The wheelhouse steadied me. There was Stratton smoking a cigarette, the Quartermaster at the wheel, everything going on as before and the bows headed slap into the wind. The radar screen showed Sgeir Mhor dead astern of us less than a mile away. I dropped my life-jacket beside Stratton’s. Should I remind him about the oil, or just forget about it? I decided to keep silent. Nothing to be done about it. What was the point? And yet…. I lit a cigarette and saw my hand was trembling. Hell! ‘What’s under the tank deck?’ I heard myself ask. ‘Water and fuel oil, I think you said.’
‘Yes, fuel oil.’ Stratton’s voice had an edge to it and he added, ‘Something on your mind?’ He was staring at me hard and I realised suddenly that he knew — knew we’d damaged the bottom plates getting off.
‘No, nothing,’ I said, and I left it at that, happier now that the knowledge was shared. Perhaps he was, too, for he smiled. ‘Keep your fingers crossed,’ he said.
But keeping your fingers crossed doesn’t mend steel plates, and it doesn’t prevent fuel oil seeping out through the cracks and rents in those battered plates. I stayed with him until I’d finished my cigarette and then I made some excuse and slipped out. There was only one way of finding out. I went down the companion ladder to the deck below, unclamped the steel door leading to the side deck and, leaning out, grabbed hold of the rail. I was just in time, for the force of the wind swept my legs from under me. I was left clinging there, my body flattened along the deck and my lungs filled to bursting with the pressure of air forcing its way into mouth and nostrils.
The power of that wind was demoniac. It forced my eyeballs back against the membranes with a stabbing pain. It tore at my hair and clothing. And the sheet spray flung against my face had the cutting power of sand. Raw and shaken I held on till there was a slight lull, and then I hurled myself back through the door. It took me quite a time to get it shut and the clamps in place. I was wet to the skin and panting with the effort, but I now knew — I had seen the surface of the water sheened with a film of oil, the surface spray held static by the viscosity of it.
When I got back to the wheelhouse Wentworth was there, clinging to the chart table, fresh plaster covering the cut on his forehead. Stratton glanced at me, a slight lift to his brows as he saw the state of my clothes. He knew where I’d been so I just gave a slight confirmatory nod. ‘Bad?’ he asked.
‘Impossible to tell.’
He nodded.
‘What’s bad?’ Wentworth asked. ‘Where’ve you been?’ His voice was slightly slurred and the whites of his eyes … I didn’t like that tendency for the whites to show.
‘I’ve just been sick,’ I said.
He accepted that. ‘So’ve I.’ He said it quite cheerfully, the beginning of a smile lighting up his face. He couldn’t have been more than twenty-two; much too young, I thought, to face a storm like this. It was the sort of storm you only expect to face once in a lifetime, and then only if you’ve been all your life at sea. I wondered whether I could paint it. Could any artist get it down on canvas — this soul-destroying, brain-numbing battering, this violence that went beyond the limits of experience?
And the fact that we existed, that the ship still held her blunt bows head-to-wind, battling against the driving planes of water, made it somehow marvellous, the little oasis of the wheelhouse a miracle. In the midst of chaos, here within the tight frame of fragile steels walls, there was the reassurance of familiar things — the radar, the charts, the burly Quartermaster quite unperturbed, orders being given, messages coming in — particularly the messages. L4400 signalling that she was under the lee of Malesgair and riding it out, safe for the moment at any rate. Coastal Command asking us whether we needed assistance, relaying to us the information that the Admiralty tug was now waiting instructions in Lochmaddy. First Braddock and then Standing asking for news of us — how many men had we embarked, what stores and equipment, obviously quite oblivious of the magnitude of the storm. The last contact with Cliff before he went on duty had given the wind locally as south, approximately fifty knots. Fifty knots, when out here it was blowing eighty, ninety, a hundred — God knows what force it was. And at six forty-five the shipping forecast: A local depression of great intensity may affect parts of sea areas Faeroes, Hebrides.… Winds cyclonic and temporarily Beaching hurricane force. … I think that was the most extraordinary part of it — the sense of still being in contact with the outside world when all our own world was being blown to bits by the wind, the whole surface of the sea apparently disintegrating and being forced up into the atmosphere.
And then suddenly our little oasis of ordered security crashed about our ears. The engine-room phone had probably been buzzing for some time. But nobody had heard it. The din was too great. It was the ring of the telegraph that informed us and the Quartermaster’s voice: Port engines losing power, sir.’ The spokes of the wheel were turning under his hand, turning until he had full starboard helm on. Again he reached for the brass handle of the port telegraph, gave it two sharp rings and jammed it back at full ahead. Stratton leapt to the engine-room telephone. ‘It’s all right now, sir.’ The Quartermaster was bringing the wheel back amidships. But I was watching Stratton. His face was white, his body rigid.’… Sea water, you say? …Yes, I knew about the leak…. Well, can’t you drain it off? … I see. Well, that must have happened when we were broadside on in the bay…. All right, Stevens. Do what you can…. Yes, we’ll try. But we can’t hold her any steadier. There’s quite a sea…. Well, give me warning when the other engines start cutting out.’ He put the phone back on its hook. His face looked bleak.
‘What is it?’ Wentworth demanded. ‘What’s happened?’
‘Main tank’s leaking and we’ve been pumping sea water into the ready-use tank. Only the port engine’s affected so far, but …’ He turned to the Quartermaster. ‘Think you can hold her on starboard engines alone?’
‘I’ll try, sir.’
The Cox’n came in then. His flat, broad face was smeared with oil. ‘Port outer engine starting to cut out, sir. Chief asked me to tell you he’s afraid…’ Something in Stratton’s face stopped the breathless rush of his words. In a quieter voice he added, ‘I was going round the mess decks. I could feel there was something wrong so I slipped down to the engine-room. Chief said he couldn’t get you on the phone.’
‘Thank you, Cox’n. I’ve just had a word with him. The starboard engines are all right, I gather?’
‘For the moment, sir. But he’s afraid the ready-use tank may be …’
‘I’ve had his report on that.’ Stratton’s voice, quiet and controlled, stilled the suggestion of panic that had hung for a moment over the wheelhouse.
‘There’s another thing, sir. The tiller flat. Bilge pumps not working. Chief think’s they’re choked. Anyway, there’s a lot of water….’
‘All right, Cox’n. Have some men closed up on the tiller flat, will you — just in case.’
‘Very good, sir.’ And as he went out Wentworth, close at my side, said, ‘I had a feeling about the tiller flat. Ever since I found the hatch unfastened. We must have taken a hell of a lot of water through it when we were getting off the beach.’ His manner was quite different now, almost calm, as though he’d braced himself against the urgency of the situation. He reached for the log book and began entering it up.
Everything normal again, the ship headed into the wind, the beat of the engines steady under our feet. But even with both engines at full ahead she was making little or no headway against the moving masses of air and water that seemed fused into a solid impenetrable wall. The shape of Laerg on the radar screen came and went, fuzzed by the thickness of the atmosphere. The Quartermaster shifted his stance at the wheel, gripped the spokes tighter. And in the same instant I felt it through the soles of my feet, a change of beat, a raggedness. The wheel spun. Full starboard helm and the beat steadier again, but not so strong. ‘Port engines both stopped, sir.’