the sheave block in the engine

room. He felt his heart jump. If it caught now, they would lose it

all; no man could penetrate that hull again, the sea was now too

vicious. They would lose the tackle, and they would lose Golden

Adventurer, she would break up in the seas that were coming.

Please God, let it run,, Nick whispered in the boom and burst of sea

wind. The drum halted, made a half turn and jammed. somewhere down

there,, the cable had snagged and Nick signalled to the helmsman to take

the work boat in closer, to change the angle of the line into the hull.

He could almost feel the strain along his nerves as the winch took up

the pull, and he could imagine the fibres of the nylon messenger

stretching and creaking.

Let it run! Let it run! prayed Nick, and then Suddenly he saw the drum

begin to revolve again, the cable feeding out smoothly, and streaming

down into the sea.

Nick felt light-hearted, almost dizzy with relief, as he heard Baker's

voice over the VHF, strident with triumph.

Wire secured. Stand by/ Nick told him. We are connecting the two inch

wire now. AgAin the whole laborious, touchy, nerve-scouring Process as

the massive two-inch steel cable was drawn out by its thinner, weaker

forerunner - and it was a further forty vital minutes, with the wind and

sea rising every moment, before Baker shouted, Main cable secured, we

are ready to haul! Negative, I Nick told him urgently. Take the strain

and hold. If the collision mat in the bows hooked and held on the work

boat's gunwale, Baker would pull the bows under and swamp her.

Nick signalled to his crew and the five of them shambled up into the

bows, bulky and clumsy in their electric-yellow oilskins and work boots.

With hand-signals, Nick positioned them around the shaggy head-high pile

of the collision mat before he signalled to the helmsman to throw the

gear in reverse and pull back from Golden Adventurer's side.

The mass of unravelled oakum quivered and shook as the two-inch cable

came up taut and they struggled to heave the whole untidy mass

overboard.

There was nearly five tons of it and the weight would have been

impossible to handle were it not for the reverse pull of the work boat

against the cable. Slowly, they heaved the mat forward and outward, and

the work boat took on a dangerous list under the transfer of weight. She

was down at the bows and canting at an angle of twenty degrees, the

diesel motor screaming angrily and her single propeller threshing

frantically, trying to pull her out from under her cumbersome burden.

The mat slid forward another foot, and snagged on the gunwale, sea water

slopped inboard, ankle-deep around their rubber boots as they strained

and heaved at the reluctant mass of coarse fibre.

Some instinct of danger made Nick look up and out to sea. Warlock was

lying a quarter of a mile farther out in the bay, at the edge of the

ice, and beyond her, Nick saw the rearing shape of a big wave alter the

fine of the horizon.

It was merely a forerunner of the truly big waves that the storm was

running before her, like hounds before the hunter, but it was big enough

to make Warlock throw up her stern sharply, and even then the sea

creamed over the tug's bows and streamed from her scuppers.

it would hit the exposed and hampered work boat in twenty-five seconds,

it would hit her broadside while her bows were held down and anchored by

mat and cable.

When she swamped, the five men who made up her crew would die within

minutes-, pulled down by their bulky clothing, frozen by the icy green

water.

Beauty, I Nick's voice was a scream in the microphone, heave all - pull,

damn you, pull. Almost instantly the cable began to run, drawn in by

the powerful winch on Golden Adventurer's deck; the strain pulled the

work boat down sharply and water cascaded over her gunwale.

Nick seized one of the oaken oars and thrust it under the mat at the

point where it was snagged, and using it as a lever he threw all his

weight upon it.

Lend a hand/ he yelled at the man beside him, and he strained until he

felt his vision darkening and the fibres of M his back-muscles creaking

and popping.

The work boat was swamping, they were almost kneedeep now and the wave

raced down on them. It came with a great silent rush of irresistible

power, lifting the mass of broken ice and tossing it carelessly aside

without a check.

Suddenly, the snag cleared and the whole lumpy massive weight of oakum

slid overboard. The work boat bounded away, relieved of her intolerable

burden, and Nick windmilled frantically with both arms to get the

helmsman to bring her bows round to the wave.

They went up the wave with a gut-swooping rush that threw them down on

to the floorboards of the half-flooded work boat, and then crashed over

the crest.

Behind them the wave slogged into Golden Adventurer's stern, and shot up

it with an explosion of white and furious water that turned to white

driven spray in the wind.

The helmsman already had the work boat pushing heavily through the

pack-ice, back towards the waiting Warlock.

Stop/Nick signalled him. Back up.

Already he was struggling out of his hood and oilskins, as he staggered

back to the stern.

He shouted in the helmsman's face, I'm going down to check/ and he saw

the disbelieving, almost pleading, expression on the man's face.

He wanted to get out of there now, back to the safety of Warlock, but

relentlessly Nick resettled the diving helmet and connected his air

hose.

The collision mat was floating hard against Golden Adventurer's side,

buoyant with trapped air among the mass of wiry fibre.

Nick positioned himself beneath it twenty feet from the maelstrom

created by the gashed steel.

It took him only a few seconds to ensure that the cable was free, and he

blessed Beauty Baker silently for stopping the winch immediately it had

pulled the mat free of the work boat. Now he could direct the final

task.

She's looking good,, he told Baker. But take her up slowly, fifty feet

a minute on the winch. Fifty feet, it is! Baker confirmed.

And slowly the bobbing mat was drawn down below the surface.

Good, keep it at that. It was like pressing a field-dressing into an

open bleeding wound. The outside pressure of water drove it deep into

the gash, while from the inside the two-inch cable plugged it deeper

into place. The wound was staunched almost instantly and Nick finned

down, and swam carefully over it.

The deadly suck and blow of high pressure through the gap was killed

now, and he detected only the lightest movement of water around the

edges of the mat; but the oakum fibres would swell now they were

submerged and, within hours the plug would be watertight.

It's done/ said Nick into his microphone. Hold a twenty-ton pull on the

cable - and you can start your pumps and suck the bitch clean. It was a

measure of his stress and relief and fatigue that Nick called that

beautiful ship a bitch, and he regretted the word as it was spoken.

Nick craved sleep, every nerve, every muscle shrieked for surcease, and

in his bathroom mirror his eyes were inflamed, angry with salt and wind

and cold; the smears of exhaustion that underlined them were as lurid as

the fresh bruises and abrasions that covered his shoulders and thighs

and ribs.

His hands shook in a mild palsy with the need for rest and his legs

could hardly carry him as he forced himself back to Warlock's navigation

bridge.

Congratulations, sir/ said David Allen, and his admiration was

transparent.

How's the glass, David? Nick asked, trying to keep the weariness from

showing.

994 and dropping, sir. Nick looked across at Golden Adventurer. Below

that dingy low sky, she stood like a pier, unmoved by the big swells

that marched on her in endless ranks, and she shrugged aside each burst

of spray, hard aground and heavy with the water in her womb.

However, that water was being flung from her, in solid white sheets.

Baker's big centrifugals were running at full power, and from both her

port and starboard quarters the water poured.

It looked as though the flood gates had been opened on a concrete dam,

so powerful was the rush of expelled water.

The oil and diesel mixed with that discharge formed a sullen, iridescent

slick around her, sullying the ice and the pebble beach on which she

lay. The wind caught the jets from the pump outlets and tore them away

in glistening plumes, like great ostrich feathers of spray.

Chief/ Nick called the ship. What's your discharge rate? We are moving

nigh on five hundred thousand gallons an hour. Call me as soon as she

alters her trim! he said, and then glanced up at the pointer of the

anemometer above the control panel. The wind force was riding eight

now, but he had to blink his stinging swollen eyes to read the scale.

David/ he said, and he could hear the hoarseness in his voice, the flat

dead tone. It will be four hours before she will be light enough to

make an attempt to haul her off, but I want you to put the main

towing-cable on board her and make fast, so we will be ready when she

is., Sir. Use a rocket-line/ said Nick, and then stood dumbly, trying

to think of the other orders he must give, but his brain was blank.

Are you all right, sir? David asked with quick concern, and immediately

Nick felt the prick of annoyance. He had never wanted sympathy in his

life, and he found his voice again. But he stopped the sharp words that

came so quickly to his lips.

You know what to do, David. I won't give you any other advice. He

turned like a drunkard towards his quarters.

Call me when you've done it, or if Baker reports alteration of trim - or

if anything else changes, anything, anything at all, you understand. He

made it to the cabin before his knees buckled and he IV

dropped his terry robe as he toppled backwards on to his bunk.

At 6o south latitude, there runs the only sea-lane that circumnavigates

the entire globe, unbroken by any land mass. This wide girdle of open

water runs south of Cape Horn and Australasia and the Cape of Good Hope,

and it has the fearsome reputation of breeding the wildest weather on

earth. It is the meeting-ground of two vast air masses, the cold

slumping Antarctic air, and the warmer, more buoyant airs of the

sub-tropics. These are flung together by the centrifugal forces

generated by the earth as it revolves on its own axis, and their

movement is further complicated by the enormous torque of the coriolis

force.

As they strike each other, the opposing air masses split into smaller

fragments that retain their individual characteristics. They begin to

revolve upon themselves gigantic whirlpools of tortured air, and as they

advance, so they, gain in strength and power and velocity.

The high-pressure system which had brought that ominously calm and

silken weather to Cape Alarm, had bounced the pressure right up to 103 5

millibars, while the great depression which pursued it so closely and

swiftly had a centre pressure as low as 985 millibars. Such a sharp

contrast meant that the winds along the pressure-gradient were

ferocious.

The depression itself was almost fifteen hundred miles across its

circumference, and it reached up to the high troposphere, thirty

thousand feet above the level of the sea. The mighty winds it contained

reached right off the mum of the Beaufort scale of force twelve, gusting

120 miles an hour and more. They roared unfettered upon a terrible sea,

unchecked by the bulwark of any land mass, 1A

nothing in their path, but the sudden jagged barrier of Cape Alarm.

While Nicholas Berg slept the deathlike sleep of utter exhaustion, and

Beauty Baker tended his machines, driving them to their limits in an

effort to pump Golden Adventurer free of her burden of salt water, the

storm rushed down upon them.

When her knock was unanswered, Samantha stood uncertainly, balancing the

heavy tray against the Warlock's extravagant action as she rode the

rising swells at the entrance to the bay.

Her uncertainty lasted not more than three seconds, for she was a lady

given to swift decisions. She tried the doorlatch and when it turned,

she pushed it open slowly enough to warn anybody on the far side, and

stepped into the Captain's day cabin.

He ordered food/ she justified her intrusion, and closed the door behind

her, glancing swiftly around the empty cabin. It had been furnished in

the high style of the old White Star liners. Real rosewood panelling

and the couch and chairs were in rich brown calf hide, polished and

buttoned, while the deck was carpeted in thick shaggy wool, the colour

of tropical forest leaves.

Samantha placed the tray on the table that ran below the starboard

portholes, and she called softly. There was no reply, and she stepped

to the open doorway into the night cabin.

A white terry robe lay in a heap in the centre of the deck, and she

thought for one disturbing moment that the body on the bed was naked,

but then she saw he wore a thin pair Of white silk boxer shorts.

Captain Berg/ she called again, but softly enough not to disturb him,

and with a completely feminine gesture picked up the robe from the

floor, folded it and dropped it over a chair, moving forward at the same

time until she stood beside his bunk.

She felt a quick flare of concern when she saw the bruises which stood

out so vividly on the smooth pale skin, and concern turned to dismay

when she realized how he lay like a dead man, his legs trailing over the

edge of the bunk and his body twisted awkwardly, one arm thrown back

over his shoulder and his head lolling from side to side as Warlock

rolled.

She reached out quickly and touched his cheek, experiencing a lift of

real relief as she felt the warmth of his flesh and saw his eyelids

quiver at her touch.

Gently she lifted his legs and he rolled easily on to his side, exposing

the sickening abrasion that wrapped itself angrily across back and

shoulder. She touched it with a light exploring fingertip and knew that

it needed attention, but she sensed that rest was what he needed more.

She stood back and for long seconds gave herself over to the pleasure of

looking at him. His body was fined down, he carried no fat on his belly

or flanks; clearly she could see the rack of his ribs below the skin,

and the muscles of his arms and legs were smooth but well-defined, a

body that had been cared for and honed by hard exercise. Yet there was

a certain denseness to it, that thickening of shoulder and neck, and the

distinctive hair patterns of the mature It might not have the grace and

delicacy of the boys she had known, yet it was more powerful than that

of even the strongest of the young men who had until then filled her

world. She thought of one of them whom she had believed she loved. They

had spent two months in Tahiti together on the same field expedition.

She had surfed with him, danced and drunk wine, worked and slept sixty

consecutive days and nights with him; in the same period they had become

engaged to marry, and had argued, and parted, with surprisingly little

regret on her pan - but he had had the most beautiful tanned and

sculptured body she had ever known. Now, looking at the sleeping figure

on the bunk, she knew that even he would not have been able to match

this man in physical determination and strength.

Angel had been right. It was the power that attracted her so strongly.

The powerful, rangy body with the dark coarse hair covering his chest

and exploding in flak bursts in his armpits - this, together with the

power of his presence.

She had never known a man like this, he filled her with a sense of awe.

It was not only the legend that surrounded him, nor the formidable list

of his accomplishments that Angel had recounted for her, nor yet was it

only the physical strength which he had just demonstrated while the

entire crew of Warlock, she among them, had watched and listened avidly

over the VFH relay. She leaned over him again, and she saw that even in

repose, his jawline was hard and uncompromising, and the little creases

and lines and marks that life had chiselled into his face, around the

eyes at the corners of the mouth, heightened the effect of power and

determination, the face of a man who dictated his own terms to life.

She wanted him, Angel was right, oh God, how she wanted him! They said

there was no love at first sight they had to be mad.

She turned away and unfolded the eiderdown from the foot of the bunk,

spreading it over him, and then once again she stooped and gently lifted

the fall of thick dark hair from his forehead, smoothing it back with a

maternally protective gesture.

Although he had slept on while she lifted and covered him, strangely

this lightest of touches brought him to the edge of consciousness and he

sighed and twisted, then whispered hoarsely, Chantelle, is that you?

Samantha recoiled at the bitter sharp pang of jealousy with which

another woman's name stabbed her. She turned away and left him, but in

the day cabin she paused again beside his desk.

There were a few small personal items thrown carelessly on the

leather-bound blotter, a gold money clip holding a mixed sheath of

currency notes, five pounds sterling, fifty US dollars, Deutschmarks and

francs, a gold Rolex Oyster perpetual watch, a gold Dunhill lighter with

a single white diamond set in it, and a billfold of the smoothest finest

calf leather. They described clearly the man who owned them and,

feeling like a thief, she picked up the billfold and opened it.

There were a dozen cards in their little plastic envelopes, American

Express, Diners, Bank American, Carte Blanche, Hertz No. 1, Pan Am VIP

and the rest. But opposite them was a colour photograph. Three people:

a man, Nicholas in a cable-stitch jersey, his face bronzed, his hair

windruffled; a small boy in a yachting jacket with a curly mop of hair

and solemn eyes above a smiling mouth - and a woman. She was probably

one of the most beautiful women Samantha had ever seen, and she closed

the billfold, replaced it carefully, and quietly left the cabin.

David Allen called the Captain's suite for three minutes without an

answer, slapping his open palm on the mahogany chart table with

impatience and staring through the navigation windows at the spectacle

of a world gone mad.

For almost two hours, the wind had blown steadily from the north-west at

a little over thirty knots, and although the big humpy seas still

tumbled into the mouth of the bay, Warlock had ridden them easily, even

connected, as she was, to Golden Adventurer by the main tow-cable.

David had put a messenger over the finer's stern, firing the nylon fine

from a rocket gun, and Baker's men had retrieved the fine and winched

across first the carrier wire and then the main cable itself.

Warlock had let the main cable be drawn out of her by Adventurer's

winches, slowly revolving off the great winch drums in the compartment

under the tug's stern deck, out through the cable ports below the after

navigation bridge where David stood controlling each inch of run and

play with light touches on the controls.

A good man could work that massive cable like a flyfisherman playing a

big salmon in the turbulent water of a mountain torrent, letting it slip

against the clutchplates, or run free, or recover slack, bringing it up

hard and fast under a pull of five hundred tons - or, in dire emergency,

he could hit the shear button, and snip through the flexible steel

fibre, instantaneously relinquishing the tow, possibly saving the tug

itself from being pulled under or being rushed by the vessel it was

towing.

It had taken an hour of delicate work, but now the tow was in place, a

double yoke made fast to Golden Adventurer's main deck bollards, one on

her starboard and one on her port stern quarters.

The yoke was Y-shaped, drooping over the high stern to join at the white

nylon spring, three times the thickness of a man-s thigh and with the

elasticity to absorb sudden shock which might have snapped rigid steel

cable. From the yoke connection, the single main cable looped back to

the tug.

David Allen was lying back a thousand yards from the shore, holding

enough strain on the tow-cable to prevent it sagging to touch and

possibly snag on the unknown bottom. He was holding his station with

gentle play on the pitch and power of the twin screws, and checking his

exact position against the electronic dials which gave him his speed

across the ground in both directions, accurate to within a foot a

minute.

It was all. nicely under control, and every time he glanced up at the

liner, the discharge of water still boiled from her pump outlets.

Half an hour previously, he had been unable to contain his impatience,

for he knew with a seaman's deep instinct what was coming down upon them

out of the dangerous quadrant of the wind. He had called Baker to ask

how the work on the liner was progressing. It had been a mistake.

You've got nothing better to do than call me out of the engine room to

ask about my piles, and the IA Cup final?

I'll tell you when I'm ready, believe me, sonny, I'll call you.

If you are bored, go down and give Angel a kiss, but for God's sake,

leave me alone./ Beauty Baker was working with two of his men in that

filthy, freezing steel box deep down in the liner's stern that housed

the emergency steering-gear. The rudder was right across at full port

lock. Unless he could get power on the steering machinery, she would be

almost unmanageable, once she was under tow, especially if she was

pulled off stern first. It was vital that the big ship was responding

to her helm when Warlock tried to haul her off Baker cursed and cajoled

the greasy machinery, knocking loose a flap of thick white skin from his

knuckles when a spanner slipped, but working on grimly without even

bothering to lift the injury to his mouth to suck away the welling

blood. He let it drop on to the spanner and thicken into a sticky

jelly, swearing softly but viciously as he concentrated all his skills

on the obdurate steel mass of the steering gear. He knew every bit as

well as the First Officer what was coming down upon them.

The wind had dropped to a gentle force four, a moderate steady breeze

that blew for twenty minutes, just long enough for the crests of the

waves to stop breaking over on themselves. Then slowly, it veered north

- and without any further warning, it was upon them.

It came roaring like a ravening beast, lifting the surface of the sea

away in white sheets of spray that looked as though red-hot steel had

been quenched in it, It laid Warlock right over, so that her port rail

went under and she was flung up so harshly on her main cable that her

stern was pulled down sharply, water pouring in through her stern

scuppers.

It took David by surprise, so that she paid off dangerously before he

could slam open the port throttle and throw the starboard screw into

full reverse thrust. As she came up, he hit the call to the Captain's

suite, watching with rising disbelief as the mad world dissolved around

him.

Nick heard the call from far away, it only just penetrated to his

fatigue-drugged brain, and he tried to respond, but it felt as though

his body was crushed under an enormous weight and that his brain was

slow and sluggish as a hibernating reptile.

The buzzer insisted, a tinny, nagging whine and he tried to force his

eyes open, but they would not respond. Then dimly, but deeply, he felt

the wild anguished action of his ship and the tumult that he believed at

first was in his own ears, but was the violent uproar of the storm about

the tug's superstructure.

He forced himself up on one elbow, and his body ached in every joint. He

still could not open his eyes but he groped for the handset.

Captain to the after bridge! He could hear something in David Allen's

voice that forced him to his feet.

When Nick staggered on to the after navigation bridge, the First Officer

turned gratefully to him.

Thank God you've come, sir.

The wind had taken the surface off the sea, had stripped it away,

tearing each wave to a shrieking fog of white spray and mingling it with

the sleet and snow that drove horizontally across -the bay.

Nick glanced once at the dial of the wind anemometer, and then

discounted the reading. The needle was stuck at the top of the scale.

It made no sense, a wind-speed of 120 miles an hour was too much to

accept, the instrument had been damaged by the initial gusts of this

wind, and he refused to believe it; to do so now would be to admit

disaster, for nobody could salvage an ocean-going liner in wind

velocities right off the Beaufort scale.

Warlock stood on her tail, like a performing dolphin begging for a meal,

as the cable brought her up short and the bridge deck became a vertical

cliff down which Nick was hurled. He crashed into the control panel and

clung for purchase to the foul-weather rail.

We'll have to shear the cable and stand out to sea. David Allen's voice

was pitched too high and too loud, even for the tumult of the wind and

the storm.

There were men on board Golden Adventurer, Baker and sixteen others,

Nick thought swiftly, and even her twin anchors could not be trusted to

hold in this.

Nick clung to the rail and peered out into the storm.

Frozen spray and sleet and impacted snow drove on the wind, coming in

with the force of buckshot fired at point blank range, cracking into the

armoured glass of the bridge and building up in thick clots and lumps

that defeated the efforts of the spinning clear vision panels.

He looked across a thousand yards and the hull of the liner was just

visible, a denser area in the howling, swirling, white wilderness.

Baker? he asked into the hand microphone. What is your position? The

wind's got her, she's slewing. The starboard anchor is dragging. And

then, while Nick thought swiftly, You'll not be able to take us off in

this. It was a flat statement, an acceptance of the fact that the

destinies of Baker and his sixteen men were inexorably linked to that of

the doomed ship.

No/ Nick agreed. We won't be able to get you off. To approach the

stricken ship was certain disaster for all of them.

Shear the cable and stand off/ Baker advised. We'll try to get ashore

as she breaks up. Then, with a hangman's chuckle, he went on, 'Just

don't forget to come and fetch us when the weather moderates - that is

if there is anybody to fetch., Abruptly Nick's anger came to the surface

through the layers of fatigue, anger at the knowledge that all he had

risked and suffered was now to be in vain, that he was to lose Golden

Adventurer, and probably with her sixteen men, one of whom had become a

friend.

Are you ready to heave on the anchor winches? he asked. We are going

to pull the bitch off. Jesus! said Baker. She's still half flooded We

will have a lash at it, cobber/ said Nick quietly.

The steering-gear is locked, you won't be able to control her. You'll

lose Warlock as well as - but Nicholas cut Baker short.

Listen, you stupid Queensland sheep-shagger, get on to those winches. As

he said it, Golden Adventurer disappeared, her bulk blotted out

completely by the solid, white curtains of the Engine room/ Nick spoke

crisply to the Second Engineer. Disengage the override, and give me

direct control of both power and pitch. Control transferred to bridge,

sir/ the Engineer confirmed, and Nick touched the shining

stainless-steel levers with fingers as sensitive as those of a concert

pianist.

Warlock's response was instantaneous. She pivoted, shrugging aside a

green slithering burst of water which came in over her shoulder and

thundered down the side of her superstructure.

Anchor winches manned. Beauty Baker's tone was almost casual.

Stand by, said Nick, and felt his way through that white inferno. It

was impossible to maintain visual reference, the entire world was white

and swirling, even the surface of the sea was gone in torn streamers of

white; the very pull of gravity, that should have defined even a simple

up or down, was confused by the violent pitch and roll of the deck.

Nick felt his exhausted brain begin to lurch dizzily in the first

attacks of vertigo. Swiftly he switched his attention to the big

compass and the heading indicator.

David/ he said, take the wheel. He wanted somebody swift and bright at

the helm now.

Warlock plunged suddenly, so viciously that Nick's bruised ribs were

brought in brutal contact with the edge of the control console. He

grunted involuntarily with the pain. Warlock was feeling her cable, she

had come up hard.

Starboard ten/ said Nick to David, bringing her bows up into that

hideous wind.

Chief/ he spoke into the microphone, his voice still ragged with the

pain in his chest. Haul starboard winch, full power. Full power

starboard. Nick slid pitch control to fully fine, and then slowly

nudged open the throttles, bringing in twenty-two thousand horse-power.

Held by her tail, driven by the great wind, and tortured by the sea,

lashed by her own enormous propellers, Warlock went berserk. She

corkscrewed and porpoised to her very limits, every frame in her hull

shook with the vibration of all her screws as her propellers burst out

of the surface and spun wildly in the air.

Nick had to clench his jaws as the vibration threatened to crack his

teeth, and when he glanced across at the forward and lateral

speed-indicators, he saw that David Allen's face was icy white and set

like that of a corpse.

Warlock was slewing down on the wind, describing a slow left-hand circle

at the limit of the cable as the engine torque and the wind took her

around.

Starboard twenty/ Nick snapped, correcting the turn, and despite the

rigour of his features, David Allen's response was instantaneous.

Twenty degrees of starboard wheel on, sir!

Nick saw the lateral drift stop on the ground speedindicator, and then

with a wild lurch of elation he saw the forward speed-indicator flicked

into green. Its electronic digital read out, changing swiftly - they

were moving forward at 150 feet a minute.

We are moving her/ Nick cried aloud, and he snatched up the microphone.

Full power both winches. Still full and holding, answered Baker

immediately.

And Nick glanced back at the forward speed across the ground, 150, to 75

feet a minute, Warlock's forward . 3etus slowed, and Nick realized with

a slide of dismay that it was merely the elasticity of the nylon spring

that had given them that reading. The spring was stretching out to its

limit.

For two or three seconds, the dial recorded a zero rate of speed.

Warlock was standing still, the cable drawn out to the full limit of her

strength, then abruptly the dial flicked into vivid red; they were gong

backwards, as the nylon spring exerted pressures beyond that of the twin

diesels and the big bronze screws - Warlock was being dragged back

towards that dreadful shore.

For another five minutes, Nick kept both clenched fists on the control

levers, pressing them with all his strength to the limit of their

travel, sending the great engines shrieking, driving the needles up

around the dials, deep into the red never exceed sectors.

He felt tears of anger and frustration scalding his swollen eyelids, and

the ship shuddered and shook and screamed under him, her torment

transmitted through the soles of his feet and the palms of his hands.

Warlock was held down by cable and power, so she could not rise to meet

the -seas that came out of the whiteness. They tumbled aboard her,

piling up on each other, so she burrowed deeper and more dangerously.

For God's sake, sir/ David Allen was no longer able to contain himself.

His eyes looked huge in his bone-white face. You'll drive her clean

under. Baker/ Nick ignored his Mate, Are you gaining? No recovery

either winch, Beauty told him. She is not moving. Nick pulled back the

stainless steel levers, the needles sank swiftly back around their

dials, and Warlock reacted gratefully, shaking herself free of the piled

waters.

You'll have to shear the tow. Baker's disembodied voice . was muted by

the clamour of the storm. We'll take our chances, sport. Beside him,

David Allen reached for the red-painted steel box that housed the shear

button. It was protected by the box from accidental usage; David Allen

opened the box and looked expectantly, almost pleadingly at Nick.

Belay that! I Nick snarled at him, and then to Baker, I'm shortening

tow. Be ready to haul again, when I am in position. David Allen stared

at him, his right hand still on the open lid of the red box.

Close that bloody thing/ Nick said, and turned to the main cable

controls. He moved the green lever to reverse, and felt the vibration

in the deck as below him in the main cable room the big drums began to

revolve, drawing the thick ice-encrusted cable up over Warlock's stern.

Fighting every inch of the way like a wild horse on a head halter,

Warlock was drawn in cautiously by her own winches , and the officers

watched in mounting horror as out of the white terror of the blizzard

emerged the mountainous ice-covered bulk of Golden Adventurer.

She was so close that the main cable no longer dipped below the surface

of the sea, but ran directly from the liner's stern to the tug's massive

fairleads on her stern quarter.

Now we can see what we are doing/ Nick told them grimly. He could see

now that much of Warlock's power had been wasted by not exerting a pull

on exactly the same plane as Golden Adventurer's keel. He had been

disoriented in the white-out of the blizzard, and had allowed Warlock to

pull at an angle. It would not happen now.

Chief/ he said. Pull, pull all, pull until she bursts her guts! And

again he slid the throttle handles fully home.

Warlock flung up against the elastic yoke, and Nick saw the water spurt

from the woven fibres and turn instantly to ice crystals as it was

whipped away on the shrieking She's not moving, sir/David cried beside

him.

No recovery either winch/ Baker confirmed almost immediately. 'She's

solid! Too much water still in her! said David, and Nick turned on him

as though to strike him to the deck.

Give me the wheel/he said, his voice cracking with his anger and

frustration.

With both engines boiling the sea to white foam, and roaring like dying

bulls, Nick swung the wheel to full port lock.

Wildly Warlock dug her shoulder in, water pouring on board her as she

rolled, instantly Nick spun the wheel to full starboard lock and she

lurched against the tow, throwing an extra ton of pressure on to it.

Even above the storm, they heard Golden Adventurer groan, the steel of

her hull protesting at the weight of water in her and the intolerable

pressure of the anchor winches and Warlock's tow cable.

The groan became a crackling hiss as the pebble bottom gave and moved

under her.

Christ, she's coming! shrieked Baker, and Nick swung her to full port

lock again, swinging Warlock into a deep trough between waves, then a

solid ridge of steaming water buried her, and Nick was not certain she

could survive that press of furious sea. It came green and slick over

the superstructure and she shuddered wearily, gone slow and unwieldy.

Then she lifted her bows and, like a spaniel, shook herself free,

becoming again quick and light.

Pull, my darling, pull/Nick pleaded with her.

With a slow reluctant rumble, Golden Adventurer's hull began to slide

over the holding, clinging bottom.

Both winches recovering/ Baker howled gleefully, and Warlock's ground

speed-indicator flicked into the green, its little angular figures

changing in twinkling electronic progression as Warlock gathered way.

They all saw Golden Adventurer's stern swinging to meet the next great

ridge of water as it burst around her.

1: She was floating, and for moments Nick was paralysed by the wonder of

seeing that great and beautiful ship come to life again, become a

living, vital sea creature as she took the seas and rose to meet them.

We've done it, Christ, we've done itV howled Baker, but it was too soon

for self-congratulation. As Golden Adventurer came free of the ground

and gathered sternway under Warlock's tow, so her rudder bit and swung

her tall stern across the wind.

She swung, exposing the enormous windage of her starboard side to the

full force of the storm. It was like setting a main -sail, and the wind

took her down swiftly on the rocky headland with its sentinel columns

that guarded the entrance to the bay.

Nick's first instinct was to try and hold her off, to oppose the force

of the wind directly and he flung Warlock into the task, relying on her

great diesels and the two anchors to keep the liner from going ashore

again - but the wind toyed with them, it ripped the anchors out of the

pebble bottom and Warlock was drawn stern first through the water,

straight down on the jagged rock of the headland.

Chief, get those anchors up/ Nick snapped into the microphone. 'They'll

never hold in this. Twenty years earlier, bathing off a lonely beach in

the Seychelles, Nick had been caught out of his depth by one of those

killer currents that flow around the headlands of oceanic islands, and

it had sped him out into the open sea so that within minutes the

silhouette of the land was low and indistinct on his watery horizon. He

had fought that current, swimming directly against it, and it had nearly

killed him. Only in the last stages of exhaustion had he begun to

think, and instead of battling it, he had ridden the current, angling

slowly across it, using its impetus rather than opposing it.

The lesson he had learned that day was well remembered, and as he

watched Baker bring Golden Adventurer's dripping anchors out of the wild

water he was driving Warlock hard, bringing her around on her cable so

the wind was no longer in her teeth, but over her stern quarter.

Now the wind and Warlock's screws were no longer opposed, but Warlock

was pulling two points off the wind, as fine a course as Nick could

judge barely to clear the most seaward of the rocky sentinels; now the

liner's locked rudder was holding her steady into the wind - but

opposing Warlock's attempt to angle her away from the land.

It was a problem of simple vectors of force, that Nick tried to work out

in his head and prove in physical terms, as he delicately judged the

angle of his tow and the direction of the wind, balancing them against

the tremendous leverage of the liner's locked rudder, the rudder which

was dragging her suicidally down upon the land.

Grimly, he stared ahead to where the black rock cliffs were still hidden

in the white nothingness. They were invisible, but their presence was

recorded on the cluttered screen of the radar repeater. With both wind

and engines driving them, their speed was too high, and if Golden

Adventurer went on to the cliffs like this, her hull would shatter like

a water melon hurled against a brick wall.

It was another five minutes before Nick was absolutely certain they

would not make it. They were only two miles off the cliffs now, he

glanced again at the radar screen, and they would have to drag Golden

Adventurer at least half a mile across the wind to clear the land. They

just were not going to make it.

Helplessly, Nick stood and peered into the storm, waiting for the first

glimpse of black rock through the swirling eddies of snow and frozen

spray, and he had never felt more unmanned tired and in his entire life

as he moved to the shear button ready to cut Golden Adventurer loose and

let her go to her doom.

His officers were silent and tense around him, while under his feet

Warlock shuddered and buffeted wildly, driven to her mortal limits by

the sea and her own engines, but still the land sucked at them.

Look! David Allen shouted suddenly, and Nick spun to the urgency in his

voice.

For a moment he did not understand what was happening. He knew only

that the shape of Golden Adventurer's stern was altered subtly.

The rudder/ shouted David Allen again. And Nick saw it revolving slowly

on its stock as the ship lifted on another big sea.

Almost immediately, he felt Warlock making offing from under that lee

shore, and he swung her up another point into the wind, Golden

Adventurer answering her tow with a more docile air, and still the

rudder revolved slowly.

I've got power on the emergency steering gear now! said Baker.

Rudder amidships, Nick ordered.

Amidships it is/Baker repeated, and now he was pulling her out stern

first, almost at right angles across the wind.

Through the white inferno appeared the dim snow-blurred outline of the

rock sentinels, and the sea broke upon them like the thunder of the

heavens.

God, they are close/ whispered David Allen. So close that they could

feel the backlash of the gale as it rebounded from the tall rock walls,

moderating the tremendous force that was bearing them down - moderating

just enough to allow them to slide past the three hungry rocks, and

before them lay three thousand miles of wild and tumultuous water, all

of it open sea room.

We made it. This time we really made it! said Baker, as though he did

not believe it was true, and Nick pulled back the throttle controls

taking the intolerable strain off her engines before they tore

themselves to pieces.

Anchors and all/ Nick replied. It was a point of honour to retrieve

even the anchors. They had taken her off clean and intact - anchors and

all.

Chief, he said, instead of sitting there hugging yourself, how about

pumping her full of Tannerax? The anti-corrosive chemical would save

her engines and much of her vital equipment from further sea-water

damage, adding enormously to her salvaged value.

You just never let up, do you? Baker answered accusingly.

Don't you believe it/said Nick, he felt stupid and frivolous with

exhaustion and triumph. Even the storm that still roared about them

seemed to have lost its murderous intensity. Right now I'm going down

to my bunk to sleep for twelve hours - and I'll kill anybody who tries

to wake me!

He hung the mike on its bracket and put his hand on David Allen's

shoulder. He squeezed once, and said: You did well - you all did very

well. Now take her, Number One, and look after her. Then he stumbled

from the bridge.

it was eight days before they saw the land again. They rode out the

storm in the open sea, eight days of unrelenting tension and

heart-breaking labour.

The first task was to move the tow-cable to Golden Adventurer's bows. in

that sea, the transfer took almost 24 hours, and three abortive attempts

before they had her head-on to the wind. Now she rode more easily, and

Warlock had merely to hang on like a drogue, using full power only when

one of the big icebergs came within dangerous range, and it was

necessary to draw her off.

However, the tension was always there and Nick spent most of those days

on the bridge, watchful and worried, nagged by the fear that the plug in

the gashed hull would not hold. Baker used timbersiroin the ship's

store to shore up the temporary patch, but he could not put steel in

place while Golden Adventurer plunged and rolled in the heavy seas, and

Nick could not go aboard to check and supervise the work.

Slowly, the great wheel of low pressure revolved over them, the winds

changed direction, backing steadily into the west, as the epicentre

matched on down the sea lane towards Australasia - and at last it had

passed.

Now Warlock could work up towing speed. Even in those towering glassy

swells of black water that the storm had left them as a legacy, she was

able to make four knots.

Then one clear and windy morning under a cold yellow sun, she brought

Golden Adventurer into the sheltered waters of Shackleton Bay. It was

like a diminutive guide dog leading a blinded colossus.

As the two ships came up into the still waters under the sheltering arm

of the bay, the survivors came down from their encampment to the water's

edge, lining the steep black pebble beach, and their cheers and shouts

of welcome and relief carried thinly on the wind to the officers on

Warlock's bridge.

Even before the liner's twin anchors splashed into the clear green

water, Captain Reily's boat was puttering out to Warlock, and when he

came aboard, his eyes were haunted by the hardship and difficulties of

these last days, by the disaster of a lot command and the lives that had

been ended with it. But when he shook hands with Nick, his grasp was

firm.

My thanks and congratulations, sir! He had known Nicholas Berg as

Chairman of Christy Marine, and, as no other, he was aware of the

magnitude of this most recent accomplishment. His respect was apparent.

Quite good to see you again/ Nick told him. Naturally you have access

to my ship's communications to report to your owners.

immediately he turned back to the task of manoeuvring the "lock

alongside, so that the steel plate could be swung up from her salvage

holds to the liner's deck; it was another hour before Captain Reilly

emerged from the radio room.

Can I offer you a drink, Captain? Nick led him to his day cabin, and

began with tact to deal with the hundred details which had to be settled

between them. It was a delicate situation, for Reilly was no longer

Master of his own ship. Command had passed to Nicholas as salvage

master.

The accommodation aboard Golden Adventurer is still quite serviceable,

and, I imagine, a great deal warmer and more comfortable than that

occupied by your passengers at present -'Nick made it easier for him

while never for a moment letting him lose sight of his command position,

and Reilly responded gratefully.

Within half an hour, they had made all the necessary arrangements to

transfer the survivors aboard the liner.

Levoisin on La Mouette had been able to take only one hundred and twenty

supernumeraries on board his little tug. The oldest and weakest of them

had gone and Christy Marine was negotiating for a charter from Cape Town

to Shackleton Bay to take off the rest of them. Now that charter was

unnecessary, but the cost of it would form part of Nick's claim for

salvage award.

I won't take more of your time. Reilly drained his glass and stood. You

have much to do. There were another four days and nights of hard work.

Nick went aboard Golden Adventurer and saw the cavernous engine room lit

by the eye-scorching blue glare of the electric welding flames, as Baker

placed his steel over the wound and welded it into place. Even then,

neither he nor Nick was satisfied until the new patches had been shored

and stiffened with baulks of heavy timber. There was a hard passage

through the roaring forties ahead of them, and until they had Golden

Adventurer safely moored. in Cape Town docks, the salvage was complete.

They sat side by side among the greasy machinery and the stink of the

anti-corrosives, and drank steaming Thermos coffee laced with Bundaberg

rum.

We get this beauty into Duncan Docks - and you are going to be a rich

man, Nick said.

I've been rich before. With me it never lasts long - and it's always a

relief when I've spent the stuff. Beauty gargled the rum and coffee

appreciatively, before he went on, shrewdly. So you don't have to worry

about losing the best goddamned engineer afloat. Nick laughed with

delight. Baker had read him accurately. He did not want to lose him.

With this Nick left him and went to see to the trim of the liner,

studying her carefully and using the experience of the last days to

determine her best points of tow, before giving his orders to David

Allen to raise her slightly by the head.

Then there was the transfer from the liner's bunkers of sufficient

bunker oil to top up Warlock's own tanks against the long tow ahead, and

Bach Wackie in Bermuda kept the telex clattering with relays from

underwriters and Lloyd's, with the first tentative advances from Christy

Marine; already Duncan Alexander was trying out the angles, manoeuvring

for a liberal settlement of Nick's claims, without, as he put it, the

expense of the arbitration court.

Tell him I'm going to roast him/ Nick answered with grim relish. 'Remind

him that as Chairman of Christy Marine I advised against underwriting

our own bottoms and now I'm going to rub his nose in it. The days and

nights blurred together, the illusion made complete by the imbalance of

time down here in the high latitudes, so that Nick could often believe

neither his senses nor his watch when he had been working eighteen hours

straight and yet the sun still burned, and his watch told him it was

three o'clock in the morning.

Then again, it did not seem part of reality when his senior officers,

gathered around the mahogany table in his day cabin, reported that the

work was completed - the repairs and preparation, the loading of fuel,

the embarkation of passengers and the hundred other details had all been

attended to, and Warlock was ready to drag her massive charge out into

the unpredictable sea, thousands of miles to the southernmost tip of

Africa.

Nick passed the cheroot-box around the circle and while the blue smoke

clouded the cabin, he allowed them all a few minutes to luxuriate in the

feeling of work done, and done well.

We'll rest the ship's company for twenty-four hours/he announced in a

rush of generosity. And take in tow at 0800 hours Monday. I'm hoping

for a two speed of six knots - twenty-one days to Cape Town, gentlemen.

When they rose to leave, David Allen lingered selfconsciously. The

wardroom is arranging a little Christmas celebration tonight, sir, and

we would like you to be our guest. The wardroom was the junior

officers, club from which, traditionally, the Master was excluded. He

could enter the small panelled cabin only as an invited guest, but there

was no doubt at all about the genuine warmth of the welcome they gave

him. Even the Trog was there. They stood and applauded him when he

entered, and it was clear that most of them had made an early start on

the gin. David Allen made a speech which he read haltingly from a scrap

of paper which he tried to conceal in the palm of one hand.

It was a speech full of hyperbole, cliches and superlatives, and he was

clearly mightily relieved once it was over.

Then Angel brought in a cake he had baked for the occasion. It was iced

in the shape of Golden Adventurer, a minor work of art, with the figures

121/2% picked out in gold on its hull, and they applauded him. That

121/2% had significance to set them all grinning and exclaiming.

Then they called on Nick to speak, and his style was relaxed and easy.

He had them hooting with glee within minutes - a mere mention of the

prize money that would be due to them once they brought Golden

Adventurer into Cape Town had them in ecstasy.

The girl was wedged into a corner, almost swallowed in the knot of young

officers who found it necessary to press as closely around her as was

possible without actually smothering her.

She laughed with a clear unaffected exuberance, her voice ringing high

above the growl of masculine mirth, so that Nick found it difficult not

to keep looking across at her.

She wore a dress of green clinging material, and Nick wondered where it

had come from, until he remembered that Golden Adventurer's passenger

accommodation was intact and that earlier that morning, he had noticed

the girl standing beside David Allen in the stern of the work boat as it

returned from the liner, with a large suitcase at her feet. She had

been to fetch her gear and she probably should have stayed aboard the

liner. Nick was pleased she had not.

Nick finished his little speech, having mentioned every one of his

officers by name and given to each the praise they deserved, and David

Allen pressed another large whisky into his one hand and an inelegant

wedge of cake into the other, and then left hurriedly to join the tight

circle around the girl. It opened reluctantly, yielding to his

seniority and Nick found himself almost deserted.

He watched with indulgence the open competition for her attention.

She was shorter than any of them, so Nick saw only the top of that

magnificent mane of sun-streaked hair, hair the colour of precious

metal. that shone as she nodded and tilted her head, catching the

overhead lights.

Beauty Baker was on one side of her, dressed in a readymade suit of

shiny imitation sharkskin that made a startling contrast to his plaid

shirt and acid-yellow tie; the trousers of the suit needed hoisting

every few minutes and his spectacles glittered lustfully as he hung over

the girl.

David Allen was close on her other side, blushing pinkly every time she

turned to speak to him, plying her with cake and liquor - and Nick found

his indulgence turning to irritation.

He was irritated by the presence of a tongue-tied fourth officer who had

clearly been delegated to entertain him, and was completely awed by the

responsibility. He was irritated by the antics of his senior officers.

They were behaving like a troupe of performing seals in their

competition for the girl's attention.

For a few moments, the tight circle around her opened, and Nick was left

with a few vivid impressions - The green of her dress matched exactly

the brilliant sparkling green of her eyes. Her teeth were very white,

and her tongue as pink as a cat's when she laughed. She was not the

child he had imagined from their earlier encounters; with colour touched

to her lips and pearls at her throat, he realized she was in her

twenties, early twenties perhaps, but a full woman, nevertheless.

She looked across the wardroom and their eyes met. The laughter stilled

on her lips, and she returned his gaze. It was a solemn enigmatic gaze,

and he found himself once again regretting his previous rudeness to her.

He dropped his gaze from hers and saw now that under the clinging green

material, her body was slim and beautifully formed, with a lithe

athletic grace. He remembered vividly that one nude glimpse he had been

given.

Although the green dress was high-necked, he saw that her breasts were

large and pointed, and that they were not trussed by any undergarments;

the young shapely flesh was as strikingly arresting as if it had been

naked.

It made him angry to see her body displayed in this manner. It did not

matter that every young girl in the streets of New York or London went

so uncorseted, here it made him angry to see her do the same, and he

looked back into her eyes. Something charged there, a challenge

perhaps, his own anger reflected? He was not sure. She tilted her head

slightly, now it was invitation - or was it?

He had known and handled easily so many, many women.

Yet this one left him with a feeling of uncertainty, perhaps it was

merely her youth, or was it some special quality she possessed? Nicholas

Berg was uncertain and he did not relish the feeling.

David Allen hurried to her with another offering, and cut off the gaze

that passed between them, and Nick found himself staring at the Chief

Officer's slim, boyish back, and listening to the girl's laughter again,

sweet and high.

But somehow it seemed to be directed tauntingly at Nick, and he said to

the young officer beside him, Please ask Mr. Allen for a moment of his

time. Patently relieved the officer went to fetch him.

Thank you for your hospitality, David/said Nick, when he came.

You aren't going yet, sir? Nick took a small sadistic pleasure in the

Mate's obvious dismay.

He sat at the desk in his day cabin and tried to concentrate.

It was the first opportunity he had had to consider the paperwork that

awaited him. The muted sounds of revelry from the deck below distracted

him, and he found himself listening for the sounds of her laughter while

he should have been composing his submissions to his London attorneys,

which would be taken to the arbitrators of Lloyd's, a document and

record of vital importance, the whole basis of his claim against Golden

Adventurer's underwriters. And yet he could not concentrate He swung

his chair away from the desk and began to pace the thick,

sound-deadening carpet, stopping once to listen again as he heard the

girl's voice calling gaily, the words unintelligible, but the tone

unmistakable. They were dancing, or playing some raucous game which

consisted of a great deal of bumping and thumping and shrieks of

laughter.

He began to pace again, and suddenly Nick realized he was lonely. The

thought stopped him dead again. He was lonely, and completely alone. It

was a disturbing realization, especially for a man who had travelled

much of life's journey as a loner. Before it had never troubled him,

but now he felt desperately the need for somebody to share his triumph.

Triumph it was, of course. Against the most improbable odds he had

snatched spectacular victory, and he crossed slowly to the cabin

portholes and looked across the darkened bay to where Golden Adventurer

lay at anchor, all her lights burning, a gay and festive air about her.

He had been knocked off his perch at the top of the tree, deprived of a

life's work, a wife and a son - yet it had taken him only a few short

months to clamber back to the top.

With this simple operation, he had transformed Ocean Salvage from a

dangerously insecure venture, a tottering cash-starved, problem-hounded

long chance, into something of real value. He was off and running again

now, with a place to go and the means of getting there. Then why did it

suddenly seem of so little worth? He toyed with the idea of returning

to the revelry in the wardroom, and grimaced as he imagined the dismay

of his officers at the Master's inhibiting intrusion.

He turned away from the porthole and poured whisky into a glass, lit a

cheroot and dropped into the chair. The whisky tasted like toothpaste

and the cheroot was bitter.

He left the glass on his desk and stubbed the cheroot before he went

through on to the navigation bridge.

The night lights were so dim after his brightly lit cabin that he did

not notice Graham, the Third Officer, until his eyes adjusted to the

ruby glow.

Good evening, Mr. Graham. He moved to the chart table and checked the

log. Graham was hovering anxiously, and Nick searched for something to

say.

Missing the party? he asked at last.

Sir. It was not a promising conversational opening, and despite his

loneliness of a few minutes previously, Nick suddenly wanted to be alone

again.

I will stand the rest of your watch. Go off and enjoy yourself. The

Third Officer gawped at him.

You've got three seconds before I change my mind, That's jolly decent of

you, sir/ called Graham over his shoulder as he fled.

The party in the wardroom had by now degenerated into open competition

for Samantha's attention and approbation.

David Allen, wearing a lampshade on his head and, for some unaccountable

reason, with his right hand thrust into his jacket in a Napoleonic

gesture, was standing on the wardroom bar counter and declaiming Henry's

speech before Agincourt, glossing over the Passages which he had

forgotten with a Idurn-de-durn'. However, when Tim Graham entered, he

became immediately the First Officer.

He removed the lampshade and inquired frostily.

Mr. Graham, am I correct in believing that you are officer of the watch?

Your station at this moment is on the bridge!

The- old man came and offered to stand my watch/ said Tim Graham.

Good Lord! David replaced his lampshade, and poured a large gin for his

Third Officer. "The old bastard must have come over all soft suddenly.

Beauty Baker, who was hanging off the wall like a gibbon ape, dropped to

his feet and drew himself up with rather unsteady dignity, hitched his

trousers and announced ominously, if anybody calls the old bastard a

bastard, I will personally kick his teeth down his throat. He swept the

wardroom with an eye that was belligerent and truculent, until it halted

on Samantha. Immediately it softened. That one doesn't count, Sammy!

he said.

Of course not, Samantha agreed. You can start again. Beauty returned

to the starting point of the obstacle course, fortified himself with a

draught of rum, pushed up his spectacles with a thumb and spat on his

palms.

One to get ready, two to get steady - and three to be off! sang out

Samantha, and clicked the stopwatch. Beauty Baker swung dizzily from

the roof, clawing his way around the wardroom without touching the deck,

cheered on by the entire company.

Eight point six seconds! Samantha clicked the watch, as he ended up on

the bar counter, the finishing post. A new world record., A drink for

the new world champion- I'm next, time me, Sammy!

They were like schoolboys. Hey, watch me, Sammy! But after another ten

minutes, she handed the stopwatch to Tim Graham, who as a late arrival

was still sober.

I'll be back! she lied, picked up a plate with a large untouched hunk

of Angel's cake upon it and was gone before any of them realized it was

happening.

Nick Berg was working over the chart-table, so intent that he was not

aware of her for many seconds. In the dramatic lighting of the single

overhead lamp, the strength of his features was emphasized. She saw the

hard line of his jawbone, the heavy brow and the alert widely spaced set

of his eyes. His nose was large and slightly hooked, like that of a

plains Indian or a desert Bedouin, and there were lines at the corners

of his mouth and around his eyes that were picked out in dark shadow. In

his complete absorption with the charts and Admiralty Pilot, he had

relaxed his mouth from its usual severe line. She saw now that the lips

were full without being fleshy, and there was a certain sensitivity and

voluptuousness there that she had not noticed before.

She stood quietly, enchanted with him, until he looked up suddenly,

catching the rapt expression upon her face.

She tried not to appear flustered, but even in her own ears her voice

was breathless.

I'm sorry to disturb you. I brought some cake for Timmy Graham. I sent

him below to join the party. Oh, I didn't notice him. I thought he was

here. She made no move to leave, holding the plate in one hand, and

they were silent a moment longer.

I don't suppose I could interest you in a slice? It's going begging.

Share it/he suggested, and she came to the chart-table.

owe you an apology/ he said, and was immediately aware of the harshness

in his own voice. He hated to apologize, and she sensed it.

I picked a bad moment/ she said, and broke off a piece of the cake. But

this seems a better time. Thank you again, an( I'm sorry for all the

trouble I caused. I understand now that it nearly cost you the Golden

Adventurer. They both turned to look out of the big armoured glass

windows to where she lay.

She is beautiful, isn't she? said Nick, and his voice had lost its

edge.

Yes, she's beautiful/ Samantha agreed, and suddenly they were very close

in the intimate ruddy glow of the night lights.

He began to talk, stiffly and self-consciously at first, but she drew

him on, and with secret joy, she sensed him warming and relaxing. Only

then did she begin to put her own ideas forward.

Nick was surprised and a little disconcerted at the depth of her view,

and at her easy coherent expression of ideas, for he was still very much

aware of her youth. He had expected the giddiness and the giggle, the

shalowness an uninformed self-interest of immaturity, but it was not

there, and suddenly the difference in their ages was of no importance.

They were very close in the night, touching only with their minds, but

becoming each minute so much more closely involved in their ideas that

time had no significance.

They spoke about the sea, for they were both creatures of that element

and as they discovered this, so their mutual delight in each other grew.

From below came the faint unmelodious strains of Beauty Baker leading

the ship's officers in a chorus of:

The working class can kiss my arse I've got my. 12'12% at last. And at

another stage in the evening, a very worried Tim Graham appeared on the

bridge and blurted out, Captain, sir, Doctor Silver is missing. She's

not in her cabin and we have searched - He saw her then, sitting in the

Captain's chair and his worry turned to consternation.

Oh, I see. We didn't know - I mean we didn't expect - I'm sorry, sir.

Excuse me, sir. Goodnight, sir! And again he fled the bridge.

Doctor? Nick asked.

I'm afraid so/ she smiled, and then went on to talk about the

university, explaining her research project, and the other work she had

in mind. Nicholas listened silently, for like all highly competitive

and successful men, he respected achievement and ambition.

The chasm that he imagined existed between them shrank rapidly, so that

it was an intrusion when the eight to-twelve watch ended, and the relief

brought other human presence to the bridge, shattering the fragile mood

they had created around themselves, and denying them further excuse for

remaining together.

Goodnight, Captain Berg/ she said.

Goodnight, Doctor Silver/ he answered reluctantly.

Until that night, he had not even known her name, and there was so much

more he wanted to know now, but she was gone from the bridge; as he

entered his own suite, Nick's earlier loneliness returned, but with even

more poignancy.

During the long day of getting Golden Adventurer under tow, the hours of

trim and accommodation to the sea, until she was following meekly

settling down to the long journey ahead, Nick thought of the girl at

unlikely moments; but when he changed his usual routine and dined in the

saloon rather than his own cabin, she was surrounded by a solidly

attentive phalanx of young men, and, with a small shock of self-honesty,

Nick realized that he was actually jealous of them. Twice during the

meal, he had to suppress the sharp jibes that came to his lips, and

would have plunged the unfortunate recipient into uncomprehending

confusion.

Nick ate no desert and took coffee alone in his day cabin.

He might have relished Beauty Baker's company, but the Australian was

aboard Golden Adventurer, working on her main engines. Then, despite the

tensions and endeavours of the day, his bunk had no attractions for him.

He glanced at the clock on the panelled bulkhead above his desk and saw

that it was a few minutes after eight o'clock.

On impulse he went through to the navigation bridge, and Tim Graham

leapt guiltily to his feet. He had been sitting in the Master's chair,

a liberty which deserved at the least a sharp reprimand, but Nick

pretended not to notice and made a slow round of the bridge, checking

every detail from the cable tensions of the tow and power settings of

Warlock's engines, to the riding lights on both ships and the last log

entry.

Mr. Graham/ he said, and the young officer stiffened to attention like

the victim before a firing squad, I will stand this watch - you may go

and get some dinner. The Third Officer was so thunderstruck that he

needed a large gin before he could bring himself to tell the wardroom of

his good fortune.

Samantha did not look up from the board but moved a bishop flauntingly

across the front of David Allen's queen, and when David pounced on it

with a gurgle of glee, she unleashed her rook from the rear file and

said, Mate in three, David. One more, Sam, give me my revenge/ pleaded

David, but she shook her head and slipped out of the wardroom.

Nicholas became aware of the waft of her perfume. it was an inexpensive

but exuberant fragrance -'Babe', that was it, the one advertised by

Hemingway's granddaughter.

It suited Samantha perfectly. He turned to her, and it was only then

that he was honest enough to admit to himself that he had relieved his

Third Officer with the express intention of luring the girl up to the

bridge.

There are whales ahead/ he told her, and smiled one of those rare,

irresistible smiles that she had come to treasure. I hoped you might

come up.

Where? Where are they? she asked with unfeigned excitement, and then

they both saw the spout, a golden feather of spray in the low night

sunlight two miles ahead.

Balaenoptera musculus! she exclaimed.

I'll take your word for it, Doctor Silver, but to me it's still a blue

whale. Nick was still smiling, and she looked abashed for a moment.

Sorry, I wasn't trying to dazzle you with science. Then she looked back

at the humpy, uninviting cold sea as the whale blew again, a far and

ethereal column of lonely spray.

/one/ she said, only one. And the excitement in her voice cooled. There

are so few of them left now - that might be the last one we will ever

see. So few that they cannot find each other in the vastness of the

ocean to breed. Nick's smile was gone also, and again they talked of

the sea, of their own involvement with it, their mutual concern at what

man had done to it, and what he was still doing to it.

When the Marxist government of Mozambique took over from the Portuguese

colonists, it allowed the Soviets to send in dredges - not trawlers, but

dredges - and they dredged the weed beds of Delagoa Bay. They actually

dredged the breeding grounds of the Mozambique prawn.

They took out a thousand tons of prawn, and destroyed the grounds for

ever - and they drove an entire species into extinction in six short

months. Her outrage was in her voice as she told it.

Two months ago the Australians arrested a Japanese trawler in their

territorial waters. She had in her freezers the meat of 120,000 giant

clams that her crew had torn from the barrier reef with crow bars. The

clam population of a single coral reef would not exceed 20,000. That

means they had denuded six oceanic reefs in one expedition - and they

fined the Captain a thousand pounds. It was the Japanese who perfected

the "long line"/ Nick agreed, the endless floating line, armed with

specially designed hooks, and laid across the lanes of migration of the

big pelagic surface-feeding fish, the tuna and the marlin. They wipe

out the shoals as they advance - wipe them out to the last fish. You

cannot reduce any animal population beyond a certain point. Samantha

seemed much older as she turned her face up to Nick. Look what they did

to the whales. Together they turned back to the windows, gazing out for

a glimpse of that gentle monster, doomed in hope of another now to

extinction, one last look at another creature that would disappear from

the seas The Japanese and the Russians again/ said Nick. They would not

sign the whaling treaty until there were not enough blues left in the

seas to make their killing an economic proposition. Then they signed

it. when there were two or three thousand blue whales left in all the

oceans, that is when they signed. 'Now they will hunt the fill and the

seal and the minke to extinction. As they stood side by side staring

into the bizarre sun-lit for that spark of life in the watery night,

searching vainly wilderness, without thinking Nick lifted his arm; he

would have placed it around her shoulders, the age-old protective

attitude of man to his woman, but he caught himself at the last moment

before he actually touched her. She had felt his movement and tensed

for it, swaying slightly towards him in anticipation, but he stepped

away, letting his arm fall and stooped over the radarscope. She only

realized then how much she had wanted him to touch her, but for the rest

of that evening he stayed within the physical limits which he seemed to

have set for himself.

The next evening she declined the wardroom's importunate invitations,

and after dinner waited in her own cabin, the door an inch ajar so she

heard Tim Graham leave the bridge, clattering down the companionway with

exuberance, relieved once more of his watch. The moment he entered the

wardroom, Samantha slipped from her cabin and ran lightly up to the

bridge.

She was with him only minutes after he had assumed the watch and Nick

was amused by the strength of his pleasure. They grinned at each other

like school children in a successful piece of mischief.

Before the light went, they passed close by one of the big tabular

bergs, and she pointed out the line of filth that edged the white ice

like the ring around a bathtub that had been used by a chimney sweep.

Paraffin wax/ she said, and undissolved hydrocarbons. No, he said,

that's only glacial striation.

It's crude oil/ she answered him. I've sampled it. It was one of the

reasons I took the guide job on Golden Adventurer, I wanted first-hand

knowledge of these seas. But we are two thousand miles south of the

tanker lanes. The beach at Shackleton Bay is thick with wax balls and

crude droplets. We found oil-soaked penguins on Cape Alarm, dead and

dying. They hit an oil slick within fifty miles of that isolated shore.

I can hardly believe -'Nick started, but she cut across him.

That's just itV she said. Nobody wants to believe it.

just walk on by, as though it's another mugging victim lying on the

sidewalk. You're right/ Nick admitted grudgingly. Very few people

really care. A few dead penguins, a few little black tar balls sticking

to your feet on the beach. It doesn't seem much to shout about, but

it's what we cannot see that should terrify us.

Those millions of tons of poisonous hydrocarbons that dissolve into the

sea, that kill slowly and insidiously, but surely. That's what should

really terrify us, Nicholas! She had used his given name for the first

time, and they were both acutely aware of it. They were silent again,

staring intently at the big iceberg as it passed slowly. The sun had

touched it with ethereal pinks and amethyst, but that dark line of

poisonous filth was still there.

The world has to use fossil fuels, and we sailors have to transport

them/ he said at last.

But not at such appalling risks, not with an eye only to the profits.

Not in the same greedy thoughtless grabbing petty way as man wiped out

the whale, not at the cost of turning the sea into a stinking festerring

cesspool. There are unscrupalous owners! - he agreed, and she cut

across him agrily.

Sailing under flags of convenience, without control, ships built to

dangerous standards, equipped with a single boiler -she reeled out the

charges and he was silent.

Then they waived the winter load-line for rounding the Cape of Good Hope

in the southern winter, to enable them to carry that extra fifty

thousand tons Of crude. The Agulhas Bank, the most dangerous water sea

in the world, and they send overloaded tankers into it. that was

criminal/ he agreed.

Yet you were Chairman of Christy Marine, you had a representative on the

Board of Control. She saw that she had made a mistake. His expression

was suddenly ferocious. His anger seemed to crackle like electricity in

the ruby gloom of the bridge. She felt an unaccountable flutter of real

fear. She had forgotten what kind of man he was.

But he turned away and made a slow circuit of the bridge, elaborately

checking each of the gauges and instruments, and then he paused at the

far wing and lit a cheroot. She ached to offer some token of

reconciliation, but instinctively she knew not to do so. He was not the

kind of man who respected compromise or retreat.

He came back to her at last, and the glow of the cheroot lit his

features so that she could see the anger had passed.

Christy Marine seems like another existence to me now/ he said softly,

and she could sense the deep pain of unhealed wounds. Forgive me, your

reference to it took me off balance. I did not realize that you know of

my past history., Everybody on board knows., Of course/ he nodded, and

drew deeply on the cheroot before he spoke. When I ran Christy Marine, I

insisted on the highest standards of safety and seamanship for every one

of our vessels. We opposed the Cape winterline decision, and none of my

tankers loaded to their summer-line on the Good Hope passage. None of

my tankers made do with only one boiler, the design and engineering of

every Christy Marine vessel was of the same standard as that ship

there/he pointed back at Golden Adventurer, or this one here! and he

stamped once on the deck.

Even the Golden Dawn? she asked softly, braving his anger again - but

he merely nodded.

Golden Dawn/ he repeated softly. It sounds such an absurdly

presumptuous name, doesn't it? But I really thought of her as that,

when I conceived her. The first million-ton tanker, with every

refinement and safety feature that man has so far tested and proved.

From inert gas scrubbers to independently articulated main tanks, not

one boiler but four, just like one of the old White Star liners - she

was really to be the golden dawn of crude oil transportation.

However, I am no longer Chairman of Christy Marine, and I am no longer

in control of Golden Dawn, neither her design nor her construction. His

voice was hollow, and in the dim light his eyes seemed shrunken into

their cavities like those of a skull. Nor yet am I in control of her

operation. it was all turning out so badly; she did not want to argue

with him, nor make him unhappy. However, she had stirred memories and

regrets within him, and she wished vainly that she had not disturbed him

so. Her instinct warned her she should leave him now.

Goodnight, Doctor Silver/ he nodded noncommittally at her sudden plea of

tiredness.

My nname is Sam! she told him, wishing that she could comfort him in

some way, any way, or Samantha, if you prefer it. I do prefer it, he

said, without smiling. Goodnight, Samantha. She was angry with both

herself and him, angry that the good feeling between them had been

destroyed, so she flashed at him: You really are old-fashioned, aren't

you? and hurried from the bridge.

The following evening she almost did not go up to him, for she was

ashamed of those parting words, for -having pointed up their age

difference so offensively. She knew he was aware of their differences,

without being reminded. She had done herself harm, and she did not want

to face him again.

While she was in the shower of the guest cabin, she heard Tim Graham

come clattering down the stairs on the other side of the thin bulkhead.

She knew that Nicholas had relieved him.

I'm not going up/ she told herself firmly, and took her time drying and

talcumming and brushing out her hair before she clambered naked and

still pink from the hot water into her bunk.

She read for half an hour, a western that Beauty Baker had lent her, and

it required all her concentration to follow the print, for her mind kept

trying to wander. At last she gave an exclamation of self-disgust,

threw back the blankets and began dressing.

His relief and pleasure, when she appeared beside him, were transparent,

and his smile was a princely welcome for her. She was suddenly very

glad she had come, and this night she effortlessly steered past all the

pitfalls.

She asked him to explain how the Lloyd's Open Form contract worked, and

she followed his explanations swiftly.

If they take into consideration the danger and difficulties involved in

the salvage/she mused, you should be able to claim an enormous award.

I'm going to ask for twenty percent of the hull value What is the hull

value of Golden Adventurer? And he told her.

She was silent a moment as she checked his mental arithmetic.

That's six million dollars, she whispered in awe.

Give or take a few cents/ he agreed.

But there isn't that much money in the world! She turned and stared

back at the liner.

Duncan Alexander is going to agree with you. Nick smiled a little

grimly.

But, she shook her head, what would anybody do with that much money? I'm

asking for six - but I won't get it. I'll walk away with three or four

millions. Still, that's too much. Nobody could spend that much not if

they tried for a lifetime. It's spent already. It will just about

enable me to pay off my loans, launch my other tug, and to keep Ocean

Salvage going for another few months. You owe three or four million

dollars? She stared at him now in open wonder. I'd never sleep, not

one minute would I be able to sleep Money isn't for spending/he

explained. There is a limit to the amount of food you can eat, or

clothes you can wear.

Money is a game, the biggest most exciting game in town. She listened

attentively to it all, happy because tonight he was gay and excited with

grand designs and further plans, and because he shared them with her.

What we will do is this, we'll come down here with both tugs and catch

an iceberg. She laughed. Oh, come on! I'm not joking, he assured her,

but laughing also. We'll put tow-lines on a big berg. It may take a

week to build up tow speed, but once we get it moving nothing will stop

it.

We will guide it up into the middle forties, catch the roaring forties

and, just like the old wool clippers on the Australian passage, we will

run our castings down. He moved to the chart-table, selected a

large-scale chart of the Indian Ocean and beckoned her to join him.

You're serious. She stopped laughing, and stared at him again. You

really are serious, aren't you? He nodded, still smiling, and traced it

out with his finger.

Then we'll swing northwards, up into the Western Australian current,

letting the flow carry us north in a great circle, until we hit the

easterly monsoon and the north equatorial Elicuffent! He described the

circle, but she watched his face.

They stood very close, but still not touching and she felt herself

stiffed by the timbre of his voice, as though to the touch of fingers.

"We will cross the Indian Ocean to the east coast of Africa with the

current pushing all the way, just in time to catch the south-westerly

monsoon drift right into the Persian Gulf- He straightened up and smiled

again.

A hundred billion tons of fresh water delivered right into the dryest

and richest corner of the globe., But - but - she shook her head, it

would melt!

From a helicopter we spray it with a reflective polyurethane skin to

lessen the effect of the sun, and we moor it in a shallow specially

prepared dock where it will cool its own surrounds. Sure, it will melt,

but not for a year or two and then we'll just go out and catch another

one and bring it in, like roping wild horses. How would you handle it?

she objected. It's too big. My two tugs hustle forty-four thousand

horses - we could pull in Everest, if we wanted. Yes, but once you get

it to the Persian Gulf? We cut it into manageable hunks with a laser

lance, and lift the hunks into a melting dam with an overhead crane, She

thought about it. It could work/ she admitted.

It will work/he told her. I've sold the idea to the Saudis already.

They are already building the dock and the dams.

We'll give them water at one hundredth the cost of us nuclear condensers

on sea water, and without the risk of radio-active contamination. She

was absorbed with his vision, and he with hers. As they talked deep

into the long watches of the night, they drew closer in spirit only.

Although each of them treasured those shared hours, somehow neither

could bridge the narrow chasm between friendliness and real intimacy.

She was instinctively aware of his reserves, that he was a min who had

considered life and established his code by which to live it. She

guessed that he did nothing unless it was deeply felt, and that a casual

physical relationship would offer no attraction to him; she knew of the

turmoil to which his life had so recently been reduced, and that he was

pulling himself out of that by main strength, but that he was now wary

of further hurt. There was time, she told herself, plenty of time - but

Warlock bore steadily north by north-east, dragging her crippled ward up

through the roaring forties; those notorious winds treated her kindly

and she made good the six knots that Nick had hoped for.

On board Warlock, the attitude of the officers towards Samantha Silver

changed from fawning adulation to wistful. respect. Every one of them

knew of the nightly ritual of the eight-to-midnight watch.

Bloody cradle-snatcher! groused Tim Graham.

Mr. Graham, it is fortunate I did not hear that remark/ David Allen

warned him with glacial coldness - but they all resented Nicholas Berg,

it was unfair competition, yet they kept a new respectful distance from

the girl, not one of them daring to challenge the herd bull.

The time that Samantha had looked upon as endless was running out now,

and she closed her mind to it. Even when David Allen showed her the

fuzzy luminescence of the African continent on the extreme range of the

radar-screen, she pretended to herself that it would go on like this -

if not for ever, at least until something special happened.

During the long voyage up from Shackleton Bay, Samantha had streamed a

very fine-meshed net from Warlock's stern, collecting an incredible

variety of krill and plankton and other microscopic marine life. Angel

had grudgingly given her a small corner of his scullery in return for

her services as honorary assistant under-chef and unpaid waitress, and

she spent many absorbed hours there each day, identifying and preserving

her specimens.

She was working there when the helicopter came out to Warlock. She

looked up at the buffeting of the machine's rotors as they changed into

fine pitch for the landing on Warlock's high-deck, and she was tempted

to go up like every idle and curious hand on board, but she was in the

middle of staining a slide, and somehow she resented the encroachment on

this little island of her happiness. She worked on, but now her

pleasure was spoiled, and she cocked her head when she heard the roar of

the rotors as the helicopter rose from the deck again and she was left

with a sense of foreboding.

Angel came in from the deck, wiping his hands on his apron and he paused

in the doorway.

You didn't tell me he was going, dearie.

What do you mean? Samantha looked up at him, startled.

Your boyfriend, darling. Socks and toothbrush and all., Angel watched

her shrewdly. Don't tell me he didn't even kiss you goodbye., She

dropped the glass slide into the stainless steel sink and it snapped in

half. She was panting as she gripped the rail of the upper deck and

stared after the cumbersome yellow machine.

It flew low across the green wind-chopped sea, humpbacked and nose low,

still close enough to read the operating company's name COURTLINE

emblazoned on its fuselage, but it dwindled swiftly towards the far blue

line of mountains.

Nick Berg sat in the jump seat between the two pilots of the big S. 58T

Sikorsky and looked ahead towards the flat silhouette of Table Mountain.

It was overlaid by a thick mattress of snowy cloud, at the

south-easterly wind swirled across its summit.

From their altitude of a mere thousand feet, there were still five big

tankers in sight, ploughing stolidly through the green sea on their

endless odyssey, seeming to be alien to their element not designed to

live in harmony with it, but to oppose every movement of the waters.

Even in this low sea, they wore thick garlands of white at their stubby

rounded bows, and Nick watched one of them dip suddenly and take spray

as high as her foremast. In any sort of blow, she would be like a pier

with pylons set on solid ground.

The seas would break right over her. It was not the way a ship should

be, and now he twisted in his seat and looked back.

Far behind them, Warlock was still visible. Even at this distance, and

despite the fact that she was dwarfed by her charge, her lines pleased

the seaman in him. She looked good, but that backward glance invoked a

pang of regret that he had been so stubbornly trying to ignore - and he

had a vivid image of green eyes and hair of platinum and gold.

His regret was spiced by the persistent notion that he had been

cowardly. He had left Warlock without being able to bring himself to

say goodbye to the girl, and he knew why he had done so. He would not

take the chance of making a fool of himself. He grimaced with distaste,

as he remembered her exact words, You really are old-fashioned, aren't

you? There was something vaguely repulsive in a middle-aged man lusting

after young flesh - and he supposed he must now look upon himself as

middle-aged. In six months he would be forty years of age, and he did

not really expect to live to eighty. So he was in the middle of the

road.

He had always scorned those grey, lined, balding, unattractive little

men with big cigars, sitting in expensive restaurants with pretty young

girls beside them, the young thing pretending to hang on every

pearl-like word, while her eyes focused beyond his shoulder - on some

younger But still, it had been cowardice. She had become a friend

during those weeks, and she could hardly have been aware of the emotions

that she had aroused in him during those long dark hours on Warlock's

bridge. She was not to blame for his unruly passions, in no way had she

encouraged him to believe that he was more than just an older man, not

even a father figure, but just someone with whom to pass an otherwise

empty hour. She had been as friendly and cheerful to everyone else on

board Warlock, from the Mate to the cook.

He really had owed her the common courtesy of a handshake and an

assurance of the pleasure he had taken from her company, but he had not

been certain he could restrict it to that.

He winced again as he imagined her horror as he blurted out some sort of

declaration, some proposal to prolong their relationship or alter its

structure into something more intimate, her disenchantment when she

realized that behind the facade of the mature and cultured man, he was

just as grimy an old lecher as the furtive drooling browsers in the

porno-shops of Times Square.

Let it go, he had decided. No matter that he was probably in better

physical shape now than he had been at twenty-five, to Dr. Samantha

Silver he was an old man and he had a frightening vision of an episode

from his own youth.

A woman, a friend of his mother's, had trapped the nineteen-year-old

Nicholas alone one rainy day in the old beach house at Martha's

Vineyard. He remembered his own revulsion at the sagging white flesh,

the wrinkles, the lines of strain across her belly and breasts, and the

oldness of her.

She would then have been a woman of forty, the same as he was now, and

he had done her the service she required out of some obligation of pity,

but afterwards he had scrubbed his teeth until the gums bled and he had

stood under the shower for almost an hour.

it was one of the cruel deceits of life that a Person aged from the

outside. He had thought of him self in the fullness of his physical and

mental powers, especially now after bringing in Golden Adventurer. He

was ready for them to lead on the dragons and he would tear out their

jugulars with his bare hands - then she had called him an old-fashioned

thing, and he had realized that the sexual fantasy which was slowly

becoming an obsession must be associated with the male menopause, a

sorry symptom of the ageing process of which he had not been conscious

until then. He gRinned wryly at the thought.

The girl would probably hardly notice that he had left the ship, at the

worst might be a little piqued by of manners, but in a week would have

forgotten his name.

As for himself, there was enough, and more than enough to fill the days

ahead, so that the image of a slim young body and that precious mane of

silver and gold would fade until it became the fairy tale it really was.

Resolutely he turned in the jump seat and looked ahead.

Always look ahead, there are never regrets in that direction.

They clattered in over False Bay, crossing the narrow isthmus of the

Cape Peninsula under the bulk of the cloudcapped mountain, from the

Indian Ocean to the Atlantic in under ten minutes.

He saw the gathering, like vultures at the lion kill, as the Sikorsky

lowered to her roost on the helipad within the main harbour area of

Table Bay.

As Nick jumped down, ducking instinctively under the still-turning

rotors, they surged forward, ignoring the efforts of the Courtline

dispatcher to keep the pad clear; they were led by a big red-faced man

with a scorched looking bald head and the furry arms of a tame bear. ,

"Larry Fry, Mr. Berg, he growled. You remember me? Hello, Larry. He

was the local manager for Bach Wackie & Co, Nick's agents.

I thought you might say a few words to the Press. But the journalists

swarmed around Nick now, demanding, jostling each other, their camaras

firing flash bulbs.

Nick felt his irritation flare, and he needed a deep breath and a

conscious effort to control his anger.

All right, lads and ladies. He held up both hands, and grinned that

special boyish grin. They were doing a tough job, he reminded himself.

It couldn't be easy to be forced daily into the company of rich and

successful men, grabbing for tidbits, and being grossly underpaid for

your efforts with the long-term expectation of ulcers and cirrhosis of

the liver.

Play the game with me and I'll play it with you/ he promised, and

thought for a moment how it would be if they didn't want to speak with

him, how it would be if they didn't know who he was, and didn't care.

Where have you booked me? he asked Larry Fry now, and turned back to

them. In two hours time I'll be in my suite at the Mount Nelson Hotel.

You're invited, and there'll be whisky. They laughed and tried a few

more half-hearted questions, but they had accepted the compromise - at

least they had got the pictures.

As they went up the palm-lined drive to the gracious old hotel, built in

the days when space included five acres of carefully groomed gardens,

Nick felt the stir of memory, but he suppressed that and listened

intently to the list of appointments and matters of urgency from which

Larry Fry read. The change in the big man's attitude was dramatic. When

Nick had first arrived to take command of Warlock, Larry Fry had given

him ten minutes of his time and sent a deputy to complete the business.

Then Nick had been touched by the mark of the beast, a man on his way

down, with as much appeal as a leper.

Larry Fry had accorded him the minimum courtesy due the master of a

small vessel, but now he was treating him like visiting royalty,

limousine and fawning attention.

We have chartered a 707 from South African Airways to fly Golden

Adventurer's passengers to London, and they will take scheduled

commercial Rights to their separate destinations from there. What about

berthing for Golden Adventurer? The Harbour Master is sending out an

inspector to check the hull before he lets her enter harbour., You have

made the arrangements? Nick asked sharply.

He had not completed the salvage until the liner was officially handed

over to the company commissioned to undertake the repairs.

Courtline are flying him out now/ Larry Fry assured him.

We'll have a decision before nightfall. Have the underwriters appointed

a contractor for the repairs?

They've called for tenders. The hotel manager himself met Nicholas

under the entrance portico.

Good to see you again Mr. Berg. He waived the registration procedures.

We can do that when Mr. Berg has settled in., And then he assured Nick,

We have given you the same suite. Nick would have protested, but

already they were ushering him into the sitting-room. If it had been a

room lacking completely in character or taste, the memories might not

have been so poignant. However, unlike one of those soulless plastic

and vinyl coops built by the big chains and so often offered to

travellers under the misnomer of inns', this room was furnished with

antique furniture, oil-paintings and flowers. The memories were as

fresh as those flowers, but not as pleasing. The telephone was ringing

as they entered, and Larry Fry seized it immediately, while Nick stood

in the centre Of the room. It had been two years since last he stood

here, but it seemed as many days, so clear was the memory.

The Harbour Master as given permission for Golden Adventurer to enter

harbour., Larry Fry grinned triumphantly at Nick, and gave him the

thumbs-up signal.

Nick nodded, the news was an anti-climax after the draining endeavours

of the last weeks. Nick walked through to the bedroom. The wallpaper

was a quietly tasteful floral design with matching curtains.

From the four-poster bed, Nick remembered, you could look out over the

lawns. He remembered Chantelle sitting under that canopy, with a

gossamer-sheer bed-robe over her creamy shoulders, eating thin strips of

marmaladed toast and then delicately and carefully licking each slim

tapered finger with a pink pointed tongue.

Nicholas had come out to negotiate the transportation of South African

coal from Richards Bay, and iron ore from Saldanha Bay to Japan. He had

insisted that Chantelle accompany him. Perhaps he had the premonition

of imminent loss, but he had overridden her objections.

But Africa is such a primitive place, Nicky, they have things that

bite., And she had in the end gone with him. He had been rewarded with

four days of rare happiness. The last four days ever, for though he did

not then even suspect it, he was already sharing her bed and body with

Duncan Alexander. He had never tired in thirteen years of that lovely

smooth creamy body; rather, he had delighted in its slow luscious

ripening into full womanhood, believing without question that it

belonged to him.

Chantelle was one of those unusual women who grew more beautiful with

time; it had always been one of his pleasures to watch her enter a room

filled with other internationally acclaimed beauties, and see them pale

beside his wife. And suddenly, for no good reason, he imagined Samantha

Silver beside Chantelle - the girl's coltish grace would be transmuted

to gawkiness beside Chantelle's poise, her manner as gauche as a

schoolgirl's beside Chantelle's mature control, a warm lovable little

bunny beside the sleekly beautiful mink Mr. Berg, London. Larry Fry

called from the sittingroom interrupting him, and with relief Nick

picked up the telephone. Just keep going forward/he reminded himself,

and before he spoke, he thought again of the two women, and wondered

suddenly how much that thick rich golden mane of Samantha's hair would

pale beside Chantelle's lustrous sable, and just how much of the

mother-of-pearl glow would fade from that young, clear skin. Berg, he

said abruptly into the telephone.

Mr. Berg, good morning. Will you speak to Mr. Duncan Alexander of

Christy Marine? Nick was silent for five full seconds. He needed that

long to adjust to the name, but Duncan Alexander was the natural

extension of his previous thoughts. In the silence he heard the banging

of doors and rising clamour of voices, as the journalists converged on

the liquor-cabinet next door.

Mr. Berg, are you there? Yes, he said, and his voice was steady and

cool. Put him on. Nicholas, my dear fellow. The voice was glossy as

satin, slow as honey, Eton and King's College, a hundred thousand pound

accent, impossible to imitate, not quite foppish nor indolent, razor

steel in a scabbard of velvet encrusted with golden filigree and

precious stones - and Nicholas had seen the steel bared. 'It seems that

it is impossible to hold a good men down. But you tried, young Duncan/

Nick answered lightly.

Don't feel bad about it, indeed you tried. Come, Nicholas. Life is too

short for recriminations.

This is a new deck of cards, we start equal again. Duncan chuckled

softly. At least be gracious enough to accept my congratulations.

Accepted/ Nicholas agreed. Now what do we talk about? Is Golden

Adventurer in dock yet? She has been cleared to enter. She'll be tied

up within twenty-four hours - and you'd better have your cheque book

ready. I hoped that we might avoid going up before the Committee. There

has been too much bitterness already. Let's try and keep it in the

family, Nicholas. The family? Christy Marine is the family - you,

Chantelle, old Arthur Christy - and Peter. It was the very dirtiest form

of fighting, and Nick found suddenly that he was shaking like a man in

fever and that his fist around the receiver was white with the force of

his grip. It was the mention of his son that had affected him so.

I'm not in that family any more. in a way you will always be part of

it, It is as much your achievement as any man's, and your son Nick cut

across him brusquely, his voice gravelly.

You and Chantelle made me a stranger. Now treat me like one. Nicholas-

Ocean Salvage as main contractor for the recovery of Golden Adventurer

is open to an offer. Nicholas - Make an offer. As bluntly as that. I'm

waiting. Well now. My Board has considered the whole operation in

depth, and I am empowered to make you an outright settlement of

three-quarters of a million dollars. Nick's tone did not alter. We

have been set down for a hearing at Lloyd's on the 27th of next month.

Nicholas, the offer is negotiable within reasonable limits. You. are

speaking a foreign language, Nick cut him off.

We are so far apart that we are wasting each other's time. Nicholas, I

know how you feel about Christy Marine, you know the company is

underwriting its own. Now you are really wasting my time. 'Nicholas,

it's not a third party, it's not some big insurance consortium it's

Christy Marine He used his name again, though it scalded his tongue.

Duncan, you're breaking my heart. I'll see you on the 27th of next

month, at the arbitration court. He dropped the receiver on to its

bracket, and moved across to the mirror, swiftly combing his hair and

composing his features, startled to see how hard and bleak his

expression was, and how fierce his eyes.

However, when he went through to the lounge of the suite, he was relaxed

and urbane and smiling.

All right, ladies and gentlemen. I'm all yours/ and one of the ladies

of the press, blonde, pretty and not yet thirty but with eyes as old as

life itself, took another sip of her whisky as she studied him, then

murmured huskily, I'll wouldn't mind at all, duckie. Golden Adventurer

stood tall and very beautiful against the wharf of Cape Town harbour,

waiting her turn to go into the dry dock.

Globe Engineering, the contractors who had been appointed to repair her,

had signed for her and legally taken over responsibility from Warlock's

First Officer. But David Allen still felt an immense proprietary pride

in her.

From Warlock's navigation bridge, he could look across the main harbour

basin and see the tall, snowy superstructure glistening in the bright

hot summer sunshine, towering as high as the giraffe-necked steel wharf

cranes; and in gloating self-indulgence, David dwelt on a picture of the

liner, wreathed in snow, half obscured by driving sleet and sea fume,

staggering in the mountainous black seas off Antarctica. It gave him a

solid feeling of achievement, and he thrust his hands deeply into his

pockets and whistled softly to himself, smiling and watching the liner.

The Trog thrust his wrinkled head from the radio room.

There's a call for you on the land-line/ he said, and David picked up

the handset.

David? Yessir. He drew himself to his full height as he recognized

Nicholas Berg's voice.

Are you ready for sea? David gulped, then glanced at the bulkhead

clock. We discharged tow an hour and ten minutes ago. Yes, I know. How

soon? David was tempted to lie, estimate short, and then fake it for

the extra time he needed. Instinct warned him against lying

deliberately to Nicholas Berg.

Twelve hours/ he said.

It's an oil-rig tow, Rio to the North Sea, a semi-submersible rig.

Yessir, David adjusted quickly, thank God he had not yet let any of his

crew ashore. He had arranged for bunkering at 1300, hours. He could

make it. When are you coming aboard, sir? I'm not/said Nick.

You're the new Master. I'm leaving for London on the five o'clock

flight. I won't even get down to shout at you. She's all yours, David.

Thank you, sir! David stuttered, feeling himself flush hot scarlet.

Bach Wackie will telex you full details of the tow at sea, and you and I

will work out your own contract later. But I want you running at top

economic power for Rio by dawn tomorrow.

Yessir. I've watched you carefully, David. Nick's voice changed,

becoming personal, warmer. You're a damn good tug-man. just keep

telling yourself that. Thank you, Mr. Berg. Samantha had spent half

the afternoon helping with the arrangements for taking off the remaining

passengers from Golden Adventurer and embarking them in the waiting

fleet of tourist buses which would distribute them to hotels throughout

the city while they waited for the London charter flight.

It had been a sad occasion, farewell to many who had become friends and

remembering those who had not come back from Cape Alarm with them - Ken,

who might have been her lover, and the crew of raft Number 16 who had

been her special charges.

once the final bus had left, with the occupants waving for the last time

to Samantha, Take care, honey! You come and visit with us now, hear!

she was as lonely and forlorn as the silent ship. She stood for a long

time staring up the liner's high side, the damage where sea and ice had