by Barry Letts
Food could wait.
She was beginning to get her sealegs too. Though the motion of the ship was just as extreme, it seemed to her to have lost its violence, and was more regular, more predictable. After all, she thought as she clambered up the ladder on her way to the upper deck, even Nelson used to be seasick when he went back to sea after a spell at home.
Sammy would have been proud of her. She was a real sailor after all.
When she poked her nose out of the door onto the deck, she realised why it felt so different. The howling gale had gone. There was now no more than a strong breeze; and the waves had settled into a deep rolling swell, which the Hallaton was punching through almost as if she was enjoying herself in the fitful sunlight. True, when she was in the trough, the tops were as high as the bridge, or even higher; and her bow was still alternately plunging into the water and pointing at the still turbulent sky. But at least she wasn’t rolling from side to side and staggering like a comedy drunk any more.
But the waves! As you rose to the top you could see them stretched in regular ranks far out to the horizon, and every one different and constantly changing, like a mobile work of art sculpted by a giant hand.
This was something like it! Clorinda would give her a double-page spread for shots like this.
Off she went to get her camera.
‘Take over, Number One. And try to keep the bloody ship steady, will you? Can you manage that, do you think? I’m going to get my head down. Give me a shake if there’s any change.’
Well, that’s got rid of him for a bit, thought the Brigadier as the door closed behind Eugene Hogben. For this relief, much thanks... Granny McDougal was always quoting Shake-speare. Macbeth, wasn’t it? Or Hamlet. One of those.
He looked doubtfully over at Pete Andrews. He was standing by the helmsman (who was still the grizzled Petty Officer Hardy, the veteran cox’n who had piloted them through the storm). He was staring grimly ahead, and showed no signs of turning the ship back onto the southbound course that would take them to Stella Island.
Should he say something?
He glanced at the door to the port wing of the bridge. The Doctor was still out there - hadn’t come in for hours. Perhaps he could persuade him to come and have a go.
On the other hand, he’d got short shrift from him when he’d suggested it earlier.
‘Er... Is there any chance of our getting back on course?’ he asked.
Andrews turned and looked at him, angry and preoccupied.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘I was just asking about the way we’re heading. I mean, now that the gale is over...’
Andrews’ face cleared, and he became, again, the amiable teddy-bear of a man they’d all come to respect. ‘Forgive me, sir. The last few hours have been a little stressful, to say the least. No, I’m afraid we’ll have to wait a while. It’s not just the wind, you see. With a swell like this, it still wouldn’t be safe.’
‘Ah! You mean we might... er... broach to?’
The First Lieutenant looked surprised. ‘Precisely,’ he said.
‘Yes, well...What does that mean exactly?’ It was hardly the sort of thing they taught at Sandhurst, for God’s sake!
Petty Officer Hardy took his eyes off the gyro-repeater compass for a moment, and started to speak, ‘Well, it’s like this... Oh sorry, sir.’
But the First Lieutenant didn’t seem to mind his interrup-tion. ‘No, no, Cox’n. You’ve had far more experience of this sort of thing than I have. I’ve spent most of my short career pootling round Hong Kong.’
The Brigadier was still irritated with himself for his lack of knowledge. ‘Heard the expression, of course. But I’ve never quite...’ He heard himself clearing his throat in a sort of
‘ Harrumph!’ Good God! He was turning into a real Colonel Blimp!
‘Yeah, right,’ said the Cox’n, keeping his eye on the compass, and automatically turning the wheel to keep them on course. ‘Well now, as you know, to keep the rudder working you’ve got to be moving through the water. Have to have way on. But the trouble is, if you’re going in the same direction as waves of any size, you lose way.’
‘If you try to go at the same speed, like surfing, then the rudder has no grip at all - and if you try to go faster or slower, you’re on a sort of moving switchback. You’re either slipping down the front of the wave, and speeding up, or sliding down the back, and slowing down.’
So you lose control. Of course.
‘So you lose control?’ the Brigadier said aloud.
‘You got it, sir. There’s always a time when the helm doesn’t answer at all - and the ship can swing round broadside on to the waves. And when that happens, if she happens to be rolling in the same direction as the waves...’
‘She can roll right over!’
‘Right. And it’s too late to say your prayers then.’
‘So that was broaching to’. Fair enough. As long as they knew what they were doing. But they were never going to get to the blasted island at this rate!
Brother Alex woke up feeling even better. One advantage of a high metabolic rate, he thought. He’d been well known for his drive even before, when he was in public life; like Winnie, he could get by on four hours’ sleep a night. And since he’d left politics, he’d benefited from the extraordinary access of energy, of sheer vigour, that went with becoming one of the Skang ‘teachers’.
He had no intention of losing that permanently. If he couldn’t get it back, along with all the rest of it, life had no meaning, no savour, no worth.
So what to do?
After all, he was there officially, albeit on sufferance. If he got to know these people, he might be able find out what their game was. But his most important job was dealing with the Smith girl. ASAP Get to know the layout of the vessel.
That was the thing to do. And the movements of the girl.
Sooner or later, he’d get her alone. And his immediate problem would be solved.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Over all the years of the Doctor’s jaunts through time and space, seeking the ultimate experience that he knew in his heart could never be found, it had become a joke, saying to those around him, ‘...there’s nothing we can do - but wait’.
He’d taught himself the art of waiting: the wide-open acceptance of every perception, which took him to a timeless place of satisfaction where he vanished into the ever-changing immediacy and sharp reality of a totally experienced world.
The hours of the storm could have lasted a day or a minute. There was nobody keeping an eye on the clock.
Yet the very alertness that informed his awareness could, if necessary, instantly bring him back to the inexorable flow of one damn thing after another (as he put it when trying to describe it later to a bemused Brigadier). And the sight of Sarah Jane Smith, hanging on with one hand to the lines of one of the ship’s boats in its davits, while she leaned out over the boiling sea, was enough to snap him back in an instant.
‘Sarah! For Pete’s sake! What do you think you’re doing?’
‘It’s all right, Doctor!’ she called, waving her little camera in the air. ‘Look, one hand for me and one for the ship!’
There was nothing he could do but watch as she clambered into ever more precarious positions, reaching out for the perfect shot.
At last she was satisfied, and carefully manoeuvred herself back onto the deck. With a cheery wave, she vanished round the corner.
She was an adult, after all; and she seemed to know what she was doing. With a mental shrug, the Doctor settled back into his corner, noticing that, in spite of his cloak, he was very nearly as wet as if he had been swimming fully dressed; and he examined with interest the clammy touch of his shirt on the skin of his back.
Sarah on the lifeboat no longer existed, at that moment; not even as a memory.
It was pure luck that the girl was going down the corridor just when Alex had made the - surprisingly small - effort to get into his clothes and set off on his first
recce. He heard the footsteps coming round the corner and was just in time to pull himself back through the door, leaving a crack to peep through.
At the sight of her, camera in hand, stepping out in that cocky, superior way she had, his guts convulsed with hate. It was her fault, her and her bloody camera, that he was in this mess; her fault that Hilda had turned against him; her fault that he’d lost everything that had made his life worth living, after he’d had to abandon any hope of reaching the top in politics.
This might be his chance. He looked round the cabin.
There seemed to be nothing that he could use as a weapon.
But then he saw it: the simple, heavy wooden chair by the dressing table. In a moment, it was upended, his grip tightened around the base of one of the legs, and with a twist to break the brittle glue, and a wrench to free it from the joints, he was supplied with a club as deadly as any baseball bat.
Thank God he’d recovered his strength.
Hefting it in his hand, he cautiously followed the girl out onto the deck, being careful to keep out of sight.
Maybe he’d lost her. No! There she was, on the lifeboat.
At first it seemed that she was determined to keep within sight of the figure on the bridge, the one they called the Doctor.
But at last she climbed back onto the deck, and came towards him. He drew back into the shadow of a large ventilator and froze into the rapt stillness of a cat waiting for the moment to pounce, pressing himself against the ventilator to keep himself stationary as the ship swung up and down with the waves.
He watched, only his eyes moving, as she crossed the deck, pausing every so often to take a shot. If only...
Yes... she was coming closer, working her way down the guard rail, leaning out to find the shot she wanted.
And then she stopped not ten feet away, just out of sight of the bridge, with her back to him, snapping away as if she’d found the ideal position at last.
He took a step forward and froze again, as the ship sank into the trough of a wave.
There was no sign that she’d noticed him.
One more step...Wait for the pause at the top of the rise...
Now!
He should have crept nearer to her. As he rushed forward, his makeshift club aloft, she heard the movement and turned.
And screamed.
The scream was cut short as the chairleg marginally connected with the side of her skull. All in a moment, before she could slip to the deck, he grabbed her by the legs and tipped her over the guard rail.
He turned to flee, but there on the deck was the cursed camera. Picking it up, he hurled it viciously after her.
The job was done.
Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart had always been impatient. Being an only child, with a hefty pair of lungs, and a mother (and later a substitute mother in the shape of Granny McDougal) who couldn’t deny him a thing, he’d soon learnt that his widower father, with the bark of a Rottweiler, had the bite of a miniature poodle. It was school, and Sandhurst (public school writ large), that taught him that instant gratification was the privilege of the spoilt toddler.
But that didn’t make him feel any better inside. Tucked out of the way in a corner of the bridge house, peering through one of the spinning discs of glass that did duty in lieu of windscreen wipers, he felt that the entire world was conspiring to thwart him.
The waves looked as big as ever, which seemed not only illogical but unfair - as the wind had by now dropped almost completely.
‘We’ll give it another hour or so,’ said Pete Andrews. ‘The swell’s easing quite fast.’
You could have fooled him. It still felt more like a scenic railway than the bridge of one of Her Britannic Majesty’s ships.
Bob Simkins was busy at his chart table as he tried to get some idea of how much they’d been swept off course, keeping a weather-eye on the radar, to make sure there was nothing to collide with. Only half listening to himself, he’d explained that the waves were now ‘a heavy swell’, rather than ‘a sea’.
But that was just playing with words, for God’s sake. What difference did it make? It was the feeling of utter helplessness, that there was nothing he could do that...
The door of the port wing slammed open.
Man overboard! It’s Sarah!’
What!
‘Where away?’ sang out the Cox’n.
‘Port side,’ came the Doctor’s voice.
Even before the First Lieutenant could give an order, the Cox’n was spinning the wheel to port, to swing the stern with its murderous screws away to starboard.
But by now the Brigadier was through the door, to find that the Doctor had flung off his cloak, and pulled off his boots, and was climbing up as if to dive into the water.
‘What the devil?’ cried the Brigadier, clinging onto the door jamb as the ship came broadside onto the swell, and rolled alarmingly to starboard.
‘Look!’
As the ship came to the crest of the wave and started to recover, Sarah’s body could be seen briefly on the next wave to the south.
She was face down in the water.
The Doctor didn’t dive in. As the ship rolled to port, on the downhill side of the wave, he held his nose like a seven-year-old jumping off the side of the swimming bath and plunged feet first some thirty feet into the sea.
‘Bob! Get a scrambling net rigged.’
‘Aye aye sir. Which side?’
‘Port. No, better make it both sides.’
The Navigating Officer shot off to see to it.
A scrambling net. The meaning of the term was self-evident. But couldn’t they lower a boat? It had been quite obvious that there was no point in hurling a life buoy after the pair in the water, but surely... ‘What about a boat?’ the Brigadier asked.
‘Negative. No visibility so low in the water. At least we’ve a chance of spotting them from up here.’
Pete grabbed a pair of binoculars and vanished onto the wing of the bridge. The Brigadier tried to follow him, but the roll of the ship was so extreme that he lost his footing completely and landed on the deck.
When he regained his feet, he clung onto the ledge at the front and tried to see through the glass. He’d soon lost sight of the Doctor, swimming away from the ship with the confident strong strokes of an Olympic gold medallist. How old had he said he was? Four hundred years? Seven hundred? But how could anybody survive in these conditions?
The Cox’n’s careful explanation of the danger of travelling with the waves had become fearsomely real. When the Hallaton was going precisely in the same direction as the swell, the rudder had no effect at all. But then, as her bow swung, it began to bite, and the Petty Officer spun the wheel hard over in the opposite direction, in an attempt to bring her back on course before she reached the critical point of utmost danger; and then he had to spin it back again, so that he wouldn’t bring her round too far and let her roll over the other way.
The sum total was a series of near-fatal swoops and rolls, saved at the last moment, it seemed, by the hard-won skill of the man at the wheel.
‘Okay, Cox’n?’ Pete Andrews had reappeared, and was scanning ahead through his glasses.
‘All right so far, sir, as the man said when he fell off the Blackpool tower.’
At least the Royal Navy lot seemed to know what they were doing, thought the Brigadier grudgingly.
‘The trouble is that with our turning circle they’ll have been swept quite a way off by now. Can’t twizzle round like Margot Fonteyn. It takes time,’ said Pete, who seemed as calm and in control as the Petty Officer. ‘Haven’t had a sight of them yet,’
he went on. ‘But it’s early days. The theory is that if we keep on the reciprocal course, two hundred degrees - sou’sou’west near as dammit - we’re bound to come across them. But in this weather...’
As if to confirm his thought, the Hallaton heeled over so violently that even he staggered and had to catch hold to save himself.
‘Cox’n...’
‘Sir?’
‘I’m going up top. Get a better view from there.’
‘Aye aye sir.’
Pete made his way towards the door in the corner. The Brigadier knew that this led to the deck above, which was a de facto additional bridge, open to the sky.
‘Who give... who was’t give th’ order to change course?’
Lieutenant-Commander Eugene Hogben, whose eyes seemed to be as out-of-focus as his words, stood in the doorway, clinging onto the handle for a precarious swaying support.
Pete Andrews turned at the bottom of the ladder. ‘I did sir.
You see...’
‘And why have you dis... dis’beyed a direct order, may I ask? Only asking.’
‘Man overboard, sir. Or rather, two of them...’
‘Who?’
‘The Doctor and Miss Smith.’
‘And you think you can pick ‘em up? In a sea like this? You must be bloody joking, mate.’
‘I thought...’
‘Yes, well, stop thinking and start... start doing what you’re told. Start ‘beying bloody orders, right? Try this one for size.
Resume...’
Before he could finish speaking another particularly severe lurch brought the Commanding Officer to his knees. Pete hurried over and helped him to his feet.
‘Sir, don’t you think it would be a good idea if...’
This brought out the CO’s latent rage, which had been sim-mering below the surface, the blind anger of the alcoholic, disappointed and frustrated by the unjustness of life.
‘Take your hands off me! ‘ he said harshly. ‘Or I’ll have you for ‘ssaulting a superi... sup... your commanding officer!’
Pete Andrews released his arm, and stood back, his face white with fury.
Hogben gave him a vicious look. ‘I’ll ‘tend to you later,’ he said. ‘Cox’n!’
‘Yessir?’
‘Port ten!’
‘Port ten, sir... Ten of port wheel on.’
