The ship, of course! It was the fallout from the fire. He swung his head, searching the limits of the rain-swept void around them, but could see nothing except the short and choppy sea fading away into the murk. In the squall it could be blown for miles. But there was more of it now. Sooty splotches were dotting her arms. It had to be nearby. He turned, eyes slitted against the spindrift and rain, and stared directly to windward. Then he saw it—not the ship itself, but a faint and shapeless wash of orange glowing through the gray. He spun Karen around and pointed.
There was no way to tell how far away she was or in what direction she was going. It was simply a color without form or dimension, and they had no framework or orientation except the wind, which could be veering all around the compass. But it was growing brighter, he thought, conscious of the pounding of his heart.
Then they could see the flames and the dark clouds of smoke, and the side of the ship began to materialize in the mists at the limit of visibility. It was in profile, going past them very slowly with scarcely any disturbance to the swell or the confused and choppy sea set up by the squall.
‘The engine’s stopped!’ Goddard said. ‘And she’s lost most of her headway.’
Karen slipped out of the life ring. They each hooked an arm through it and began to kick in the direction of the ship. She was fading from view into the curtain again, off to their right, but the glow was still visible and he knew she was slowing all the time.
12
They must be almost there, Antonio Gutierrez thought; he should see the pretty blonde one any minute now. One could see the ship was stopping, just as it had when they had gone back to pick up the big American on his rubber raft. The engine room telegraph meant nothing to him, and he had no way of knowing the Leander had been moving through the water only from her own headway ever since Lind and the others had run from the bridge.
But it was very difficult to see anything in all this rain, and to make it worse nobody even appeared to be watching for her. The officer still lay where he’d left him in the house where the wheel was, and on the decks below everybody was shouting and running around dragging hoses as they shot streams of water into the fire which still roared and threw flames as high as the stack. He himself had started to leave the boat deck once, before they discovered him up here where he had no business, but the men with guns were around the ladder below him, with no way for him to get past them unnoticed, so he had remained. His white jacket and trousers were drowned, and water ran out of his hair and down into his eyes. But since he was the only one watching, he would continue to watch.
He went over to the rail between the starboard lifeboats and looked down. She wasn’t there, but he could see that the ship was barely moving now. He searched the surface as far out as he could see through the blown curtains of rain. Nada. He went over to the portside and peered outward and then down. Truly, they had not yet reached her. He went back to the door of the wheelhouse and looked in. The officer was trying to sit up. He was very weak and holding his head with the dolor, and a little stream of blood ran down across his face.
* * *
It was agonizingly slow and exhausting, trying to make any headway against the wind and the steep-sided chop it was kicking up into their faces, and they’d had to stop several times and rest. Goddard didn’t know how long they’d been struggling after the orange glow in the rain, dragging the life ring. They’d almost lost it at first. It had faded until they could scarcely see it, but the ship had lost way rapidly as she continued to turn and had finally come head up into the wind and sea. She was dead in the water now, directly ahead. The dark shape of the counter materialized below the column of flame. In a few minutes they were under it. They looked up at the railing of the poop far above them, and then at each other in mutual admission of what they’d both known all along. When they did reach her, there was no way to get aboard.
To call out would be to attract the attention of Lind or one of his men. They’d simply be shot in the water, or ignored, to be left there when the ship got under way again. If she did, Goddard thought, looking up at the tower of flame and smoke blown back across the poop by the force of the squall. If they didn’t get the fire under control very soon, the Leander was doomed.
Lind and the bos’n would be back here directing the fight, so their best chance of attracting the attention of someone else would be to go forward. He gestured to Karen, and they began kicking ahead along the black steel cliff of her starboard side. They could hear shouted orders and the roaring of the fire, but no one appeared at the bulwark above them. They passed the well-deck, and were below the midships house.
* * *
Harald Svedberg climbed unsteadily to his feet, assisted by Gutierrez. He was nauseated, his head was splitting, and when he put a hand to his face, it came away with blood on it. The ship was stopped, he noted, they were still enveloped in the opaque fury of the squall, and there was nobody else on the bridge except this waterlogged and obviously insane Filipino messman who appeared to have taken up residence on it. There was a roaring sound in his ears, which he took to be part of the headache until he became aware the messman was speaking English now and was saying something about a fire. He made it to the door of the wheelhouse and looked aft, and the whole picture clarified itself then as he remembered Mayr and that other messman with their guns. Lind had taken over the ship, that man he’d seen back there in the wake had probably been thrown overboard, and now they were all fighting the fire.
Their only hope was that Captain Steen was still alive and that he might have a weapon of some kind. He went in through the office to the captain’s stateroom. The improvised oxygen tent was gone now, but Steen still lay on the bunk in the same position he’d been in last night, and his eyes were closed. Svedberg grabbed a wrist. The flesh was warm, and after several hurried and fumbling attempts he located a pulse. Steen was alive, and still the legal master of the ship, whether drugged or not. It seemed unlikely that a man of his devout religious beliefs would own a gun, but captains quite often did, and a forlorn hope was better than none. He began yanking open drawers under the bunk, and then the desk, conscious of the ominous sound the fire was making and the fact that he had no idea how many of the crew were involved in this with Lind. He moved out into the office and began hurriedly ransacking the desk there. Then the crazy messman, dripping water like a sponge, ran in from the starboard wing of the bridge.
‘We have arrived,’ he said, pointing outward. ‘She is right there.’
Svedberg pulled open another drawer and began scattering its contents, paying no attention.
‘The man we saw too,’ Gutierrez said. ‘It is the big American.’
What in the hell was he talking about, anyway? If the skipper had a gun, it must be in the safe—Svedberg’s head jerked around then. ‘What?’
‘The people who fell into the water.’
People? It was one man, and he would be miles astern by now. But wait a minute! At the same time he’d noticed the engine room telegraph was on STOP, he’d automatically checked the rudder indicator. It was hard over! He sprang to his feet and ran out onto the wing of the bridge where Gutierrez was pointing. He looked down and saw Goddard and Karen Brooke clinging to the life ring right below them.
‘Come on!’ he ordered. Followed by Gutierrez, he ran back through the wheelhouse to the chartroom, and down the inside companionway.
In the confusion on the after end of the crew’s deck, two fire hoses with a pair of sailors on each nozzle were throwing hard jets of water into the inferno of number three hold. The bos’n and Otto, armed with the Luger and the .45, were directing them and holding back excited crew members jammed into the entrance of the passageway and clustered in gesticulating groups forward of them. Lind and Mayr were standing at the starboard corner of the deck house. Lind was now carrying an automatic rifle, and they were speaking rapidly in German, with Mayr doing most of the talking, apparently giving orders. Lind nodded. He gestured to the bos’n, and to a member of the black gang, the twelve-to-four oiler, a thin, hard-faced man named Spivak. They came over. Lind spoke to them, still in German. Spivak nodded. The bos’n handed Spivak the Luger, and received the automatic rifle Lind had been carrying. Lind ran up the ladder to the boat deck.