THURSDAY'S ORCHID (26 page)

The salvors on
Syrius
returned to the stern and hurled a weighted rope out to the tug as it wallowed beneath our overhang, its propellors slowly churning the water. A light wire was attached to the rope and hauled back to us, and then led overboard along the starboard side of the ship. Two men dragged it up to the bow, threaded it through the block and took it back down to the stern again. The end was lowered to the rubber boat and taken out to the where the tug was now stationed. The light wire was fed on to a winch drum and slowly wound in.

The tug’s crew had already joined the other end of the light wire to the heavy cable and, with a flick of his hand, the salvage master released the brake on the reel and it started a slow ponderous turning as the coils began to unwind. He gave a signal and the wire winch started to
move faster. The water at the stern of the tug boiled and bubbled as the engines revved and pushed against the force of the winch as it tried to pull the tug towards the ship.

The great reel spun faster, threatening to send the whole of the cable racing to the sea-bed in a great loop, but the salvage master jumped forward and shot the brake home, smoke pouring out as the shoes grabbed hold of the drum.

The slack cable snaked up from the water, up along the ship’s side and up to the bow. They fed the end of the cable through the first sheave of the block, and then it was on its way back to the tug.

One end of the first loop had been completed.

Pacific Ranger
steamed back out towards the yellow marker-buoy, paying out the heavy cable as she went. The two divers entered the water, taking down a length of light rope. Five minutes later they were back at the surface, swimming the rope over to the stern of the tug where it was joined to the light wire. The tug crew hauled in the other end of the rope, pulling the wire down over the stern, down to the block, pulling it through the sheave without snagging, back up to the tug, and made it fast to the end of the heavy cable.

The reel started to spin
again as the winch drew the light wire back around the sheave of the block far below, pulling the end of the cable down and back to the tug again. One diver stayed at the surface. The other was below watching and leading the cable through the block. The buoy bobbed once and the winch stopped. Five minutes later it bobbed several times and the winch turned again and kept turning until the end of the cable finally saw daylight again.

Again and again the procedure was repeated; eight times in all.

The job wasn’t finished until midnight, none of the salvage crew seeming to rest.

I watched with tired eyes as the final turn was made through the block on the bow. The end of the wire cable was hauled back to the deck of
Pacific Ranger
and wrapped around the towing hook as she steamed out towards the anchor buoy, pulling even more cable from the reel.

The crew were working under lights on the back deck
of the tug, bending the end of the cable to form a loop, and making it fast with large bolted clamps. Then, without ceremony or fuss, the end was pushed over the side; to remain there until needed.

The few remaining turns of cable still left on the reel were snaked on the tug’s
deck and a bolted loop formed on that end as well. The tug manoeuvred to port and that second end was dropped over the side some distance away from where the salvage anchor lay.

The laying of the tackle completed, the tug moved away towards the lagoon, and that was that. All day they had worked; from before sun-up until after midnight. The tackle had been laid and everything prepared, and then they had quietly steamed off into the night.

At least there was a sense of satisfaction, a feeling that something concrete had been done, that it hadn’t just been another day of rearranging cargo, or of doing nothing. They had shown us that they had the equipment to do the task; and knew how to handle it.

I went to bed feeling happier than I had for many days; but exhausted, even though I had done nothing but watch and wait.

It was more than two weeks since we had gone aground.

Fifteen

Everybody slept late the next morning, including the crew of the tug. I came down to a late breakfast to find her still at anchor inside the lagoon.

The salvage master came on board about mid-morning and spent an hour or so closeted with the captain in his cabin.

I was burning with curiosity and could hardly wait to question Flint, but I had to wait until we were seated at lunch before satisfying my enquiring mind. I let Flint slop through his soup and held my impatience until he was well into the main course before broaching the subject.

“When are they going to start pulling?” I asked, and listened to the sudden silence as everyone else paused, cutlery raised.

He chewed on the mouthful several more times and looked up from his plate, wiping his lips with the back of one hand as he did so. “Thought you might be curious,” he said, and then paused, savouring the moment to the hilt. “They plan to test the tackle at high tide tomorrow, but they don’t expect her to come off. If she does, it will be a fluke.”

He still didn’t believe they could do it.

“The tide won’t reach its highest peak for another three days,” he went on. “So they won’t overload the tackle. The test tomorrow will be mainly to check that the gear has been rigged correctly and hasn’t been caught up in anything, or twisted, or whatever.”

A week ago he would have told me to mind my own business; but now that I had shown I could pull my weight and wasn’t a quitter, he was treating me more on an equal footing, and not as the fool he had earlier taken me for.

“So,” I replied. “Tomorrow will be a test of the ground tackle, and the day after that will be the first attempt to pull us off. If that’s not successful, they’ll give it all they’ve got on the following day?”

“In a nutshell, Mr. Rider. In a nutshell.”

“So, there’s nothing further to be done then?”

“Yes. They’ll be bringing a couple of salvage pumps across this afternoon, if they can get close enough, that is. The sea is calm enough at the moment, but it can’t last much longer.”

Old doom and gloom was at it again; but even so
I didn’t like the sound of it. His weather predictions had been fairly accurate to date and it seemed as if the elements might be playing a game with us.

“Why do we need the pumps?” I asked. “Do you think there’s any danger of us taking a few more holes?”

“I hope not,” he replied. “But you never know. No, they need them to empty out the main hold.”

His food was getting cold, but it didn’t seem to worry him.

“Why can’t they use the bilge pumps?” I asked. “And the fire pump?”

He gave me an exasperated look. “Have you ever tried to empty a bath with a tea-cup?” He paused. “Well, that’s about how long it would take if you tried to empty the main hold with our bloody pumps. It would take a couple of days; maybe even longer. You saw how long it took to put the water in th
ere in the first place. As it is, our pumps will be flat out trying to empty the tanks which have been holed. With luck we might be able to keep a few tons from creeping back in.” He cut off a piece of steak and looked across again, the fork half-way to his mouth. “Or maybe you’d like to organize a bucket chain to help speed things up?”

I shook my head and went back to the food, letting him get on with his own. I had learned all I was likely to learn.

By the time I had cleaned my teeth and returned to the open deck, the tug had moved out from the lagoon back into the open sea and was steaming towards our stern. The salvage master stood out on the
Syrius’
starboard bridge-wing, a walkie-talkie in his hand.

Pacific Ranger
edged closer to our stern, then crawled part way along our starboard side, coming dangerously close to the reef. Her draft was far less than ours and she was safe as long as she didn’t drift any further in towards the coral. If something went wrong with the bow-thruster, if it missed a beat, the tug would be swept down along the length of our hull and join us on the reef.

The swell had come up again as Flint had forecast. The tug skipper would be cursing, regretting that they hadn’t started out again at first light as they had the previous day, but it would have been too near to low tide then, with the tug’s hull even closer to the coral.

With every surge of the sea the tug would bash against the hull of
Syrius
; but
Pacific Ranger
was built for that, with great hard rubber buffer-strips bolted along each side. It was the tug crew who were getting the worst of it, treading warily, keeping one hand on the rail at all times, and now and then being jerked off their feet as a sudden jarring impact caught them unawares.

There were four large pieces of machinery sitting on the back deck of the tug, each
wrapped in water-proof canvas: the salvage pumps. Our aft cargo winch-boom was swung overboard and the cable lowered and drawn across to the tug’s stern, and in an instant the hook was passed through the sling on the first pump and the signal given.

The winch driver pushed the lever and the pump jerked from the deck, snatched from the crew’s re
straining hands, swinging backwards to the stern bulwark, crashing into the rail. The sling snapped at one end, running free through the hook. The pump teetered on the edge as two men raced forwards; one of them just managing to get a finger to the pump as it tumbled over the rail and down to the reef below.

The Dutchman came racing across the deck yelling at the top of his voice. The situ
ation was electric. He stood below the winch house, his face red, one hand on the ladder ready to swing himself up. It was the winch-man’s fault, trying to impress, snatching the lever forward. That one piece of carelessness and the loss of a pump could have cost the whole salvage. One glance at the winch-man’s ashen-white face was enough to show the Dutchman that it wouldn’t happen again.

The cable was lowered once more
. The second pump moved up and out from the tug’s stern, restrained by the crew from hitting the bulwark, then straight up and over on to our deck. The other two pumps were brought on board and the tug moved away to the safety of deep water.

Two divers climbed down into the rubber boat, and were brought bounc
ing back to our side. They fell into the swell, disappearing beneath the surface, their bubbles streaming across the reef.

The winch cable
pierced the water and we could see the divers dragging the hook back across the reef towards the pump. The winch whirred and the pump broke the surface, dripping water. The canvas cover was removed as it hit the deck, and I saw that it was not a complete pump and motor, but only the pump itself. What I had taken to be four separate pumps were in fact two pumps, split into their component units: a pump and a motor.

A couple of brackets had been bent, but it didn’
t seem as though the fall had done any real damage. The salvage master leant over the unit, turning this and checking that, and then looked up with a smile. It would work!

Lengths of hose were unloaded from the tug
on to the rubber boat three or four at a time, and carried in under our stern and hoisted on board, the aft quarter-deck becoming a mass of twisting blue pipe.

The pumps were joined to their partner motors; the damaged one requiring the application of a sledge-hammer before a fit was achieved. The hoses were attached and dropped into the flooded
main hold, the pumps primed and the motors started. Water spewed forth: tonnes and tonnes pouring out each minute.

They could empty the hold in a matter of hours and not the days it would take if we relied on the ship’s bilge pumps. They were run for two hours, with the water level marked as they began and when they stopped. They would take just over six hours to empty the hold.

The fire hoses were set going again to replace the water thrown out by the pumps, water needed to pin us back down on the reef.

The stage was now set for the attempt: the ground tackle had been laid and the pumps set in position. The big test would come on the next day, the first test of the
tackle, and the tug. The news spread throughout the ship, the air crackling with excitement.

The entire crew was up and about even before the sun had risen, and I was among the first on deck, but nothing was happening.
Pacific Ranger
was still at anchor in the lagoon. The coral on the reef was far too visible – high tide still hours away.

A cry went up from our crew around mid-morning as they spotted the tug’s anchor being raised; and then she steamed around to take up position just ahead of the buoy over the salvage anchor; holding herself on station with the bow thruster as the crew picked up the end of the line attached to the loop in the wire. We watched as the divers went down into the water. We stood at the rail, knowing that thirty metres below they would be hauling the end of the wire cable
over to the huge anchor, dragging the heavy wire across the sea bed by pure physical force. Fifteen minutes later they surfaced. The loop was fixed to the great shackle on the anchor stock.

Meanwhile
the tug had steamed across to the white buoy, to the other end of the cable. The light line was hauled in on the aft windlass. Once on deck the cable was looped over the towing hook, ready to take the strain.

The divers waited in the inflatable, circling the yellow buoy as the tug got up steam and bega
n to move out to sea, the water churning behind her.

The divers went down again. The yellow buoy bobbed once and the boat driver raised the walkie-talkie to his mouth and the tug’s engines eased, the churning water smoothing out.

The bubbles pimpling the surface came towards us, following the line of wires as the divers checked for obstructions; then they headed back to the anchor and the buoy bobbed twice. Once again the tug churned forward, moving on for fifty metres until the jerking buoy once again brought it to a halt. This time the divers swam nearly to our bow before returning again to signal the tug.

Twice more the pattern was repeated and each time the tug moved farther away as the slack was taken up, until finally the single strand of cable from the tug’
s towing hook back to the pulley-block on the
Syrius’
bow came looping out of the water, flopping on the surface. Minutes later, with much dripping of water, the group of wires rose out of the water, stretching from the pulley-block on our bow – clear of the water for half the ship’s length – before knifing into the sea and down to the salvage anchor.

The divers returned to the tug, their task completed, the tackle checked: no tangles or obstructions, no twists, no turns – laid perfectly.

Pacific Ranger
lay some four or five hundred metres astern of us, over to our starboard side. Without the binoculars it was difficult to discern the churning water around the propellors. White smoke drifted from the funnels; the drooping wire cable flipped out of the water, and dipped back again.

Our stern deck was cleared of all personnel. The wire’s breaking strain was known but never tested
and if it parted under tension it might whip back, severing heads, limbs and bodies.

I moved up to the bridge.

Smoke streamed from the tug’s funnels and this time the wire was stretched clear of the water, dipping only where it approached the stern of the tug; its back deck deserted.

The smoke darkened. The water rumbled and bubbled. The wire stretched and no longer touched the sea at any point, as taut as a violin string. I held my breath and waited for it to snap.

The tug growled for another ten minutes, the water a turmoil. We hadn’t moved, hadn’t even rocked on the reef. The smoke cleared to grey; the wire dropped and the ground tackle sank slowly beneath the waves.

The testing was over.

We watched as the wire was removed from the towing hook, and watched as the buoyed line was tied on again and the wire cable tossed over the side. Gloom descended. We knew it was only to be a test, but we believed we would come free. We had all seen the force exerted, and yet there had been no movement, not even a shudder.

The remaining hours of that day and evening were the most mi
serable I had spent on the ship. It wasn’t the weather. The wind had dropped and we weren’t rolling about. It was the crew. The entire ship’s complement had thought that this was to be the day they would bid farewell to that godforsaken reef.

There were a couple of fights in the crew’s quarters, where tempers were running hot. It wasn’t safe being on deck any more. You only had to look sideways and somebody would take offence. The mumbled insults and veiled threats were once again out in the open.

I kept to my cabin with a bottle of whisky and my own thoughts for comfort.

The new day dawned quietly, as had many previous days, except there were more sore heads on this one. The bond store had been broken into during the night and most of the liquor distributed.

Breakfast was a despondency of grumbling officers, complaining about the food and the way it was cooked, and the rapid decline in discipline amongst the crew. Flint hadn’t come down from his cabin, and had coffee sent up to the bridge,