The Leper Ship

by Peter Tonkin

  Everything—motion, time—stopped. And darkness slammed up against the bridge window. It was so sudden, so absolute, so shockingly unexpected that there was almost a sound to it, as though Napoli’s face had been slapped by the blackness. As though in answer to the blow, the lights in the bridgehouse died as well. The whole ship shuddered and heeled. And fell off the edge of the world.

  *

  The thing that Richard felt most poignantly was amazement that he should feel anything at all. The next thing he felt was cold. It was a cold which had gone far beyond anything of the surface. It existed deep in the very heart of him, like a spike of ice. So numb was he that he didn’t even notice the shock of Napoli landing in the next trough, though it was great enough to break his grip on the ice-slick hawser and smash him jarringly to the deck. It was also enough of a shock to start his lungs working again, and he breathed in air, which was absolutely miraculous. When Napoli’s head came back up, she all but threw him on to his feet but his legs weren’t actually working and so he just rolled down the deck in an ungainly bundle until his lifeline brought him up short. He thought, ‘If I don’t get up and get myself into the bridgehouse, I’ll freeze to death in no time.’ But when he looked for it, he could see no sign of the bridgehouse at all.

  *

  El Jefe had been carrying out an elaborate ritual in the engine room designed to protect the main drive shaft. Every time the ship pitched forward, he gave a signal to cut engine power so that when the propeller came up out of the water it did not begin to race uncontrollably and destructively. There was no way he could be prepared for the water mountain, and when Napoli fell off the back of it, having been swept from end to end like a toy boat, he was damn near thrown through the engine control room window. On the other hand, when the power went, he knew exactly what to do. Emergency power was on within minutes and full power not long after. But his responsibilities only began with the restoration of power; he had to start checking all the damage that might have been done when they lost it in the first place. It took power to run the steering motors, power to keep the shaft turning in its long, open bed. Power to keep the seacocks closed and the bilge pumps pumping out.

  As soon as the emergency lighting came on, John was in action. The fact that he was trained to act under the most mind-numbing circumstances when lesser mortals stood around and gaped was what made him a master mariner. A Heritage Mariner master mariner. It also nearly killed him. He crossed the bridge while the others were standing gawping and pushed the door to the bridge wing open. ‘Niccolo, check in the bridgehouse and below,’ he ordered. ‘I’m going to see what’s left on the deck.’ And he stepped out of the door into the night. Only by the greatest good fortune did he keep firm hold of the door handle, and it saved him. He stepped off the bridge with his right leg and leaned forward, expecting his foot to touch the bridge wing. And then he was swinging wildly, holding on for dear life, his left leg twisting agonisingly while the door took his weight until he hauled himself back on to the bridge.

  The starboard bridge wing was gone altogether.

  *

  When the lights came back on in the bridgehouse, Richard began to crawl towards them. It was an act of superhuman strength and willpower and it was utterly useless. He did not realise that his lifeline was still attached and his frozen hands and knees were simply skidding over the icy deck while he stayed in the same place, exactly halfway between the nearest containers and his bright but battered goal.

  And that was where John and the rescue team found him three minutes later when they came rushing out on to the deck.

  When he came to, he felt as though he had recently been boiled in oil. His right cheek also seemed to have been branded. As he came spiralling up towards full wakefulness, he became aware of a persistent sobbing and this caused him some deep concern. ‘It’s all right, darling. Robin, I’m fine,’ he said.

  But then he realised that the crying was too deep to be Robin’s. And the odours of this place were not the familiar smells of his bedroom either.

  Then it all came back in a colossal rush and he sat up straight in his bed. Fatima jerked awake at his bedside and stopped him moving any further. ‘Asha says you’ve got to keep warm!’ she whispered.

  A shivering fit overcame him. He looked around a little wildly. Fatima watched him, her face worn and lined. Behind her shoulder, a bundle in the next bed shook and sobbed. Dim light on gold curls showed that it was Marco. Beyond him sat Asha herself. Her eyes met his.

  ‘Cesar?’ he asked quietly.

  ‘Gone. Everyone on the deck except you and…’ Asha looked down at the sobbing man.

  ‘My God! So it’s just John and Niccolo?’

  ‘He’s made up the crewman Eduardo acting third. But he needs you. He needs you, Richard. You’ve got to get better as quickly as possible.’

  Richard lay back, shaking again, trying to gather his strength. Well, he thought, every nerve alert, at last she was sitting more firmly in the water. The pitching and rolling had stilled. ‘Are we through the storm?’ he asked, his voice full of wonder.

  Fatima nodded.

  ‘Well, that’s a good start!’ he said brightly. ‘How long have I been out?’

  ‘Four hours.’

  ‘My God! I must get up!’

  ‘No,’ said Asha. ‘He needs you well and strong. Get some more sleep. Please. We’ll wake you.’

  He acquiesced, leaning back. They had piled too many pillows up behind his head. He could not get comfortable. He reached back to remove them. And froze. There were none there. It was not the angle of his bed that was so acute. It was the angle of the deck.

  The angle of the whole ship.

  24

  ‘My God, Richard, you look dreadful!’

  ‘You don’t look too good yourself, John.’ Richard hesitated on the threshold of the bridge, just a little winded by his rush to dress and get up here. He looked around with narrowed eyes at the shambles in the bridge and the mess outside. ‘Still,’ he grated, ‘you look better than Napoli does.’

  John was grey with fatigue and had clearly taken no rest since the beginning of the storm. Niccolo looked no better, and was slumped in the watchkeeper’s chair. The door of the radio shack was propped open and Jesus sat like a ghost in there with Ann Cable perched on a work surface by one of his radios. Eduardo had replaced Marco as third officer, but he was really only a kind of extra Bosun, his paper qualifications were not sufficient to support his place as a navigating officer. Salah still stood at the wheel. They were all staring through the bridge window down on to the deck.

  It was a glorious dawn, still, calm and bright. The sea was a cheerful blue, the long south-westerly groundswell rolling up towards them like billows of peacock silk to caress the length of the ship making her rock gently like a cradle. There was no foam or wrack on them, no sign of present weather or memory of last night’s tempest. Napoli continued to push through them, doggedly upon her course, as though anyone aboard still thought she and her cargo would make it safely to Sept Isles.

  The deck which Richard overlooked sloped downhill. The swell which should have reached the middle lading marks on her hull rose over them near the fo’c’sle and, Richard knew, would be nowhere near them at the poop. The line between her black side and her red-lead bottom was no longer parallel with the water’s surface; it plunged below each rising wave which tried to wash the anchor. And, he suspected, that same red bottom would be on view from astern, along with the top of her rudder. But at least the propeller was under water or they would not have had steerage way. That was something.

  The angle of the deck was only the start. How the forward radio mast had survived remained a miracle to rank with his own continued existence. The cranes had not been so blessed: all four of them were twisted, hunched. Their arms were broken or gone. This was a serious problem, because now they could not tidy up the deck cargo which lay strewn across the green steel like a child’s building blocks thrown down in a tantrum. Richard was
surprised the deck had stood up to the impact of their toppling. Surprised that he could see no immediate evidence of the containers themselves having fractured or burst. God alone knew what things were like within those great corrugated boxes, how many barrels were leaking, split or shattered. As for the hold cargo, he didn’t like to think what leakage from the deck cargo was doing to it.

  ‘Has anyone been down for a closer look?’ he asked. They shook their heads. A captain coming on to a bridge normally consults barometer, compass and heading, log, chronometer. Richard had so far looked at only the deck; none of the other things seemed important beside the state of the cargo. ‘What does Cape Race say about this?’ he demanded, swinging round to look into the little radio shack.

  ‘Radio’s fucked,’ said John. Richard, who had hardly ever heard his friend swear, was slightly shocked.

  ‘I get a little incoming. No outgoing,’ Jesus explained. ‘Is random, yes? No pattern. No control. I think is aerial. I don’t know. I’ve looked inside radio. Now I must look outside bridgehouse. See if outside aerial is still there. I don’t think she is.’

  ‘God!’ Richard paused. But there was more he wanted to know. ‘Well, what does El Jefe say? How are the pumps handling things?’

  ‘Pumps are fucked.’ John’s voice sounded dead, as though he was beyond caring.

  Silence.

  Richard looked round at them all; they seemed at the end of their tether. Only Ann Cable appeared to have any energy left. Richard was not particularly strong himself at the moment. He would have to conserve his energy if he was going to be of any long-term use. But they could not continue pounding up towards Canada in this state, dumb, helpless, apparently slowly sinking, with a horrifically dangerous cargo that was damaged and quite likely deteriorating. The deck cargo had been leaking before the wall of water smashed into them. They needed a plan of action and they needed it fast.

  His precious energy would be best expended in gathering facts and making that plan while these exhausted zombies continued to sail the ship into the early day. Perhaps they would meet another ship, though the storm might well have cleared even these busy shipping lanes. Perhaps Jesus would manage to fix his set and raise Cape Race. ‘Ann,’ he said quietly.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Could you find the chef and a couple of stewards. Get some hot coffee and a couple of mattresses up here. Then the captain can catch a nap and the watch officer can keep himself awake. And some food.’

  ‘Galley’s probably out of action,’ she said. ‘But I’ll see what I can do.’

  ‘Right. In the meantime, I’ll be in the engine room.’

  *

  Everyone in the engine control room was asleep and most of them were wearing their life jackets. El Jefe, for all his bull-like strength, was clearly as exhausted as John and it seemed a pity to have to wake him. Information about the weather and the radio and where they were on the face of the Western Ocean could wait; what Richard needed to know most urgently was how long they could expect to remain afloat. The term ‘fucked when applied to pumps was a little vague.

  ‘J’ou understand pumps?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘The bilge pumps on Napoli are reciprocating displacement pumps. J’ou are familiar with this?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘They work with a central piston and four valves. J’ou know?’ Richard just nodded. ‘The valves must fit exactly or the pump does not work well. If the valves wear out, stop to fit, the pump will cavitate. Will break. All our valves worn out. None fit now. Head pressure dangerously low. I shut down system.’

  ‘All the valves failed at once? At the same time?’

  The Spaniard looked at him sideways. Richard had put his finger on the central point. The valves were the most delicate parts in the system, but it was unusual, to put it mildly, for all the valves in a series of pumps to fail at once.

  ‘What do you think it is, Jefe?’

  The chief engineer hesitated, thinking. ‘The deck cargo. Is in the bilges. Bilge water go through the pumps. Valves suddenly fail. Deck cargo has destroyed the valves. J’ou see this?’

  Richard nodded wearily. It was exactly what he had been worried about. ‘Can you check?’

  ‘Long job to check. And any case, all valves would need to be re-machined.’

  Richard read between the lines here with no trouble at all. It was a question of time. There was probably not enough time to check; definitely not enough time for the re-machining. ‘How fast are we taking water?’

  ‘Not fast. Here, at this part of the ship, we have hardly measured any gain in the last two hours. To know more, j’ou will have to check further forward.’

  Richard nodded again. He was going to have to go down into the forward hold as soon as possible in any case. Into all three holds, in fact. And he would have to take Professor Faure. If the concentration of deck cargo in the bilge was strong enough to destroy the pump valves, it was certainly strong enough to attack the hull. And, if the hold cargo was under its surface, then the concrete protection round that was at risk as well.

  ‘Can you give me any idea how long she will stay afloat if we can either stop the leaks or fix the pumps?’

  El Jefe shrugged, a gesture exaggerated by the bright orange life jacket he was wearing. ‘Afloat? Perhaps days. Moving? Not very long. We go down at the head by another metre, I have to shut the engine off. The propeller, j’ou see, is almost out of the water now. Water pressure of the sea on the propeller blades is falling quickly. Soon the revs go up too high and the engine stop or the main shaft break. J’ou look, j’ou see bad vibration already.’

  *

  Faure looked just as exhausted as everyone else. Clearly, the fact that he had spent all night in his bunk did not mean that he had actually got any rest. No one aboard had slept, or even relaxed. The state of the main deck did nothing to cheer the distinguished scientist. Like all the rest, he had glanced outside when calm dawn had descended. And, again like all the rest, a glance out of the side windows had sufficed for him. He had collapsed into relief and stayed put. Now, in the company of Richard and Ann Cable, he was kitted up in a white protective suit, carefully picking his way through the lethal litter on the main deck. He was not enjoying the experience at all. Every time he stooped or knelt to take a sample from a pool, the action only served to emphasise the angle of the deck. His samples were in any case a little academic. The bottoms of so many of the pools he paused at were pale enough to make it obvious that some corrosive agent was at work. And there was only one source of that agent.

  The forward hatch was smashed open along half its length, though no sign remained of what had done the damage. Richard’s torch probed the shadows beyond the sunlight streaming down into the gaping, snaggle-toothed hole, but the morning brightness was enough to establish at once that the hold’s ladder was still firmly in place. Their ears were all they needed to tell them about the hold’s liquid contents, though the sun also obligingly revealed a restless, filthy lake of sea water below, sluggishly washing over the tops of the concrete containers. At the forward end of the hold, they were deeply submerged; at the rear it was possible to see the grey shapes below the filthy, oily, surface. Napoli pitched exhaustedly. A wave of scum and debris slopped back to explode against the after wall of the hold. Richard watched it wash up over the outline of the huge door there, the one that Captain Fittipaldi had had welded shut. His face folded into a frown.

  ‘Wait here a minute,’ he said to the other two, though neither of them had yet shown the slightest inclination to clamber down into the forbidding little cavern.

  The cover to the next hatch was undamaged and Richard had no trouble opening it. The motor whirred and the sections folded back one by one. Richard looked down into the darkness, at the square of light expanding on the floor of the hold, over the concrete boxes. Over the dry concrete boxes. The ship pitched gently again and a thunder came from against the dividing wall. Richard suddenly found that he was short of breath. It
was hope and it winded him as effectively as a punch below the belt. He pulled his headgear into place and switched on the air. Then he swung one leg over the raised lip of the hatch cover and stepped down on to the first rung of the ladder. He descended rapidly, pausing only when the thunder of water against the dividing wall just before his nose made the ladder he was climbing shiver along its length.

  At the foot of the ladder he knelt, looking at the flat grey metal. It was dry. He touched it almost unbelievingly. He looked up to his right at the massive dividing door welded shut by the dead captain’s fear. Not a drop. Dry as a bone. He rose to his feet again and walked over towards the nearest concrete boxes. It was not far, they were spread out and fitted snugly across the floor of the hold. All the pitching and heaving last night didn’t seem to have moved them all. Thank God for small mercies.

  On closer examination he saw that things were not actually as dry down here as they had seemed at first. The blocks were splashed with darkness; whole areas of them were black and shiny. But it did not seem particularly important at that moment.

  What was of overpowering importance was the dryness of the deck. It looked as though Napoli was down by the head because of the weight of the water that had poured through the smashed hatch into the forward hold. If the pumps had been working, they could either have pumped it over the side, or at least balanced the weight. As it was, the only way they had of bringing up her head would be to cut open the welded doors between the three holds and let the water flow back and settle at the bottom so that Napoli would sit on an even keel. Then they could look at getting the pumps fixed. Or sail in search of help. Maybe even think about getting to Sept Isles after all. As long as that stuff slopping in the forward hold was not so corrosive it ate away their bottom or their hold cargo first. And as long as there was no more water coming in through the hull at the bow.