Ocean Prize (1972)

by Pattinson, James

  The rope came in, dripping with salt water, and Loder also lent a hand. It was hard, skin-rasping, back-breaking work, but they kept at it, panting with exertion, bringing the rope foot by foot through the fairlead and dragging the submerged hawser slowly but surely across the gap.

  At last, after nearly fifteen minutes of steady hauling, the eye of the hawser broke the surface.

  “Now, lads—hup! And once more—hup!”

  They had it now. The eye came up through the fairlead, the wire rope shining with grease and sea-water. They belayed the hawser to a pair of bollards and shackled the eye to a deck clench. After that they were able to relax and get their breath back, easing their aching muscles.

  But there was no time to waste. Loder was anxious to get back to the Hopeful Enterprise. His task here was completed and he had no wish to stay on board the derelict any longer than was necessary. The fire might not appear to be serious, but there was no telling with such things; it might flare up suddenly, or there might be another explosion. If anything of that kind happened he would rather be well away from it.

  “All right, men. Back to the boat.”

  The lifeboat had been bumping against the side of the ship but had been saved from damage by the fenders. A quantity of water had got into it and the bottom boards were awash. On the return trip they were able to occupy themselves with baling.

  Captain Barling was pleased. So far everything had gone smoothly. And Loder’s report that the fire in the India Star showed no immediate signs of flaring up was good news.

  “What is your estimation of the chances of her staying afloat now that you’ve had a look?”

  Loder was reluctant to commit himself. “Difficult to say. A lot will depend on the weather. She doesn’t appear to be holed anywhere, though there could be damage below the waterline. There’s that list too. It’s not bad at present, but it could get worse. Some of the cargo may have shifted.”

  “You’re looking on the black side.”

  “No point in blinding oneself to the possibilities. Conditions aren’t improving.”

  There could be no doubt about that; they had got appreciably worse even in the time it had taken to fix the tow-rope, and the trip back to the Hopeful Enterprise had been even more hazardous than the outward one. None of the men in the boat had been at all sorry to see the hooks latched on again and the falls being drawn in. They felt a great deal safer standing again on the solid steel deck, even if that deck was beginning to imitate the motion of a seesaw.

  The Hopeful Enterprise went ahead slowly, taking up the slack in the tow-rope. Three hundred yards astern the bows of the India Star dipped as though acknowledging a new master. The long tow had begun.

  EIGHT

  NOT IMPORTANT

  They settled down to a speed of about three knots, and the rain fell steadily from a leaden sky, the wind driving it across the decks to mingle with the salt spray tossed up from the sea. The ship ahead and the ship astern both rolled, sometimes in unison, sometimes not, so that the masts of the Hopeful Enterprise might be leaning over to starboard while those of the India Star leaned to port. At times the India Star was almost lost from sight in the murk; at best she was no more than an ill-defined mass rising out of the water.

  It was difficult to realise just how highly valuable that shadowy mass might be. If only it would stay afloat long enough; if only the fire would stay within bounds; if only the list would not get worse; if only the Hopeful Enterprise could keep going.

  “We’ll never do it, you know,” Trubshaw said. “The Old Man’s crazy even to think abaht it. Christ, ’e wants ’is brains tested.”

  Lawson disagreed. He had helped to get the tow-rope across and he felt a kind of proprietorial interest in the operation. “We’ll make it. You’re too bloody pessimistic, chum.”

  “Pessimistic? Nah. What’s it ter me? I don’t stand t’git nothin’ aht of it. The Old Man, yes. But what’s in it for you an’ me, mate? That’s what I’d like t’know.”

  “We’ll get our share.”

  “’Owja know that?” Trubshaw stabbed a thick, inquisitorial finger into Lawson’s chest. “Is that the law?”

  “I don’t know about the law. But the Old Man’ll see us right.”

  Trubshaw gave a jeering laugh. “I reckon you believe in Father Christmas too. You mark my words, the Old Man’ll grab all ’e can; ’e won’t care a damn abaht us. That’s ’is prize aht there, not ours.”

  The table in the seamen’s messroom tilted as the ship rolled heavily; the door swung open and slammed shut again; above the rattling and creaking they could hear the sea beating against the hull and the wind howling.

  Moir said: “The only one that’s going to get that prize is Mr. Davy Jones.”

  “We’ll make it,” Lawson said again.

  Trubshaw laughed and began to roll a cigarette.

  Night had fallen. There was a powerful spotlight fixed to the taffrail of the Hopeful Enterprise and there was a seaman keeping watch on the towing hawser. In the beam of the spotlight he caught an occasional glimpse of the India Star plunging along at the end of the tow.

  The seaman was able to get a little shelter from the wind and the rain by huddling against the lee side of the poop deckhouse, but with the deck lifting and falling and shuddering it was at best an uncomfortable post to say the least. From time to time he could hear the rattle of the steering machinery and the sudden crack of spray hitting the other side of the deckhouse like the flick of a whip. He pulled the collar of his oilskin coat more closely about his neck and waited morosely for the hours of his watch to pass.

  The night wore away and morning came, and the India Star was still there, still with the thin banner of smoke trailing from her, still with the same slight list to starboard. Barling, early on the bridge after a few hours’ sleep, observed her with satisfaction, studying her through his binoculars.

  “We’re doing well,” he remarked to the mate. “Very well indeed.”

  Mr. Loder had had a tedious four-hour watch and was not in the most cheerful of moods. “There’s a long way to go yet.”

  Barling felt a stab of annoyance with Loder; he did not want anyone pouring cold water on his hopes. He answered a little sharply: “I know there’s a long way to go. That doesn’t alter the fact that we’re doing well.”

  “It doesn’t alter anything,” Loder said.

  Indeed, nothing had altered: the weather was as it had been at nightfall; the wind blowing gustily from the southwest, the sky overcast, rain falling, the sea rough. Conditions were neither better nor worse.

  They were some fifty miles nearer home.

  “Is Madden happy?” Loder asked.

  “Madden is never happy. It’s contrary to his nature. But I believe he’s reasonably satisfied with the way the engines have behaved so far. More than that can hardly be expected from him.”

  Loder had it on the tip of his tongue to repeat his earlier observation that there was a long way still to go, but he thought better of it. He had, in the grey disillusion of the morning watch, lost much of that uncharacteristic enthusiasm which had come over him the previous day when the job of fixing the towing hawser had to be taken in hand. Now he remembered the impaled head that he had seen through the smoke and he felt depressed. Where was the point of all this striving if that was what it finally came to? Here was George Barling pinning all his hopes to an operation that had no real chance of success, and to what end? A few more years and he would be dead anyway, snuffed out as completely as those men who had been caught by the explosion in the India Star. Life! It was nothing; just a lot of trouble leading to extinction. The hell with it.

  This kind of mood of utter nihilism was not unusual with Loder during the last part of a watch that began at four in the morning and continued until eight. And it was especially in evidence when the dawn came cold and grey and wet like an old army blanket soaked in water. He would feel better when he had got some food inside him. No man could be expected to be at his
best before breakfast.

  Barling was not concerned with Loder’s mood. He looked again at the India Star, the prize that had somehow to be towed those hundreds of miles to safety. For Ann’s sake it had to be done.

  A few hours later Scotton brought news. He had picked up signals from the Atlantic Scavenger. The tug was still heading westwards at full speed and expected to be in the vicinity of the India Star in about two more days.

  “Making good time,” Barling commented. “I’ve no doubt she can manage fifteen knots. Well, she’ll find the cupboard bare.”

  “You don’t think we ought to let them know, sir?” Scotton sounded a little worried. “I mean, it’s wasting their time. And they couldn’t take the India Star away from us, could they? She’s ours by right now, isn’t she?”

  “Yes, she’s ours by right.”

  “Then why the secrecy, sir?”

  Barling had no convincing answer to that. There was no good reason why it should not be made known that they had taken the derelict in tow. As Scotton had said, the Atlantic Scavenger could not take it away from them. Nevertheless, he had a feeling, unreasonable as it might be, that to broadcast the information would be in some way to put the prize in jeopardy, to tempt fate to snatch it from him. No; the fewer people who knew about it, the better; and as long as Scotton kept his radio silent no one outside the Hopeful Enterprise could know.

  “Never mind why,” he said. “Just carry out orders.”

  “Yes, sir,” Scotton said, and felt resentful. He had been snubbed and did not like it. “Is there anything else?”

  “Anything new on the weather?”

  “Nothing good, sir. It seems likely to get worse.”

  Barling did not care for the sound of that, but he was not surprised. Scotton’s words merely supported his own deductions. The glass was still falling.

  “Well,” he said, “we shall just have to make the best of it.”

  All day the Hopeful Enterprise plodded on at the same depressingly low speed. It was scarcely walking pace, and it irked Barling. He would dearly have liked to go faster, but he knew that to press for more knots would be to risk everything. One had to have patience. Yet patience, in the face of this mounting threat from the weather, was difficult to maintain.

  He consulted with Madden. An extra knot perhaps? Madden opposed the suggestion with every argument at his command, and Barling knew that in this instance the chief engineer was right.

  “Very well, then. We’ll leave things as they are.”

  “I only hope and pray they stay like it.”

  Madden looked tired and worried, even haggard. Barling remarked on it.

  “You’re not looking well. I think you ought to get some sleep.”

  “Sleep!” Madden sounded shocked. Barling might have been suggesting a shot of heroin to judge by his reaction. “I can’t sleep.”

  “If you don’t get some rest it’s you that’ll have the breakdown, not the engines. You don’t have to watch them all the time.”

  “That’s what you think,” Madden said darkly, and went away rubbing his nose and looking like a small local depression.

  By nightfall they had been towing for nearly thirty hours and had lopped almost a hundred miles off the distance that had to be covered. But Captain Barling felt no inclination to complacency; if there had been no other reason, the weather would have been sufficient to dispel any such feeling. For it had appreciably worsened. The wind, backing a little, was now hitting them more on the beam and with much increased strength, building up the sea and causing the Hopeful Enterprise and her helpless consort to roll more and more heavily.

  The smoke, still coming from the India Star, scarcely rose at all; as soon as it emerged from the hole in her decks it was pounced on by the wind, flattened out and carried away just above the crests of the waves. The whole vast circle of water, as far as the eye could see, was nothing but hills and valleys, streaked with white, spume blowing from the peaks like smoke, paler but thicker than that which issued from the crippled ship.

  The India Star, straining at the leash, plunging and yawing seemed intent on breaking free; and Charlie Wilson, doing his stint of tow-rope watch in the late afternoon, could hear the hawser screeching as it rubbed against the sides of the fairlead. Now and then he thought he detected a kind of twanging sound, like a distant harp, but the wind was making so much noise anyway that he could not be certain. The poop was becoming more and more inhospitable as the sea grew more boisterous. The stern rose and fell with a sickening motion, and as it fell a monstrous hill of water appeared to be tossed up beyond the taffrail, blocking out all view of the India Star and threatening, so it seemed, to engulf the entire after part of the Hopeful Enterprise.

  Wilson stared at the India Star whenever she became visible and wondered how much longer she would stay afloat. And he wondered what he ought to do if suddenly she was no longer there. Suppose she went down so quickly that there was no time to release the hawser. Would she drag the Hopeful Enterprise down with her?

  He put this question to Sandy Moir when the Scotsman came to relieve him, but Moir was unworried.

  “Ye can put that oot of your mind, laddie. It’ll tak’ more than a wire-rope to pull this old girl doon. Yon hawser would part under the strain.”

  Wilson supposed Moir was right. After all, the ship was able to carry thousands of tons of cargo without being forced under, and the breaking strength of the hawser could not be more than two or three tons—a negligible addition to the load.

  “Do you think we’re going to get that ship safely to port?”

  Moir gave a derisive laugh. “There’s never a snowball’s chance in hell o’ that. If it was me making the decisions we’d be slipping that tow-rope right this very minute and calling it a day.”

  “Ah, but it’s not you making the decisions, is it?” Wilson said, and he left Moir to find what shelter he could in the lee of the deckhouse.

  It was six o’clock in the morning when Trubshaw took over from Veevers on tow-rope watch. It had been a wild night and it was still pitch dark, the lamp on the stern throwing the waves into startling relief and shining on the dripping hawser.

  “The bastard’s still there then,” Trubshaw said.

  Veevers grunted. “It’s a bleedin’ miracle, that’s what it is. I’d‘ve said she’d be gone long ago.”

  “Which goes to show you ain’t no prophet.”

  “Maybe the Old Man’s not so mad after all. Maybe he knows what he’s doing.”

  “Give it time,” Trubshaw said. He cocked his head on one side, listening. “What’s that?”

  “What’s what?”

  “Kinda ’ummin’ sound.”

  “It’s the hawser,” Veevers said. “Makes that sound now and again. Like it was trying to play a tune.”

  “Ain’t the sorta tune I like.” Trubshaw seemed a shade uneasy. “You reported it?”

  “Reported it? Why would I report a thing like that? Not important, is it?”

  “S’pose not.”

  “Well, behave yourself, wack.”

  Veevers went away and left Trubshaw to his vigil. It was raining again, and the rain was being driven across the poop by the wind, which must have been getting near to gale force in the gusts. There was plenty of spray too; Trubshaw could tell the rain from the spray by the taste; the spray was salty on his tongue. In a partial lull he again heard that humming sound. He wondered whether to ring the bridge and report it to the officer of the watch, but he remembered that it was the mate up there and he wanted none of Mr. Loder’s sarcastic comments. He decided to let it go. It was probably, as Veevers had said, not important.

  At a quarter-past six Sam Orwell awoke, reached for the butt of a cigarette that he had stubbed out before going to sleep, lit it, and lay for a while in his bunk, smoking and listening to the sounds of a ship under stress. Orwell coughed, the smoke from the cigarette butt getting on to his chest. He ignored the cough, went on smoking until his lips were in danger o
f being scorched, then crushed the remains of the tobacco and paper into a tin screwed to the bulkhead and heaved himself out of the bunk.

  The small cabin was moving so erratically that dressing was no easy task. But Orwell accomplished it, and having dragged on gumboots, oilskin coat and sou’wester, he left the cabin and made his way out on deck.

  He was driven by curiosity more than anything else, for it was no duty of his to turn out at that hour and inspect the tow. But he wanted to see for himself how things were going, whether the India Star was still with them or whether the two ships had parted company in the night.

  The cold wind struck him as he clawed his way towards the stern, flicking rain and spray into his face, and with the deck behaving crazily under his feet, he was obliged to move carefully from one handhold to the next. He could see the powerful electric lamp cutting a swathe of light through the darkness astern, but no one appeared to be keeping watch on the tow-rope.

  He gave a shout: “Hi, there! Anyone about?”

  No one answered, and he shouted again, “Anyone here? Anyone on watch?”

  He had reached the after end of the poop deckhouse and had still seen no one, and he was beginning to wonder a little uneasily whether some accident had occurred, whether perhaps the man who should have been on watch had been washed overboard. With this sea running it was not impossible. He moved to the taffrail, rested his hands on it and looked at the cauldron of water below him. If anyone had gone into that it was goodbye to him, that was for certain.

  He was turning away from the rail when he heard Trubshaw’s voice.

  “Gotcher knife with you this time, Chippie?”

  Trubshaw had come up behind him, and before he could make a move to defend himself Trubshaw’s iron fist crashed into the side of his neck. It was like a club hitting him. He staggered under the impact, clutched at the rail for support, failed to make contact, lost his balance as the deck tilted, and fell heavily. He tried to get up, and Trubshaw slammed him down again with his foot, stamping viciously and grinding his heel into Orwell’s ribs.