Hungry as the Sea (12 page)

Samantha held aloft one of the phosphorus flares, and it required all the strength of her frozen arm to rip the igniter tab. The flare spluttered and streamed acrid white smoke, then burst into the dazzling crimson fire that denotes distress at sea. She stood like a tiny statue of liberty, holding the flare aloft in one hand and peering with streaming eyes into the sullen fog-banks.

Again the animal bellow of the siren boomed through the milky, frosted air; it was so close that it shook Samantha’s body the way the wind moves the wheat on the hillside, then it went on to collide solidly with the cliff of ice that hung above her.

The working of sea and wind, and the natural erosion of chancing temperatures had set tremendous forces at work within the glittering body of the berg. Those forces had found a weak point, a vertical fault line, that ran like an axe-stroke from the flattened tableland of the summit, five hundred feet down to the moulded bottom of the berg far below the surface.

The booming sound waves of
Warlock’s
horn found a sympathetic resonance with the body of the mountain that set the ice on each side of the fault vibrating in different frequencies. Then the fault sheared, with a brittle cracking explosion of glass bursting under pressure, and the fault opened. One hundred million tons of ice began to move as it broke away from the mother berg. The block of ice that the berg calved was in itself a mountain, a slab of solid ice twice the size of Saint Paul’s cathedral - and as it swung out and twisted free, new pressures and forces came into play within it, finding smaller faults and flaws so that ice burst within ice and tore itself apart, as though dynamited with tons of high explosive.

The air itself was filled with hurtling ice, some pieces the size of a locomotive and others as and as sharp and as deadly as steel swords; and below this plunging toppling mass, the tiny yellow plastic raft bobbed helplessly.

“There,” called Nick. On the starboard beam. The phosphorus distress flare lit the fog-banks internally with a fiery cherry red and threw grotesque patterns of light against the belly of lurking cloud. David Allen blew one last triumphant blast on the siren.

“New heading 5.1,” Nick told the helmsman and
Warlock
came around handily, and almost instantly burst from the enveloping bank of fog into another -arena of open air.

Half a mile away, the life-raft bobbed like a fat yellow toad beneath a glassy green wall of ice. The top of the iceberg was lost in the fog high above, and the tiny human figure that stood erect on the raft and held aloft the brilliant crunson flue was an insignificant speck in this vast wilderness of fog and sea and ice. .

“Prepare to pick up survivors, David,” said Nick, and the mate hurried away while Nick moved to the wing of the bridge from where he could watch the rescue.

Suddenly Nick stopped and lifted his head in bewilderment. For a moment he thought it was gunfire, then the explosive crackling of sound changed to a rending shriek as of the tearing of living fibre when a giant redwood tree is falling to the axes. The volume of sound mounted into a rumbling roar, the unmistakeable roar of a mountain in avalanche.

“Good Christ!” whispered Nick, as he saw the cliff of ice begin to change shape. Slowly sagging outwards, it seemed to fold down upon itself. Faster and still faster it fell, and the hissing splinters of bursting ice formed a dense swirling cloud, while the cliff leaned further and further beyond its point of equilibrium and at last collapsed and lifted pressure waves from the green waters that raced out one behind the other, flinging
Warlock’s
bows high as she rode them and then nosed down into the troughs between.

Since Nick’s oath, nobody had spoken on the bridge. They clutched for balance at the nearest support and stared in awe at that incredible display of careless might, while the water still churned and creamed with the disturbance and pieces of broken jagged ice, some the size of a country house, bobbed to the surface and revolved slowly, finding their balance as they swirled and bumped against each other.

“Closer,” snapped Nick. “Get as close as you can.” Of the yellow life-raft there was no longer any sign. Jagged shards of ice had ripped open its fragile skin and the grinding, tumbling lumps had trodden it and its pitiful human cargo deep beneath the surface.

“Closer,” urged Nick. If by a miracle anybody had survived that avalanche, then they had four minutes left of life, and Nick pushed
Warlock
into the still rolling and broiling mass of broken ice — pushing it open with ice strengthened bows.

Nick flung open the bridge doors beside him and stepped out into the freezing air of the open wing. He ignored the cold, buoyed up by new anger and frustration. He had paid the highest price to make this rescue, he had given up his chance at
Golden Adventurer
for the lives of a handful of strangers, and now at this last moment, they had been snatched away from him. His sacrifice had been in vain, and the terrible waste of it all appalled him. Because there was no other outlet for his feelings, he let waves of anger sweep over him and he shouted at David Allen’s little group on the fore-deck.

“Keep your eyes open. I want those people!” Red caught his eye, a flash of vivid red, seen through the green water, becoming brighter and more hectic as it rose to the surface.

“Both engines half astern,” he screamed. And
Warlock
stopped dead as the twin propellers changed pitch and bit into the water, pulling her up in less than her own length.

In a small open area of green water the red object broke out.

Nick saw a human head in a red anorak hood, supported by the thick inflated life-jacket. The head was thrown back, exposing a face as white and glistening with wetness as the deadly ice that surrounded it. The face was that of a young boy, smooth and beardless, and quite incredibly beautiful.

“Get him!” Nick yelled, and at the sound of his voice the eyes in that beautiful face opened. Nick saw they were a musty green and unnaturally large in the, glistening pale oval framed by the crimson hood.

David Allen was racing back, carrying life-ring and line.

“Hurry. God damn you.” The boy was still alive, and Nick wanted him. He wanted him as fiercely as he had wanted anything in his life, he wanted at least this one young life in return for all he had sacrificed. He saw that the boy was watching him. “Come on, David,” he shouted

“Here!” called David, bracing himself at the ship’s rail and he threw the life-ring. He threw it with an expert round arm motion that sent it skimming forty feet to where the hooded head bobbed on the agitated water. He threw it so accurately that it hit the bobbing figure a glancing blow on the shoulder and then plopped into the water alongside, almost nudging the boy.

“Grab it!” yelled Nick. “Grab hold!” The face turned slowly, and the boy lifted a gloved hand clear of the surface, but the movement was uncoordinated.

“It’s next to you,” David encouraged. “Grab it, man!” The boy had been in the water for almost two minutes already, he had lost control of his body and limbs, he made two inconclusive movements with the raised hand, one actually bumped the ring but he could not hold it and slowly the life-ring bobbed away from him.

“You bloody idiot,” stormed Nick. “Grab it.” And those huge green eyes turned back to him, looking up at him with the total resignation of defeat, one stiff arm still raised — almost a farewell salute.

Nick did not realize what he was going to do until he had shrugged off his coat and kicked away his shoes; then he realized that if he stopped to think about it, he would not go.

He jumped feet first, throwing himself far out to miss the rail below him, and as the water closed over his head he experienced a terrified sense of disbelief at the cold. It seized his chest in a vice that choked the air from his lungs, it drove needles of agony deep into his forehead, and blinded him with the pain as he rose to the surface The cold rushed through his light closing, it crushed his testicles and his stomach was filled with nausea. The marrow in the bones of his legs and arms ached so that he found it difficult to force his limbs to respond, but he struck out for the floating figure.

It was only forty feet, but halfway there he was seized by a panic that he was not going to make it. He clenched his teeth and fought the icy water as though it was a mortal enemy, but it sapped away his strength with the heat of his body.

He struck the floating figure with one outflung before he realized he had reached him, and he clung desperately to him, peering up at
Warlock’s
deck.

David Allen had retrieved the ring by its line and he threw it again.

The cold had slowed Nick down so that he could not avoid the ring and it struck him on the forehead, but he felt no pain, there was no feeling in his face or feet or hands.

The fleeting seconds counted out the life left to them as he struggled with the inert figure, slowly losing command of his own limbs as he tried to fit the ring over the boy’s body. He did not accomplish it. He got the boy’s head and one arm through, and he knew he could do no more.

“Pull,” he screamed in rising panic, and his voice was remote and echoed strangely in his own ears. He took a twist of line around his arm, for his fingers could no longer hold, and he clung with the remains of his strength as they dragged them in.

Jagged ice brushed and snatched at them, but he held the boy with his free arm.

“Pull,” he whispered.” Oh, for God’s sake, pull!” And then they were bumping against
Warlock’s
steel side, were being lifted free of the water, the twist of line smearing the wet skin from his forearm, staining his sleeve with blood that was instantly dissolved to pink by sea water. He felt no pain.

With the other arm, he hung on to the boy, holding him from slipping out of the life-ring. He did not feel the hands that grabbed at him. There was no feeling in his legs and he collapsed face forward, but David caught him before he struck the deck and they hustled him into the steaming warmth of Angel’s galley, his legs dragging behind him.

“Are you okay, Skipper?” David kept demanding, and when Nick tried to reply, his jaw was locked in a frozen rictus and great shuddering spasms shook his whole body.

“Get their clothes off,” grated Angel, and, with an easy swing of his heavily muscled shoulders lifted the boy’s body on to the galley table and laid it out face upwards. With a single sweep of a Solingen steel butcher’s knife he split the crimson anorak from neck to crutch and stripped it away.

Nick found his voice, it was ragged and broken by the convulsions of frozen muscles.

“What the hell are you doing, David? Get your arse on deck and get this ship on course for
Golden Adventurer
,” he grated, and would have added something a little more forceful, but the next convulsion caught him, and anyway David Allen had already left.

“You’ll be all right.” Angel did not even glance up at Nick as he worked with the knife, ripping away layer after layer of the boy’s clothing. “A tough old dog like you - but I think we’ve got a ripe case of hypothermia here.”

Two of the seamen were helping Nick out of his sodden clothing, the cloth crackled with the thin film of ice that had already formed. Nick winced with the pain of returning circulation to half-frozen hands and feet.

“Okay,” he said, standing naked in the middle of the galley and scrubbing at himself with a rough towel. “I’ll be all right now, return to your stations.” He crossed to the kitchen range, tottering like a drunk, and welcomed the blast of heat from it, rubbing warmth into himself, still shaking and shuddering, his body mottled puce and purple with cold and his genitals shrunken and drawn up into the dense black bush at his crotch.

“Coffee’s boiling. Get yourself a hot drink, Skip,” Angel told him, glancing up at Nick from his work. He ran a quick appreciative glance over Nick’s body, taking in the wide rangy shoulders, the dark curls of damp hair that covered his chest, and the trim lines of hard muscle that moulded his belly and waist. “Put lots of sugar in it - it will warm you the best possible way,” Angel instructed him, and returned his attention to the slim young body on the table.

Angel had put aside his camp airs, and worked with the brusque efficiency of a man who had been trained at his task.

Then suddenly he stopped and stood back for a moment.

“Would you believe! No fun gun!” Angel sighed.

Nick turned just as Angel spread a thick woollen blanket over the pale naked body on the table and began to massage it vigorously.

“You better leave us girls alone together, Skipper,” said Angel with a sweet smile and a twinkle of his diamond earrings, and Nick was left with the memory of a single fleeting glimpse of the stunningly lovely body of a young woman below the pale face and the thick sodden head of copper and gold hair.

Nick Berg was swaddled in a grey woollen blanket, over the boiler suit and bulk jerseys. His feet were in thick Norwegian trawlerman’s socks and heavy rubber working boots. He held a china mug of almost boiling coffee in both hands, bending over it to savour the aroma of the steam.

It was the third cup he had drunk in the last hour - and yet the shivering spasms still shook him every few minutes.

David Allen had moved his canvas chair across the bridge so he could watch the Trog and work the ship at the same time. Nick could see the loom of the black rock cliffs of Cape Alarm close on their port beam.

The morse beam squealed suddenly, a long sequence of code to which every man on the bridge listened with complete attention, but it needed the Trog to say it for them.

“
La Mouette
has reached the prize.” He seemed to take a perverse relish in seeing their expressions. “She’s beaten us to it, lads, salvage to her crew.

“I want it word for word,” snapped Nick irritably, and the Trog grinned spitefully at him before bowing over his pad.

La Mouette to Christy Marine. Golden Adventurer is hard aground, held by ice and receding tides. Stop. Ice damage to plating appears to be below surface. Stop. Hull is flooded and open to sea. Stop.