'How long before you chased them off?'
She shrugged. 'What does it matter? There is no law against purse-seine fishing, and it is their nets they risk.'
'And suppose one of them had had divers on board?'
'With bombs?' She laughed. 'Does your mind run on nothing else? I tell you they were just fishermen earning their living, the way we once try to earn ours.'
'How long?' I repeated.
It was Johan who answered. 'The fog came down shortly after midnight. It was about two hours after dawn before the last of the fishing boats made off.'
'Five or six hours then.' I was thinking what a well-trained frogman could achieve in five or six hours. But it was no good telling Gertrude what was in my mind. She wouldn't believe it. She wouldn't believe that there were forces at work planning the destruction of that monster lying motionless off our starboard quarter. I found it difficult to believe myself. 'Were you both on watch?' I asked. 'You and Johan, both or you?'
'Yes.'
'All through the night?'
'Yes, of course. They are shooting their purse nets inside the circle of the buoys, drifting them close by the rig, and in that fog it is very risky. I do not want to steam across the nets. I do not want any trouble with these Shetland fishermen.'
It explained the tiredness, the edginess, the general air of a ship that was without proper order and authority. 'Tell Flett to get me some food right away. Hot food, not lukewarm leftovers like this tea.' I handed her the mug. 'And call me at dusk. I'll stay on watch through the night. After that it will be normal routine.
I left them and went below to find a vacant bunk, hoping Johan would have the sense to make the most of the night's rest I was offering him. Flett came in with a tray just as I was getting into the bunk. There was coffee as well as a shepherd's pie, and both were scalding hot.
The twilight was darkening in the west when I was called, clouds building up like a ragged mountain range, peaks of cu-nim black against the last dying glow of sunset.
'They have all run for home,' Gertrude said. 'I think you have a quiet night.'
'Has Johan turned in?' Apart from Lars at the helm she was alone on the bridge.
'I think so.'
'Well, check that he has. I don't want a tired mate, or a tired crew. Those purse-seiners will be back, and unless we're tough with them, it's going to be hard to keep the area clear.'
She went through into the chart recess, entered up the log and then turned and went to the cabin behind the bridge without another word, her silence lingering as the last flicker of the day's warmth was snuffed out by the growing cloud cover. Soon it had spread right across the sky, the light fading and the movement of the ship increasing as wind and sea rose. I circled the rig just inside the buoys, the three-ton cans difficult to see and not a ship's light anywhere, only the rig blazing like a factory, the derrick jewelled with rubies. All the long night stretched ahead of me and nothing to do but think about my situation and what it was I had to guard against. For a time I tucked the Duchess close in under the rig, seeing myself as a marauding fishing boat bent on sabotage and trying to work out how they would do it, what method they would employ. But the sheer size of the rig made a nonsense of the exercise. No bomb carried by a diver could possibly do more than superficial damage, and to get at the weakest section of the cross-bracing a frogman would have to climb well above the level of the sea.
At 23.00 hours I got the financial news. The reference to Villiers came near the end. He had held a press conference and had attacked the directors and shareholders of the old Star-Trion company for letting their assets go to waste. As for the North Star rig and the Shetland licences, what had the Company ever done to establish whether there was oil there or not? They hadn't dared risk their money, so why attack him for risking his? Perhaps I was biased by the fact that he had ignored Fuller's advice and supported me, but I couldn't help a sneaking admiration for a man who fought back so strongly when forced into a corner. Somehow it gave me strength.
The forecast for inshore areas followed fifteen minutes later; the depression deepening with wind westerly Force 6 rising to Gale Force 7. We were already hove-to, our bows pointing just south of west. I switched off, and after that I had nothing but my thoughts for company. At midnight Henrik relieved Lars. For a moment the two of them were there by the wheel whispering and glancing at me. Then Lars went below. He returned a moment later with a steaming mug of cocoa and handed it to me without a word.
It was shortly after that, when we were nosing westward into a rainstorm to check for fishing vessels, that something hammered at the soles of my feet. I thought for a moment the old girl had fallen off the top of a rogue wave. But it wasn't that. We were in a trough with the sea gone dead in one of those lulls that happen sometimes. The empty mug was on the floor, clattering towards the side of the bridge, and the glass of the rev counter had a crack running across it.
I don't know why I went for the buoys. It was purely instinctive. My hand seemed to leap out for the telegraph and without any thought on my part I had rung for full speed and had ordered Henrik to steer nor'nor'west. I had the spotlight on, but with the rain driving across it, we had hell's own difficulty locating No. 4 buoy. I got it in the beam and then couldn't hold it, but it was there all right, and so was No. 3. Henrik, his mind Concentrated on the wheel, hadn't felt a thing. If it hadn't been for the mug and that crack in the rev counter glass I might have thought I had imagined it.
We steamed south and checked Nos. 1 and 2 buoys. Nothing wrong with them and I turned for the rig, calling the operator on duty to ask whether they had felt anything. But of course they hadn't. They were too high above sea level and the draw-works and the power plant were going all the time. I steamed close alongside the five south-facing column legs, then back up the north side. Everything was normal, the big tubular cross-bracings solid and undamaged. By then Gertrude was on the bridge, her fair hair tousled and a duffle coat over her pyjamas. She had been roused by the changes of engine note and the wildness of the movement, and she wanted to know what the hell was going on.
'Nothing,' I said. 'Just been checking the western anchor buoys, that's all.' I didn't tell her I thought I had felt some sort of explosion. It seemed too ridiculous with the rig towering over us and blazing with light, everything so obviously normal. 'Ever seen that crack in the glass there?' I asked her, pointing to the rev counter.
She looked puzzled, staring at it and then at me. 'Yes,' she said. 'It's been there ever since I can remember. Now it is a little more noticeable. Why?'
I shrugged. 'I hadn't noticed it before.' And I walked over to the mug and picked it up. All imagination, and Gertrude standing there looking at me very oddly. Was I beginning to suffer from some sort of persecution mania? I could have convinced myself of that, too, I think, but just as I had told her irritably to go back to bed and get some sleep, Henrik drew my attention to two men high up on the helicopter deck. They were peering down over the edge of it and one of them was pointing to the column leg below winches 1 and 2. A wave reared up and I was flung against the side of the bridge. Gertrude was close beside me. 'What is it?' she asked.
We were coming back on the other roll, the ship broadside to the seas as Henrik took her down the west-facing side of the rig towards the corner where the men standing high above us had been joined by several more, all of them leaning over the edge gazing down at the cable stretched from the winch to the underwater block. I rang for slow and turned the boat head-to-wind, watching from the gangway as men began running to the far side of the rig. 'What is it?' Gertrude called out again, and this time there was a note of urgency in her voice.