Wilbur Smith's Smashing Thrillers (22 page)

The wind had dropped to a gentle force four, a moderate steady breeze
that blew for twenty minutes, just long enough for the crests of the
waves to stop breaking over on themselves. Then slowly, it veered north
- and without any further warning, it was upon them.

It came roaring like a ravening beast, lifting the surface of the sea
away in white sheets of spray that looked as though red-hot steel had
been quenched in it, It laid Warlock right over, so that her port rail
went under and she was flung up so harshly on her main cable that her
stern was pulled down sharply, water pouring in through her stern
scuppers.

It took David by surprise, so that she paid off dangerously before he
could slam open the port throttle and throw the starboard screw into
full reverse thrust. As she came up, he hit the call to the Captain's
suite, watching with rising disbelief as the mad world dissolved around
him.

Nick heard the call from far away, it only just penetrated to his
fatigue-drugged brain, and he tried to respond, but it felt as though
his body was crushed under an enormous weight and that his brain was
slow and sluggish as a hibernating reptile.

The buzzer insisted, a tinny, nagging whine and he tried to force his
eyes open, but they would not respond. Then dimly, but deeply, he felt
the wild anguished action of his ship and the tumult that he believed at
first was in his own ears, but was the violent uproar of the storm about
the tug's superstructure.

He forced himself up on one elbow, and his body ached in every joint. He
still could not open his eyes but he groped for the handset.

‘
Captain to the after bridge!
’
He could hear something in David Allen's
voice that forced him to his feet.

When Nick staggered on to the after navigation bridge, the First Officer
turned gratefully to him.

‘
Thank God you've come, sir.
’

The wind had taken the surface off the sea, had stripped it away,
tearing each wave to a shrieking fog of white spray and mingling it with
the sleet and snow that drove horizontally across the bay.

Nick glanced once at the dial of the wind anemometer, and then
discounted the reading. The needle was stuck at the top of the scale.
It made no sense, a wind-speed of 120 miles an hour was too much to
accept, the instrument had been damaged by the initial gusts of this
wind, and he refused to believe it; to do so now would be to admit
disaster, for nobody could salvage an ocean-going liner in wind
velocities right off the Beaufort scale.

Warlock stood on her tail, like a performing dolphin begging for a meal,
as the cable brought her up short and the bridge deck became a vertical
cliff down which Nick was hurled. He crashed into the control panel and
clung for purchase to the foul-weather rail.

‘
We'll have to shear the cable and stand out to sea.
’
David Allen's voice
was pitched too high and too loud, even for the tumult of the wind and
the storm.

There were men on board Golden Adventurer, Baker and sixteen others,
Nick thought swiftly, and even her twin anchors could not be trusted to
hold in this.

Nick clung to the rail and peered out into the storm.
Frozen spray and sleet and impacted snow drove on the wind, coming in
with the force of buckshot fired at point blank range, cracking into the
armoured glass of the bridge and building up in thick clots and lumps
that defeated the efforts of the spinning clear vision panels.

He looked across a thousand yards and the hull of the liner was just
visible, a denser area in the howling, swirling, white wilderness.

‘
Baker?
’
he asked into the hand microphone.
‘
What is your position?
’

‘
The
wind's got her, she's slewing. The starboard anchor is dragging.
’
And
then, while Nick thought swiftly,
‘
You'll not be able to take us off in
this.
’
It was a flat statement, an acceptance of the fact that the
destinies of Baker and his sixteen men were inexorably linked to that of
the doomed ship.

‘
No
,’
Nick agreed.
‘
We won't be able to get you off.
’
To approach the
stricken ship was certain disaster for all of them.

‘
Shear the cable and stand off
,’
Baker advised. We'll try to get ashore
as she breaks up. Then, with a hangman's chuckle, he went on,
‘
Just
don't forget to come and fetch us when the weather moderates - that is
if there is anybody to fetch.
’

Abruptly Nick's anger came to the surface
through the layers of fatigue, anger at the knowledge that all he had
risked and suffered was now to be in vain, that he was to lose Golden
Adventurer, and probably with her sixteen men, one of whom had become a
friend.

‘
Are you ready to heave on the anchor winches?
’
he asked.
‘
We are going
to pull the bitch off.
’

‘
Jesus!
’
said Baker.
‘
She's still half flooded
-‘

‘
We
will have a lash at it, cobber
,’
said Nick quietly.

‘
The steering-gear is locked, you won't be able to control her. You'll
lose Warlock as well as
–‘
but Nicholas cut Baker short.

‘
Listen, you stupid Queensland sheep-shagger, get on to those winches.
’
As
he said it, Golden Adventurer disappeared, her bulk blotted out
completely by the solid, white curtains of the
blizzard.

‘
Engine room
,’
Nick spoke
crisply to the Second Engineer.
‘
Disengage the override, and give me
direct control of both power and pitch.
’

‘
Control transferred to bridge,
sir
,’
the Engineer confirmed, and Nick touched the shining
stainless-steel levers with fingers as sensitive as those of a concert
pianist.
Warlock's response was instantaneous. She pivoted, shrugging aside a
green slithering burst of water which came in over her shoulder and
thundered down the side of her superstructure.

‘
Anchor winches manned.
’
Beauty Baker's tone was almost casual.

‘
Stand by,
’
said Nick, and felt his way through that white inferno. It
was impossible to maintain visual reference, the entire world was white
and swirling, even the surface of the sea was gone in torn streamers of
white; the very pull of gravity, that should have defined even a simple
up or down, was confused by the violent pitch and roll of the deck.

Nick felt his exhausted brain begin to lurch dizzily in the first
attacks of vertigo. Swiftly he switched his attention to the big
compass and the heading indicator.

‘
David
,’
he said,
‘
take the wheel.
’
He wanted somebody swift and bright at
the helm now.

Warlock plunged suddenly, so viciously that Nick's bruised ribs were
brought in brutal contact with the edge of the control console. He
grunted involuntarily with the pain. Warlock was feeling her cable, she
had come up hard.

‘
Starboard ten
,’
said Nick to David, bringing her bows up into that
hideous wind.

‘
Chief
,’
he spoke into the microphone, his voice still ragged with the
pain in his chest.
‘
Haul starboard winch, full power.
’

‘
Full power
starboard.
’
Nick slid pitch control to fully fine, and then slowly
nudged open the throttles, bringing in twenty-two thousand horse-power.

Held by her tail, driven by the great wind, and tortured by the sea,
lashed by her own enormous propellers, Warlock went berserk. She
corkscrewed and porpoised to her very limits, every frame in her hull
shook with the vibration of all her screws as her propellers burst out
of the surface and spun wildly in the air.

Nick had to clench his jaws as the vibration threatened to crack his
teeth, and when he glanced across at the forward and lateral
speed-indicators, he saw that David Allen's face was icy white and set
like that of a corpse.

Warlock was slewing down on the wind, describing a slow left-hand circle
at the limit of the cable as the engine torque and the wind took her
around.

‘
Starboard twenty
,’
Nick snapped, correcting the turn, and despite the
rigour of his features, David Allen's response was instantaneous.

‘
Twenty degrees of starboard wheel on, sir!
’

Nick saw the lateral drift stop on the ground speed
indicator, and then
with a wild lurch of elation he saw the forward speed
indicator flicked
into green.
Its electronic digital read out
changing swiftly - they
were moving forward at 150 feet a minute.

‘
We are moving her
,’
Nick cried aloud, and he snatched up the microphone.

‘
Full power both winches.
’

‘
Still full and holding,
’
answered Baker
immediately.

And Nick glanced back at the forward speed across the ground, 150,
110,
75
feet a minute, Warlock's forward
imp
etus slowed, and Nick realized with
a slide of dismay that it was merely the elasticity of the nylon spring
that had given them that reading. The spring was stretching out to its
limit.

For two or three seconds, the dial recorded a zero rate of speed.
Warlock was standing still, the cable drawn out to the full limit of her
strength, then abruptly the dial flicked into vivid red; they were go
i
ng
backwards, as the nylon spring exerted pressures beyond that of the twin
diesels and the big bronze screws - Warlock was being dragged back
towards that dreadful shore.

For another five minutes, Nick kept both clenched fists on the control
levers, pressing them with all his strength to the limit of their
travel, sending the great engines shrieking, driving the needles up
around the dials, deep into the red
‘
never exceed
’
sectors.

He felt tears of anger and frustration scalding his swollen eyelids, and
the ship shuddered and shook and screamed under him, her torment
transmitted through the soles of his feet and the palms of his hands.

Warlock was held down by cable and power, so she could not rise to meet
the
seas that came out of the whiteness. They tumbled aboard her,
piling up on each other, so she burrowed deeper and more dangerously.

‘
For God's sake, sir
,’
David Allen was no longer able to contain himself.
His eyes looked huge in his bone-white face.
‘
You'll drive her clean
under.
’

‘
Baker
,’
Nick ignored his Mate,
‘
Are you gaining?
’