Water burst through the bridge openings and the ship lay over again, tiredly, heavily. The sea tried to pluck my hands from the wheel. Yet I sensed that her head had fallen off the wind and the bow seemed to be sheering away from the danger — whatever it was-quicker than I could have hoped.
I felt, but did not see, the next sea. This time, would the game little ship roll over on her side? Or would there be a sickening crash and rending of metal which meant that she had gone bows-on into the obstacle in her path? I felt the roll begin to port -1 detected that easier motion somewhere — and I waited, cowering, for the next hill of water to crown that which now pinned her down.
Walvis Bay rolled farther.
The sea held back its fatal punch.
Hundreds of tons of water cleared themselves off the decks in that life-giving roll; somewhere aft I heard, above the gale, the tearing of metal.
Feldman screamed again in agony behind me, and some
heavy object rolled, bumped and thumped. Walvis Bay ca upright. Still the sea did not strike. Why?
I was flabbergasted at the relative calmness of the sea. The gale still brought the icy rain and spray in bucketfuls through the gaps and Walvis Bay rose tiredly at first-as if herself cringing from that final crushing weight of water-and then more optimistically. Then she was on an even keel, sharp, back on her feet, fighting. She completed that long purgative roll to starboard and I caught the glimmer of clear deck below me.
Where was that thing in our path? Whatever it was there was no sign of it now.
Walvis Bay rose confidently to the next wave.
She had won through.
The bridge was a shambles. It was still a foot deep in water, which I could hear thundering into the bowels of the ship. There was broken glass everywhere. I tried to see our course, but the compass had been stove in.
Something heavy bumped behind me. I risked a glance to see what it was. The barrel of the heavy winch below the bridge, which in her whaling days had been used to secure whales after harpooning, had been torn free by that crazed dive of hers and pitched bodily through the front of the bridge. Had I not moved away from the compass when I did, it might have killed me. Feldman had not been so lucky: the flying winch had struck him a glancing blow, breaking his left shoulder and pinning him against the deck until Walvis Bay's life-giving roll had freed him. He was lying amidst the glass and water, groaning, his right hand at his damaged left shoulder. Jubela, spitting seawater, was half on his feet, cut and bleeding about the head.
The engine-room voice-pipe shrilled incessantly. At least something was working! Scannel was not a man to get rattled easily, but there was an overtone of fear in his voice.
'What are you trying to do to us, skipper? I thought this was a whaler, not a submarine.. ’
I explained quickly, at the same time leaning forward to try and assess the damage on the deck below me.
'Get four men on to the foredeck, quickly!' I told him. 'Lash a tarpaulin over the deck where the winch was..'
'Was?'
'It looped the loop and left a hole in the deck you could drive a car through. Caught Feldman up here,' I got out hastily. 'Get the men up quick, before another sea puts paid to us.'
'There's enough of the ocean down here already,' growled Scannel. 'She's half full of water.' 'Pumps.. ?'
'I've got them going full blast. I don't know for sure, but perhaps we're holding our own. Lot still coming down from your part of the world.'
I quickly sketched what had happened to the bridge. My cabin and the ward-room were probably flooded too.
'What's that noise?' I asked.
There seemed to be a jarring thumping coming from outside the hull. The whole ship reverberated with it. I had new anxieties forward of the hole in the deck.
'The foremast has come adrift,' I told Scannel further. 'Get another team up and frap the stays before it goes over the side altogether. Seems to have a couple of feet of play from here.'
Amidst the stream of orders, I still had room for puzzlement. There remained that curious lack of punch about the sea. The waves looked the same, the wind looked the same, but nonetheless they seemed to lack the power to break and destroy.
'It's not the mast making that racket,' Scannel retorted grimly. 'Something's hammering the hull from the outside.'
His voice was drowned by a vibrating crash which I felt on the bridge. The enclosed space of the engine-room magnified it like a sounding-board.
I heard Scannel shouting orders below, above the crash and bump of something heavy against the port quarter. At the same time, Walvis Bay started to slew against the power of the rudder. I corrected her quickly. I guessed what had happened. For some reason or other, one screw was out of action.
'Port screw,' Scannel confirmed. 'Bit into something solid. Either badly chipped or smashed. Can't tell.' 'Rock. .?'
'No, something's beating the hell out of the hull. Reckon it's one of those fancy crane things we took aboard in Durban.'
The Van Veen grab with its chain-controlled bucket-like a small steam shovel, Alistair had said-was housed on the port rail.
'Can you be spared from the engine-room for five minutes?' I whipped out. 'I'll get aft there to the grab. See you there.' 4Aye aye.'
Smit was gaping at the wreck of the bridge. 'She's chasing her tail — one prop's out,' I told him. Jubela, on his feet now, still looked stunned.
'Try and hold her steady,' I went on. 'No course. Anything-just keep the water out of her while we make some jury repairs.'
'Came past the gyro gear on my way here,' replied Smit. 'It's gone for a Burton
'It'll keep,' I snapped back. 'It's the ship now above anything.'
I knelt and examined Feldman cursorily. His face was strained, white, terrified. He looked fearfully at the heavy winch barrel on the gratings.
'Don't let it come at me again,' he mouthed. 'Keep it away, for Christ's sake. Not again.'
I waited until it rolled towards us, then I guided it with my foot towards the doorway. It skidded and jammed itself across the lintel.
Scannel was waiting for me at the stern with a torch. Walvis Bay still rolled heavily in the seas, but nothing like the previous quantity of water was coming aboard. Scanners light showed what was left of the Van Veen grab. It had been welded as a triangle of steel bars: one upright from the rail, one at the top jutting out horizontally, and a double support running upward and outward to form the third leg of the triangle. There were big block-and-pulleys at the top and at the extremity from which the bucket grab was suspended on chains. The two projecting bars had been twisted and buckled out of recognition by the sea and now trailed in the water. These had fouled the screw.
Walvis Bay dipped for a lee roll and then started to come back.
'Nick! Duck! Watch out!'
A shower of sparks arced round towards us from the direction of the stern. The bucket grab, snapping and gaping with the ship's movement, swung round, from the remnants of its support, crashing and banging the steel deck straight towards the engineer. If those clamping jaws fastened on an arm, they would bite it off like a mechanical shark.
Scannel threw himself on the deck and the torch went out. There was a crash and a clatter, another shower of sparks, and then the wild thing was past.
I leapt to Scannel's side. The grab revolved out over the stern again; in a moment it would crash back in a malicious, deadly circle.
My grip slipped on his wet leather lumber-jacket which he had thrown over his dungarees, but I scrabbled and snatched him to the safety of the lifelines, out of reach of the swinging grab. Scannel was shaking from cold and fright.