Wilbur Smith's Smashing Thrillers (24 page)

He hung the mike on its bracket and put his hand on David Allen's
shoulder. He squeezed once, and said:
‘
You did well - you all did very
well. Now take her, Number One, and look after her.
’
Then he stumbled
from the bridge.

I
t was eight days before they saw the land again. They rode out the
storm in the open sea, eight days of unrelenting tension and
heart-breaking labour.

The first task was to move the tow-cable to Golden Adventurer's bows.
I
n
that sea, the transfer took almost 24 hours, and three abortive attempts
before they had her head-on to the wind. Now she rode more easily, and
Warlock had merely to hang on like a drogue, using full power only when
one of the big icebergs came within dangerous range, and it was
necessary to draw her off.

However, the tension was always there and Nick spent most of those days
on the bridge, watchful and worried, nagged by the fear that the plug in
the gashed hull would not hold. Baker used timbers
from
the ship's
store to shore up the temporary patch, but he could not put steel in
place while Golden Adventurer plunged and rolled in the heavy seas, and
Nick could not go aboard to check and supervise the work.

Slowly, the great wheel of low pressure revolved over them, the winds
changed direction, backing steadily into the west, as the epicentre
ma
r
ched on down the sea lane towards Australasia - and at last it had
passed.

Now Warlock could work up towing speed. Even in those towering glassy
swells of black water that the storm had left them as a legacy, she was
able to make four knots.

Then one clear and windy morning under a cold yellow sun, she brought
Golden Adventurer into the sheltered waters of Shackleton Bay. It was
like a diminutive guide dog leading a blinded colossus.

As the two ships came up into the still waters under the sheltering arm
of the bay, the survivors came down from their encampment to the water's
edge, lining the steep black pebble beach, and their cheers and shouts
of welcome and relief carried thinly on the wind to the officers on
Warlock's bridge.

Even before the liner's twin anchors splashed into the clear green
water, Captain Rei
l
ly's boat was puttering out to Warlock, and when he
came aboard, his eyes were haunted by the hardship and difficulties of
these last days, by the disaster of a lo
s
t command and the lives that had
been ended with it. But when he shook hands with Nick, his grasp was
firm.

‘
My thanks and congratulations, sir!
’
He had known Nicholas Berg as
Chairman of Christy Marine, and, as no other, he was aware of the
magnitude of this most recent accomplishment. His respect was apparent.

‘
Quite good to see you again
,’
Nick told him.
‘
Naturally you have access
to my ship's communications to report to your owners.
’

I
mmediately he turned back to the task of manoeuvring
War
lock
alongside, so that the steel plate could be swung up from her salvage
holds to the liner's deck; it was another hour before Captain Reilly
emerged from the radio room.

‘
Can I offer you a drink, Captain?
’
Nick led him to his day cabin, and
began with tact to deal with the hundred details which had to be settled
between them. It was a delicate situation, for Reilly was no longer
Master of his own ship. Command had passed to Nicholas as salvage
master.

‘
The accommodation aboard Golden Adventurer is still quite serviceable,
and, I imagine, a great deal warmer and more comfortable than that
occupied by your passengers at present
-’
'Nick made it easier for him
while never for a moment letting him lose sight of his command position,
and Reilly responded gratefully.

Within half an hour, they had made all the necessary arrangements to
transfer the survivors aboard the liner.

Levoisin on La Mouette had been able to take only one hundred and twenty
supernumeraries on board his little tug. The oldest and weakest of them
had gone and Christy Marine was negotiating for a charter from Cape Town
to Shackleton Bay to take off the rest of them. Now that charter was
unnecessary, but the cost of it would form part of Nick's claim for
salvage award.

‘
I won't take more of your time.
’
Reilly drained his glass and stood.
‘
You
have much to do.
’
There were another four days and nights of hard work.

Nick went aboard Golden Adventurer and saw the cavernous engine room lit
by the eye-scorching blue glare of the electric welding flames, as Baker
placed his steel over the wound and welded it into place. Even then,
neither he nor Nick was satisfied until the new patches had been shored
and stiffened with baulks of heavy timber. There was a hard passage
through the roaring forties ahead of them, and until they had Golden
Adventurer safely moored
in Cape Town docks, the salvage was
in
complete.

They sat side by side among the greasy machinery and the stink of the
anti-corrosives, and drank steaming Thermos coffee laced with Bundaberg
rum.

‘
We get this beauty into Duncan Docks - and you are going to be a rich
man,
’
Nick said.

‘
I've been rich before. With me it never lasts long - and it's always a
relief when I've spent the stuff.
’
Beauty gargled the rum and coffee
appreciatively, before he went on, shrewdly.
‘
So you don't have to worry
about losing the best goddamned engineer afloat.
’

Nick laughed with
delight. Baker had read him accurately. He did not want to lose him.

With this Nick left him and went to see to the trim of the liner,
studying her carefully and using the experience of the last days to
determine her best points of tow, before giving his orders to David
Allen to raise her slightly by the head.

Then there was the transfer from the liner's bunkers of sufficient
bunker oil to top up Warlock's own tanks against the long tow ahead, and
Bach Wackie in Bermuda kept the telex clattering with relays from
underwriters and Lloyd's, with the first tentative advances from Christy
Marine; already Duncan Alexander was trying out the angles, manoeuvring
for a liberal settlement of Nick's claims, without, as he put it, the
expense of the arbitration court.

‘
Tell him I'm going to roast him
,’
Nick answered with grim relish.
‘
Remind
him that as Chairman of Christy Marine I advised against underwriting
our own bottoms and now I'm going to rub his nose in it.
’

The days and
nights blurred together, the illusion made complete by the imbalance of
time down here in the high latitudes, so that Nick could often believe
neither his senses nor his watch when he had been working eighteen hours
straight and yet the sun still burned, and his watch told him it was
three o'clock in the morning.

Then again, it did not seem part of reality when his senior officers,
gathered around the mahogany table in his day cabin, reported that the
work was completed - the repairs and preparation, the loading of fuel,
the embarkation of passengers and the hundred other details had all been
attended to, and Warlock was ready to drag her massive charge out into
the unpredictable sea, thousands of miles to the southernmost tip of
Africa.

Nick passed the cheroot-box around the circle and while the blue smoke
clouded the cabin, he allowed them all a few minutes to luxuriate in the
feeling of work done, and done well.

‘
We'll rest the ship's company for twenty-four hours
,’
he announced in a
rush of generosity.
‘
And take in tow at 0800 hours Monday. I'm hoping
for a two speed of six knots - twenty-one days to Cape Town, gentlemen.
’
When they rose to leave, David Allen lingered selfconsciously.
‘
The
wardroom is arranging a little Christmas celebration tonight, sir, and
we would like you to be our guest.
’

The wardroom was the junior
officers
’
club from which, traditionally, the Master was excluded. He
could enter the small panelled cabin only as an invited guest, but there
was no doubt at all about the genuine warmth of the welcome they gave
him. Even the Trog was there. They stood and applauded him when he
entered, and it was clear that most of them had made an early start on
the gin. David Allen made a speech which he read haltingly from a scrap
of paper which he tried to conceal in the palm of one hand.
It was a speech full of hyperbole, cliches and superlatives, and he was
clearly mightily relieved once it was over.

Then Angel brought in a cake he had baked for the occasion. It was iced
in the shape of Golden Adventurer, a minor work of art, with the figures
‘
12
½
%
’
picked out in gold on its hull, and they applauded him. That
‘12 ½ %’
had significance to set them all grinning and exclaiming.

Then they called on Nick to speak, and his style was relaxed and easy.
He had them hooting with glee within minutes - a mere mention of the
prize money that would be due to them once they brought Golden
Adventurer into Cape Town had them in ecstasy.

The girl was wedged into a corner, almost swallowed in the knot of young
officers who found it necessary to press as closely around her as was
possible without actually smothering her.

She laughed with a clear unaffected exuberance, her voice ringing high
above the growl of masculine mirth, so that Nick found it difficult not
to keep looking across at her.

She wore a dress of green clinging material, and Nick wondered where it
had come from, until he remembered that Golden Adventurer's passenger
accommodation was intact and that earlier that morning, he had noticed
the girl standing beside David Allen in the stern of the work boat as it
returned from the liner, with a large suitcase at her feet. She had
been to fetch her gear and she probably should have stayed aboard the
liner. Nick was pleased she had not.

Nick finished his little speech, having mentioned every one of his
officers by name and given to each the praise they deserved, and David
Allen pressed another large whisky into his one hand and an inelegant
wedge of cake into the other, and then left hurriedly to join the tight
circle around the girl. It opened reluctantly, yielding to his
seniority and Nick found himself almost deserted.

He watched with indulgence the open competition for her attention.
She was shorter than any of them, so Nick saw only the top of that
magnificent mane of sun-streaked hair, hair the colour of precious
metal that shone as she nodded and tilted her head, catching the
overhead lights.

Beauty Baker was on one side of her, dressed in a readymade suit of
shiny imitation sharkskin that made a startling contrast to his plaid
shirt and acid-yellow tie; the trousers of the suit needed hoisting
every few minutes and his spectacles glittered lustfully as he hung over
the girl.

David Allen was close on her other side, blushing pinkly every time she
turned to speak to him, plying her with cake and liquor - and Nick found
his indulgence turning to irritation.