Scend of the Sea

CHAPTER SIX

Feldman, looking strangely large in the unreal light, turned to me, gesturing and grinning that the incident was over. At least he seemed to have snapped out of his previous attitude. He made a wide sweep of his free arm, hanging on with the other, as if to indicate that he had expected Alistair to have completed his circuit and come back over Walvis Bay. Then he grinned again and shrugged his shoulders, surprised that he had not done so.

I still faced the direction in which the Buccaneer had disappeared. The flare burned lower.

With the same sort of slow shock that one feels in the presence of an inescapable, evil reality-I felt now as I did once when I came face-to-face with a black mamba rearing man-high on a forest path in Natal-I knew I would never see Alistair alive again.

The Buccaneer's lights had winked his last farewell to me; I had watched him go to his death. How or why, I did not know, but the instinctive realization was there, as surely as the moment Tafline stepped under the photograph of the Waratah, she became part of its tragedy. In the numbness of that moment on the icy sea-and-rain-drenched deck, I turned to the recollection of her in my cabin. I, in reconstructing the Waratah's night of doom, had brought doom to my brother, and added yet another victim to her charnel-house. The power of the seas was puny alongside that other force, which stood with its headman's axe dripping and bloody in the night

Feldman was shaking me and shouting. I could not hear what he was saying. A whole hill of water had fallen on top of the gallant little weather ship as I stood numb. The flare was out. Even on the upper deck, I was waist-deep in water, and the lifeline dragged at my oilskins. The floodlight still threw its bright clinical white light over the scene: even high up the ship seemed deep in water, scarcely with the strength to ride above the waves. The screws had a newer, higher note when next they broke clear-soon they would tear themselves out of their bearings. One more wave like that at present speed and Walvis Bay would dive down and never come up again.

I yelled back at Feldman and indicated the bridge. His schoolboy grin was gone; he was grey, afraid again. I, too, was afraid. My earlier cool, detached assessment of force and counter-force was gone: all at once I was fighting something bigger. I could not put a name to the sinister force. I must throw everything into saving the whaler. Her speed was madness. I had held on to it for too long.

We groped and scrambled our way along the lifelines to regain the bridge.

Jubela was quicksilvered in sweat. He gave one quick look at my face. He did not speak.

I grabbed the engine-room telegraph.

'Half speed ahead!'

Feldman's relief was overwhelming.

If I was to save Walvis Bay, I must break off the Waratah’s course. The very strength of the sea and the gale forced the logic of a south-westerly course upon me. That course common to all the tragedies — south-west I It drummed through and through my mind. That is the way death lay, whatever the other dictates might be, however telling they might sound.

I must break for the open sea.

The risk of turning away from meeting the seas head-on was great, but the whaler's low freeboard and streamlined superstructure gave her a sporting chance. She had, moreover, that splendid flared bow designed specially to cope with the huge Antarctic seas.

For one moment I hung on my decision.

Bashee!

What did it imply? Waratah had vanished — south of the Bashee. Walvis Bay's position, although highly uncertain, was certain in one respect only-she was south of the Bashee. Death had come to my father and brother — south of the Bashee. What did it mean?

I rejected the doubt sabotaging the precious moments.

'Bring her round! Gently, Jubela, if you value your life! Course — south, if you can. Watch it, for God's sake and ours! Choose your moment!'

Jubela nodded helplessly at the bridge windows. Through them, one could not see even the foredeck.

A racing driver, they say, steers by the seat of his pants. Yachting is like racing, but one steers by the soles of one's feet. The master helmsmen of Captain Ilbery's day of sail preferred to stand barefooted at the wheel — without a sou'wester if they could-so that they could feel the motion of the ship under their feet and the way of the wind on the nape of their necks. When a yacht is being hard pushed, one can detect the slight movement of the deck seams; these things are still more meaningful than all the instruments invented.

Walvis Bay was riding easier now that the way was off her, but I felt sure that we were being pushed backwards by the storm.

'Now!'

But Jubela shook his head, poised slightly on the balls of his feet.

The radio warning buzzed. Before Feldman could go, it buzzed peremptorily a second time. I jerked my head for him to go. All my attention was on the ship.

The sea poured over the bow and sluiced down the deck. As she rose, the wind threw it bodily against the bridge structure and the rain added its quota of icy wetness.

She sank in the trough and started to roll to starboard. Jubela flicked the wheel to port, eased it back, and flicked it again to meet it head-on as the next roller hit her. Water poured over the ship again, but this time the direction was slightly more on the bow.

Walvis Bay had gained a few precious points of the compass towards safety. Again, Jubela waited.

I went forward to the compass. South-south-west. That was better I Walvis Bay seemed to be regaining her resilience too. There was a faint improvement in her motion, although she rolled more heavily now that her bow was away from the eye of the gale.

Feldman came back.

'Urgent signal to you from Weather Bureau, sir.'

I took the paper and turned from the compass. I started towards the port bridge windows, the way I was trying to edge her seawards. My attention was on the ship. I tried to penetrate the driving water. My eyes dropped to the signal.

Urgent. Weather Bureau to Walvis Bay. Report your position immediately … The deck canted forward.

Walvis Bay dropped her bows like a stone.

Until now, she had been a ship labouring and fighting. Now she was out of control.

I was thrown off my feet into the corner of the bridge. I had been too late in my turn-away! The name burned in my brain — Waratah!

Walvis Bay was making her final dive to her death.

As I sprawled, I had a momentary glimpse of Jubela throwing up his right hand to protect his face, as if warding off a blow. With the other, he still held the wheel. There was an awful sensation of the ship falling literally forward and downward.

There was a tremendous crash, and the bridge windows splintered in, as if by bomb-blast. The lights went. I heard a heavy thud inside the bridge itself, and Feldman screamed as if in pain. Water — hundreds of tons of sea-came pouring into the shattered bridge.

Still the ship nose-dived at that impossible angle.

Waratah.

I was picked up by the wall of water and carried headlong aft as it swept through the open door at the rear of the bridge, down the companionway into my cabin. I clutched at something metal and hung on against the rush of water. As the rudder lost its power to control her, so the seas took command. Now, as Walvis Bay dived, I could feel a frightening loss of control; she was, also slewing sideways as she dived. With the weight of water pressing her down thundering into her, she would be on her side soon.

I hauled myself into a crouching position and threw my body forward to where I knew the wheel must be. The steep forward angle helped me, but the water catapulting through the broken windows hit me in the chest like a blow.

The jar of the spinning wheel which I grabbed was almost as great as the water crashing in. Mine were instinctive movements; there was no time to think or reason. All I knew was that I must hold her, try and bring her head round.

The deck levelled under my feet.

Still the water poured in.

For one irrational moment I thought the whaler was floating level under water, and that she would quickly fill and go to the bottom on an even keel. Strange, too, the wild motion of the past hours had eased. She rode, not easily, but dead. .

Feldman screamed from the other side of the bridge. I started to turn a split second from my fight with the wheel.

I stopped, transfixed.

Dead ahead, through the gaping windows, loomed something big and black, right in the whaler's path.

I spun the wheel to port, giving her the full weight of water and all the strength of the gale to try and bring her head clear.

Then I saw nothing.

Water burst through the bridge openings and the ship lay over again, tiredly, heavily. The sea tried to pluck my hands from the wheel. Yet I sensed that her head had fallen off the wind and the bow seemed to be sheering away from the danger — whatever it was-quicker than I could have hoped.

I felt, but did not see, the next sea. This time, would the game little ship roll over on her side? Or would there be a sickening crash and rending of metal which meant that she had gone bows-on into the obstacle in her path? I felt the roll begin to port -1 detected that easier motion somewhere — and I waited, cowering, for the next hill of water to crown that which now pinned her down.

Walvis Bay rolled farther.

The sea held back its fatal punch.

Hundreds of tons of water cleared themselves off the decks in that life-giving roll; somewhere aft I heard, above the gale, the tearing of metal.

Feldman screamed again in agony behind me, and some

heavy object rolled, bumped and thumped. Walvis Bay ca upright. Still the sea did not strike. Why?

I was flabbergasted at the relative calmness of the sea. The gale still brought the icy rain and spray in bucketfuls through the gaps and Walvis Bay rose tiredly at first-as if herself cringing from that final crushing weight of water-and then more optimistically. Then she was on an even keel, sharp, back on her feet, fighting. She completed that long purgative roll to starboard and I caught the glimmer of clear deck below me.

Where was that thing in our path? Whatever it was there was no sign of it now.

Walvis Bay rose confidently to the next wave.

She had won through.

The bridge was a shambles. It was still a foot deep in water, which I could hear thundering into the bowels of the ship. There was broken glass everywhere. I tried to see our course, but the compass had been stove in.

Something heavy bumped behind me. I risked a glance to see what it was. The barrel of the heavy winch below the bridge, which in her whaling days had been used to secure whales after harpooning, had been torn free by that crazed dive of hers and pitched bodily through the front of the bridge. Had I not moved away from the compass when I did, it might have killed me. Feldman had not been so lucky: the flying winch had struck him a glancing blow, breaking his left shoulder and pinning him against the deck until Walvis Bay's life-giving roll had freed him. He was lying amidst the glass and water, groaning, his right hand at his damaged left shoulder. Jubela, spitting seawater, was half on his feet, cut and bleeding about the head.

The engine-room voice-pipe shrilled incessantly. At least something was working! Scannel was not a man to get rattled easily, but there was an overtone of fear in his voice.

'What are you trying to do to us, skipper? I thought this was a whaler, not a submarine.. ’

I explained quickly, at the same time leaning forward to try and assess the damage on the deck below me.

'Get four men on to the foredeck, quickly!' I told him. 'Lash a tarpaulin over the deck where the winch was..'

'Was?'

'It looped the loop and left a hole in the deck you could drive a car through. Caught Feldman up here,' I got out hastily. 'Get the men up quick, before another sea puts paid to us.'

'There's enough of the ocean down here already,' growled Scannel. 'She's half full of water.' 'Pumps.. ?'

'I've got them going full blast. I don't know for sure, but perhaps we're holding our own. Lot still coming down from your part of the world.'

I quickly sketched what had happened to the bridge. My cabin and the ward-room were probably flooded too.

'What's that noise?' I asked.

There seemed to be a jarring thumping coming from outside the hull. The whole ship reverberated with it. I had new anxieties forward of the hole in the deck.

'The foremast has come adrift,' I told Scannel further. 'Get another team up and frap the stays before it goes over the side altogether. Seems to have a couple of feet of play from here.'

Amidst the stream of orders, I still had room for puzzlement. There remained that curious lack of punch about the sea. The waves looked the same, the wind looked the same, but nonetheless they seemed to lack the power to break and destroy.

'It's not the mast making that racket,' Scannel retorted grimly. 'Something's hammering the hull from the outside.'

His voice was drowned by a vibrating crash which I felt on the bridge. The enclosed space of the engine-room magnified it like a sounding-board.

I heard Scannel shouting orders below, above the crash and bump of something heavy against the port quarter. At the same time, Walvis Bay started to slew against the power of the rudder. I corrected her quickly. I guessed what had happened. For some reason or other, one screw was out of action.

'Port screw,' Scannel confirmed. 'Bit into something solid. Either badly chipped or smashed. Can't tell.' 'Rock. .?'

'No, something's beating the hell out of the hull. Reckon it's one of those fancy crane things we took aboard in Durban.'

The Van Veen grab with its chain-controlled bucket-like a small steam shovel, Alistair had said-was housed on the port rail.

'Can you be spared from the engine-room for five minutes?' I whipped out. 'I'll get aft there to the grab. See you there.' ⁴Aye aye.'

Smit was gaping at the wreck of the bridge. 'She's chasing her tail — one prop's out,' I told him. Jubela, on his feet now, still looked stunned.

'Try and hold her steady,' I went on. 'No course. Anything-just keep the water out of her while we make some jury repairs.'

'Came past the gyro gear on my way here,' replied Smit. 'It's gone for a Burton

'It'll keep,' I snapped back. 'It's the ship now above anything.'

I knelt and examined Feldman cursorily. His face was strained, white, terrified. He looked fearfully at the heavy winch barrel on the gratings.

'Don't let it come at me again,' he mouthed. 'Keep it away, for Christ's sake. Not again.'

I waited until it rolled towards us, then I guided it with my foot towards the doorway. It skidded and jammed itself across the lintel.

Scannel was waiting for me at the stern with a torch. Walvis Bay still rolled heavily in the seas, but nothing like the previous quantity of water was coming aboard. Scanners light showed what was left of the Van Veen grab. It had been welded as a triangle of steel bars: one upright from the rail, one at the top jutting out horizontally, and a double support running upward and outward to form the third leg of the triangle. There were big block-and-pulleys at the top and at the extremity from which the bucket grab was suspended on chains. The two projecting bars had been twisted and buckled out of recognition by the sea and now trailed in the water. These had fouled the screw.

Walvis Bay dipped for a lee roll and then started to come back.

'Nick! Duck! Watch out!'

A shower of sparks arced round towards us from the direction of the stern. The bucket grab, snapping and gaping with the ship's movement, swung round, from the remnants of its support, crashing and banging the steel deck straight towards the engineer. If those clamping jaws fastened on an arm, they would bite it off like a mechanical shark.

Scannel threw himself on the deck and the torch went out. There was a crash and a clatter, another shower of sparks, and then the wild thing was past.

I leapt to Scannel's side. The grab revolved out over the stern again; in a moment it would crash back in a malicious, deadly circle.

My grip slipped on his wet leather lumber-jacket which he had thrown over his dungarees, but I scrabbled and snatched him to the safety of the lifelines, out of reach of the swinging grab. Scannel was shaking from cold and fright.

'We've got to get that thing secured before we can attempt anything else,' I said quickly.

'Aye,' replied Scannel. 'It could have taken my head ott-thanks.'

Again the whaler rolled. We cowered back, waiting for the clatter and the sparks to go past. 'Now!'

We raced for the rail. I reached out with a securing rope for the chains at the top of the grab, but the ship heeled and it slipped from my grasp.

'Get back!'

We dodged to safety while the grab made another spark-trailing orbit.

'Next round, hang on to my legs — it's just out of reach,' I told Scannel.

We waited our moment and sprinted to the rail. Had the supporting bars been in place, I could have used them to hold on and secure the grab with my free hand, but they were adrift, crashing and banging against the ship's stern-plates.

Scannel took me round the waist as if in a rugby tackle. At the top of the pendulum swing of the bucket, I whipped the rope's end through the chains at the top. I tugged it fast. It took only a moment then to bring the grab itself inboard and lash it firmly to the shattered remains of its base structure.

Scannel flashed his light over the Wreckage. 'You'll have to hang on to me this time,' he remarked grimly. 'Hell, what a shambles! This will need an oxy-acetylene cutter.'

The sea came over and drenched us.

'Can you keep the flame burning?' I asked anxiously.

'Got to,' he jerked out. 'If those cables or chains wrap themselves round the screw..' he gestured.

'One's already out of action,' I said.

'I don't know how bad it is -1 stopped her before it could do itself more damage,' he replied. He took a hard, long look at me. ‘I guess you'll want everything she has, to get through the night?’

'Yes, Nick. We're in trouble. Big trouble. But one dud screw or not, if another sizzler like that big wave hits us, we've had it. Just say your prayers-if there's time. She's got a hole in the foredeck the size of Table Mountain. No tarpaulin is going to be worth a damn in another sea like that.'

Scannel's eyes were sizing up the job professionally as he spoke. ‘It wasn't like any wave I've ever encountered. The engine-room floor suddenly nose-dived. It was like putting her head down an escalator.'

I found my hands shaking on the lifelines, reaction to the dive like a near-miss car smash. Deliberately, consciously, I crushed all thought of the Waratah out of my mind. I must not be hamstrung in coping with our mortal peril by shadows from the past.

'Put that light on the gravity corer on the other rail,' I told Scannel. 'Maybe we'll have to cut that one away too. Not such heavy gear as this one, though.'

Scannel laughed mirthlessly. 'Take a look.' Across the wet deck, only a few stumps of metal showed where the gravity corer had been.

'The sea's done that job pretty well for us, but for this we'll want an oxy-acetylene cutter-le Roux can help. He's a good boy. Won't panic'

'I'll wait,' I said briefly. 'Feldman's injured. Smit's trying to sort things out on the bridge.'

I tried to get my bearings as Scannel staggered off along the bucking lifeline. On the exposed deck the gale was penetrating, Arctic. Walvis Bay rolled heavily, but still the seas were not sweeping the decks as they had done before the great wave. Something seemed to be taming them. The crests still broke aboard, but Walvis Bay, with all the weight of water inside her, was riding them, not plunging headlong.

The fear rose in my throat at the thought of the black shape into which Walvis Bay had so nearly plunged. I took a grip of my nerves and edged over to the windward side of the deck, trying to pierce the darkness, trying to bring to rational, everyday terms the thing I thought I had seen. The gale still tore its Force 10 swathe from the south-west. Tears streamed down my face as I held my eyes into it to make sure it held the same quarter. Walvis Bay was edging slowly towards the deep sea-towards safety. Had the savagery of the seas lessened, I asked myself, because there was already deeper water under her? Had we side-stepped some diabolical sea-bottom contour which lashed the waves to such madness?

I wiped the spray and the rain from my eyes with the back of my hand and tried again to find the black mass which had stood in our path. For perhaps half a minute I could see before the iciness brought a fresh gush of tears. Nothing. Could I find the place again? The compass was hopelessly wrecked; more than before, even, my dead reckoning was pure guesswork. We could be five miles in any direction. I turned my face from the scalpel of wind and spray. Had it simply been a trick of the light which had made a big sea loom to take shape like … I dared not bring the thought out from shadows as Avernal as the darkness around the battling ship.

I heard Scannel shouting to me from the other side of the deck, near the grab. I made my way back cautiously. He and young le Roux were sitting astride a heavy gas cylinder. If that broke free, I thought quickly, it could be as big a menace as the swinging grab had been. A crushing impact against a broken-off stanchion could explode the high-compression gas inside …

Scannel had not forgotten to bring a strong light as well as a rope.

'Get a turn round her,' he panted. 'Can't work if this thing's going to go wild.'

I wormed a noose over the steel neck of the bottle, round a couple of severed stanchions, and then back over the smooth cylinder barrel.

'Every time that spar dogs into the ship, I die a little,’ Scannel remarked. 'It's bad enough here, but you want to hear it below in the engine-room. I'll bet there are some holes punched in her plates already.'

He worked deftly as he spoke, trying to ignite the torch. Le Roux and I huddled close to form a windbreak. The cutter suddenly burst into bright flame, hissing and spitting in the rain and spray.

'I'll go for the big boy first,' said the engineer. He looked apprehensively at the grab I had made fast. 'I'd really like to ditch that to begin with, but if I cut it loose it may only get fouled up with the clutter under the stern. Then we double our problem.'

Holding the spitting, blue-tongued flame in his left hand, he steadied himself against the buckled rail with his right. He strained to see where to begin.

'Bring the light closer, skipper,' he called. 'This will be trickier even than I thought.'

I shone the beam on the twisted mass. The main three-inch heavy tube was so contorted that it seemed impossible that the sea could have wrought it. Strong, flexible steel cable, used for lowering the grab hundreds of fathoms deep to the ocean floor, was snarled about it like a knotted ball of wool. The winching device which was integral to it had been unseated from its bolt and seemed inextricably mixed up with the lower portions of the crane. No part of it would ever be fit for use again.

The three of us ducked as a wave crest toppled over the rail on the lee roll; again, I was surprised at the sea's lack of viciousness. The waves were no smaller, but they seemed to be pawing at the ship now rather than punching.

When the water cleared, Scannel hung over the rail. 'I'm going over head-first, skipper,' he told me calmly. 'You'll have to hang on to my legs while I work. Piet, boy, get yourself alongside the skipper. When you see a wave coming, shout. I'll hand you the torch. Shove it above your head-keep it out of the water — do anything, but keep it alight.'

'You'll get drowned, Nick,' I objected. 'This is a modern variation on keel-hauling a man.'

Scannel brushed aside my anxiety. 'If you yell in good time, I'll take a long breath. Getting wet doesn't matter. We can't play musical chairs with each wave, back and forth to the deck and over the side again each time. Every time that wreckage bashes her, our chances of seeing tomorrow get slimmer.'

'Right,' I replied. 'But don't object if I recommend you for the George Cross or whatever they offer enginers in tight spots.'

Scannel already had his flashlight on the heaving water, judging his moment to go overside. The water looked murky, oily, almost as if someone had drawn a thin sheet of plastic over its surface.

'Here we go!'

Scannel stuck the cutting torch, where the metal joins the rubber tubes from the cylinder, between his teeth and plunged himself full-length over the rail; I held his lower legs and feet, and young le Roux craned over to snatch the vital light from being doused.

Had it been a matter of cutting away the gravity corer on the other side of the stern, our task would have been far easier. There was a great deal more water coming aboard on the lee roll (where we were) than on the weather roll opposite. The cold, too, made movements stiff and hands clumsy, I worked my jaws to keep my face from freezing.

Scannel called to le Roux to open the gas cock. The whole scene flared into unnatural, incandescent brightness as flame bit into metal, throwing up showers of blue-white sparks.

In that sudden brightness, I spotted the next wave.

'Nick! The torch — quick!'

The engineer was almost through the thick pipe. Despite my warning, he went on cutting, using every last second. The sea started its upward heave. The seared metal support broke and swung, bringing with it a flurry of flaring steel which exploded in a sizzling cascade over Scanners neck and chest.

The wave broke.

I had a momentary glimpse of his agonized face: he swivelled sideways and upwards and thrust the torch clear of the water into le Roux's grip; he rammed it high above his head.

The rail dipped under. Water engulfed us.

It cleared. I reached forward and dragged Scannel bodily back on to the deck. His left shoulder was a polka-dot of burn-holes. He would carry those scars for the rest of his life.

He managed to speak. 'Let me get back-give me the torch! I'll have her completely free this time …'

'Nick-no-'

He shook his head, as if not trusting himself to speak through the pain. He gestured for me to take his legs. He snatched the torch from le Roux and dived, so it seemed, headlong over the side once more.

Again the bright light lit the scene unnaturally white. Then, miraculously soon, Scannel signalled to be pulled back.

There's only the cable left, and that's nothing,' he said quietly.

'Here it comes!'

We ducked for another sea, but le Roux hung on, standing upright.

'Good boy!' exclaimed Scannel after the roller had passed. 'Now for the cable.'

Skilfully and quickly he sent the flame through the tangle of wire and chains. The wind drowned its splash.

Scannel grimaced in agony.

'Nick,' I said urgently, "I'll come below to the engine-room and fix you up. We've got to get something on those burns right away..'

‘I did,' he winced lop-sidedly. 'Seawater. Try it some time. The hot so hot and the cold so cold. No, skipper, someone else can patch me up-you're needed to save the ship, not play nursemaid to me.'

He was right. Walvis Bay now had a sporting chance. It was up to me to exploit what Scannel had achieved.

'Okay,' I answered, 'but, Nick, that doesn't mean I don't appreciate. .'

The pain and reaction were hitting him. 'Save the speech for a calm sea,' he said. 'Can we risk that screw?' I asked.

'We'll try, anyway, and see what happens.' He snapped out the torch. 'I'll get on the bridge blower as soon as I can. Pumps, too. We've had a lucky break from the calmer seas. Just depends whether that tarpaulin holds over the hole in the deck. .'

I groped my way along the lifelines to the foredeck below the bridge. The men were putting the final touches to sealing the ragged hole where previously the winch had stood. Ends of the double tarpaulin still flapped and snapped, but my team was on top. Apart from another mammoth wave, it would keep out enough sea to enable the pumps to cope with what did make its way below.

I headed for the bridge.

Smit had rigged a couple of storm lanterns overhead and both he and Jubela were heavily oil-skinned against the driving rain. He had cleared away some of the glass and seen Feldman below to the ward-room. He had also found a small boat's compass somewhere and had taped it over the smashed binnacle.

'Do you think we'll make it, sir?' Smit was more excited than fearful.

I dodged a straight answer. 'How's she steering?'

'It would be a big help if we could get the port screw working.'

Walvis Bay's head seemed to be pointing somewhere east of south, but the tiny compass made it difficult to tell with any degree of accuracy.

'We'll try,' I replied. 'There may be a chunk out of it, Scannel thinks, but we still could get by if the shaft's not messed up.'

'Better than nothing at all, sir.'

I picked up the voice-pipe. 'Nick? Can we risk that port screw yet?'

The engineer's voice was tight with reaction. 'Aye. But we'll have to cut speed on the starboard prop first. Quarter-speed to start with. Maybe we can work up a bit more later, if the other can take it.'

Jubela gestured to me as I spoke.

I, too, felt the change of motion. Walvis Bay rose sharply to the next sea, quite unlike her longer, lazier motion a little while before. The white crest crashed aboard and sluiced to port, with the earlier characteristic deep lee roll. She lifted her bows well, but I could detect the inhibiting weight of water inside her.

I nodded to Jubela. 'Nick,' I went on. 'The sea's beginning to hit her again. I don't know why, but it is. How soon can you pump the water out of her? I need all the buoyancy I can find.'

'Couple of hours,' he answered. 'Depends on how much comes via the tarpaulin. Skipper-here comes your port screw.'

There was a squeal of agonized metal and a heavy, thumping vibration. It struck right through the hull to the bridge. The voice-pipe dropped with a crash the other end and Scannel yelled orders to stop the engine. The shattering noise stopped.

Scannel came on the voice-pipe.

'That's the sort of scream you should have let out just now if you weren't such a bloody spartan,' I told the engineer.

The engineer was in no mood to respond. I knew how much that damaged prop hurt him.

'She's bad, skipper-very bad,' he said. The shaft must be bent — what else, only a dockyard could know.'

I made my decision. 'Nick,' I said, 'I'm going to heave to. The sea's gone back to what it was before the big 'un hit us. I can't hold her all night with the engines like this. See if you can coax that starboard prop into giving me just enough to help hold her head into the run of the sea. I’ll stream a sea anchor and a drum of oil. The oil will soften the waves and keep them off the decks, maybe.'