Wentworth was there. He was bending over the winch. His sou’wester had gone and his fair hair was plastered to his head. He looked drowned and so did the two men with him. They were all of them bent over the winch and the drum was stationary. A broken wave-top streaming spray like smoke from its crest reared up in the lights, a shaggy, wind-blown monster, all white teeth as it slammed rolling against the stern. It buried everything, a welter of foam that subsided to the lift of the ship, water cascading over the sides, the men still gripping the winch like rocks awash. I yelled to Wentworth, but my shout was blown back into my mouth and he didn’t hear me. The winch remained motionless and the hawser, running through two steel pulleys and out over the stern, just hung there, limp.
I turned and went like a leaf blown by the wind back to the open bridge and Stratton standing there, the phone in his hand and the engines still pounding at full astern. I grabbed his arm. ‘The hawser,’ I yelled. ‘You’ll overrun the hawser.’
He nodded, calm now and in full control of himself. ‘Gears jammed. I’ve told him to cut it.’ And then he said something about taking her out on radar as he put the phone down and went quickly, like a crab, down the steel ladder to the wheelhouse. It was a relief just to be out of the wind. The radar was switched on, set to the three-mile range. The screen showed us half surrounded by the mass of Laerg, the shore still very close. And when he did try to turn — what then? Broadside to that sea with the weight of the wind heeling her over, anything might happen.
But that was something else. What worried me was the thought of that hawser. I could see it clear in my mind, a great loop of wire running from the stern down through the heaving waters and under the whole length of the ship to the anchor dug into the sea bed somewhere beyond our bows now. It had only to touch one of the propeller blades — it would strip the propeller then or else it would warp. And that wasn’t the only hazard. Driving astern like this, backing into sea and wind, it might come taut at any moment. Then if it were fractionally off-centre our stern would swing. Or was that what Stratton was trying to do? I glanced quickly at his face. It was quite blank, his whole mind given to the ship as he stood just behind the helmsman, watching the compass and at the same time keeping an eye on the radar.
, I thought I felt a jerk, a sort of shudder. ‘Stop port. Half ahead port.’
‘Port engine stopped. Port engine half ahead, sir.’
Slowly the bulk of Laerg shifted its position on the radar screen. The bows were moving to starboard, swung by the screws and the pull of the anchor against the stern. The movement slowed. A wave crashed breaking against the starboard side. The ship rolled. ‘Helm hard a’starboard. Stop starboard engine. Half ahead together.’
The beat changed. The ship shuddered as she rolled. The outline on the radar screen resumed its circling anticlockwise movement. The bows were coming round again. A big sea crashed inboard, the tank deck awash. The ship reeled, heeling over so steeply that Pinney was flung across the wheelhouse. Slowly she righted, to be knocked down again and yet again, the weight of the wind holding her pinned at an angle, driving her shorewards. But the bows kept on swinging, kept on coming round. The helmsman’s voice pipe whistled.
‘Number One reporting anchor hawser cut,’ he said.
Stratton nodded.
‘He’s asking permission to come for’ard.’
‘Yes. Report to me in the wheelhouse.’ Stratton’s whole mind was fixed on the radar. Now the bulk of Laerg was on the left-hand side of the screen, at about eight o’clock. ‘Full ahead both engines.’ The telegraph rang. The shuddering was replaced by a steadier beat.
And the helmsman confirmed — ‘Both at full ahead, sir.’
‘Helm amidships.’
‘Midships.’
We were round with Learg at the bottom of the radar screen, the two sheltering arms running up each side, and the top all blank — the open sea for which we were headed. Steaming into it, we felt the full force of the wind now. It came in great battering gusts that shook the wheelhouse. Spray beat against the steel plates, solid as shot, and the bows reared crazily, twisting as though in agony, the steel creaking and groaning. And when they plunged the lights showed water pouring green over the sides, the tank deck filled like a swimming pool.
‘Half ahead together. Ten-fifty revolutions.’
God knows what it was blowing. And it had come up so fast. I’d never known anything like this — so sudden, so violent. The seas were shaggy hills, their tops beaten flat, yet still they contrived to curve and break as they found the shallower water of the bay. They showed as a blur beyond the bows in moments when the wind whipped the porthole glass clean as polished crystal. The barometer at 965 was still falling. Hundreds of tons of water sloshed around in the tank deck and the ship was sluggish like an overladen barge.
Wentworth staggered in. He had a jagged cut above his right eye; blood on his face and on his hands, bright crimson in the lights. Beads of water stood on his oilskins, giving them a mottled effect. ‘The tiller flat,’ he said.
Stratton glanced at him. ‘That cut — you all right?’
Wentworth dabbed it with his hand, staring at the blood as though he hadn’t realised he was bleeding. ‘Nothing much. Fenwick has hurt his arm.’ And he added, ‘They didn’t secure the hatch. There’s a lot of water …’
‘What hatch?’
‘The tiller flat.’
But Stratton had other things to worry about. The helmsman had been caught off balance, the wheel spinning. A figure moved and caught the spokes. ‘All right, sir. I’ve got her.’ It was the Quartermaster. A sea broke slamming on the starboard bow, but she was coming back again, swinging her bows back into the waves. God, what a sea! And I heard Stratton say, ‘What’s that on your oilskins — oil? It looks like oil.’
‘There was a lot of it in the sea,’ Wentworth answered. ‘Every time a wave broke …’
But Stratton had pushed past me and was staring alternatively at the radar screen and out through the porthole.
It was just on five-thirty then and dawn had come; a cold, grey glimmer in the murk.
Darkness would have been preferable. I would rather not have seen that storm. It was enough to hear it, to feel it in the tortured motion of the ship. The picture then was imaginary, and imagination, lacking a basis of experience, fell short of actuality. But dawn added sight to the other senses and the full majesty of the appalling chaos that surrounded us was revealed.
I had seen pictures of storms where sea and rock seemed so exaggerated that not even artistic licence could justify such violent, fantastic use of paint. But no picture I had ever seen measured up to the reality of that morning. Fortunately, the full realisation of what we faced came gradually — a slow exposure taking shape, the creeping dawn imprinting it on the retina of our eyes like a developing agent working on a black and white print. There was no colour; just black through all shadows of grey to white, the white predominating, all the surface of the sea streaked with it. The waves, like heaped-up ranges, were beaten down at the top and streaming spray — not smoking as in an ordinary gale, but the water whipped from their shaggy crests in flat, horizontal sheets, thin layers like razor blades cutting down-wind with indescribable force. Above these layers foam flew thick as snow, lifted from the seething tops of the broken waves and flung pell-mell through the air, flakes as big as gulls, dirty white against the uniform grey of the overcast.