'Are you sure they've checked everywhere?' Villiers asked. 'All the compartments with doors that could lock or jam?'
Smit nodded. 'I go down in the lift and search the torpedo compartments myself. All storerooms, refrigerator plant, ve even open the store on deck for sea safety equipment — he is nowhere on the barge.'
Villiers didn't say anything. He didn't thank him. He just stood there, staring at the bank of radio equipment. In the end he sat down and drafted a telex message to Ed Wiseberg's wife. He read it through, made several corrections, then handed it to the operator. 'Send that right away please.' And we went to the galley for a meal, which he ate quickly, hardly saying a word.
Afterwards I went up on to the helicopter deck. It had stopped raining and the wind had fallen right away. I could see the trawler's lights quite clearly bobbing up and down about four cables to the south of us. I was there about half an hour, thinking of the big Texan toolpusher, and about his wife and the sons that had been born in different oil areas of the world, a strange, wandering life. It must have required a lot of courage for him to end it in this alien element, going down into the seething surge of the waves beneath his last rig. And Fiona, the two of them so different, each seeking a way out.
I felt sad and depressed as I turned at last to go below in search of Smit. The wind had already backed into the south-west and increased a little. It was raining again and I could no longer see the lights of the Duchess. I found the Dutchman in the radio room talking to Sparks and I suggested he get the spare cable and anchor ready just in case. Then I went in search of Villiers.
He was in the barge engineer's office again, standing at the table with Chart 1118B spread out in front of him. 'If the remaining cable broke,' he said, 'how far {Jo you reckon we could drift in twenty-four hours?'
'Depends on the wind force.'
'Of course. Say an average over the whole period of thirty knots and the general direction westerly.'
I had joined him at the table, staring down at the chart. 'I have a pretty good idea of the drift of a trawler. But this thing.' I shook my head. I just didn't know. 'The windings must be colossal.'
'What would a trawler's drift be?'
'Ignoring tidal current, about one to two knots — say around thirty to forty miles over the full 24-hour period.'
'And Papa Stour only twenty-five miles to the east of us. We could be on the rocks there in less than twenty-four hours.'
'Not necessarily,' I said. 'Against the windings you have to reckon on the pontoons, the drag of the columns. It could work out about half the drift of a ship, J73 perhaps even less. But if the cables don't break under the strain, then the anchors will hold us — or if they drag, the drift will be slowed until the anchors hold again as we drag into shallower water.'
'So we're all right if the anchor cables don't break?' He nodded thoughtfully. 'Better see if you can organize Smit and his men-'
'I've already advised him to get that spare anchor ready. But I don't think we should drop it unless we're in real trouble, and then only in much shallower water.'
We argued about that for a time. In the end he agreed. But as I was leaving to go on deck, he said, 'So long as nobody gets hurt. I don't want anybody else-'
'Men don't try and get themselves killed,' I said sharply. 'And no good warning them, it only makes them think about it and then they get scared. These things either happen or they don't.'
I left him then and went up to the pipe deck, where the engineers and a whole gang of roustabouts were working in the glare of the spotlights to wind the new cable on to No. 4 winch. It would have been better if they could have rigged it on No. 1 winch, which was facing due west now, but as Smit pointed out to me, it had to be a winch within reach of one of the two cranes, since there was no other way of hoisting a fifteen-ton anchor out over the side.
It was past midnight before they had it all set up, the anchor shackled on and bowsed down to the deck. By then the wind was strong to gale force from the % south-west. We all went down to the mess for coffee, then turned in. Villiers and I had taken over Ed Wise-berg's quarters and he was already occupying the upper berth of one of the two-tier bunks. It was very hot in the cabin, the blowers full on, and he stirred as I switched on the light. 'Everything all right?'
'Blowing hard,' I said. 'And there's a big sea running.' Down here I was more conscious of the movement of the rig, a slow rise and fall, the floor of the cabin sloped and rolling slightly under my feet. 'They've rigged the spare anchor and set a watch on all three cable tension indicators.'
He grunted. 'We'll just have to hope for the best then.'
I switched from the overhead light to my bunk reading lamp, stripped to my borrowed underwear and was asleep as soon as my head touched the pillow.
It was Villiers who woke me, shaking my shoulder and telling me the last anchor cable had just parted. The light was on and he was fully clothed, his rig issue overalls gleaming wet, a safety helmet on his head. 'What's the time?' I asked.
'Just on six-thirty. The tension indicators were showing over three-fifty kips on the dials. I don't know what that is in tons, but it was too much. The first cable parted shortly after four.'
I swung my legs off the bunk, reaching for my clothes. 'You should have woken me.'
'Nothing you could do.'
That was true. 'What's the wind force?'
'Between fifty and fifty-five knots — a lot more in the gusts. And it's coming out of the north-west now.'
So the depression was passing to the north of us and moving away. 'We'll need to fix our position hourly to check the rate of drift.'
'I think Hans is doing that. And the radio operator on duty is getting on to the Met. Office for the latest forecast.'
'And the tug?' I asked.
'Hove-to off the north-east of Scotland. He says the Pentland Firth is out of the question and he can't make the east side of Orkney because it means a beam sea across the entrance to the Firth.'
He waited while I finished scrambling into my clothes and then we went along to Telecommunications. It was the same operator I had met months ago and Hans Smit was still there. He handed me the weather sheet. Depression of 977 millibars almost stationary to the NE of the British Isles expected to clear all areas by noon followed by shallow ridge of high pressure with winds northerly 20–30 knots backing SW as deep depression of 958 moves in from the Atlantic. This depression still deepening and storm or violent storm conditions with hurricane force winds locally expected in sea areas Bailey, Hebrides, Faroes, Fair Isle within next 24 hours.
'Any chance of getting helicopters out before that lot hits us?' I was thinking of all the men we had cooped up on board with nothing to do. And the Duchess out there. She ought to run for shelter, now while she had the chance. % 'Depends what sort of clearance we get when that ridge of high pressure comes through,' Villiers said.
But we never got any clearance, and the ridge of high pressure did not materialize. All that day the depression to the north-east of us stayed almost stationary, and the wind did not lessen, drifting us south-eastward. It was impossible to stand on the helicopter deck, and clinging to the guard rail just outboard of the toolpusher's office, I stared through slitted eyes at the waste of water below. I was accustomed to seeing heavy seas, but from the deck of a trawler, or in the shelter of its bridge. Perched up here, sixty to seventy feet above the water, I was looking down on to. an ocean on the move, long lines of great shaggy wave crests marching endlessly, toppling and bursting; dense streaks of foam streaming out along the direction of the wind. Flurries of rain, and in between the.rainstorms I caught glimpses of the Duchess pitching madly, rolling her guts out, and I thought of Gertrude, worrying about that patch in the hull, worrying about the engines and how long the ship could go on taking it.