From the wing, Number One was shouting down to the RAS party. Hob watched the ship's jack-staff sweeping gently across the horizon, steady up, then settle.
'Course, sir,' Campbell reported calmly from the wheel, ' three-five-five.'
Hob glanced at the grey slab side of the tanker towering above them. She was very, very close.
'Watch your steering, Cox'n,' the captain said quietly. ' Nothing to starboard.'
'Nothing to starboard, sir.'
Hob heard the crashing of the seas outside — he glanced at the clock: 1057 — the next zig was in thirteen minutes. He jumped when an alarm began ringing behind him.
'Steering breakdown, sir,' Neame yelled.
'What wheel have you on, Cox'n?'
'Five of starboard, sir.'
'Break away.' Pascoe Trevellion was speaking crisply into the intercom.' Stop port engine…'
'Wheel locked with five degrees of starboard on, sir,' Campbell reported tersely.
As Icarus lost way, she began to lose her relative bearing on Oileus. ' Break away!' The buffer was leaping for the RAS slip, where the man stood with the hammer; the oil hose was tautening, beginning to drag forward.
'Knock off the flaming thing!' The first lieutenant was yelling through his loud-hailer. The buffer snatched the hammer and clouted at the slip himself.
Hob felt the shiver as the wire jack-stay, complete with probe, hose and roller jockey, flicked clear. Icarus was relentlessly swinging to starboard, her stem now abreast Oileus' funnel and the towering superstructure of her after island.
'Full astern port engine.' Trevellion's command cracked like a pistol shot. Hob held his breath as the quartermaster's fingers tore at the telegraphs. The two ships were separated by only a few yards… in his imagination, Hob could hear the scream of tortured steel.
The telegraph repeat indicators flickered their response; the ship trembled, and when Hob looked up again he glimpsed the faces of Dutch seamen, peering down from the Oileus' guard rails, from her flight deck high above. The huge curve of her transom was rolling on top of Icarus' jack-staff — and then the frigate was shuddering and pounding to the colossal astern power. The seas boiled white as Icarus was heeled over by the tanker's threshing wake.
Hi! Sparger felt the shock wave; even from where he was sitting at his desk in his cabin, he knew instinctively whence the explosion originated: his cabin was two decks above the DO room. For months, day and night, he had been dreading it. As he reached for his cap, the fire alarm brayed through the ship.
He could smell the reeking fumes even before he reached the Burma Road — and then the stench of fire as he dropped down the second ladder. The hands were already unreeling the hose and wrenching at extinguishers.
The Chief Stoker was taking charge. While the firefighters were scrambling into their ' fearnought' gear, others were already prising out the axes and reaching for the breathing sets. One of the ship's standing fire party had already 'crash-stopped' the ventilation.
'Fane's down there!' The sprog MEM, his face white, was screaming at the frenzied hands.
The Chief Stoker was crouched over the CO2 drenching-valve to the DG room. He glanced at his MEO, the agonizing question in his eyes.
'Hold on,' Sparger shouted. 'You ready, fire party?'
A white heat fanned from the DG hatchway; tongues of crimson flame darted through, while gobs of brown fumes billowed outwards. Sparger sprang backwards as the sheet of fire flayed his skin. The roaring conflagration drowned his orders as he watched the scene helplessly. A grotesque figure in a fire-fighting suit stumbled past, the nozzle hose in his gloved hands. Sparger felt the bulkhead doors thudding shut above him, heard the hatches slamming down.
The fire-fighter staggered backwards, his arm across his face. He was shaking his head, choking as the flames leaped higher, curling along the deckhead and the passage-way: no man could survive the inferno below. The whole ship was now at risk.
'Open the drenching valve,' Sparger shouted, grabbing the fire-fighter's arm and pointing to the hatch still clipped back on its Samson-post.
'Shut the hatch!'
The man lumbered forward; his ponderous gloves fumbled with the lock. He dragged at the hatch, lurched backwards and watched it crash on to its coaming.
Crouched over the open valve, the chief stoker was staring up at Sparger. Glimpsing the momentary signal of understanding in the man's tormented eyes, Sparger stumbled aft, choking from the fumes and smoke. Someone caught him as he fell and bundled him over on his back. As they smothered the flames flickering across his clothing, Sparger passed out.
It was 1154 when Sparger finally saw the temperatures dropping in the thermometer which was stuck on the outside of the hatch. The CO2 drenching had been total. Even if the gas had not drowned the conflagration the flames must have long been extinguished: the ventilation was still shut off, the hatch clipped down….
L/RO Osgood had been trying to reach the scene of the fire. They let him through, silently elbowing him towards the front of the fire-fighters while the ship wallowed, stationary, in the Atlantic.
'Chief Stoker!' Osgood shouted.
The sweating chief turned. ' Okay, Osgood. Put on a suit.'
The fire party took him down with them.
The silence was what unnerved Osgood most as he clambered down the ladder, the stillness in the compartment through which the air was blowing. When he reached the plates, still hot beneath his feet, a fire-fighter in a fearnought suit pushed him gently towards the port after corner of the DO room. Something lay on the deck on the far side of No. 2 generator, behind the ladder.
'Oh Christ,' he whispered, his eyes focussing on what had once been Niv Fane. Oz bent down and pulled the gold ring from the remains of Niv's finger. It came away easily. He knelt down, felt again the shrivelled flesh. He glanced over his shoulder as the leading medical assistant began slipping the Neil-Robinson stretcher beneath the remains. Oz covered the corpse with the blanket which the LMA gave him; and then they began the trek up the ladder and aft to the sick bay.
'C'mon, Osgood.'
It was the Master-at-Arms who took him by the shoulder and firmly pushed him from the green painted compartment. He led him back down the Burma Road to the Regulating Office.
'You'll be needing a tot,' was all Campbell said, closing the half-doors behind them.
It was 1730 when flying stations were piped. The ship had cleared Oileus' counter by only a few feet and was under way again. She was steaming at twenty-five knots to catch up with STANAVFORLANT, the MEG having diagnosed the problem in the recalcitrant turbo: a matter of a faulty governor. Osgood had the first dog watch, but the chief radio supervisor had relieved him when the pipe — ' Hands lay aft for funeral service' — came through the general broadcast.
The cold breeze cutting across the quarterdeck jerked Osgood from his shocked state. He shook his head, sniffing the air, as he pulled the collar of his anorak about his ears. On the grid was the Lynx, the ship's flight party fussing about it while the pilot inspected the machine, peering beneath the fuselage, checking, always checking. The ' tell-tale' ribbons were fluttering in the breeze; dropping through the angry line-squall, the sun was already dipping towards the endless rows of white horses spilling along the horizon.
Silent officers and men fell in by divisions across the quarterdeck; a pathetic bundle, swathed in its white ensign, lay on the deck amidships, a few yards ahead of the Lynx's nose. Everyone not on watch seemed to be there. When Osgood reached the quarterdeck, the ranks shivered where room was made for him.