Scend of the Sea

Scannel already had his flashlight on the heaving water, judging his moment to go overside. The water looked murky, oily, almost as if someone had drawn a thin sheet of plastic over its surface.

'Here we go!'

Scannel stuck the cutting torch, where the metal joins the rubber tubes from the cylinder, between his teeth and plunged himself full-length over the rail; I held his lower legs and feet, and young le Roux craned over to snatch the vital light from being doused.

Had it been a matter of cutting away the gravity corer on the other side of the stern, our task would have been far easier. There was a great deal more water coming aboard on the lee roll (where we were) than on the weather roll opposite. The cold, too, made movements stiff and hands clumsy, I worked my jaws to keep my face from freezing.

Scannel called to le Roux to open the gas cock. The whole scene flared into unnatural, incandescent brightness as flame bit into metal, throwing up showers of blue-white sparks.

In that sudden brightness, I spotted the next wave.

'Nick! The torch — quick!'

The engineer was almost through the thick pipe. Despite my warning, he went on cutting, using every last second. The sea started its upward heave. The seared metal support broke and swung, bringing with it a flurry of flaring steel which exploded in a sizzling cascade over Scanners neck and chest.

The wave broke.

I had a momentary glimpse of his agonized face: he swivelled sideways and upwards and thrust the torch clear of the water into le Roux's grip; he rammed it high above his head.

The rail dipped under. Water engulfed us.

It cleared. I reached forward and dragged Scannel bodily back on to the deck. His left shoulder was a polka-dot of burn-holes. He would carry those scars for the rest of his life.

He managed to speak. 'Let me get back-give me the torch! I'll have her completely free this time …'

'Nick-no-'

He shook his head, as if not trusting himself to speak through the pain. He gestured for me to take his legs. He snatched the torch from le Roux and dived, so it seemed, headlong over the side once more.

Again the bright light lit the scene unnaturally white. Then, miraculously soon, Scannel signalled to be pulled back.

There's only the cable left, and that's nothing,' he said quietly.

'Here it comes!'

We ducked for another sea, but le Roux hung on, standing upright.

'Good boy!' exclaimed Scannel after the roller had passed. 'Now for the cable.'

Skilfully and quickly he sent the flame through the tangle of wire and chains. The wind drowned its splash.

Scannel grimaced in agony.

'Nick,' I said urgently, "I'll come below to the engine-room and fix you up. We've got to get something on those burns right away..'

‘I did,' he winced lop-sidedly. 'Seawater. Try it some time. The hot so hot and the cold so cold. No, skipper, someone else can patch me up-you're needed to save the ship, not play nursemaid to me.'

He was right. Walvis Bay now had a sporting chance. It was up to me to exploit what Scannel had achieved.

'Okay,' I answered, 'but, Nick, that doesn't mean I don't appreciate. .'

The pain and reaction were hitting him. 'Save the speech for a calm sea,' he said. 'Can we risk that screw?' I asked.

'We'll try, anyway, and see what happens.' He snapped out the torch. 'I'll get on the bridge blower as soon as I can. Pumps, too. We've had a lucky break from the calmer seas. Just depends whether that tarpaulin holds over the hole in the deck. .'

I groped my way along the lifelines to the foredeck below the bridge. The men were putting the final touches to sealing the ragged hole where previously the winch had stood. Ends of the double tarpaulin still flapped and snapped, but my team was on top. Apart from another mammoth wave, it would keep out enough sea to enable the pumps to cope with what did make its way below.

I headed for the bridge.

Smit had rigged a couple of storm lanterns overhead and both he and Jubela were heavily oil-skinned against the driving rain. He had cleared away some of the glass and seen Feldman below to the ward-room. He had also found a small boat's compass somewhere and had taped it over the smashed binnacle.

'Do you think we'll make it, sir?' Smit was more excited than fearful.

I dodged a straight answer. 'How's she steering?'

'It would be a big help if we could get the port screw working.'

Walvis Bay's head seemed to be pointing somewhere east of south, but the tiny compass made it difficult to tell with any degree of accuracy.

'We'll try,' I replied. 'There may be a chunk out of it, Scannel thinks, but we still could get by if the shaft's not messed up.'

'Better than nothing at all, sir.'

I picked up the voice-pipe. 'Nick? Can we risk that port screw yet?'

The engineer's voice was tight with reaction. 'Aye. But we'll have to cut speed on the starboard prop first. Quarter-speed to start with. Maybe we can work up a bit more later, if the other can take it.'

Jubela gestured to me as I spoke.

I, too, felt the change of motion. Walvis Bay rose sharply to the next sea, quite unlike her longer, lazier motion a little while before. The white crest crashed aboard and sluiced to port, with the earlier characteristic deep lee roll. She lifted her bows well, but I could detect the inhibiting weight of water inside her.

I nodded to Jubela. 'Nick,' I went on. 'The sea's beginning to hit her again. I don't know why, but it is. How soon can you pump the water out of her? I need all the buoyancy I can find.'

'Couple of hours,' he answered. 'Depends on how much comes via the tarpaulin. Skipper-here comes your port screw.'

There was a squeal of agonized metal and a heavy, thumping vibration. It struck right through the hull to the bridge. The voice-pipe dropped with a crash the other end and Scannel yelled orders to stop the engine. The shattering noise stopped.

Scannel came on the voice-pipe.

'That's the sort of scream you should have let out just now if you weren't such a bloody spartan,' I told the engineer.

The engineer was in no mood to respond. I knew how much that damaged prop hurt him.

'She's bad, skipper-very bad,' he said. The shaft must be bent — what else, only a dockyard could know.'

I made my decision. 'Nick,' I said, 'I'm going to heave to. The sea's gone back to what it was before the big 'un hit us. I can't hold her all night with the engines like this. See if you can coax that starboard prop into giving me just enough to help hold her head into the run of the sea. I’ll stream a sea anchor and a drum of oil. The oil will soften the waves and keep them off the decks, maybe.'

CHAPTER SEVEN

I fought, hour by hour, for the life of the ship through the long night that followed. What I did not know was that the news of the storm I was challenging had brought as great a storm, emotionally, to Tafline in Cape Town. Her storm, like mine, held its secrets: when the shock-waves of her long night were over, she admitted consciously that she was in love.

It began, she told me afterwards, like mine, with the Buccaneer. She heard the radio announcement that a Buccaneer had gone missing on a training flight. Aboard Walvis Bay, all radios were dead. The main set was out because the radio hut had been smashed. All portable sets had been flooded and their batteries swamped. Until daylight it was impossible to find new ones in the 'tween-decks shambles.

She had frozen at the Buccaneer announcement. She saw intuitively behind the standard, cautious, well-used phrases: she guessed it was Alistair.

A second radio bulletin later increased her own tumult. It described the severity of the great storm I was riding out, hanging between life and death at the end of a wood-and-canvas sea anchor and a drum of oil. We had knocked holes in the drum before getting it overboard to let the oil seep out and try and soften the waves from swamping the labouring weather ship. Nonetheless, all night they broke through the shattered bridge; they cascaded through the hole in the deck; again and again we replaced the torn canvas. Our hands were numbed by the cold. Our nails were ripped. Our flesh bled. The tarpaulin reared, whipped, lashed, like a maniac. Strong men wept and cursed the south-west wind. Again and again it tore away their puny efforts to save themselves.