Close on the starboard bow the skerry rocks of Sgeir Mhor lifted grey molars streaming water, the waves exploding against them in plumes of white like an endless succession of depth charges. And beyond Sgeir Mhor, running away to our right, the sheer cliffs of Keava were a black wall disappearing into a tearing wrack of cloud, the whole base of this rampart cascading white as wave after wave attacked and then receded to meet the next and smash it to pieces, heaping masses of water hundreds of feet into the air. Not Milton even, describing Hell, has matched in words the frightful, chaotic spectacle my eyes recorded in the dawn; the Atlantic in the full fury of a storm that had lifted the wind right to the top of the Beaufort scale.
That the landing craft wasn’t immediately overwhelmed was due to the almost unbelievable velocity of the wind. The waves were torn to shreds as they broke so that their force was dissipated, their height diminished. The odd thing was I felt no fear. I remember glancing at Stratton, surprised to find his face calm, almost relaxed. His eyes met mine for an instant, cool and steady. No fear there either. Fear would come later no doubt, as a reaction when the danger had lessened. Fear requires time to infect the system, and we had had no time; it had come upon us too quickly with too much to do. And panic is an instantaneous thing, a nerve storm. Men carrying out the duties for which they have been trained, straining every nerve to meet the situation, their minds entirely concentrated on the work in hand, are seldom liable to panic.
‘Have the men put their life-jackets on.’ Stratton’s voice was barely audible as he shouted the order to Wentworth. ‘Everyone. Understand?’ he turned to Pinney. ‘Go with him. See that every one of your men has his life-jacket on.’
‘What about the tiller flat?’ Wentworth asked.
‘How much water got in?’
‘I don’t know. It was dark down there and I couldn’t see. Quite a bit, I think.’
‘Did you fix the hatch?’
‘Yes. But it may have got in through the rudder stock housings. It may still be …’
‘All right, Number One. I’ll have a word with Stevens. His engineers will get it pumped out.’ He picked up the engine-room phone. ‘And have that cut seen to.’
It was after Wentworth had left that I found my bowels reacting and felt that sick void in my guts that is the beginning of fear. If I’d been in control I wouldn’t have noticed it. I’d have been too busy. But I was a spectator and what I saw both on the radar screen and through the porthole was the tip of Sgeir Mhor coming closer, a gap-toothed rock half awash and the wicked white of the seas breaking across it. Stratton was keeping the bows head-on to the waves. He had no choice. To sheer away in that sea was impossible — the head of the ship would have been flung sideways by the combined thrust of wind and water and she’d have broached-to and been rolled over. But bows-on we were headed about one-ninety degrees, sometimes nearer two hundred, for the wind was just west of south. We were slowly being forced towards the rocks that formed the western arm of Shelter Bay. Some time back Stratton had realised the danger and had ordered full ahead on both engines, but even at full ahead our progress was painfully slow, the ship labouring to make up against the almost solid wall of the elements. Yard by yard we closed Sgeir Mhor and we kept on closing it. There was no shelter behind those rocks — not enough in that force of wind; our only hope was the open sea beyond.
It was six-ten by the clock above the chart table when we came abreast of Sgeir Mhor and for a full six minutes we were butting our bows into a welter of foaming surf with the last rock showing naked in the backwash of each trough less than a hundred yards on our starboard side. Every moment I expected to feel the rending of her bottom plates as some submerged rock cut into her like a knife gutting a fish. But the echo-sounder clicking merrily away recorded nothing less than 40 fathoms, and at six-sixteen we were clear, clawing our way seaward out of reach, I thought, at last.
North-westward of us now the sheer rock coast of Laerg was opening up, a rampart wall cascading water, its top vanishing into swirling masses of cloud. We were in deeper water then and Stratton was on the phone to the engine-room again, cutting the revolutions until the ship was stationary, just holding her own against the wind. ‘If the old girl can just stay in one piece,’ he yelled in my ear. I didn’t need to be told what he planned to do; it was what I would have done in his shoes. He was reckoning that the storm centre would pass right over us and he was going to butt the wind until it did. Nothing else he could do, for he couldn’t turn. When we were into the eye of the storm there would be a period of calm. He’d get the ship round then and tuck himself tight under those towering cliffs. We’d be all right then. As the centre passed, the wind would swing round into the east or north-east. We’d be under the lee of Laerg then. But how long before that happened — an hour, two hours? Out here in the deepest water the waves no longer built up in range upon range of moving hills; they lay flat, cowed by the wind which seemed to be scooping the whole surface of the sea into the air. The noise was shattering, spray hitting the wheelhouse in solid sheets. Visibility was nil, except for brief glimpses of the chaos when a gust died. And then a squall blotting everything out and the Quartermaster quietly announcing that the wind had caught her and she wasn’t answering.
‘Full astern starboard.’
The ring of the telegraph, faint and insubstantial, the judder of the screws, and the bows steadying. She’d have come back into the wind then, but a sea caught her and she heeled over. If we’d been in the shallow waters of the bay, she’d have rolled right over, but out here it was the wind more than the waves that menaced us; it held her (canted at a steep angle and the man who brought Stratton his life-jacket had to crawl on his hands and knees. Stratton tossed it into the corner by the chart table. ‘Better get yours, too,’ he said to me, ‘just in case.’ The bows were coming round now, sluggishly. ‘Full ahead both. Starboard wheel.’ And then she was round with her blunt nose bucking the seas, her screws racing as they were lifted clear in the troughs.
Even head-to-wind again it was a struggle to get down the alleyway to my quarters. McDermott lay on the floor. He had tied himself with a blanket to the bunk support and he’d been sick again, all over himself and the floor. The place was a shambles. ‘Was that the power steering packed in?’ Wentworth asked me. He was clinging to the desk whilst Fairweather tried to stitch the cut on his head.
‘We were blown off,’ I said.
But he didn’t seem to take that in. ‘I tried to tell Stratton. They forgot to close the hatch. To the tiller flat. You remember? I told him….’
I did remember and my first reaction was a mental picture of McGregor’s corpse being sloshed around in that small compartment above the rudders. My mind must have been sluggish for it was a moment before I realised what was worrying him. If the electric motors shorted…. The possibility brought the sweat to my palms, a sting to the armpits that I could have sworn I smelt despite the layers of clothing. And then I remembered that the hatch was closed now and the engineers would have disposed of the water. ‘They’ll have pumped it out by now,’ I said.
He nodded. ‘Yes. Yes, of course. I remember now.’ He seemed dazed, staring at me wide-eyed. ‘But that oil. What do you think it was, Mr Ross?’ Staring at me like that, the whites of his eyes beginning to show, I began to wonder.
‘What oil?’ I said.
‘It was all round the stern and every time a sea broke. Look at my hair.’ He leaned his head forward, ignoring the Doc’s warning. ‘See? It’s oil. Diesel oil.’
‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘Another couple of hours….’ I ducked out of the cabin. I wanted fresh air, the confidence that only men doing something to preserve themselves can inspire. Was Wentworth scared, or was it me? All I knew was that something like a contagious disease had touched me in that sour cabin full of the sick smell of vomit. That oil … I remembered when he’d first come up to the wheelhouse, how his oilskin had been mottled with it, and Stratton asking about it.