All the rest of that afternoon we were under power in order to stay head-to-wind, and slamming into it like that, the swoop and plunge of the bows became unbearably, exhaustingly violent. I no longer cared about anything. All my energies were set on keeping myself from being battered to pieces. And then, when I thought I could stand it no longer, the vibrations of the engine increased and the vertical movement eased, changing to a slow, deep roll. We were under way, with the seas almost broadside, and through the thickness of the hull I could hear the water hissing and creaming past.
The time was eight thirty-four. It would be dark now and I thought of the rig again, wondering how long it would be before we reached it and what was happening on that huge platform. Half an hour later the beat of the engine changed. It was no longer under power and we lay wallowing with occasional waves breaking aboard. I thought we had arrived, but then I heard the sound of a much more powerful engine. I could hear it very plainly, a solid, throaty roar, magnified by the fact that I was lying below the waterline. That, too, slowed and I thought I heard, very faintly, the sound of a hail and voices shouting. They were still shouting when the churn of a propeller close alongside drowned all sound, merging with the heavy beat of an engine's exhaust so close beside me and so loud that it seemed like a hammer drill attacking the walls of my prison. I thought my eardrums would split, it made such a thundering noise. Then it faded into a churning of water close alongside. We lay wallowing in its wash, and after a while we got under way again.
I thought it was Island Girl that had come alongside us and that we had now taken over the stand-by duty from her. But time passed and we held our course, rolling wickedly with the waves breaking against us on the starboard side, so that I knew we were steering south. We stayed on the same course for almost three hours, then the engine slowed and I heard the beat of another boat passing us to port, and after that it was all I could do to save myself from injury, for the seas were big now and we were headed straight into them, the fall and crash of the bows sudden and very violent. I heard the sound of movement on deck, orders being shouted, but only vaguely through the din of the waves. And then we turned and the roll threw me against the side.
I was still lying against the side, clutching the links of the chain under me, desperately trying to hold myself there, when I felt the first explosion through the timbers at my back, not heavy, more like a sharp tap against my shoulders. But I knew what it was, and lying there in the dark I could visualize the scene on deck, the fishing lights probing the darkness for the anchor buoys and that wicked little torpedo trailing astern, sending its impulses through the water to some submerged receiver on the end of a trailing wire that went down 500 feet to the explosive device grappled to a cable on the seabed.
Clinging to the links, I counted the minutes on my watch — four, five, and at five and a half the second tap of a detonation hit the timbers. Two of the anchors gone, the windward ones presumably. And then we were turning, but not into the seas — away from them, downwind. Footsteps in the hold and the door opening, the beam of light dazzling after the darkness. 'On deck.' A hand grabbed hold of my arm, hauling me to my feet, pulling me out of the locker and I was so cramped and exhausted I could hardly stand.
They dragged me up the narrow companionway that led direct into the wheelhouse and forced me to stand, propped against the closed door. I saw Dillon's face, but only as a blur, the wheelhouse lit by a weird glow. It shone on my father's twisted face, and I blinked my eyes, weeping after the long darkness. 'You heard the anchor cables go,' Dillon said. 'You heard, did you?'
I nodded, wondering what he wanted of me, and desperately trying to recover myself. I was sore all over, a deep ache.
'Your ship has cut numbers One and Four.' Your ship! What did he mean by my ship? His face was strangely lit, a livid red, his cheek puffed and a scab of dried blood on the side of his head where I had slammed it against the R/T transmitter. Slowly I turned, my weeping eyes narrowed against the glare. The bows swung wildly, the break of a wave lashing the windows, and suddenly I saw it, heaving and tossing in the glass panel opposite, Dillon's face no longer red, his head in silhouette.
It was the rig. It rose up out of the wildness of the seas no more than three cables away, towering above us and lit the way I had so often seen it, like a factory complex with the tall finger of the derrick climbing into the night, a tier of ruby lights. But now, from the very top of it, a long gas jet streamed in the wind, and at deck level, thrust out from the side of the platform at the end of a steel boom, a huge tongue of burning oil, a great flare of flame like a dragon's breath, pulsed into the night, spray jets of water shooting out in a lurid flare. " The moment we've been waiting for.' Dillon's voice was tense, his eyes glowing with a deep inner excitement. 'Only two anchors holding her, the wind around thirty knots, gusting forty, and yours the only ship here.'
I looked at my father, sitting wedged in the corner of the wheelhouse, a crumpled, silent figure. Quite ruthless. His words came back to me as Dillon's voice, tight with tension, said, 'We're turning now for the final run. And when we cut those two remaining cables she'll go, just like that.' He banged his hand on the flat of the ledge we used as a chart table, and the boat completing its turn, his face was lit again by the red flaring of the oil, the skin shiny with sweat, his eyes glowing. 'They won't have time to disconnect or operate the kill and choke. And at the end of it all it's you they'll blame.' And he added, 'But once you're in the inflatable you won't care. You won't care about anything, you'll be too frightened.'
My mind was slow and confused, unable to grasp his meaning, still thinking of the rig and the cold ruthless drive of this man who could see the killing of so many men, a group of fellow workers, the destruction of the rig, as justified, as part of the struggle…
'You could have done it for us,' he said. 'You could have done it, so easily. And I asked you. I came to you-'
'I'm not a murderer,' I said, my voice strained and hoarse.
'You think it's murder?' His voice had risen. 'How can it be murder when you're fighting a war?' The man at the helm reported 'On course', but he took no notice. 'Korea, Vietnam, Angola — a soldier doesn't call it murder when he destroys defenceless villages, or a pilot when he bombs a town, spreads napalm and burns up innocent children. And if anybody dies out there, it'll be their own fault. They've got safety rafts, scrambling nets-'
They're testing,' I said, cutting short his outburst of self-justification. 'There's oil flowing up from thousands of feet down, under pressure — and this ship's a floating mine.'
'And who will they blame? — not me.' He laughed, but no mirth in it and his eyes cold with contempt. 'I gave you the chance to prove yourself. Think of Villiers, with the oil flowing and his shares booming. He'll make millions out of this. Is that the sort of world you want?'
'Destruction doesn't build a new world,' I said.
'What do you care about a new world? You're not a fighter. You're not one of us. You're nothing. A little shit of a bourgeois radical who can't make up his mind which side he's on. Radicals!' He spat the word out. 'Get him into the boat.'