The Leper Ship

by Peter Tonkin

  *

  John’s action proved the making of Marco. As a blundering, easily frightened boy learning his craft and all too often getting it wrong, he had been the subject of scorn and the butt of the crew’s cruellest words and actions. As the officer in charge of the only way off the sinking ship, he instantly acquired status among the men who had despised him so recently. The change was facilitated by the fact that Bernadotte, the ringleader of most of the trouble, was now effectively helpless and utterly reliant on Marco’s good offices. In truth, the task of swinging out the lifeboat, uncovering it, loading the last necessities, including the emergency radio, and then lowering it on to the gently swelling sea was not particularly difficult. Even the slope of the deck failed to make the unrolling of the Jacob’s ladder too much of a problem. Marco knew who the best boatmen were and he sent two of them down first to control the lifeboat while the others lined up quietly in the order he dictated. When he called ‘Wait! , not one of them thought of disobeying, even when he walked away to report to John that all was ready, and ask for his next instruction. He suspected it would simply be, ‘Go back and wait for the order to abandon ship.’

  *

  In essence, the plan was so simple because it had to be. Both Richard and John knew how many things could so easily go badly wrong. John would stay on the bridge. His task would be to coordinate their efforts and keep the ship steady. Richard would go with Faure to place the first set of charges against the already weakened metal of the bow section. Salah would place the second set of charges against the sternmost section available in the engine room, with El Jefe to advise and Fatima to assist. There would be a fifteen-minute interval between the timers. And in any case there would be a further fifteen-minute delay before the first explosion to allow them all to get safely off.

  John stood on the bridge while Eduardo took the wheel. The young acting third’s bright blue eyes flicked restlessly from the compass card to the sea and back. He did not have to pay much attention to their heading, which was roughly south-west at the moment; his major, extremely important, task was to keep her head into the swell, holding her as steady as possible while the charges were placed.

  John felt the way she was riding, using his acutely honed senses and years of experience to judge whether her movement could be bettered, and decided it could not. So, after glancing at Eduardo, he paid no more attention to the way the helm was and crossed to the port bridge wing where he could look down at the preparations for the abandonment and also watch Richard and Professor Faure hurrying towards the forecastle. They were both wearing environmental protection suits because there was more than a chance that they would get splashed as they placed the charges and neither wanted to run the risk of any of the deck cargo getting on their skin. John tapped the earpiece of the hand-held radio against his strong, white teeth, watching and waiting.

  *

  The main shaft lay in an open bed for most of its length. It came out of the direct drive at the aft of the engine where the pistons turned it one hundred revolutions a minute. It went straight along in that bed on top of the sludge tank to the housing which was effectively the aft wall of the ship. Between the bed and the housing, the shaft spanned a triangular depression about three feet deep, down to the keel of the ship. This was called the bilge well and it gave access to the after housing where the explosives would best be placed.

  El Jefe brought Salah and Fatima and helped them both into the triangular hollow of the well where they could work side by side. The shaft revolved between them, grey and slick with grease, humming a deep note as it drove the propeller at its unvarying speed, guaranteeing Napoli’s headway into the south-westerly swell. It was deafeningly noisy, dirty and dangerous down here, quite apart from the work they were doing with the explosives. El Jefe put the hand-held radio into a capacious overall pocket. It was too noisy to use it down here and anyway there was nothing much to say. He crouched above them, watching them work while keeping a worried eye on the nearest rev. counter and the engine beyond it. He still did not trust that engine.

  *

  The chain locker was at a strange angle, the forward wall at such a slope that the ladder was difficult to negotiate. Faure went first with the explosives slung over his shoulder. Richard followed him at once, pausing only to flash the torch he was carrying round the locker. He put the radio to his mouth. ‘In, John,’ he said, and pulled his headpiece down over his face.

  At the locker floor, surrounded by the sprawling coils of chain disturbed by the storm last night, Faure waited until Richard joined him and flashed the flashlight beam round the eerie little room again. They were lucky: the chains had not blocked the trap door that opened down to the inside of the bow itself. Richard lifted it for Faure and shone his torch down. The ladders plunged down the metal walls, past the balks of wood Cesar had wedged there, and into the sluggish yellow water immediately below them.

  Faure sat, swung his legs into the opening and stepped down on to the first steel rung. After a moment, Richard followed. The little steel-sided valley was even more claustrophobic now than when he had been down here last. The angle didn’t help, making everything lean forward. The water, too, sloshing back and forth just below their feet added its own sinister air to the atmosphere.

  When they reached the agreed position, they stopped and Richard shone the torch where Faure pointed so that the Frenchman, science professor and army-trained demolition expert, could complete his task. Faure placed his explosive charges in the angles made by black timbers and the steel of Napoli’s cutwater. And all the time they worked, even through the white hoods they were wearing, they were deafened by the thunder of the surf which beat, a foot or so from their faces, on the far side of the steel.

  *

  ‘Keep her head to the swell, Eduardo,’ said John automatically. His voice carried in from the bridge wing easily enough, and the young officer nodded, concentrating on doing just that. John’s eyes narrowed. He was watching the swells now as they came in that long aquamarine series, automatically counting them. The seventh was always larger than the rest. He had learned that on the narrow beaches of Donegal, with the tall cliffs standing at his back and the huge seas beating at his feet. ‘Big one coming, Eduardo, watch her.’ He felt the ship give a little extra swoop and looked down to see how Marco was handling things. Everyone seemed to be in place, but the third officer had gone. They should have given him a radio too, thought John, but they had lost one with Cesar last night and the last one Richard had mislaid in the black heart of the water mountain.

  Marco came panting up on to the bridge a moment later. ‘Pronto, Capitano,’ he announced.

  John nodded and crossed to the radio shack. ‘Anything, Niccolo?’

  Niccolo simply shook his head. His face was bitter. ‘Niente,’ he spat. ‘Morta! It’s gone dead now, Captain.’

  ‘Maybe you’ll have more luck with the radio in the lifeboat,’ John said. ‘Go on down, Marco. Make doubly sure everyone is ready. When Niccolo comes down, you can cast off and prepare to get clear.’

  Niccolo translated, just to make sure the message was understood, and Marco was off at once. John went back to the front of the bridge, narrow eyes scanning the rollers, looking for the seventh one, the whole attitude of his body attuned to the movement of his ship, reading each gentle pitch and roll with every nerve, every muscle. Never, even under the most extreme of circumstances, had he concentrated this keenly before. Two men he respected deeply were relying on him to keep Napoli as still as possible while they took their lives in their hands, preparing to send her down.

  Behind him, in the shack, Niccolo automatically switched the dead radios to OFF. Even concentrating as he was, John knew the sound. ‘Eduardo, take the first officer down to the lifeboat now. Get into it yourself. I’ll take over the helm.’ He put the walkie-talkie on the console in front of him and took the helm as the other two went down.

  The spokes were hot in his hands. Either Eduardo was warm with worry or he him
self was cold with strain. That was very likely: his hands always went cool when the stakes got high.

  He put the thought out of his mind and looked away over the distant sea, mentally counting, looking for that seventh wave, the big one he knew was out there somewhere.

  *

  Marco checked that Asha had everything she required from the infirmary and kept an eye on her stuff when she went back up to the bridge. He made sure that Ann Cable was aware of where she would be sitting in the boat and that she, too, had everything with her that she needed. He also checked the disposition of the scientists waiting there.

  First aboard with Ann and Asha would be Bernadotte because of his injuries, then the first officer, also injured, who would assume command of the little boat. After him would come the other supernumeraries, the stewards and the chef, followed by the crew in whatever order they presented themselves. Last aboard at that stage would be Marco himself, and then the boat, fully loaded and ready to move off quickly should anything go wrong, would wait for the arrival of the last people left aboard: John and his scuttling team: Salah Malik, Fatima, El Jefe, Professor Faure and Richard.

  The wait was not long and the weather remained so clement that the crew did not become restless as they waited, in spite of the fact that it was early afternoon now and no one had had anything to eat or drink since last night. Asha returned, her face pale, Niccolo came hobbling down supported by Eduardo, and Ann Cable crossed to his other side. As soon as he arrived at the head of the patient line, he nodded and the abandonment began. It went exactly to plan.

  Soon all of them were aboard. Niccolo gave a quiet order and the seamen seated along the gunwales took out their oars and settled them into the rowlocks, ready. Marco looked across the quiet ship. There was no one to be seen and nothing for the moment to be heard. He took the lifeboat fall and held it, posing unconsciously like an heroic statue as he looked around. The bright afternoon seemed frozen under the high, unblemished bowl of the sky. The sea coming towards them in long, unhurried waves was all that distinguished the ocean from the heavens. Marco looked at the green sloping deck, littered, rocking gently, the battered bridgehouse leaning forward, dented and torn but agleam with salt crystals. He breathed in the sharp tang of salt and ozone deeply into his lungs. He was trying to fix this moment forever in his memory; it was the climax of a story he would dine out on for years to come.

  But then the soles of his feet tingled abruptly. The fall trembled in his hand. The deck rippled. Far down by the fo’c’sle, the deck seemed to buckle. A noise came from down there as though the sinking ship had groaned. And the tilt on the deck sharpened as though the bow had been snatched downwards. A thundering sound overwhelmed the groaning and the ship began to slide under. A figure wearing an environmental protection suit erupted from the forward chain locker and pounded up the deck. Seeing Marco standing there, frozen with horror, the figure pulled back its helmet. ‘Get away,’ it yelled, in the voice of Captain Mariner. ‘Get the boat away! She’s going down.’

  Marco swung round, looking down into the lifeboat, riven with horror. He registered only the face of the woman who had a husband and a sister still aboard. His eyes stayed riveted to hers but it was to Niccolo that he screamed in Italian: ‘Sheer off! Sheer off! She’s going down.’ Then he swung out and slid down the fall like a circus acrobat. By the time his feet hit wood, the lifeboat was already pulling away. He staggered back and fell to his knees, straining to look back, his horrified face reflecting exactly the sobbing scream that Asha was giving.

  The lifeboat slid forward with increasing momentum as the crew rowed wildly for safety. Even Bernadotte took an oar, closing his bandaged hands upon it without protest. Behind it, Napoli tilted until her propeller jumped out of the water, screaming into a frenzy of unresisted spin. No sooner had it done so than a puff of smoke belched out of the engine room vents and the sound of a muffled explosion chased them across the heaving Atlantic. ‘Row!’ yelled Niccolo, as if the fearful men at the oars needed urging.

  Asha was on her feet now, staring in utter horror. She had no idea that Ann Cable was holding one hand while Niccolo held another, keeping her safely upright as the lifeboat surged away from the terrible sight.

  After the explosion in the engine room, Napoli did not hesitate. The angle of her hull remained the same, she went no further down by the head. But she went down, all right. Down and down and down. She slid under the surface with incredible rapidity, the long deck stabbing into the water like a stiletto. Only the bridgehouse made a fuss, slapping into the surface with an explosion of foam, throwing up great waves which pursued the lifeboat over the otherwise quiet ocean and overtook it relentlessly to leave it rocking and heaving long after the ship had actually disappeared on her two and a half mile dive down to join the Titanic.

  Asha slowly collapsed back on to her seat. Ann slid her arm round her shaking shoulders. Niccolo at last took action, switching the radio beside him to the open emergency channel. But before he had the chance to say anything, the radio burst into life and a voice announced, ‘…Warrior. Say again, this is Rainbow Warrior. Napoli, we will be at your last reported position in one half-hour. Say again, one half-hour…’

  27

  John almost didn’t see it coming, for it hid among the other waves and the brightness of the early afternoon disguised it too. There was only a slightly deeper shadow, betraying a larger wave; the merest interruption to the geometric pattern of the swell. It was something a landsman would never have seen at all, and, indeed, even the experienced seaman was fooled. It was the keen eye of that little boy who had counted waves so long ago on the wild west coast of Donegal that warned the man the boy had become.

  John’s head jerked to one side, as though the peripheral retina would see more clearly, like it did at night. His jaw squared. He rose onto his toes, straining every nerve to read the movement of his oddly-angled ship. It came and went, the rogue wave, seeming to vanish and then reappear out of sequence, leaping forward magically with each reappearance, so that its arrival could not be anticipated. John’s nostrils flared. He licked his lips and tasted sharp salt. He picked up the walkie-talkie and pressed SEND: ‘Big one coming,’ he said. But there was no reply. He put the little radio down again and went back to being the helmsman.

  His fists trembled on the spokes of the helm. The wave rose up before the bows and washed silently over the forecastle head. Napoli’s forepeak swooped, dropped, slammed down. The forward section of the deck seemed to catch something from the water washing over it and the metal itself began to ripple. A sensation rushed through John’s body unlike any he had ever felt before. As though he were linked to Napoli by nerves that reached into her very steel, he felt his ship cry out. And he felt the deck tilt more steeply and more steeply yet and he knew she was going down. His hand flashed to the engine room telegraph and rang up ALL STOP. But he felt no answer from the throbbing deck beneath his feet; the chief was in his engine room; he must have switched the engine commands off automatic and onto manual. Only El Jefe could stop the engine now.

  John stood, panting like a man in shock, holding his ship’s head where it was, willing it to remain afloat a minute or two more, trying to keep control a little longer yet: until his people below contacted him as arranged to say they were safe.

  *

  All Richard ever knew about the arrival of the wave was the sudden sinister quiet it brought with it. He felt the ship’s head go down and he clung to the ladder. Then the most incredible sound he had ever heard swept over him. It was a kind of grinding, tearing shriek. It came from all around: above, below, behind.

  Behind! He swung round to look over his shoulder and cried out in sudden shock. The back wall of the space he was in, the front wall of the forward hold, was closing down towards him. Even as he looked, refusing to believe what his eyes were telling him, it ground forward another inch as though it would crush him there and then. Its movement pushed the timbers through the weak steel of her hull and the front
of the ship ripped open.

  Richard was in motion at once, tearing his lower body out of the maelstrom of water foaming greedily in through that ragged mouth. Faure moved just as fast and they ran up the ladders side by side as though indulging in some strange race. With each step that he took, Richard felt the angle of the ship increase and the terrible sensation of claustrophobia gripped him as his mind screamed that he was trapped in a rapidly shrinking space at the front of a ship going down very fast a thousand miles from land. He burst up into the chain locker and leaped for the rungs which would take him up to the brightness of the deck. At the top he paused, looking down. Faure was just coming through the trap door and into the locker. He was safe. Behind him foamed the ocean as it tore into the ship.

  That one glance back was enough. Richard was out and hurrying up the deck. He peered down through the broken gape of the forward hatch. Water was pouring into the hold already. He paused for a second, surveying the ribbed decking around the hatch. There was no doubt: the whole of the huge metal box which made up the forward hold had somehow come loose from the anchorage points securing it to the hull itself and had slid forward almost a foot. Thank God the movement had stopped for the moment, he thought, and was in motion again himself.

  Halfway along the deck, he caught sight of Marco Farnese standing frozen by the lifeboat falls. Richard tore back his headpiece and yelled at the top of his voice. He did not pause to see if his order had been obeyed, but rushed into the bridge at once. As he went in through the door off the main deck, he pressed the walkie-talkie to his mouth. ‘Richard, going down,’ he said. In more ways than one, he thought.

  In the trap door up into the chain locker, Etienne Faure hesitated. His bag of explosives had caught on something and he paused to shrug it off. In the instant that it took him to do so, the angle of the deck canted a degree or two more. The wild pile of anchor chain fell forward and slithered across the floor. The sound it made drowned out the noise of foaming water at his heels, and caused him to glance up. It seemed like some unimaginable serpent to him, slithering down the deck to wrap him in its green steel and seaweedy coils. Then the first loop of it reached him. He actually reached up to push the rounded steel away, but the weight of it was overwhelming and he never stood a chance. It thundered down through the open trap on top of him. Metre after metre of it crushed him out of existence. Then it ripped through the gap-tooth holes the wood had made, tearing and widening, until Napoli’s strange new mouth began to scream in earnest.