The Bomb Ship

by Peter Tonkin

  ‘Always assuming he doesn’t kill us first,’ said Richard. ‘Look at the length of those claws!’

  ‘Big teeth, too. Young male, I’d say.’

  ‘At least he doesn’t look as though he’s starving.’

  ‘Won’t make much difference. He’ll kill us anyway if he takes it into his head. We’re probably on his territory or something.’

  ‘That doesn’t seem too likely, unless he’s drifted here from Greenland with the rest of this lot. And if he has, he’d look hungrier than this. We’ve seen no wildlife except those birds.’

  As they talked, they began to work their way up the pile of ice blocks. They did this unhandily, their backs to the ice, watching the beast as it wandered forward, still on all fours, disconcertingly like some huge child playing a game of pretending not to be interested in them. It prowled around them, one eye fixed on them, never nearer than ten yards, never further than twenty.

  ‘What’ve we got to fight him with?’ mused Richard, more to himself than to Bill.

  ‘The axe. The cleaver.’

  As Bill said the words, Richard could see all too clearly how impossible it would be. Trying to stay firm on the treacherous ice pile, thumping away at the bear’s head with the paltry weapons while it tore at their unprotected legs with teeth and claws. No. They had to get rid of this unwelcome, inquisitive creature long before it came to blows at close quarters. But then the time for thought was suddenly past. Bill’s foot slipped and the square Cumbrian slithered past Richard’s left shoulder, down towards the bear which suddenly looked very interested after all. Richard just had time to grab his companion’s harness with his left hand. The downward slide stopped with a jerk that nearly dislocated Richard’s shoulder. Luckily he was on firm footing and stayed put. He was incapable of further action for an instant, however, until his friend had regained his footing. As the two men struggled, facing outwards with their backs against the sloping jumble of slippery blocks, perhaps six feet above the surface of the ice itself, the bear began its charge.

  ‘Your flares,’ yelled Richard, his own hand still tangled in Bill’s harness. The radio operator needed no second bidding. As the bear rushed towards them, ten yards down and ten to go, gathering itself to climb up the ice after them, he scrabbled in his pocket for the long cylinder.

  Richard tore his hand free, leaving his glove caught in the straps, just as Bill tugged the short lanyard on his first flare. With a vicious hiss the tube exploded into life and a green light sped towards the bear. It grazed past the creature’s left shoulder close enough to singe the fur, but it did not have the desired effect. The charge slowed, but only so that the bear could draw itself up to full height. On its hind legs, with its arms spread wide, tipped with lethal black claws, each as long as a dagger, it began to walk towards them, roaring. Richard’s feet were two metres above the ice but the bear’s head was level with his groin. Its mouth gaped and it sucked in icy air to bellow again its intention to attack.

  Richard just had time to take careful aim. ‘Aim for its mouth but don’t fire until I say,’ he grated to Bill in whose trembling hands he could see a second flare. Then he fired his own. The spitting ball of bright green light whooshed like a misdirected skyrocket down onto the ice immediately in front of the bear’s ankles and exploded there with vicious force. The great white pelt was suddenly pocked with burning black spots from ankle to waist, all across the great sag of its lower belly.

  Bill’s hand jerked convulsively.

  ‘Wait!’ rapped Richard, for the bear had stopped. Grotesquely, like a human, it looked down at its sullied belly and as it did so it dropped to all fours. It gave a grunting cry and turned. Its head, near the ice now, came close to the flare which was still hissing and spitting in a fizzing pool of water. And that was enough. With a noise disconcertingly like a bleat, it turned and ran away on down the valley.

  ‘You were right,’ said Richard. ‘It must have been a male. Didn’t like putting the family jewels in danger. You all right?’

  ‘Fine,’ said Bill. ‘And that’s one I owe you.’

  ‘Forget it,’ said Richard bracingly. ‘You wouldn’t have been here but for me. Let’s go.’

  ‘In a minute,’ temporised Bill. ‘I think I need a good big lump of chocolate after that. Put something other than adrenaline back into my blood.’

  *

  There were only two more ridges before the central hill. They and it were gentle enough. Bill and Richard pulled themselves across them quite quickly, although both of them began to suffer reaction to the stress of their adventure, and weariness added to the weight of everything else bearing down on them. But at last it was done and they dragged themselves up to the crest of that central ridge.

  Richard had imagined that the two halves of the ice barrier would be roughly the same, but this was not the case. True, the folds fell away from this point, but the ridges were much higher, their sides more precipitous. The terrain they had just crossed was as nothing compared to the rough wildness before them. Just as the ridges were more considerable, so the blocks and jumbled rubbish piles were more colossal. The plain itself was wider too. They had crossed five ridges to reach this spot. The same number lay beyond. But even reaching the first of these was out of the question, for the hillside which sloped gently back behind them fell away in a cliff face a yard further on.

  Richard stood immobile on the crest. Bill joined him and looked down. The precipitous slope stretched away as far as their tired eyes could see on either hand. If they went down, they would never be able to get back up. ‘We can’t go on,’ Bill said at last. ‘You said I could call it, and I am. We have to go back, Captain.’

  Richard said nothing for a moment. He pulled the binoculars off his shoulder and raised them slowly to his eyes. They made a slight sound, like ice striking ice, as they hit his sunglasses. From side to side he scanned the distance. Beyond the wilderness of crushed and tumbled ice it was possible to see the black line of the sea. But that was all.

  There was a moment more of silence, then Richard said, ‘Yes. We have to go back. She’s gone.’ He lowered his binoculars and repeated, his voice as desolate as the scene at his feet, ‘She’s gone.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE - Day Eleven

  Saturday, 29 May 15:00

  From Robin’s point of view, the best part of a bad situation was that Timmins had managed to get the shore lines in and the manoeuvring system working well enough to meet her halfway. The obvious damage to crew morale, the accommodation areas and the radio officer was not so acceptable. She fumed and spat like an irritated tiger, berating everyone involved, making no allowance at all for the fact that the first and second officers felt that they had dealt with a crisis quickly and effectively. As far as she was concerned, she had simply found herself forced into stopping and dealing with a petty lapse of discipline. This was an utter and dangerous waste of precious time when she needed every second of daylight to assure the safe disposition of her command and to prepare for what must be a busy night of detailed planning and an agonisingly hard day’s work tomorrow.

  O’Brien, Symes of the flattened nose, the rest of the search and destroy party, Timmins and Hogg all stood in various attitudes of sullen resentment in the captain’s day room on C deck while she introduced them to the rough side of her tongue. Like Richard, like almost any captain, Robin had a quarterdeck voice which would have carried to the truck of the Cutty Sark. It carried now out into the corridor and across to the stairwell where various assorted members of both crews pretended to be about important duties while they actually stood and listened.

  ‘... Finally, I will not only dock your pay, I will withhold it until the damage has been repaired and paid for out of it. If you are back at sea then, I will have what little is left sent directly to your wives or bank managers. It will be a pleasant surprise to them, I’m sure, and a nasty shock to various brothelkeepers and publicans. One more incident like this, one more, and I shall have you all on permanent deck wo
rk, watch on watch, until we get home and I’ll sort it out with the union later. Is that clear?’

  The sullen silence persisted until she thundered, ‘IS THAT CLEAR?’

  ‘Yes, Captain.’

  ‘Right. I’ll be making an announcement about duties later. Your names will feature prominently. Now, get out, the lot of you! Not you two!’ With an effort of will she moderated her tone. ‘Mr Hogg, Mr Timmins, remain behind, please.’

  As soon as the crewmen were gone, Robin began to explain to the two officers what she had found and how she proposed to make full use of it. ‘I’m relying on you two to get us there while I draw up the first set of plans and detail the first working parties,’ she concluded. ‘You’ve done well to get this far. Finding the iceberg and the slipway should be easy enough for you. You’ll need a decent helmsman soon, though. I’ll send Sam Larkman up. You’ll need to man the radio too, Mr Hogg. And, talking of that, I’d better start by looking in on the sick and wounded. I want Harry Stone up and about as soon as possible, and I can’t get much further with any of my plans unless I can get the chief up out of bed now so that he and his officers can help.’

  Hogg was a little dazed at being berated one minute and confided in the next, but he was quicker on his feet than he used to be: ‘You want me to contact Clotho and the two offices?’

  ‘Yes. London and Sept Isles both need to know what we’re up to, but I’m most concerned about Clotho. Her captain will have been worried that we’ve been out of touch. I hope he hasn’t started to do anything risky.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like coming across the ice on foot, Mr Hogg. Mr Timmins, you’re certain Stone hadn’t told Captain Mariner we were going to move Atropos before he broke contact?’

  ‘Fairly certain, Captain.’

  She paused for an instant, sucking her teeth in thought. ‘Well, there’s no help for it,’ she concluded. ‘Let’s get to work.’

  *

  Henri LeFever had been acting as chief medical officer and she found him in Lethbridge’s day room, just outside the cabin door, sitting morosely reading a medical textbook from the ship’s library. ‘I’ll want you to change hats again soon,’ she said. ‘I want to hoist Atropos out of the water up that slipway we found on the iceberg. It’s difficult to be accurate, but I suppose it must be angled at seven or eight degrees. You’ll need to advise me how the cargo will react to that if I leave it where it is or if I move some of it down towards the bow and pile it high in number one hold to lighten the stern.’ Her voice was a little hoarse. She was still trying to control the anger which a brief visit to the cabin of her battered radio operator had caused.

  LeFever looked at her, narrow-eyed, as though concerned that her obvious anger might be directed at him. When he spoke, his tone was almost defensive. ‘Cargo’s been fine through pitching of far steeper angles than that, Captain. It’ll sit still for a sixty-degree roll to the side, and I guess it’d take an eight-degree angle to the front. I’ll have to do some math if you’re going to start moving it about, though. How much time do I have?’

  ‘Lots. We’ll be moving into position before dark tonight, but I won’t be starting heavy work until the morning. If I start at all. How is he?’

  ‘Should have been in hospital, I guess. It was worse than it looked. On the mend now.’

  ‘I have to talk to him. It’s too much for Don Taylor and Lloyd Swan.’

  ‘Go ahead ...’

  She had gone.

  The room was in darkness, but Lethbridge’s voice greeted her as soon as she walked in. ‘In position for what? Which slipway? What’s too much for Don?’

  She snapped on the light, sat herself in his bedside chair and began to explain her plans. As she did so, her restless grey eyes wandered over the chief engineer. She had hardly had any real contact with him. Certainly, if the deck officers were anything to go by, his absence from the engine room could have been caused by anything, including a certain amount of malingering, especially as she had brought young Lloyd Swan with her to take over the routine work. But LeFever had said he was genuinely hurt, and she trusted LeFever even if she couldn’t quite fathom him. And Don Taylor had a lot of time for him, and she had a lot of time for Don. The bandages were nearly all gone now, revealing a strange mask made still and shiny by a combination of dead skin and ointment. His eyes were slitted and, although pale, looked like the result of a couple of hefty punches. The cheeks were unnaturally plump and the mouth pushed out into a kiss. The nose down the middle was straight and thin as a razor. Below the bloated jowls, the neck was lean and scraggy. It was an odd, unsettling face and she soon came to the conclusion that the chief was a thin man whose aspect was usually angular. The apparent rolls of plumpness were actually swellings from the scalding he had received three and a half days earlier. The whole effect was made a good deal worse, of course, by the fact that he hadn’t shaved since Monday morning. It looked as though LeFever’s diagnosis had been accurate enough.

  As she described what she wanted to do and explained how she proposed to go about it, Lethbridge pulled himself up in the bed and began to join in the conversation. His questions were germane. Positive. Creative. The slitted eyes began to gleam with enthusiasm and it was with a burgeoning sense of relief that she began to recognise someone, like herself, who not only rose to challenges but enjoyed doing so. The only thing which gave her pause was the fact that when he began to gesture with increasing fervour, it became obvious that the boxing-glove bandages round his hands were still very necessary.

  ‘Don’s up, you say.’

  ‘For a couple of days now.’

  ‘Thank God he’s not as bad as me. Where is he ...?’ Lethbridge paused, listening to the renewed vibration as Atropos got under way, powered laboriously by her manoeuvring propellers. ‘No, don’t tell me. I bet I know where he is. Wait a minute.’

  Carried away by his sudden enthusiasm, the chief surged out of bed and began to search for some clothes. ‘Give me a hand, will you, Captain?’ he demanded unselfconsciously as soon as he found a promising pile of neatly folded clothing. ‘Hold those trousers there so I can climb into them.’

  In five minutes, with his pyjamas as underwear, the chief engineer was dressed in trousers and pullover. His white overalls covered the ensemble. As long as he had no intention of going outside, it was quite adequate. Had LeFever taken the opportunity of spying through the door at any stage, he would have been treated to the unusual sight of a captain dressing her chief engineer; had he done so now, he would have seen her tying his shoelaces. And he would have heard them talking. Talking nineteen to the dozen, like old friends who had been separated for years.

  *

  Lethbridge was right. Don Taylor was in the engine room with Lloyd Swan. The two young engineering officers were deep in conversation, speculating as to what their captain had in mind. As soon as she arrived, she explained to them what she had described to Lethbridge and then she left the three of them in close enclave, talking over the practicalities and working out how two senior officers with no hands might best direct the efforts of someone with less experience but more functioning fingers. The first thing they sent him to do was to find Henri LeFever and Ann Cable; it was time, the engineers reckoned, to see just how many more of these bandages could be dispensed with.

  Buoyed up with that burgeoning feeling of hope, Robin ran up to the bridge and joined Timmins in the wheelhouse. No sooner had she done so, than Hogg stuck his head out of the radio room. ‘I have Clotho for you, Captain,’ he said.

  Her heart leaped but she did not rush over. One glance around the bridge was enough to tell her that everything was going adequately. A slit-eyed look out into the opalescent glare of the afternoon assured her that they were just entering the fog bank which clothed the iceberg. She crossed to the radio room and caught up the microphone. ‘Richard?’

  ‘No, Captain Mariner, it’s Nico. Lieutenant Hogg says you have moved Atropos.’

  ‘Yes.’ The elation wa
s gone, punctured by Nico’s statement as easily as a child’s balloon. ‘The radio officer was injured and we could not warn you.’

  ‘So the captain and Bill Christian did not reach you.’

  It was exactly as she had feared. ‘They came across the ice.’ She made it a statement, not a question.

  ‘That is correct.’

  ‘How long have they been out of contact?’

  ‘Only an hour.’

  An hour! Anything could have happened. She looked round the bridge but there was no help there. There was no help anywhere, she realised. Not for her. Not for Richard. ‘He’ll be back in contact soon,’ she said, more for her own benefit than Nico’s.

  ‘I’ll let you know,’ he said. ‘Can I have your current position? He’ll want to know at once I should think.’

  ‘I’ll hand you back to Mr Hogg. He’ll give you the details.’

  She had no time to indulge herself in worry over Richard. Her first task was to stand at Sam Larkman’s shoulder and will him safely through the fog. As soon as the fog began to clear and the glistening slopes of the iceberg shone through the thinning billows, she began to give more precise directions. In the lifeboat it had seemed to take them a considerable time to round the cliff face and discover the slipway with its surrounding stepped galleries. Even under the power of just her manoeuvring propellers, Atropos seemed to close with the glittering monster more quickly. It seemed little more than moments before Robin was directing the helmsman to steer hard over so that the ship could swing round in a slow half-circle, reverse her course and approach the slipway stern first.

  It was going to be a long manoeuvre. As soon as it was under way, Robin handed over to Timmins once again, went into her day room behind the chart room and began to prepare for the next part of her plan. Overall, the scheme was relatively simple. When they were in position close to the iceberg she was going to put lines ashore from the stern on the port and starboard quarters. They would be long lines secured to the lower slopes of ice, designed to hold Atropos safe and still in the correct position vis-à-vis the slipway. As soon as the hull was secure, she would dismiss the crew to dinner and hold a council of war with her officers. She had no desire to do anything complex tonight. In the morning, at first light, she proposed to run two more lines ashore. They would run backwards from the port and starboard bows this time and be anchored on the upper slopes. Then, carefully, in agreed sequence and perfect harmony, all lines would be tightened. The stern lines would wind round the capstans and the bow lines would be gathered by the split windlass. So, inch by inch, Atropos would be guided backwards up the frozen slipway until as much of the hull as seemed necessary and safe was pulled out of the water, and the propeller could be inspected.