'We've got to get that thing secured before we can attempt anything else,' I said quickly.
'Aye,' replied Scannel. 'It could have taken my head ott-thanks.'
Again the whaler rolled. We cowered back, waiting for the clatter and the sparks to go past. 'Now!'
We raced for the rail. I reached out with a securing rope for the chains at the top of the grab, but the ship heeled and it slipped from my grasp.
'Get back!'
We dodged to safety while the grab made another spark-trailing orbit.
'Next round, hang on to my legs — it's just out of reach,' I told Scannel.
We waited our moment and sprinted to the rail. Had the supporting bars been in place, I could have used them to hold on and secure the grab with my free hand, but they were adrift, crashing and banging against the ship's stern-plates.
Scannel took me round the waist as if in a rugby tackle. At the top of the pendulum swing of the bucket, I whipped the rope's end through the chains at the top. I tugged it fast. It took only a moment then to bring the grab itself inboard and lash it firmly to the shattered remains of its base structure.
Scannel flashed his light over the Wreckage. 'You'll have to hang on to me this time,' he remarked grimly. 'Hell, what a shambles! This will need an oxy-acetylene cutter.'
The sea came over and drenched us.
'Can you keep the flame burning?' I asked anxiously.
'Got to,' he jerked out. 'If those cables or chains wrap themselves round the screw..' he gestured.
'One's already out of action,' I said.
'I don't know how bad it is -1 stopped her before it could do itself more damage,' he replied. He took a hard, long look at me. ‘I guess you'll want everything she has, to get through the night?’
'Yes, Nick. We're in trouble. Big trouble. But one dud screw or not, if another sizzler like that big wave hits us, we've had it. Just say your prayers-if there's time. She's got a hole in the foredeck the size of Table Mountain. No tarpaulin is going to be worth a damn in another sea like that.'
Scannel's eyes were sizing up the job professionally as he spoke. ‘It wasn't like any wave I've ever encountered. The engine-room floor suddenly nose-dived. It was like putting her head down an escalator.'
I found my hands shaking on the lifelines, reaction to the dive like a near-miss car smash. Deliberately, consciously, I crushed all thought of the Waratah out of my mind. I must not be hamstrung in coping with our mortal peril by shadows from the past.
'Put that light on the gravity corer on the other rail,' I told Scannel. 'Maybe we'll have to cut that one away too. Not such heavy gear as this one, though.'
Scannel laughed mirthlessly. 'Take a look.' Across the wet deck, only a few stumps of metal showed where the gravity corer had been.
'The sea's done that job pretty well for us, but for this we'll want an oxy-acetylene cutter-le Roux can help. He's a good boy. Won't panic'
'I'll wait,' I said briefly. 'Feldman's injured. Smit's trying to sort things out on the bridge.'
I tried to get my bearings as Scannel staggered off along the bucking lifeline. On the exposed deck the gale was penetrating, Arctic. Walvis Bay rolled heavily, but still the seas were not sweeping the decks as they had done before the great wave. Something seemed to be taming them. The crests still broke aboard, but Walvis Bay, with all the weight of water inside her, was riding them, not plunging headlong.
The fear rose in my throat at the thought of the black shape into which Walvis Bay had so nearly plunged. I took a grip of my nerves and edged over to the windward side of the deck, trying to pierce the darkness, trying to bring to rational, everyday terms the thing I thought I had seen. The gale still tore its Force 10 swathe from the south-west. Tears streamed down my face as I held my eyes into it to make sure it held the same quarter. Walvis Bay was edging slowly towards the deep sea-towards safety. Had the savagery of the seas lessened, I asked myself, because there was already deeper water under her? Had we side-stepped some diabolical sea-bottom contour which lashed the waves to such madness?
I wiped the spray and the rain from my eyes with the back of my hand and tried again to find the black mass which had stood in our path. For perhaps half a minute I could see before the iciness brought a fresh gush of tears. Nothing. Could I find the place again? The compass was hopelessly wrecked; more than before, even, my dead reckoning was pure guesswork. We could be five miles in any direction. I turned my face from the scalpel of wind and spray. Had it simply been a trick of the light which had made a big sea loom to take shape like … I dared not bring the thought out from shadows as Avernal as the darkness around the battling ship.
I heard Scannel shouting to me from the other side of the deck, near the grab. I made my way back cautiously. He and young le Roux were sitting astride a heavy gas cylinder. If that broke free, I thought quickly, it could be as big a menace as the swinging grab had been. A crushing impact against a broken-off stanchion could explode the high-compression gas inside …
Scannel had not forgotten to bring a strong light as well as a rope.
'Get a turn round her,' he panted. 'Can't work if this thing's going to go wild.'
I wormed a noose over the steel neck of the bottle, round a couple of severed stanchions, and then back over the smooth cylinder barrel.
'Every time that spar dogs into the ship, I die a little,’ Scannel remarked. 'It's bad enough here, but you want to hear it below in the engine-room. I'll bet there are some holes punched in her plates already.'
He worked deftly as he spoke, trying to ignite the torch. Le Roux and I huddled close to form a windbreak. The cutter suddenly burst into bright flame, hissing and spitting in the rain and spray.
'I'll go for the big boy first,' said the engineer. He looked apprehensively at the grab I had made fast. 'I'd really like to ditch that to begin with, but if I cut it loose it may only get fouled up with the clutter under the stern. Then we double our problem.'
Holding the spitting, blue-tongued flame in his left hand, he steadied himself against the buckled rail with his right. He strained to see where to begin.
'Bring the light closer, skipper,' he called. 'This will be trickier even than I thought.'
I shone the beam on the twisted mass. The main three-inch heavy tube was so contorted that it seemed impossible that the sea could have wrought it. Strong, flexible steel cable, used for lowering the grab hundreds of fathoms deep to the ocean floor, was snarled about it like a knotted ball of wool. The winching device which was integral to it had been unseated from its bolt and seemed inextricably mixed up with the lower portions of the crane. No part of it would ever be fit for use again.
The three of us ducked as a wave crest toppled over the rail on the lee roll; again, I was surprised at the sea's lack of viciousness. The waves were no smaller, but they seemed to be pawing at the ship now rather than punching.
When the water cleared, Scannel hung over the rail. 'I'm going over head-first, skipper,' he told me calmly. 'You'll have to hang on to my legs while I work. Piet, boy, get yourself alongside the skipper. When you see a wave coming, shout. I'll hand you the torch. Shove it above your head-keep it out of the water — do anything, but keep it alight.'
'You'll get drowned, Nick,' I objected. 'This is a modern variation on keel-hauling a man.'
Scannel brushed aside my anxiety. 'If you yell in good time, I'll take a long breath. Getting wet doesn't matter. We can't play musical chairs with each wave, back and forth to the deck and over the side again each time. Every time that wreckage bashes her, our chances of seeing tomorrow get slimmer.'
'Right,' I replied. 'But don't object if I recommend you for the George Cross or whatever they offer enginers in tight spots.'