But Goss was already reaching for his array of buttons, his eyes fixed on the neatly worded compartment on the port side where a red emergency bulb had begun to flash.
‘Pumps! Come on, jump to it!’ He snatched up a telephone and shouted, ‘Give me the bridge.’ He saw Archer and a mechanic fumbling with the pump controls and added violently, ‘Yes, the bridge, you bloody idiot!’
Benbecula had hit hard and was flooding. It was all lie knew. All he cared about.
‘Bridge? Give me the captain!’
Lindsay watched the foreshortened figures of some seamen slipping and sliding across the forward well deck. Because of the thin coating of ice their black oilskins made them stand out like so many scurrying beetles as they began work with their hammers to clear the wash ports and scuppers before the task became impossible.
Dancy was saying, ‘Masthead? Yes, you can be relieved now.’
Lindsay thought briefly of the masthead lookout. Even with his electric heater he had to be relieved every hour if he was to keep his circulation going. fie peered at his luminous watch. Six o’clock. It did not seem possible they had been charging through the darkness for so many hours. He walked to the port side to watch as more fragments of broken ice materialised out of the black water and swirled playfully along the side. Nothing dangerous, in fact it was unavoidable. It looked more menacing than it was, and in the darkness gave an impression of great speed and size.
Stannard said, ‘We should sight something soon.’ But nobody answered.
Hardly anyone had said much as hour by hour the ship had pounded into the night. The noise-and violent shaking had thrown most of them inwards on their own defences, and even the men with cocoa and huge chunky sandwiches who had come and gone throughout the agony of waiting had passed without more than a quick, anxious word.
Stannard said, ‘I’d like to go and check the chart again, sir.’
‘Yes.’ Lindsay thrust his hands into his pockets, feeling the gratings under his sea boots jerking as if being pounded by unseen hammers. ‘Do that.’
Maybe the German’ had indeed turned away and run for base. He might think the Home Fleet was better deployed than it was, and feared a quick and overwhelming reprisal. And where were the two ships?
A telephone buzzed and a messenger said urgently, ‘It’s the doctor, sir.
Lindsay tore his mind from the mental picture of the chart, the course which he and Stannard had evolved to contact the two ships.
‘What does he want?’
The seaman, hidden in the darkness, answered, ‘He asked to speak with you, sir.’
Lindsay swore silently and groped his way across the deck. It was. slippery from the constant comings and goings of slushy boots, and added to the streaming condensation from deckhead and sides it filled the bridge with an unhealthy, clinging humidity.
He snatched the handset. ‘Captain. Can’t it wait?’
Boase sounded edgy. ‘Sorry, sir. It’s Lieutenant Aikman. He’s locked himself in his cabin. One of my S.B.A.‘s tried to make him open the door. I think he’s upset.’
‘Upset? The word hung in-the air like one additional mockery. ‘What do you want me to do, for God’s sake?’ Lindsay made an effort to steady his voice. ‘Do you really think he’s in trouble?’
Boase replied, ‘Yes, sir.’
As Lindsay stood with the telephone to his ear, his eyes staring at Ritchie’s shadowy outline by the nearest window, the hands of the bulkhead clock showed eight minutes past six.
At that precise moment in time several small incidents were happening simultaneously. Small, but together they amounted to quite a lot.
Able Seaman Laker, known to his messmates as Dracula because of his large protruding teeth, was just being relieved from the crow’s-nest by a seaman called Phelps. As they clung together on the swaying iron gratings outside the pod Laker was shouting in the other man’s ear about the stupid, bloody maniacs who had fitted such a piddling little heater for the lookout’s survival. Neither of them was paying much attention to the sea beyond the bows.
On the forward well deck another seaman fell from a bollard and slithered like a great black crab across the ice and came up with a thud against a hatch coaming, dropping his hammer and yelling the most. obscene word he could think of at such short notice.
The lookouts on Numbers One and Two guns turned to watch him, drawing comfort, from the man’s clumsy efforts to regain his feet, while the rest of the deck party paused to enjoy the spectacle as well.
On the bridge Dancy was remembering Aikman’s stricken voice, his pathetic self-defence under Stannard’s anger and the captain’s questioning. He had not heard what Boase was saying, but he could guess. He did not know Aikman very well, but realised probably better than the others that he was, like himself, acting a part which had suddenly got beyond him. He turned to peer at ‘Lindsay’s vague outline at the rear of the bridge, wondering what it was Aikman had done to excite Boase and make him risk disturbing the captain.
All small incidents, but as Dancy turned once more to his clearview screen he saw in that instant what a momentary lack of vigilance had created. Looming out of the darkness was a solid wedge of ice. In his imagination he had often pictured icebergs as towering and majestic, like white cathedrals, and for several more seconds he was totally incapable of speech or movement.
Then he yelled, ‘Hard astarboard!’ He heard the wheel going over, the sudden gasps of alarm, and then added wildly, ‘Ice! Dead ahead!’
Lindsay dropped the telephone and hurled himself towards the screen, his voice sharp but level as he shouted, ‘Belay.that! Wheel amidships! Both engines full astern?
Ignoring the clang of telegraphs, the violent response of reversed screws and the clamour of voices from all sides he gripped the rail and stared fixedly at the oncoming wedge of ice. It was difficult to estimate the size of it. It was not very high, probably about ten feet, and some eighty feet from end to end. Against the dark backcloth of sea and clouds it appeared enveloped in vapour, like ice emerging from a giant refrigerator. He felt the engines shaking and pounding in growing strength to stop-the ship’s onward dash, and found himself counting seconds as the distance continued to shorten. Dancy should not have put the helm over. If the ship had hit an ice ledge with her bilge it would slit her open like one huge can. But if he had not even seen it the ship would have smashed into it at full speed, with terrible results.
Stannard came running across the bridge, then stood stockstill beside him, his voice strangled as he said, ‘We’re going to strike, by Jesus!’
It seemed to take an eternity for the ice to reach them. The engines were slowing them down, dragging like great anchors so that the bow wave was falling away even as the ice became suddenly stark and very close, the jagged crest of it looming past the port bow as if drawn by a hawser.
The crash, when it came, was muted, but the sensation transmitted itself from the keel to the flesh and bones of every man aboard.
The ice turned slowly as the ship surged against it, making a kind of clumsy pirouette with pieces breaking adrift and sliding haphazardly into the dwindling bow wave.
‘Stop engines!’