“Damn right! We’d better come to port a few more degrees.” He went across to Robin by the helm to check on their exact heading. The compass read almost due south. They were at slow ahead, making about five knots, if the instruments could be trusted in this. Their heading and speed were only notional anyway. The storm, pushing on their port quarter, was moving them west almost as fast as they were heading south. The Agulhas current under their keel was in motion too, the whole mass of water moving like a river toward the Cape. And the hurricane wind above, of course, was using their massive superstructure like a sail.
He turned to his third mate. “Come to…”
He never finished what he was saying. Even as he spoke to her, in a ghastly sort of slow motion Robin sank to her knees. “What…” He went over to her and went down on one knee beside her. Her arms were crossed on her belly, her fingers buried in the taut flesh under her ribs, knuckles white. As he reached her, she rocked forward, obviously in acute pain. She was white as chalk, her eyes huge and wide with shock. “ROBIN…”
She vomited as he said her name, folding forward with the wrenching effort, smashing her forehead on the deck. He reached for her, but she could not straighten, her stomach obviously locked in a cramp. As he tried to lift her she vomited again.
He looked desperately over his shoulder. John was still by the Collision Alarm Radar, his own face looking pretty ghastly in the green glow from the dish. “JOHN!” he yelled.
The Manxman had taken two steps when the cramps hit him too. His face twisted, muscles writhing terribly. The angles of his jaw stood out in stark relief. His pipe fell to the floor, its stem bitten right through. Automatically, he tried to catch it and he lost his footing.
During the next minute they all went down, as though this were some kind of virulent plague spreading among them. One moment the bridge was functioning normally, the next they were all in fetal positions, puking helplessly on the floor. Even the helmsman slid down, the tiny wheel slipping from his numb fingers. And the agony hit Richard too, a massive shock that warned of severe damage to the system. From solar plexus to pubis, the muscles of his belly spasmed. Vomit flooded out of his throat, washing into the sensitive passages behind his nose, burning there and blinding him with tears. When he blinked them away, he found himself on the floor beside Robin, just behind the helmsman.
His whole body spasmed again, raising the hurt to the realms of agony, muscles tearing themselves as they wrenched beyond control. And yet they could not be beyond control. His mind, alert even under these circumstances, knew he must overcome this mutiny in his body and force it to his will or they were lost. And yet even to stand seemed an impossibility. He forced himself half erect, only to throw up and fall down again. Once more — like some simian ancestor in Darwinian theory — he straightened his back and stood erect.
Three steps toward the helm console. Another spasm. He slipped in the mess and crashed forward, landing with his elbows on the icy metal of the console top. There was a microphone here. When the dry heaving had stopped, he bent the metal stalk until the wire mouthpiece touched his lips.
He pressed the button. “Engine Room,” he whispered. He flipped to RECEIVE.
The noise of the answer confirmed his worst fears. But at least it was Martyr’s voice. “Captain? It’s bad down here.”
“Here too. Keep going as best you can.”
He pressed the button again. “Sparks…Tsirtos…”
The sound of helpless puking answered him. It caused his gorge to rise again. He controlled himself, feeling the effort draining him. God! He was weak!
“TSIRTOS!”
“Cap…Captain…”
“Can you radio for help?”
“…Try…”
A hand came onto his shoulder and he actually jumped with the shock. He turned so quickly that his grip on the console slipped and he crashed to the floor again.
It was Robin. She had pulled herself up, obviously with as much grim effort as himself, and she stood now, filthy, agonized, sick unto death. Simply refusing to give in.
Richard rose, inch by inch until they were in a position to collapse against each other. Breathlessly, speaking almost in shorthand, sentences — often words — broken by bouts of heaving, they discussed what they should do.
She must take the helm and try to keep Prometheus’s head around into the storm, away from the dangers of the African coast. He must go below and check on the others. Tsirtos must be made to call for help. Anyone with any strength at all must be made ready to act when that help arrived.
In many ways, the most difficult bit was simply making it to the door. The atmosphere on the bridge was so foul now that he had to stop every few steps, find something to cling to, and puke weakly. Once or twice the cramps hit him again and he fell down. It was impossible to bend and check his other officers. He looked down on them with a rigid back as they lay curled on the floor, beyond help at the moment. At the door he looked back, just in time to see Robin fold forward, start to go down, and pull herself erect again, using the helm to support her. He could not express how proud that made him feel.
In the corridor, things were marginally better. Certainly, he could at least breathe without being overcome with nausea. Right from the start, he blessed whoever had retained the old-fashioned strong wooden railings along the corridor walls. Without these to cling to, his progress would have been slow indeed. As it was, he simply leaned upon them and collapsed forward into a staggering half run. This way, as long as his arms could bear him he made progress and, although he was weaker than a sickly child, he hardly fell down at all. The retching got worse, of course, now that his stomach was empty and dry.
The atmosphere in the radio shack set him off again. He found it hard to breathe, such was the twisting and heaving of his stomach and he stood crucified in the doorway, choking and sobbing for breath. Tsirtos was lying on his chest, backside just out of his filthy chair, chin just above his filthy desk, speaking into his radio like a ghost. Every once in a while — Richard stood there long enough to perceive a pattern in it — Sparks’s left hand would depress the RECEIVE button, and Richard would hear a whisper of conversation from the headphones Tsirtos was wearing. Miraculously, the sick man was in communication with somebody. Hope and relief gave Richard added strength, though the simple good luck of the circumstances almost beggared belief. North and west of them, altering course even as they spoke, a mere three hours distant at the top of the green, were two South African oceangoing salvage tugs. If they could get their lines aboard in the relative calm of the storm’s eye, they would take Prometheus back to the safety of Durban.
But there would need to be someone in the forecastle head to take the lines aboard.
Three hours. Automatically, Richard looked at his watch. As soon as his hand came away from the door frame, his legs gave out again and he crashed to his knees on the threshold, but he had made the calculation. They would be here at 22.30.
He crawled over to the nearest wall. He pulled himself erect and leaned on the railing once more, gasping as though he had just run a marathon. He was going to have to find himself some help.