“You want me to sink her?” The Captain responded, his lip curling as though he’d just tasted something pungent.
The thought was absurd, but then, failing to do anything at all meant that a lot of people were going to die. What did they have to lose?
Tom shrugged his shoulders, as though it was of little consequence whether or not they all survived the next four hours.
Then, he saw a look of realization on the Captain’s obdurate face.
“By God, you’re right! We can flood the ship. We can knock off twenty feet of freeboard by filling her with water without actually sinking her! It will make us much heavier and will reduce our exposure to the wind.”
Tom sat in the navigator’s chair, his feet lazily stretched out on the desk in front. Every muscle in his body was relaxed. He could have just as easily been sitting on his couch, watching the end of a sitcom, for all the effort he was putting in. But instead, he was watching the outcome of a very real drama — mostly indifferent of its outcome.
To a casual observer, cognizant of the situation, Tom might appear to be insane, but he was far from it. In fact, every inch of his body had been taut with stress ever since the Maria Helena left Sydney Harbor. It was only now that he had performed his duty and had no further assistance to offer, that he could begin to relax.
The outcome of the next four hours would determine his fate.
He would certainly prefer to live. He had a lot more to do and see in this world, but he had played his part, and performed his duty well in this maritime drama; now it was out of his hands.
Tom learned long ago that it’s only worth worrying about those things you have the ability to change, and to forget about those which you have no control. With that level of indifference, he casually watched from the bridge, as the adventure on the Hayward Bulk was about to reach its final, dramatic conclusion.
Captain Ambrose flicked a number of electronic switches which opened the enormous sea-cocks and reversed the bilge pumps. The reason for such an option on a super tanker baffled Tom, but the Captain explained that the Hayward Bulk often flooded its enormous bilges to maintain stability in rough seas when depleted of its cargo.
To the right of Tom, the instrumentation in front of the Captain’s expressionless face, showed a line which portrayed the depth of the ship’s hull below the waterline.
Its reading: forty two feet.
The line didn’t move, and after several minutes, Tom started to wonder whether or not his idea had any possibility of succeeding.
Then. The line moved to forty-two point five.
Once it started to move, it kept moving. Tom thought it was similar to an altimeter on a plane, as it slowly showed the supertanker’s descent into the ocean.
“She’s moving,” Captain Ambrose said tentatively, with just the tiniest hint of a grin appearing on his stubborn face.
“But is it having any effect on our drag?” Tom asked.
The captain looked to his left, where the Hayward Bulk’s speed could be read — eight point three knots.
“She’s slowing down, but not by much.” His grin receding.
Next to the speedometer was a GPS monitor, displaying the local geography reaching out toward the northeastern tip of Australia.
The captain clicked an asterisk over the little image of a ship on the map and then placed second asterisk on the nearest point of the eastern edge of the shallow Great Barrier Reef. Instantly, a dotted line formed between the two points and a note popped up — Time to Destination: 3 hours: 35 minutes.
The reality of the computation was clear to Tom.
“How long will it take to fill the holding tanks to their maximum with sea water?”
“Perhaps another hour?” The Captain seemed slightly unsure of himself. “It might take as long as two hours, depending on how far we want to take it.”
Tom nodded.
Both men were professionals. Neither of them needed to have the simple math explained in greater detail.
They were going to die.
An hour later, the Hayward Bulk had sunk another 20 feet into the ocean. The Time to Destination reading was now: 3 hours: 5 minutes.
The ship’s drift speed had decreased again, but it still wasn’t slowing down quick enough.
Those few hours remaining them, had disappeared quickly, Tom noticed, and before he realized where the time had gone, another alarm sounded. It was a loud warning sound, more like an electrical hum than an air horn.
“What’s that?” Tom asked.
“That’s the sound of our death, Mr. Bower.” Captain Ambrose spoke the words with the fatalism of a seaman fully prepared to go down with his ship, rather than suffer the consequences of such a failure.
“That’s our proximity alarm. We are no more than a mile away from the reef.”
“Then that’s it?”
“That’s it. There is nothing more we can do, but prepare for the worst.”
Neither man was particularly religious; both just sat there and silently acknowledged their imminent death.
Another alarm rang out.
This time, it was the engine room.
“Yes?” The captain asked.
The Captain’s facial expression lightened for the first time since Tom had met him earlier that afternoon, and he then placed the handset back on the table in front of him.
“Excellent. Start her up. And Mr. Thomas, skip all safety procedures, there are a lot of lives at stake here.”
The entire ship recoiled at the vibrations from the ship’s massive engines cranking over. It then settled down to a strong hum.
Tom watched as Captain Ambrose pushed both throttles forward to full speed, and locked the rudder at forty five degrees — the maximum angle at which to efficiently turn a ship. At the front of the ship, he could hear the sound of the electric bow thruster whining.
Tom again looked down at the Time to Destination marker. It read: 4 minutes 32 seconds.
All systems were now back on.
But, did they have enough time for it to make a difference?
The ship started to turn as quickly as was possible for a super bulker like the Hayward Bulk.
It was painfully slow.
Through the large windows on the bridge, Tom could see the white froth of the waves breaking on the reef. Normally, nothing more than a patch of green in an otherwise deep blue water, the reef was now creating a gigantic bombora with the cyclonic waves.
The ship turned as if it were on a single giant axis and then that axis moved at a rate of 4 knots towards the lethal, jagged edge of the Great Barrier Reef.
It was going to be close.
There was no doubt about it. Tom decided that if he survived this, it would be his closest escape from death yet.
The stern of the ship approached the bombora, and Captain Ambrose straightened the rudder. For the first time since Tom landed on the ship, the Hayward Bulk started to make its way forward.
It was at less than half a knot, but it was progress away from their peril.
They had made it.
“I don’t believe it.” Captain Ambrose finally smiled. “We made it!”
“So we did!” Tom said jovially, and then, removing his feet from atop the table in front of him, where they’d comfortably rested throughout the entire drama, he jumped off the high navigator’s stool and said, “Is there any place I can get some food around here?”
“There sure is, buddy.”
And then, the entire ship shuddered under a series of detonations.
Chapter Five
The series of detonations tore through the ship like a Roman candle. The vibrations in the hull of the Hayward Bulk were strong enough to knock Tom onto the floor. They continued for a couple of minutes, and then stopped.