THURSDAY'S ORCHID (25 page)

I stayed at the bow all night, and by morning the number had grown to more than twenty-five; but she had not reappeared. Her place was by her husband and there she had remained.

Towards dawn the wind dropped off. The swell had subsided slightly, but even so was still sweeping along the hull; and still a cause for concern. The main hold was now two-thirds full and the weight of water pinning the ship down had stopped most of the twisting motion. I could no longer feel the coral grinding beneath the hull.

The fire-hoses were turned off.

Breakfast was a better meal than dinner had been the night before. Our spirits were lifted with the dawn, though there were haggard faces everywhere – except for the captain. Flint was his old bloodshot self again. Half a bottle – or perhaps it had taken a full one – and sleep would have come painlessly.

One face, one radiant beautiful face, would not look in my direction. It wasn’t from shame; I knew that. It would be from fear that she might show the peace we had both shared. We didn’t have to look at one another to know how we had felt,
but I knew she wouldn’t seek me out again.

I turned to Flint. “What’s the program for today then?”
I asked.

“Depends on the weather,” he replied. “If the swell drops a bit more, they might start laying out the ground tackle.” He didn’t sound optimistic.

“What do you mean by
ground tackle
?” I asked. “I thought all they had to do was tie a bloody big rope to the stern and drag us off?”

“No way,” he replied with that knowing smile. “It would take more than that little tug to pull us off this godforsaken reef
with a single line. No, they’ll have to rig ground tackle. It’s a system of pulleys,” he added, noticing my puzzlement. “Like a block and tackle.”

“I see,” I said, stirring my coffee. “Tell me more.”

He called for a second cup.

“Well,” he continued. I’m not the expert
, but this is how they explained it to me. It seems as though they’ll drop a large anchor a couple of hundred metres or so out from our stern, but a little off to the starboard side. Then they’ll fix a large set of pulley wheels to the anchor, and another set to our bow.”

“They’ll be using
one of the
Syrius’
anchors I suppose?” I said.

“No, much bigger than that.”

He sipped at the hot coffee and went on with the explanation.

“The next step will be to lead a thick wire rope through each sheave of the pulleys, in a series of great long loops. One end will be taken out to the tug and the other end will be made fast to the pulley shackled on to the salvage anchor lying on the bottom.” Another sip of the coffee. “The tug will steam out to sea and pull on the line. The tackle system should multiply the power of the tug by about seven times.”

“Is that all there is to it?” I asked.

“No.” He looked around the room at his officers. “First we have to wait for the highest tide of the month, then empty all the
seawater out of the main hold, and then pray to God while the tug tries its hardest.”

The way he said it, I think he believed that prayer might be the only thing that we could rely on.

Nothing much was done that day. It was still too rough for the salvage master and his team to return to their tug. They spent the entire day checking and rechecking the hull and sounding all the tanks.

I thought that the sea would have abated
even further with the easing of the wind, but it didn’t; but then again, it didn’t get up in the afternoon as it had on the previous day. By evening the wind had slackened off again. I checked the barometer up on the bridge and found it had risen slightly; which was promising.

The day had been an anti-climax. The preceding days had all been a flurry of activity: cargo being shifted, rearranged, or simply tossed over the side; and now there was nothing to do. The crew and the office
rs strolled around the deck, staring into the distance, thinking of home, nobody saying much. Nothing to do but wait.

I don’t think anybody spent that night up on the bow
. They were all far too tired after the previous night on the hard deck, when the wind had whistled through the railings and the spray had curled around under the overhang. They had spent the night there and the ship hadn’t broken up with all the twisting. The groaning had now almost faded away, so perhaps it might hold together for some time yet. On the other hand, it might have had something to do with the light rain that started to fall after dinner. It was miserable weather to be sleeping out in the open.

Some of the crew were preparing to bed down in the passages and open spaces of the main accommodation section, not relishing the thought of being down in the crew quarters below the waterline; and nobody could blame them.

My conscience fought against desire, and reason battled against my wanting to wander out on to the top deck on the perhaps not so slim chance that she might be waiting there for me, but reason and conscience both prevailed; and I sank into the sleep of the pure at heart.

The morning brought a new day, as I guess it always does, but this time the sun was shining and there were only a few grey clouds to spoil the brilliant effect. The sea had calmed and it could almost have been called pleasant. A few more days on the reef and it would seem like home.

The tug had come around from the lagoon while we were still asleep and was lying off our stern. The salvage master had left us and returned to her before I had managed to stagger out of my bunk.

It was unbelievable really. We were stuck up on top of a great curve of coral reef
, at the mercy of the elements, and yet still being served three meals a day and complaining if the toast was burnt.

There was nothing for me to do, and nothing for the ship’s complement to do, apart from the cook, the steward and a couple of the engineers. Nothing to do but watch the salvors rig their tackle.

It was still early morning when the divers first went down, about two hundred metres out from our stern: two of them, in their black suits and yellow metal tanks, looking for the best place to lay the salvage anchor. They had been under for fifteen minutes before surfacing another hundred metres further out. The rubber boat picked them up and a weighted line with a yellow marker buoy attached was lowered over the side. They roared back to the tug, leaving the yellow buoy drifting three hundred metres out from our stern and a hundred metres across to the starboard side.

I trained the pair of binoculars tha
t I had taken from the bridge on to
Pacific Ranger
.

Through the glasses I could see men milling around the back deck of the tug as they removed the hatch boards. The huge A-frame crane was tilted back into position over the hold
as the wire winch-rope slowly unwound. The wire went taut as the winch began its slow haul, and then an enormous anchor, dwarfing those on
Syrius
, began to rise up out of the hold like some awakening leviathan.

With the shackle hard up against the A-frame’s cross-beam, and the base of the anchor now a metre above the tug’s deck, the
powerful hydraulic rams pushed the A-frame back up to the perpendicular, moving the massive weight slowly along the deck. Centimetre by centimetre, the rams forced the two great beams backwards and the anchor moved towards the stern, the A-frame jerking, men leaning against the anchor to stop it from swaying, from rocking the tug. And the closer the great monster got to the stern, the lower the stern dropped, the bow raising itself out of the water. And then at last the beast was over the gunwale, hanging from the single wire, with the tips of the flukes just below the waves.

There was a faint roar from the tug’s engines and she steamed slowly back towards the yellow buoy sitting out from our stern. As the tug lurched through the waves, water washed ove
r the back deck, running up past the hatch and out through the scuppers. The sound faded away and the tug drifted slowly towards the buoy, missing it by only metres and then the engine revved once more and the stern kicked around as the tug moved ahead, and then back again until the buoy hit against the stern. Then, without hardly a pause, the windlass on the huge A-frame whirred out and the anchor hurtled to the bottom. Suddenly the stern of
Pacific Ranger
heaved up ponderously, rocking end to end on the waves as the anchor settled on the bottom, with the wire rope still winding out as the tug moved slowly ahead.

Once again the divers descended into the depths, following the wire rope down. We had seen two or three sharks, sharks which had nosed in, grabbed a chunk or two from a carcass of rotten meat, and then streaked out again. But it’s not the ones you can see that ar
e the worry; it’s the ones you can’t see.

Five minutes later
the buoy bobbed twice and the wire was reeled in. A large pulley-wheel was shackled on and lowered to the bottom with yet another diver following it down. The buoy bobbed twice more and the wire came to the surface again, the block left below with the anchor. And once again it went down, taking a huge shackle, and a bundle of tools: a crowbar, two heavy hammers and a spanner.

Flint’s
explanation was finally making sense. I could picture the divers far below, connecting the massive set of pulleys – the block – to the anchor. The first part of the ground tackle had been set.

There was a tap
on my shoulder and I turned to find Flint at my elbow.

“When you want to borrow something!” he shouted in my ear, pointing to the binoc
ulars. “It’s courtesy to bloody-well ask first!”

“Sorry,” I said, contrite. “But there was nobody around at the time and I didn’t think they would be needed for a while.” I turned to the tug, changing the subject. “Tell me, how do they manage to keep the tug
in position without running over the wire and getting it caught up in the propellors?”

“Simple,” he answered. “The tug’s got a bow-thruster.”

“What’s that?”

He took his hands from his pockets and made a pointed movement with his arms, swaying from side to side. “A bow-thruster is a type of wate
r-jet fitted into a tube across the centre of the bow, running from one side to the other. It pushes the tug to either port or starboard without having to use the rudder and the main engines.” I nodded my understanding.

Pacific Ranger
moved away from the buoy and came in close to our stern; but this time it was the main engines that were moving the tug, the sea churning and washing above the propellor blades.

The rubber boat
was lowered over the side again and two of the salvage team boarded us, making their way to the stern. The rubber boat now had the approach to the rope ladder worked out in fine detail; whipping in, waiting no more than a second for the man to spring for the ladder, and then around and out for the next pass.

The tug crept back even further until the whole rear deck was beneath the overhang of our stern, the main engines slowing down as the bow thruster took over, keeping the tug in position. The men waiting on our stern threw a light line out to the tug, now dangerously close to us, so close
I could have reached out and nearly touched the radio mast.

A heavier line was attached and hauled back on board
Syrius
, the slack taken in as the tug moved even closer under our stern; the tug-master out on the bridge-wing with the remote-control console in his hand, watching every wave that rolled towards us, keeping a careful eye on the massive curved steel wall above him. It was a manoeuvre that would have been impossible two days ago and, even in the slight swell, seemed fraught with risk.

The heavy line was wound around our aft capstan and the electric motor set in motion. I looked over the stern again and saw a massive pulley-block being hauled up on board, identical to that which had been lowered down to the salvage anchor. After much swearing and cursing, the block was manhandled over the lip of the bulwark and dropped to the deck.

The line was thrown back to the tug again and the large shackle and pin hauled up. The tug moved off to deeper water, and safety. It took three men to carry the huge pulley-block along to the bow.

I leaned against the bulwark and watched the salvors.

The team on board
Syrius
were up at the bow, using the huge shackle to fix the pulley-block to the starboard anchor chain, which had been released from its anchor and led back on board over the bulwark. As soon as everything was ready for the final pull, the chain and block, with the wire cable rigged and reeved, would be placed overboard, giving a direct line from the tug to the ship’s bow and then down to the anchor on the sea bed.

I moved back to the stern.

The crew on
Pacific Ranger
were working in the tug’s hold again. The A-frame’s hook was lowered down and several minutes later an immense reel of thick wire cable appeared. The reel was moved to the stern and fitted on to a stand that would allow the reel to run free.

The tug moved up to our stern
, but not as close as before.

She waited.