Hungry as the Sea

by Wilbur Smith

  chance to replan the operation, thinking his way around the problems he

  had found down there; now the work seemed to fall more readily into

  place, though he had lost all sense of time alone in the infernal

  resounding cavern of steel and he was not sure of the hour, or the phase

  of the day, when at last he was ready to carry the messenger out through

  the gap.

  Send it down/ he ordered into his headset, and the reel of light line

  came down, swinging and circling under the glaring floodlights to the

  ship's motion and throwing grotesque shadows into the far corners of the

  engine room.

  The line was of finely plaited Dacron, with enormous strength and

  elasticity in relation to its thinness and tightness. One end was

  secured on the deck high above, and Nick threaded it into the sheave

  blocks carefully, so that it was free to run.

  Then he clamped the reel of line on to his belt, riding it on his hip

  where it could be protected from snagging when he made the passage of

  the gap.

  He realized then how close to final exhaustion he was, and he considered

  breaking off the work to rest again, but the heightened action of the

  sea into the hull warned him against further delay. An hour from now

  the task might be impossible, he had to go, and he reached for the

  reserve of strength and purpose deep inside himself, surprised to find

  that it was still there - for the icy chill of the water seemed to have

  penetrated his suit and entered his soul, dulling every sense and

  turning his very bones brittle and heavy.

  It must be day outside, he realised, for light came through the gash of

  steel, pale light further obscured by the filthy muck of mixed oil and

  water contained in the hull.

  He clung to one of the engine-room stringers, his head seven feet from

  the opening, breathing in the slow, even rhythm of the experienced scuba

  diver, feeling the ebb and flow through the hull, and trying to find

  some pattern in the action of the water. But it seemed entirely random,

  a hissing, bubbling ingestion followed by three or four irregular and

  weak inflows, then three vicious exhalations of such power that they

  would have windmilled a swimming man end over into those daggers of

  splayed steel.

  He had to choose and ride a middling-sized swell, strong enough to take

  him through smoothly, without the dangerous power and turbulence of

  those viciously large swells.

  I'm ready to go now, David/ he said into his helmet.

  Confirm that the work boat is standing by for the pick-up outside the

  hull. We are all ready. David Allen's voice was tense and sharp.

  Here we go/ said Nick, this was his wave now. There was no point in

  waiting longer.

  He checked the reel on his belt, ensuring that the line was free to run,

  and watched the gash suck in clean green water, filled with tiny bright

  bubbles, little diamond chips that flew past his head to warn him of the

  lethal speed and power of that flood.

  The in flow slowed and stopped as the hull filled to capacity, building

  up great pressures of air and water, and then the flow reversed abruptly

  as the swell on the far side subsided, and trapped water began to rush

  out again.

  Nick released his grip on the stringer and instantly the water caught

  him. There was no question of being able to swim in that mill-race, all

  he could hope for was to keep his arms at his sides and his legs

  straight together to give himself a smoother profile, and to steer with

  his fins.

  The accelerating speed appalled him as he was flung head first at that

  murderous steel mouth, he could feel the nylon line streaming out

  against his leg, the reel on his belt racing as though a giant marlin

  had struck and hooked upon the other end.

  The rush of his progress seemed to leave his guts behind him as though

  he rode a fairground roller-coaster, and then a flick of the current

  turned him, he felt himself beginning to roll - and he fought wildly for

  control just as he hit.

  He hit with a numbing shock, so his vision starred in flashing colour

  and light. The shock was in his shoulders and left arm, and he thought

  it might have been severed by that razor steel.

  Then he was swirling, end over end, completely disorientated so he did

  not know which direction was up. He did not know if he was still inside

  Golden Adventurer's hull, and the nylon line was wrapping itself around

  his throat and chest, around the precious air tubes and cutting off his

  air supply like a stillborn infant strangled by its own umbilical cord.

  Again he hit something, this time with the back of his head, and only

  the cushioning of his helmet saved his skull from cracking. He flung

  out his arms and found the rough irregular shape of ice above him.

  Terror wrapped him again, and he screamed soundlessly into his mask, but

  suddenly he broke out into light and air, into the loose scum of slush

  and rotten ice mixed with bigger, harder chunks, one of which had hit

  him.

  Above him towered the endless steel cliff of the liner's side and beyond

  that, the low bruised wind-sky, and as he struggled to disentangle

  himself from the coils of nylon, he realized two things. The first was

  that both his arms were still attached to his body, and still

  functioning, and the second was that Warlock's work boat was only twenty

  feet away and butting itself busily through the brash of rotten broken

  ice towards him.

  The collision mat looked like a five-ton Airedale terrier curled up to

  sleep in the bows of the work boat, just as shaggy and shapeless, and of

  the same wiry, furry brown colour.

  Nick had shed his helmet and pulled an Arctic cloak and hood over his

  bare head and suited torso. He was balanced in the stern of the work

  boat as she plunged and rolled and porpoised in the big swells; chunks

  of ice crashed against her hull, knocking loose chips off her paintwork,

  but she was steel-hulled, wide and sea-kindly. The helmsman knew his

  job, working her with calm efficiency to Nick's hand-signals, bringing

  her in close through the brash ice, under the tall sheer of Golden

  Adventurer's stern.

  The thin white nylon line was the only physical contact with the men on

  the liner's towering stack of decks, the messenger which would carry

  heavier tackle. However it was vulnerable to any jagged piece of

  pancake ice, or the fangs of that voracious underwater steel jaw.

  Nick paid out the line through his own numbed hands, feeling for the

  slightest check or jerk which could mean a snag and a break-off.

  With hand-signals, he kept the work boat positioned so that the line ran

  cleanly into the pierced hull, around the sheave blocks he had placed

  with such heart-breaking labour in the engine room, from there up the

  tall ventilation, out of the square opening of the stack and around the

  winch, beside which Beauty Baker was supervising the recovery of the

  messenger.

  The gusts tore at Nick's head so that he had to crouch to shield the

  small two-way radio on his chest, and Baker
's voice was tinny and thin

  in the buffeting boom of wind.

  Line running free. Right, we are running the wire now/ Nick told him.

  The second line was as thick as a man's index finger, and it was of the

  finest Scandinavian steel cable. Nick checked the connection between

  nylon and steel cable himself, the nylon messenger was strong enough to

  carry the weight of steel, but the connection was the weakest point.

  He nodded to the crew, and they let it go over the side; the white nylon

  disappeared into the cold green water and now the black steel cable ran

  out slowly from the revolving drum.

  Nick felt the check as the connection hit the sheave block in the engine

  room. He felt his heart jump. If it caught now, they would lose it

  all; no man could penetrate that hull again, the sea was now too

  vicious. They would lose the tackle, and they would lose Golden

  Adventurer, she would break up in the seas that were coming.

  Please God, let it run,, Nick whispered in the boom and burst of sea

  wind. The drum halted, made a half turn and jammed. somewhere down

  there,, the cable had snagged and Nick signalled to the helmsman to take

  the work boat in closer, to change the angle of the line into the hull.

  He could almost feel the strain along his nerves as the winch took up

  the pull, and he could imagine the fibres of the nylon messenger

  stretching and creaking.

  Let it run! Let it run! prayed Nick, and then Suddenly he saw the drum

  begin to revolve again, the cable feeding out smoothly, and streaming

  down into the sea.

  Nick felt light-hearted, almost dizzy with relief, as he heard Baker's

  voice over the VHF, strident with triumph.

  Wire secured. Stand by/ Nick told him. We are connecting the two inch

  wire now. AgAin the whole laborious, touchy, nerve-scouring Process as

  the massive two-inch steel cable was drawn out by its thinner, weaker

  forerunner - and it was a further forty vital minutes, with the wind and

  sea rising every moment, before Baker shouted, Main cable secured, we

  are ready to haul! Negative, I Nick told him urgently. Take the strain

  and hold. If the collision mat in the bows hooked and held on the work

  boat's gunwale, Baker would pull the bows under and swamp her.

  Nick signalled to his crew and the five of them shambled up into the

  bows, bulky and clumsy in their electric-yellow oilskins and work boots.

  With hand-signals, Nick positioned them around the shaggy head-high pile

  of the collision mat before he signalled to the helmsman to throw the

  gear in reverse and pull back from Golden Adventurer's side.

  The mass of unravelled oakum quivered and shook as the two-inch cable

  came up taut and they struggled to heave the whole untidy mass

  overboard.

  There was nearly five tons of it and the weight would have been

  impossible to handle were it not for the reverse pull of the work boat

  against the cable. Slowly, they heaved the mat forward and outward, and

  the work boat took on a dangerous list under the transfer of weight. She

  was down at the bows and canting at an angle of twenty degrees, the

  diesel motor screaming angrily and her single propeller threshing

  frantically, trying to pull her out from under her cumbersome burden.

  The mat slid forward another foot, and snagged on the gunwale, sea water

  slopped inboard, ankle-deep around their rubber boots as they strained

  and heaved at the reluctant mass of coarse fibre.

  Some instinct of danger made Nick look up and out to sea. Warlock was

  lying a quarter of a mile farther out in the bay, at the edge of the

  ice, and beyond her, Nick saw the rearing shape of a big wave alter the

  fine of the horizon.

  It was merely a forerunner of the truly big waves that the storm was

  running before her, like hounds before the hunter, but it was big enough

  to make Warlock throw up her stern sharply, and even then the sea

  creamed over the tug's bows and streamed from her scuppers.

  it would hit the exposed and hampered work boat in twenty-five seconds,

  it would hit her broadside while her bows were held down and anchored by

  mat and cable.

  When she swamped, the five men who made up her crew would die within

  minutes-, pulled down by their bulky clothing, frozen by the icy green

  water.

  Beauty, I Nick's voice was a scream in the microphone, heave all - pull,

  damn you, pull. Almost instantly the cable began to run, drawn in by

  the powerful winch on Golden Adventurer's deck; the strain pulled the

  work boat down sharply and water cascaded over her gunwale.

  Nick seized one of the oaken oars and thrust it under the mat at the

  point where it was snagged, and using it as a lever he threw all his

  weight upon it.

  Lend a hand/ he yelled at the man beside him, and he strained until he

  felt his vision darkening and the fibres of M his back-muscles creaking

  and popping.

  The work boat was swamping, they were almost kneedeep now and the wave

  raced down on them. It came with a great silent rush of irresistible

  power, lifting the mass of broken ice and tossing it carelessly aside

  without a check.

  Suddenly, the snag cleared and the whole lumpy massive weight of oakum

  slid overboard. The work boat bounded away, relieved of her intolerable

  burden, and Nick windmilled frantically with both arms to get the

  helmsman to bring her bows round to the wave.

  They went up the wave with a gut-swooping rush that threw them down on

  to the floorboards of the half-flooded work boat, and then crashed over

  the crest.

  Behind them the wave slogged into Golden Adventurer's stern, and shot up

  it with an explosion of white and furious water that turned to white

  driven spray in the wind.

  The helmsman already had the work boat pushing heavily through the

  pack-ice, back towards the waiting Warlock.

  Stop/Nick signalled him. Back up.

  Already he was struggling out of his hood and oilskins, as he staggered

  back to the stern.

  He shouted in the helmsman's face, I'm going down to check/ and he saw

  the disbelieving, almost pleading, expression on the man's face.

  He wanted to get out of there now, back to the safety of Warlock, but

  relentlessly Nick resettled the diving helmet and connected his air

  hose.

  The collision mat was floating hard against Golden Adventurer's side,

  buoyant with trapped air among the mass of wiry fibre.

  Nick positioned himself beneath it twenty feet from the maelstrom

  created by the gashed steel.

  It took him only a few seconds to ensure that the cable was free, and he

  blessed Beauty Baker silently for stopping the winch immediately it had

  pulled the mat free of the work boat. Now he could direct the final

  task.

  She's looking good,, he told Baker. But take her up slowly, fifty feet

  a minute on the winch. Fifty feet, it is! Baker confirmed.

  And slowly the bobbing mat was drawn down below the surface.

  Good, keep it at that. It was like pressing a field-dressing into an

  open bleeding wound. The outside pressure of water drove it deep into


  the gash, while from the inside the two-inch cable plugged it deeper

  into place. The wound was staunched almost instantly and Nick finned

  down, and swam carefully over it.

  The deadly suck and blow of high pressure through the gap was killed

  now, and he detected only the lightest movement of water around the

  edges of the mat; but the oakum fibres would swell now they were

  submerged and, within hours the plug would be watertight.

  It's done/ said Nick into his microphone. Hold a twenty-ton pull on the

  cable - and you can start your pumps and suck the bitch clean. It was a

  measure of his stress and relief and fatigue that Nick called that

  beautiful ship a bitch, and he regretted the word as it was spoken.

  Nick craved sleep, every nerve, every muscle shrieked for surcease, and

  in his bathroom mirror his eyes were inflamed, angry with salt and wind

  and cold; the smears of exhaustion that underlined them were as lurid as

  the fresh bruises and abrasions that covered his shoulders and thighs

  and ribs.

  His hands shook in a mild palsy with the need for rest and his legs

  could hardly carry him as he forced himself back to Warlock's navigation

  bridge.

  Congratulations, sir/ said David Allen, and his admiration was

  transparent.

  How's the glass, David? Nick asked, trying to keep the weariness from

  showing.

  994 and dropping, sir. Nick looked across at Golden Adventurer. Below

  that dingy low sky, she stood like a pier, unmoved by the big swells

  that marched on her in endless ranks, and she shrugged aside each burst

  of spray, hard aground and heavy with the water in her womb.

  However, that water was being flung from her, in solid white sheets.

  Baker's big centrifugals were running at full power, and from both her

  port and starboard quarters the water poured.

  It looked as though the flood gates had been opened on a concrete dam,

  so powerful was the rush of expelled water.

  The oil and diesel mixed with that discharge formed a sullen, iridescent

  slick around her, sullying the ice and the pebble beach on which she

  lay. The wind caught the jets from the pump outlets and tore them away

  in glistening plumes, like great ostrich feathers of spray.

  Chief/ Nick called the ship. What's your discharge rate? We are moving

  nigh on five hundred thousand gallons an hour. Call me as soon as she

  alters her trim! he said, and then glanced up at the pointer of the