Hungry as the Sea (55 page)

“What is it?” Sam dumped the buckets with relief, slopping salt water down the steps.

“Johnny called – the anti-pollution patrol bespoke
Golden Dawn
an hour ago. She’s in the Straits, she was abeam Matanilla reef when they spotted her and she will be abeam of Biscayne Key before we can get out there, if we don’t leave now.”

“I’m coming.” Sam hefted her heavy buckets, and broke into a rubber-kneed trot. “I’ll meet you down on the wharf.  Did you call the TV studio?”

“There’s a camera team on the way,” Sally-Anne yelled back as she ran for the front doors. Hurry, Sam –”

Samantha dumped the clams into one of her tanks, switched on the oxygen and as soon as it began to bubble to the surface, she turned and raced from the laboratory and out of the front doors.

Golden Dawn’s
deck officer stopped beside the radarscope, glanced down at it idly, then stooped with more attention and took a bearing on the little glowing pinpoint of green light that showed up clearly inside the ten-mile circle of the sweep.

He grunted, straightened, and walked quickly to the front of the bridge. Slowly, he scanned the green windchopped sea ahead of the tanker’s ponderous bows. “Fishing boat,” he said to the helmsman. “But they are under way.” He had seen the tiny flash of a bow wave. “And they are right in the main navigational channel – they must have seen us by now, they are making a turn to pass us to starboard.” He dropped the binoculars and let them dangle against his chest. “Oh thank you.” He took the cup of cocoa from the steward, and sipped it with relish as he turned away to the chart-table.

One of the tanker’s junior officers came out of the radio room at the back of the bridge. “Still no score” he said, “and only injury time left now,” and they fell into a concerned discussion of the World Cup soccer match being played under floodhghts at Wembley Stadium on the other side of the Atlantic.

“If it’s a draw then it means that France is in the –”

There was an excited shout from the radio room, and the junior officer ran to the door and then turned back with an excited grin. “England has scored!” The deck officer chuckled happily. That will wrap it up. Then with a start of guilt he turned back to his duties, and had another start, this time of surprise, when he glanced into the radarscope.

“What the hell are they playing at?” he exclaimed irritably, and hurried forward to scan the sea ahead. The fishing boat had continued its turn and was now bows on. “Damn them. We’ll give them a buzz.” He reached up for the handle of the foghorn and blew three long blasts, that echoed out mournfully across the shallow greenish water of the Straits. There was a general movement among the officers to get a better view ahead through the forward bridge windows.

They must be half asleep out there. The deck officer thought quickly about calling the Captain to the bridge, If it came to manoeuvering the ship in these confined waters, he flinched from the responsibility. Even at this reduced speed, it would take
Golden Dawn
half an hour and seven nautical miles to come to a stop; a turn in either direction would swing through a wide arc of many miles before the ship was able to make a go change, of course – God, then there was the effect of the wind against the enormously exposed area of the towering stern quarters, and the full bore of the Gulf Stream driving out of the narrows of the Straits. The problems of manoeuvering the vessel struck a chill of panic into the officer – and the fishing boat was on collision course, the range closing swiftly under the combined speeds of both vessels. He reached for the call button of the intercom that connected the bridge directly to the Captain’s quarters on the deck below, but at that moment Captain Randle came bounding up the private staircase from his day cabin.

“What is it?” he demanded. “What was that blast on the horn?”

“Small vessel holding on to collision course, sir.” The officer’s relief was evident, and Randle seized the handle of the foghorn and hung on to it.

God, what’s wrong with them? The deck is crowded, exclaimed one of the officers without lowering his binoculars. Looks as though they have a movie camera team on the top deck. Randle judged the closing range anxiously; already the small fishing vessel was too close for the
Golden Dawn
to stop in time.

“Thank God,” somebody exclaimed. “They are turning away.”

“They are streaming some sort of banner. Can anybody read that?”

“They are heaving-to,” the deck officer yelled suddenly. “They are heaving-to right under our bows.”

Samantha Silver had not expected the tanker to be so big. From directly ahead, her bows seemed to fill the horizon from one side to the other, and the bow wave she threw up ahead of her creamed and curved like the set of the long wave at Cape St Francis when the surf was up. Beyond the bows, the massive tower of her navigation bridge stood so tall it looked like the skyline of The Miami Beach, one of those massive hotel buildings seen from close inshore.

It made her feel distinctly uneasy to be directly under that on-rushing steel avalanche.

“Do you think they have seen us?” Sally-Anne asked beside her, and when Samantha heard her own unease echoed by the pretty girl beside her, it steeled her.

“Of course they have,” she announced stoutly so that everyone in the small wheelhouse could hear her. “That’s why they blew their siren. We’ll turn aside at the last minute.”

“They aren’t slowing down,” Hank Petersen, the helmsman, pointed out huskily, and Samantha wished that Tom Parker had been on board with them. However, Tom was up in Washington again, and they had taken the Dicky to sea with a scratch crew, and without Tom parker’s written authorization. “What do you want to do, Sam?” And they all looked at her.

“I know a thing that size can’t stop, but at least we’re going to make them slow down. Are the TV boys getting some stuff?” Samantha asked, to delay the moment of decision. “Go up, Sally-Anne, and check them.” Then to the others, “You-all get the banner ready, we’ll let them get a good look at that.”

“Listen, Sam.” Hank Petersen’s tanned intelligent face was strained. He was a tunny expert, and was not accustomed to handling the vessel except in calm and uncluttered waters. I don’t like this, we’re getting much too close. That thing could churn us right under, and not even notice the bump. I want to turn away now. His voice was almost drowned by the sudden sky-crashing blast of the tanker’s fog-horns. “Son of a gun, Sam, I don’t like playing chicken-chicken with somebody that size.”

“Don’t worry, we’ll get out of their way at the last moment.”

“All right,” Samantha decided. “Turn go to port, Hank. Let’s show them the signs, I’m going to help them on deck.”

The wind tore at the thin white canvas banner as they tried to run it out along the side of the deckhouse, and the little vessel was rolling uncomfortably while the TV producer was shouting confused stage directions at them from the top of the wheelhouse.

Bitterly Samantha wished there was somebody to take commands somebody like Nicholas Berg – and the banner tried to wrap itself around her head. The Dicky was coming around fast now, and Samantha shot a glance at the oncoming tanker and felt the shock of it strike in the pit of her stomach like the blow of a fist. It was huge, and very close – much too close, even she realized that.

At last she managed to get a turn of the thin line that secured the banner around the stern rail – but the light canvas had twisted so that only one word of the slogan was readable. POISONER’, it accused in scarlet, crudely painted letters followed by a grinning skull and crossed bones. Samantha dived across the deck and struggled with the flapping canvas; above her head the producer was shout excitedly; two of the others were trying to help her; Sally-Anne was screaming ‘Go back! Go back!” and waving both arms at the great tanker. “You poison our oceans!” Everything was becoming confused and out of control, the Dicky swung ahead into the wind and pitched steeply, the person next to her lost his footing and knocked painfully into Samantha, and at that moment she felt the change of the engine beat.

Tricky Dicky’s diesel had been bellowing furiously as Hank opened the throttle to its stop, using full power to bring the little vessel around from under the menace of those steel bows. The smoking splutter of the exhaust pipe that rose vertically up the side of the deckhouse, had made all speech difficult – but now it died away, and suddenly there was only the sound of the wind.

Even their own raised voices were silenced, and they froze, staring out at
Golden Dawn
as she bore down on them without the slightest check in her majestic approach.

Samantha was the first one to recover, She ran across the plunging deck to the wheelhouse. Hank Petersen was down on his knees beside the bulkhead, struggling ineffectually with the conduit that housed the controls to the engine room on the deck below. “Why have you stopped?” Samantha yelled at him, and he looked up at her as though he were mortally wounded.

“It’s the throttle linkage,” he said. “It’s snapped again.”

“Can’t you fix it?” and the question was a mockery. A mile away,
Golden Dawn
came down on them – silent, menacing, unstoppable.

For ten seconds Randle stood rigid, both hands gripping the foul weather rail below the sill of the bridge windows His face was set, pale and finely drawn , as he watched the stern of the wallowing fishing boat for the renewed churning of its prop.

He knew that he could not turn nor stop his ship in time to avoid collision, unless the small vessel got under way immediately, and took evasive action by going out to starboard under full power.

Damn them to hell, he thought bitterly, they were in gross default. He had all the law and the custom of the sea behind him; a collision would cause very little damage to
Golden Dawn
, perhaps she would lose a little paint, at most a slightly buckled plate in the reinforced bows – and they had asked for it He had no doubts about the object of this crazy, irresponsible seamanship. There had been controversy before the
Golden Dawn
sailed. He had read the objections and seen the nut-case environmentalists on television. The scarletpainted banner with the ridiculously melodramatic Jolly Roger made it clear that this was a boatload of nutters attempting to prevent
Golden Dawn
entering American waters.

He felt his anger boiling up fiercely. These people always made him furious – if they had their way, there would be no tanker trade, and now they were deliberately threatening him, placing him in a position which might prejudice his own career. He already had the task of taking his ship through the Straits ahead of the hurricane. Every moment was vital – and now there was this.

He would be happy to maintain course and speed, and to run them down. They were flaunting themselves, challenging him to do it – and, by God, they deserved it, However, he was a seaman, with a seaman’s deep concern for human life at sea. It would go against all his instincts not to make an effort to avoid collision, no matter how futile that effort would be.

Then beside him one of his officers triggered him. “There are women on board her – look at that! Those are women!”

That was enough. Without waiting for confirmation, Randle snapped at the helmsman beside him. “Full port rudder!” And with two swift paces he had reached the engine room telegraph. It rang shrilly as he pulled back the chromed handle to Full Astern.

Almost immediately, the changed beat came up through the soles of his feet, as the great engine seven decks below the bridge thundered suddenly under all emergency power, and the direction of the spinning main propeller shaft was abruptly reversed.

Randle spun back to face ahead. For almost five minutes, the bows held steady on the horizon without making any answer to the full application of the rudder. The inertia of a million tons of crude oil, the immense drag of the hull through water and the press of wind and current held her on course, and although the single ferro-bronze propeller bit deeply into the green waters, there was not the slightest diminution of the tanker’s speed.

Randle kept his hand on the engine telegraph, pulling back on the silver handle with all his strength, as though this might arrest the great ship’s forward way through the water. “Turn!” he whispered to the ship, and he stared at the fishing boat that still lay, rolling wildly, directly in
Golden Dawn’s
path. He noticed irrelevantly that the tiny human figures along the rear rail were waving frantically, and that the banner with its scarlet denunciation had torn loose at one end and was now whipping and twisting like a Tibetan prayer flag over the heads of the crew.

“Turn,” Randle whispered, and he saw the first response of the hull; the angle between the bows and the fishing boat altered, it was a noticeable change, but slowly accelerating and a quick glance at the control console showed a small check in the ship’s forward speed.

“Turn, damn it, turn.” Randle held the engine telegraph locked at full astern, and felt the sudden influence of the Gulf Stream current on the ship as she began to come across the direction of flow.

Ahead, the fishing boat was almost about to disappear from sight behind
Golden Dawn’s
high blunt bows.

He had been holding the ship at full astern for almost seven minutes now, and suddenly Randle felt a change in
Golden Dawn
, something he had never experienced before. There was harsh, tearing, pounding vibration coming up through the deck.

He realized just how severe that vibration must be, when
Golden Dawn’s
monumental hull began to shake violently - but he could not release his grip on the engine telegraph, not with that helpless vessel lying in his track.

Then suddenly, miraculously, all vibration in the deck under his feet ceased altogether. There was only the calm press of the hull through the water, no longer the feel of the engine’s thrust, a sensation much more alarming to a mariner than the vibration which had preceded it, and simultaneously, a fiery rash of red warning lights bloomed on the ship’s main control console, and the strident screech of the full emergency audio-alarm deafened them all.