Hungry as the Sea

by Wilbur Smith

  anemometer above the control panel. The wind force was riding eight

  now, but he had to blink his stinging swollen eyes to read the scale.

  David/ he said, and he could hear the hoarseness in his voice, the flat

  dead tone. It will be four hours before she will be light enough to

  make an attempt to haul her off, but I want you to put the main

  towing-cable on board her and make fast, so we will be ready when she

  is., Sir. Use a rocket-line/ said Nick, and then stood dumbly, trying

  to think of the other orders he must give, but his brain was blank.

  Are you all right, sir? David asked with quick concern, and immediately

  Nick felt the prick of annoyance. He had never wanted sympathy in his

  life, and he found his voice again. But he stopped the sharp words that

  came so quickly to his lips.

  You know what to do, David. I won't give you any other advice. He

  turned like a drunkard towards his quarters.

  Call me when you've done it, or if Baker reports alteration of trim - or

  if anything else changes, anything, anything at all, you understand. He

  made it to the cabin before his knees buckled and he IV

  dropped his terry robe as he toppled backwards on to his bunk.

  At 6o south latitude, there runs the only sea-lane that circumnavigates

  the entire globe, unbroken by any land mass. This wide girdle of open

  water runs south of Cape Horn and Australasia and the Cape of Good Hope,

  and it has the fearsome reputation of breeding the wildest weather on

  earth. It is the meeting-ground of two vast air masses, the cold

  slumping Antarctic air, and the warmer, more buoyant airs of the

  sub-tropics. These are flung together by the centrifugal forces

  generated by the earth as it revolves on its own axis, and their

  movement is further complicated by the enormous torque of the coriolis

  force.

  As they strike each other, the opposing air masses split into smaller

  fragments that retain their individual characteristics. They begin to

  revolve upon themselves gigantic whirlpools of tortured air, and as they

  advance, so they, gain in strength and power and velocity.

  The high-pressure system which had brought that ominously calm and

  silken weather to Cape Alarm, had bounced the pressure right up to 103 5

  millibars, while the great depression which pursued it so closely and

  swiftly had a centre pressure as low as 985 millibars. Such a sharp

  contrast meant that the winds along the pressure-gradient were

  ferocious.

  The depression itself was almost fifteen hundred miles across its

  circumference, and it reached up to the high troposphere, thirty

  thousand feet above the level of the sea. The mighty winds it contained

  reached right off the mum of the Beaufort scale of force twelve, gusting

  120 miles an hour and more. They roared unfettered upon a terrible sea,

  unchecked by the bulwark of any land mass, 1A

  nothing in their path, but the sudden jagged barrier of Cape Alarm.

  While Nicholas Berg slept the deathlike sleep of utter exhaustion, and

  Beauty Baker tended his machines, driving them to their limits in an

  effort to pump Golden Adventurer free of her burden of salt water, the

  storm rushed down upon them.

  When her knock was unanswered, Samantha stood uncertainly, balancing the

  heavy tray against the Warlock's extravagant action as she rode the

  rising swells at the entrance to the bay.

  Her uncertainty lasted not more than three seconds, for she was a lady

  given to swift decisions. She tried the doorlatch and when it turned,

  she pushed it open slowly enough to warn anybody on the far side, and

  stepped into the Captain's day cabin.

  He ordered food/ she justified her intrusion, and closed the door behind

  her, glancing swiftly around the empty cabin. It had been furnished in

  the high style of the old White Star liners. Real rosewood panelling

  and the couch and chairs were in rich brown calf hide, polished and

  buttoned, while the deck was carpeted in thick shaggy wool, the colour

  of tropical forest leaves.

  Samantha placed the tray on the table that ran below the starboard

  portholes, and she called softly. There was no reply, and she stepped

  to the open doorway into the night cabin.

  A white terry robe lay in a heap in the centre of the deck, and she

  thought for one disturbing moment that the body on the bed was naked,

  but then she saw he wore a thin pair Of white silk boxer shorts.

  Captain Berg/ she called again, but softly enough not to disturb him,

  and with a completely feminine gesture picked up the robe from the

  floor, folded it and dropped it over a chair, moving forward at the same

  time until she stood beside his bunk.

  She felt a quick flare of concern when she saw the bruises which stood

  out so vividly on the smooth pale skin, and concern turned to dismay

  when she realized how he lay like a dead man, his legs trailing over the

  edge of the bunk and his body twisted awkwardly, one arm thrown back

  over his shoulder and his head lolling from side to side as Warlock

  rolled.

  She reached out quickly and touched his cheek, experiencing a lift of

  real relief as she felt the warmth of his flesh and saw his eyelids

  quiver at her touch.

  Gently she lifted his legs and he rolled easily on to his side, exposing

  the sickening abrasion that wrapped itself angrily across back and

  shoulder. She touched it with a light exploring fingertip and knew that

  it needed attention, but she sensed that rest was what he needed more.

  She stood back and for long seconds gave herself over to the pleasure of

  looking at him. His body was fined down, he carried no fat on his belly

  or flanks; clearly she could see the rack of his ribs below the skin,

  and the muscles of his arms and legs were smooth but well-defined, a

  body that had been cared for and honed by hard exercise. Yet there was

  a certain denseness to it, that thickening of shoulder and neck, and the

  distinctive hair patterns of the mature It might not have the grace and

  delicacy of the boys she had known, yet it was more powerful than that

  of even the strongest of the young men who had until then filled her

  world. She thought of one of them whom she had believed she loved. They

  had spent two months in Tahiti together on the same field expedition.

  She had surfed with him, danced and drunk wine, worked and slept sixty

  consecutive days and nights with him; in the same period they had become

  engaged to marry, and had argued, and parted, with surprisingly little

  regret on her pan - but he had had the most beautiful tanned and

  sculptured body she had ever known. Now, looking at the sleeping figure

  on the bunk, she knew that even he would not have been able to match

  this man in physical determination and strength.

  Angel had been right. It was the power that attracted her so strongly.

  The powerful, rangy body with the dark coarse hair covering his chest

  and exploding in flak bursts in his armpits - this, together with the

  power of his presence.

  She had never known a man like this, he filled her with a sense of awe.

  It was not on
ly the legend that surrounded him, nor the formidable list

  of his accomplishments that Angel had recounted for her, nor yet was it

  only the physical strength which he had just demonstrated while the

  entire crew of Warlock, she among them, had watched and listened avidly

  over the VFH relay. She leaned over him again, and she saw that even in

  repose, his jawline was hard and uncompromising, and the little creases

  and lines and marks that life had chiselled into his face, around the

  eyes at the corners of the mouth, heightened the effect of power and

  determination, the face of a man who dictated his own terms to life.

  She wanted him, Angel was right, oh God, how she wanted him! They said

  there was no love at first sight they had to be mad.

  She turned away and unfolded the eiderdown from the foot of the bunk,

  spreading it over him, and then once again she stooped and gently lifted

  the fall of thick dark hair from his forehead, smoothing it back with a

  maternally protective gesture.

  Although he had slept on while she lifted and covered him, strangely

  this lightest of touches brought him to the edge of consciousness and he

  sighed and twisted, then whispered hoarsely, Chantelle, is that you?

  Samantha recoiled at the bitter sharp pang of jealousy with which

  another woman's name stabbed her. She turned away and left him, but in

  the day cabin she paused again beside his desk.

  There were a few small personal items thrown carelessly on the

  leather-bound blotter, a gold money clip holding a mixed sheath of

  currency notes, five pounds sterling, fifty US dollars, Deutschmarks and

  francs, a gold Rolex Oyster perpetual watch, a gold Dunhill lighter with

  a single white diamond set in it, and a billfold of the smoothest finest

  calf leather. They described clearly the man who owned them and,

  feeling like a thief, she picked up the billfold and opened it.

  There were a dozen cards in their little plastic envelopes, American

  Express, Diners, Bank American, Carte Blanche, Hertz No. 1, Pan Am VIP

  and the rest. But opposite them was a colour photograph. Three people:

  a man, Nicholas in a cable-stitch jersey, his face bronzed, his hair

  windruffled; a small boy in a yachting jacket with a curly mop of hair

  and solemn eyes above a smiling mouth - and a woman. She was probably

  one of the most beautiful women Samantha had ever seen, and she closed

  the billfold, replaced it carefully, and quietly left the cabin.

  David Allen called the Captain's suite for three minutes without an

  answer, slapping his open palm on the mahogany chart table with

  impatience and staring through the navigation windows at the spectacle

  of a world gone mad.

  For almost two hours, the wind had blown steadily from the north-west at

  a little over thirty knots, and although the big humpy seas still

  tumbled into the mouth of the bay, Warlock had ridden them easily, even

  connected, as she was, to Golden Adventurer by the main tow-cable.

  David had put a messenger over the finer's stern, firing the nylon fine

  from a rocket gun, and Baker's men had retrieved the fine and winched

  across first the carrier wire and then the main cable itself.

  Warlock had let the main cable be drawn out of her by Adventurer's

  winches, slowly revolving off the great winch drums in the compartment

  under the tug's stern deck, out through the cable ports below the after

  navigation bridge where David stood controlling each inch of run and

  play with light touches on the controls.

  A good man could work that massive cable like a flyfisherman playing a

  big salmon in the turbulent water of a mountain torrent, letting it slip

  against the clutchplates, or run free, or recover slack, bringing it up

  hard and fast under a pull of five hundred tons - or, in dire emergency,

  he could hit the shear button, and snip through the flexible steel

  fibre, instantaneously relinquishing the tow, possibly saving the tug

  itself from being pulled under or being rushed by the vessel it was

  towing.

  It had taken an hour of delicate work, but now the tow was in place, a

  double yoke made fast to Golden Adventurer's main deck bollards, one on

  her starboard and one on her port stern quarters.

  The yoke was Y-shaped, drooping over the high stern to join at the white

  nylon spring, three times the thickness of a man-s thigh and with the

  elasticity to absorb sudden shock which might have snapped rigid steel

  cable. From the yoke connection, the single main cable looped back to

  the tug.

  David Allen was lying back a thousand yards from the shore, holding

  enough strain on the tow-cable to prevent it sagging to touch and

  possibly snag on the unknown bottom. He was holding his station with

  gentle play on the pitch and power of the twin screws, and checking his

  exact position against the electronic dials which gave him his speed

  across the ground in both directions, accurate to within a foot a

  minute.

  It was all. nicely under control, and every time he glanced up at the

  liner, the discharge of water still boiled from her pump outlets.

  Half an hour previously, he had been unable to contain his impatience,

  for he knew with a seaman's deep instinct what was coming down upon them

  out of the dangerous quadrant of the wind. He had called Baker to ask

  how the work on the liner was progressing. It had been a mistake.

  You've got nothing better to do than call me out of the engine room to

  ask about my piles, and the IA Cup final?

  I'll tell you when I'm ready, believe me, sonny, I'll call you.

  If you are bored, go down and give Angel a kiss, but for God's sake,

  leave me alone./ Beauty Baker was working with two of his men in that

  filthy, freezing steel box deep down in the liner's stern that housed

  the emergency steering-gear. The rudder was right across at full port

  lock. Unless he could get power on the steering machinery, she would be

  almost unmanageable, once she was under tow, especially if she was

  pulled off stern first. It was vital that the big ship was responding

  to her helm when Warlock tried to haul her off Baker cursed and cajoled

  the greasy machinery, knocking loose a flap of thick white skin from his

  knuckles when a spanner slipped, but working on grimly without even

  bothering to lift the injury to his mouth to suck away the welling

  blood. He let it drop on to the spanner and thicken into a sticky

  jelly, swearing softly but viciously as he concentrated all his skills

  on the obdurate steel mass of the steering gear. He knew every bit as

  well as the First Officer what was coming down upon them.

  The wind had dropped to a gentle force four, a moderate steady breeze

  that blew for twenty minutes, just long enough for the crests of the

  waves to stop breaking over on themselves. Then slowly, it veered north

  - and without any further warning, it was upon them.

  It came roaring like a ravening beast, lifting the surface of the sea

  away in white sheets of spray that looked as though red-hot steel had

  been quenched in it, It laid Warlock right over, so that her port rail

  went under and she was flung
up so harshly on her main cable that her

  stern was pulled down sharply, water pouring in through her stern

  scuppers.

  It took David by surprise, so that she paid off dangerously before he

  could slam open the port throttle and throw the starboard screw into

  full reverse thrust. As she came up, he hit the call to the Captain's

  suite, watching with rising disbelief as the mad world dissolved around

  him.

  Nick heard the call from far away, it only just penetrated to his

  fatigue-drugged brain, and he tried to respond, but it felt as though

  his body was crushed under an enormous weight and that his brain was

  slow and sluggish as a hibernating reptile.

  The buzzer insisted, a tinny, nagging whine and he tried to force his

  eyes open, but they would not respond. Then dimly, but deeply, he felt

  the wild anguished action of his ship and the tumult that he believed at

  first was in his own ears, but was the violent uproar of the storm about

  the tug's superstructure.

  He forced himself up on one elbow, and his body ached in every joint. He

  still could not open his eyes but he groped for the handset.

  Captain to the after bridge! He could hear something in David Allen's

  voice that forced him to his feet.

  When Nick staggered on to the after navigation bridge, the First Officer

  turned gratefully to him.

  Thank God you've come, sir.

  The wind had taken the surface off the sea, had stripped it away,

  tearing each wave to a shrieking fog of white spray and mingling it with

  the sleet and snow that drove horizontally across -the bay.

  Nick glanced once at the dial of the wind anemometer, and then

  discounted the reading. The needle was stuck at the top of the scale.

  It made no sense, a wind-speed of 120 miles an hour was too much to

  accept, the instrument had been damaged by the initial gusts of this

  wind, and he refused to believe it; to do so now would be to admit

  disaster, for nobody could salvage an ocean-going liner in wind

  velocities right off the Beaufort scale.

  Warlock stood on her tail, like a performing dolphin begging for a meal,

  as the cable brought her up short and the bridge deck became a vertical

  cliff down which Nick was hurled. He crashed into the control panel and

  clung for purchase to the foul-weather rail.