Firespill (17 page)

Elaine now sat facing him. Though she seemed to have recovered some of her composure, there was a forced air, an intensity, about her quite unlike her usual unruffled poise. Reindorp wondered what he should do, and decided that under the circumstances the best contribution he could make was simply to keep talking. “The island was only five acres in all—the middle blown clean out of it. Nothing left but a few of those gas holes—fumaroles the geologists call ’em. All they did was hiss an’ spit most of the time; blowing up sulphur fumes. Sometimes they’d just gurgle a bit and throw up a few puffs of smoke, but then before you could say howdy-do, they’d erupt with steam. Full of sulphur, that steam. Whenever you took a breath, it was like having a poker in your throat.”

“What happened to the men?” asked Elaine, her vision drawn back to the crimson wall only half a mile away. Suddenly, Reindorp realized that Elaine must already know the story, and that she had deliberately steered him into relating it. What puzzled him was that he was almost sure he hadn’t told it to her, though he couldn’t swear to it.

“The men?” he continued. “Well, in 1916 there were about fourteen of them on the island, and the supply ship would drop off fresh food and whatnot every three weeks or so.”

Elaine lay back on the gunwale, wiping the sweat from her face. She lifted her sweater a little and fanned her neck. “They were mining sulphur, weren’t they?”

“What?”

“Sulphur, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, that’s right. For munitions. Well they—I mean the ship—they called around two weeks later and all the men had vanished.”

“Without trace.”

Harry nodded tiredly. He didn’t want to go on with the story. It was the worst possible story in a situation like this, akin to talking of starvation amongst starving men. But Elaine looked over at him. “It was the fumes, wasn’t it?” she asked, “a sudden buildup from the—what do you call them?”

“The fumaroles.”

“Yes.”

“Mind you,” said Harry, trying his best to convey doubt, “it could have been anything.”

Elaine’s eyes closed. She shook her head, and when she spoke it was in a very matter-of-fact voice. “But there was no sign of anything. No volcanic debris, no bodies.”

“They must have panicked,” said Harry, pointedly. “Once you panic you’re gone. They must have just run and pushed off in the few boats they had.”

“But fourteen men? You’d think that there would have been some wreckage washed up on the island.”

“There were no beaches,” said Harry, feeling nauseated. Something seemed to be muddling his brain, making him think that it was of the utmost importance that Elaine and everyone else in the world should know that there were no sandy beaches on White Island, five thousand miles away in the Southwest Pacific.

“No sand,” he mumbled. Each time he breathed, fumes seared his throat.

“But it was so rocky. You would think some—oh my God,” she said, sitting up, eyes wide, staring unseeing into a cloud of smoke that reeked of kerosene.

Harry, snapped into full consciousness by her alarm, grabbed her by the arm and pulled her protectively towards him. “What’s the matter?” he asked urgently. “What’s wrong, Lainey?”

“It was the sharks,” she said. “Now I remember. It was the sharks. They killed the men. That’s why they were never found.”

“Who told you that damned story?” he asked angrily. “Was it me?”

Elaine patted his hand softly.

“I should never have told you,” he said, his voice full of self-reproach.

“You didn’t, Harry. It was Father—you told him.”

“Then I was a damned fool.”

“No. It was my fault. I’ve been trying to remember him. All I could think of was that story. I can see him telling it now. Both of you—you were great story-tellers.”

Harry looked down at her. “Were? Hey, girl, don’t count me out yet. I’ve still got a few thousand miles left.”

She forced a smile. There was a splash near the boat. They didn’t bother to look for the dead bird as it popped to the surface; they’d already seen dozens fall, dead from the utter exhaustion of trying to outfly the fire.

“You remember your tenth birthday, Lainey?”

“The go-cart,” she said.

“The red go-cart.”

Elaine’s eyes were closed again as she spoke, in an effort to lock out the smoke. “All the boys in the neighborhood said that girls didn’t ride go-carts—couldn’t ride go-carts.”

Harry nodded.
“I
said girls didn’t ride go-carts. That’s what made your pa build it. It wasn’t the boys that set his mind to it; it was old blabbermouth Reindorp.”

“That was my dad,” she said, “and then I had to go and gash my shin on the edge of the seat. I still have the scar.”

“I don’t remember that,” cut in Harry. He was finding it increasingly difficult to believe that it was the Vice-President sitting across from him and not Lainey, a small country girl, speechless at her first glimpse of the sky blue Pacific.

“Oh, yes,” she continued, “the boys laughed at that—little monsters—but Daddy just got a thick piece of rubber hosing, slit it almost right through from end to end, and glued it onto the edge of the seat.” She paused. “I thought he was the smartest man in the world. I mean, he was always there to help, especially after Mother died. ’Course he had his faults, like anyone, but…” Elaine’s lip began to tremble.

Harry leaned over, straining his back. “I know, Lainey,” he said, patting her gently on the arm. “I know.”

Elaine was winding and unwinding a grimy rope end around her finger. “I miss him,” she said, but her words were lost in the explosion of a pool of high octane floating in amongst the heavier oil. More crude was burning, its water vapor driven off by the heat of the lighter fuel.

As the smoke all but blotted out the fast-fading daylight, they forced themselves to breathe as slowly as they could, to move as little as possible, in order to conserve what strength remained. The boat now lay near the middle of the lake-sized area not yet covered by the firespill. Afraid as they were, watching and hearing the roar of the fire wall encircling them in the near distance, they could not help but be struck by its awesome beauty.

The singed yellow flames of high octane did not leap up now, but rather churned towards the indigo sky in crimson fireballs belched up by the boiling sea. Now and then, surprised by the bellows of the rising wind, the flames would suddenly flare out, and the tar black fume clouds would roll further in towards the boat. Each time this happened, it seemed that the becalmed area was being reduced to nothing. For Elaine it was like watching a great black spider taunting its trapped prey. For minutes at a time they were blinded by the acrid vapor; then without warning the wind would fall, causing the smoke to retreat just far enough to reveal that the flames had not yet reached them. Harry, exhausted from coughing, was leaning on the gunwale, limply holding a hose, trying to cool the wooden boat. Beside him a pump chattered away, lifting and pushing the dirty seawater up onto the deck. He coughed again, his throat sore and burning. “You all right, Lainey?” he gasped as a new wave of smoke enveloped them.

“No—can hardly breathe.”

Harry, convulsed by his coughing, lost his grip on the hose. It slithered along the deck like a tired snake, finally gushing up against the pump and flooding it. When his cough temporarily abated, Harry turned his attention to fixing the pump. “All we can do is to keep us hosed down. I’ve thrown everything overboard we don’t need in case we have to make a dash.” His eyes searched carefully about the boat for anything else that was expendable. Then, although the effort nearly made him black out, he managed to restart the pump. He slapped it affectionately, as one would a faithful pet. “She’s a heavy old sod—weighs us down I know, but if that sub makes it I’ll chuck her over all right. An extra burst of speed will come in mighty handy.”

The Vice-President wasn’t listening. All she could hear was a bellowing roar, and all she could see was the canyon-deep wall of fire which completely surrounded them. “Do you think we’ve got a fighting chance?”

Slumped against the life preserver, Harry was coughing uncontrollably. Finally he took a swig of fresh water, hot from the fire, cleared his throat, and spat blood over the side. After a while he answered slowly. “No, Lainey, I don’t. A fighting chance is a fair chance.”

More fumes swept over and around the boat.

“One in ten, maybe?”

“More like one in fifty.”

They did not speak again for several minutes. Elaine didn’t want to think of anything, least of all her slim chances of survival, but she knew that she must steady her mind against the panic she felt welling up again inside her. But the only thing her consciousness would allow was the thought of how much trouble she was causing. She heard the old man wheezing heavily. She looked at him sorrowfully. “I’m very…” she began weakly, coughing again. “I … shouldn’t have gotten you into this … should’ve let those agents come with me … used a bigger boat.”

The wind had changed direction again, and they immediately felt better as the suffocating fumes momentarily fell back. “Bigger boat wouldn’t have helped, Lainey. Neither would a hundred agents. We’d still be stuck out here, and them with us. Besides, it’s the motor’s fault.”

Before ceasing transmission to save their battery’s power, they had radioed Admiral Klein that if there were any risk at all to others, no one should try to rescue them. Klein, taking care not to tell them about the precarious position of the
Swordfish
, the dispersal rate of the oil, the deteriorating weather, or anything else which would make the rescue hazardous, had thanked them and then had told them that regardless of their desire, the President of the United States and the Prime Minister of Canada had decided that an attempt should be made. All Harry had said was “Damn fine of them Canadians.” Elaine had readily agreed, buoyed up by even the faint prospect of rescue.

But afterwards she realized that there had been a certain inner calm in the acceptance of finality. Now that there was hope, however little, there was anxiety.

For her the most terrifying aspect of the fire was that there was no reference point, no steady marker against which to calculate the rate of its advance. It was even possible, she thought, that it might be slowly withdrawing, as it had earlier, in the squall. She tried to gauge the wind, but because much of it was being generated by the fire itself, it seemed to be coming from all different directions at once. Harry passed over some fresh water. Elaine felt that it was all she could do to reach out for the flask, and when she drank, it tasted of gasoline. She wiped her lips with a rag to rid them of their crust of smoke deposits. The next sip tasted worse. She capped the flask and handed it back. “How wide do you think this—this pond of ours is?”

“It was about five miles.”

“Was?”

“The fire’s coming in. Wind’s rising.”

A surge of panic passed over the Vice-President. “But—I mean—how can you tell? The wind’s been eddying all around us.”

Harry motioned towards the control console. “Drift indicator.”

She looked at her watch. “How fast do you think it’s advancing?”

“ ’Round half a mile an hour. It’s about four miles across now, I reckon. Time we moved into the center again—need as much moat as we can get.”

As Harry struggled to his feet to make his way towards the console, Elaine, her face contorted against the heat, asked, “You said four miles wide?”

Harry nodded and pressed the starter button.

“Then we’ve got four hours … before it reaches us?”

The boat started to move, slowly. “Less than that, Lainey. Four hours and it’ll be right on top of us. Doubt if we can last less than a quarter of a mile from the flames. All the oxygen’d be gone. I’d say about two hours—maybe less.”

Despite his fatherly tone of voice, his matter-of-fact delivery was alarming. Elaine suspected that the old man no longer believed that their chances were even one in fifty; he didn’t believe they had any chance at all.

When they reached the center of the clear area and Harry turned off the motor, they could see rivulets of oil from the main slick curling about the bow in rainbows of colors, riding the wake and probing here and there in long tentacles. In the distance there was a loud crump as a new pool of high octane exploded, shooting a long, bluish yellow flash through the dull orange of the burning crude. Soon new columns of smoke could be seen arching towards them, riding on the advancing balls of flame which tumbled madly over and into each other, growing larger and spreading by the second as they cannibalized the primary fire in their path. As each wave reached the perimeter of the clear area, it collapsed, spreading out and hissing into the newly won space.

Soon the explosions of the high octane sounded like a creeping artillery barrage, raising the temperature of the whole spill, bringing more and more of the vast blanket of crude to its flash point. Unlike the variegated and dancing patterns of the high-octane fire, there was nothing especially dramatic about the ignition of the gel-like crude—only a slow roll of tangerine flame. But once it was alight, the thicker oil would bum on and on, outlasting the high octane by days, even weeks.

Harry guessed what the explosions meant, but when Elaine asked him what was happening, he said he didn’t know. More fire meant less oxygen and less time for the submarine to reach them. Suddenly a fierce gust of hot, skin-itching wind howled into the
Happy Girl
, sending Elaine’s hair streaming behind her and flattening her against the gunwale. The fire was creating its own wind system, and this was its first assault. Harry knew that this too would get worse, for even though the high waves that would result from the winds at the fire’s center might douse part of it, churning and breaking up some of the oil, he was sure that the winds had already pushed part of the fire onto the North American coast, and would push more. But he said nothing about this to Elaine. It would only make her feel worse about having asked him to bring her out here.

“What time do you have?” she asked.

He turned towards her and smiled kindly, answering her question as if it really mattered, as if they really did stand a chance. “Nearly six-forty-five.”