Wilbur Smith's Smashing Thrillers (8 page)

Samantha closed and secured the plastic door-cover, then she groped her way through the press of packed and terrified bodies until she found Mrs. Goldberg.

‘ Are you crying, dear? ’ the elderly woman quavered, clinging to her desperately.

‘ No .’ said Samantha, and placed one arm around her shoulders. ’ No, I'm not crying. ’ And with her free hand, she wiped away the icy tears that streamed down her cheeks.

The Trog lifted his headset and looked at Nick through the reeking clouds of cigar smoke.

‘ Their radio operator has screwed down the key of his set. He's sending a single unbroken homing beam. ’

Nick knew what that meant - they had abandoned Golden Adventurer. He nodded once but remained silent. He had wedged himself into the doorway from the bridge. The restless impatience that consumed him would not allow him to sit or be still for more than a few moments at a time. He was slowly facing up to the reality of disaster. The dice had fallen against him and his gamble had been with very survival. It was absolutely certain that Golden Adventurer would go aground and be beaten into a total wreck by this storm. He could expect a charter from Christy Marine to assist La Mouette in ferrying the survivors back to Cape Town, but the fee would be a small fraction of the Esso tow fee that he had forsaken for this wild and desperate dash south.

The gamble had failed and he was a broken man. Of course, it would take months still for the effects of his folly to become apparent, but the repayments of his loans and the construction bills for the other tug still building would slowly throttle and bring him down.

‘ We might still reach her before she goes aground ,’ said David Allen sturdily, and nobody else on the bridge spoke.

‘ I mean there could be a backlash of the current close inshore which could hold her off long enough to give us a chance - ‘ His voice trailed off as Nick looked across at him and frowned.

‘ We are still ten hours away from her, and for Reilly to make the decision to abandon ship, she must have been very close indeed. Reilly is a good man. ’ Nick had personally selected him to command the Golden Adventurer. ‘ He was a destroyer captain on the North Atlantic run, the youngest in the navy, and then he was ten years with P & O. They pick only the best –‘ He stopped talking abruptly. He was becoming garrulous. He crossed to the radarscope and adjusted it for maximum range and illumination before looking down into the eye-piece. There was much fuzz and sea clutter, but on the extreme southern edge of the circular screen there showed the solid luminous glow of the cliffs and peaks of Cape Alarm. In good weather they were a mere five hours steaming away, but now they had left the shelter of that giant iceberg and were staggering and plunging wildly through the angry night. She could have taken more speed, for Warlock was built for big seas, but always there was the deadly menace of ice, and Nick had to hold her at this cautionary speed, which meant ten hours more before they were in sight of Golden Adventurer - if she was still afloat.

Behind him, the Trog's voice crackled rustily with excitement. ‘ I'm getting voice - it's only strength one, weak and intermittent. One of the lifeboats is sending on a battery-powered transmitter. ’ He held his earphones pressed to his head with both hands as he listened.

‘ They are towing a batch of life-rafts with all survivors aboard to Shackleton Bay. But they've lost a life-raft ,’ he said, ‘ It's broken away from their tow-line, and they haven't got enough boats to search for it. They are asking La Mouette to keep a watch for it. ’

‘ Is La Mouette acknowledging? ’ The Trog shook his head. ‘ She's probably still out of range of this transmission. ’

‘ Very well. ’ Nick turned back into the bridge. He had still not broken radio silence, and could feel his officers disapproval, silent but strong. Again he felt the need for human contact, for the warmth and comfort of human conversation and friendly encouragement. He didn't yet have the strength to bear his failure alone.

He stopped beside David Allen and said, ‘ I have been studying the Admiralty sailing directions for Cape Alarm, David ,’ and pretended not to notice that the use of his Christian name had brought a startled look and quick colour to the mate's features. He went on evenly, ’ the shore is very steep-to and she is exposed to this westerly weather, but there are beaches of pebble and the glass is going up sharply again. ’

‘ Yes, sir ,’ David nodded enthusiastically. ’ I have been watching it. ’

‘ Instead of hoping for a cross-current to hold her off, I suggest you offer a prayer that she goes up on one of those beaches and that the weather moderates before she is beaten to pieces. There is still a chance we can put ground tackle on her before she starts breaking up. ’

‘ I'll say ten Hail Marys, sir ,’ grinned David. Clearly he was overwhelmed by this sudden friendliness from his silent and forbidding Captain.

‘ -And say another ten that we hold our lead on La Mouette ,’ said Nick, and smiled. It was one of the few times that David Allen had seen him smile, and he was a mazed at the change it made to the stern features. They lightened with a charm and warmth and he had not before noticed the clear green of Nick Berg's eyes and how white and even were his teeth.

‘ Steady as she goes .’ said Nick. ‘ Call me if anything changes ,’ and he turned away to his cabin.

‘ Steady as she goes, it is, sir ,’ said David Allen with a new friendliness in his voice.

The strange and marvel l ous lights of the Aurora Australis quivered and flickered in running streams of red and green fire along the horizon, and formed an incredible backdrop for the death agonies of a great ship.

Captain Reilly looked back through the small portholes of the leading lifeboat and watched her going to her fate. It seemed to him she had never been so tall and beautiful as in these terrible last moments. He had loved many ships, as if each had been a wonderful living creature, but he had loved no other ship more than Golden Adventurer, and he felt something of himself dying with her.

He saw her change her action. The sea was feeling the land now, the steep bank of Cape Alarm, and the ship seemed to panic at the new onslaught of wave and wind, as though she knew what fate awaited her there.

She was rolling through thirty degrees, showing the dull red streak of her belly paint as she came up short at the limit of each huge penduluming arc. There was a headland, tall black cliffs dropping sheer into the turbulent waters and it seemed that Golden Adventurer must go full on to them, but in the last impossible moments she slipped by, borne on the backlash of the current, avoiding the cliffs and swinging her bows on into the shallow bay beyond where she was hidden from Captain Reilly's view.

He stood for many minutes more, staring back across the leaping wave-tops and in the strange unnatural light of the heavens his face was greenish grey and heavily furrowed with the marks of grief.

Then he sighed once, very deeply, and turned away, devoting all his attention to guiding his pathetic limping little convoy to the safety of Shackleton Bay.

Almost immediately it was apparent that the fates had relented, and given them a favourable inshore current to carry them up on to the coast. The lifeboats were strung out over a distance of three miles, each of them with its string of bloated and clumsy rafts lumbering along in its wake. Captain Reilly had two-way VHF radio contact with each of them, and despite the brutal cold, they were all in good shape and making steady and unexpectedly rapid progress. Three or four hours would be sufficient, he began to hope. They had lost so much life already, and he could not be certain that there would be no further losses until he had the whole party ashore and encamped.

Perhaps the tragic run of bad luck had changed at last, he thought, and he picked up the small VH F radio. Perhaps the French tug was in range at last and he began to call her.

‘ La Mouette, do you read me? Come in, La Mouette….’

The lifeboat was low down on the wate r, and the output of the little set was feeble in the vastness yet he kept on calling.

They had accustomed themselves to the extravagant action of the disabled liner, her majestic roll and pitch, as regular as a gigantic metronome. They had adjusted to the cold of the unheated interior of the great ship, and the discomfort of her crowded and unsanitary conditions.

They had steeled themselves and tried to prepare themselves mentally for further danger and greater hardship but not one of the survivors in life-raft Number 16 had imagined anything like this. Even Samantha, the youngest, probably physically the toughest and certainly the one most prepared by her training and her knowledge and love of the sea, had not imagined what it would be like in the raft.

It was utterly dark, not the faintest glimmer of light penetrated the insulated domed canopy, once its entrance was secured against the sea and the wind.

Samantha, realized almost immediately how the darkness would crush their morale and, more dangerously, would induce disorientation and vertigo, so she ordered two of them at a time to switch on the tiny locator bulbs on their life-jackets. I t gave just a glimmering of light, enough to let them see each other ’ s faces and take a little comfort in the proximity of other humans.

Then she arranged their seating, making them form a circle around the sides with all their legs pointing inwards, to give the raft better balance and to ensure that each of them had space to stretch out.

Now that Ken had gone, she had naturally taken command, and, as naturally, the others had turned to her for guidance and comfort. It was Samantha who had gone out through the opening into the brutal exposure of the night to take aboard and secure the tow-rope from the lifeboat. She had come in again half-frozen, shaking in a palsy of cold, with her hands and face numbed. it had taken nearly half an hour of hard massage before feeling returned and she was certain that she had avoided frost-bite.

Then the tow began, and if the movement of the light raft had been wild before, it now became a nightmare of unco - ordinated movement. Each whim of sea and wind was transmitted directly to the huddling circle of survivors, and each time the raft pulled away or sheered off, the tow-rope brought it up with a violent lurch and jerk. The wave crests whipped up by the wind and feeling the press of the land were up to twenty feet high, and the raft swooped over them and dropped heavily into the troughs. She did not have the lateral stability of a keel, so she spun on her axis until the tow-rope jerked her up and she spun the other way. The first of them to start vomiting was Mrs. Goldberg and it spurted in a warm jet down the side of Samantha's anorak.

The canopy was almost airtight, except for the small ventilation holes near the apex of the roof, and immediately the sweetish acrid stench of vomit permeated the raft. Within minutes, half a dozen of the other survivors were vomiting also.

It was the cold, however, that frightened Samantha. The cold was the killer. It came up even through the flexible insulated double skin of the deck, and was transferred into their buttocks and legs. It came in through the plastic canopy and froze the condensation of their breaths, it even froze the vomit on their clothing and on the deck.

‘ Sing! ’ Samantha told them. ‘ Come on, sing! Let's do "Yankee Doodle Dandy", first. You start, Mr. Stewart, come on. Clap your hands, clap hands with your neighbour. ’ She hectored them relentlessly, not allowing any of them to fall into that paralytic state which is not true sleep but the trance caused by rapidly dropping body temperature. She crawled among them, prodding them awake, popping barley sugar from the emergency rations into their mouths.

‘ Suck and sing! ’ she commanded them, the sugar would combat the cold and the sea-sickness. ‘ Clap your hands. Keep moving we'll be there soon. ’

When they could sing no more, she told them stories and whenever she mentioned the word dog they must all bark and clap their hands, or crow like the rooster, or bray like the donkey.

Samantha's throat was scratchy with singing and talking and she was dizzy with fatigue and sick with cold, recognizing in herself the first symptoms of disinterest and lethargy, the prelude to giving up. She roused herself, struggling up into the sitting position from where she had slumped.

‘ I'm going to try and light the stove and get us a hot drink ,’ she sang out brightly. Around her there was only a mild stir and somebody retched painfully.

‘ Who's for a mug of beef tea –‘ she stopped abruptly. Something had changed. It took her a long moment to realize what it was. The sound of the wind had muted and the raft was riding more easily now, it was moving into a more regular rhythm of sweep and fall, without the dreadful jerk of the tow-rope snapping it back.

Frantically she crawled to the entrance of the raft, and with cold crippled fingers she tore at the fastenings.

O utside the dawn had broken into a clear cold sky of palest ethereal pinks and mauves. Although the wind had dropped to a faint whisper, the seas were still big and unruly, and the waters had changed from black to the deep bottle green of molten glass.

The tow-rope had torn away at the connecting shackle, leaving only a
dangling flap of plastic. Number 16 had been the last raft in the line
being towed by number three, but of the convoy, Samantha could now see
no sign - though she crawled out through the entrance and clung
precariously to the side of the raft, scanning the wave-caps about her
desperately.

There was no sign of a lifeboat, no sight even of the rocky, ice-capped
shores of Cape Alarm. They had drifted away, during the night, into the
vast and lonely reaches of the Weddell Sea.

Despair cramped her belly muscles, and she wanted to cry out in protest
against this further cruelty of fate, but she prevented herself doing
so, and stayed out in the clear and frosty air, drawing it in carefully
for she knew that it could freeze her lung tissue. She searched and
searched until her eyes streamed with the cold and the wind and
concentration. Then at last the cold drove her back into the dark and
stinking interior of the raft. She fell wearily among the supine and
quiescent bodies, and pulled the hood of her anorak more tightly around
her head. She knew it would not take long for them to start dying now,
and somehow she did not care. Her despair was too intense, she let
herself begin sinking into the morass of despondency which gripped all
the others, and the cold crept up her legs and arms.
She closed her eyes, and then opened them again with a huge effort.