“Right-ho, sir,” said Slope cheerfully, and he was gone.
Richard leaned back against the headrest which, with the swivel foot, made his chair look like a dentist’s chair. On the shelf beneath the port windows was his radio transceiver handset: his R/T. He picked it up and switched it on, ready to receive.
“Third Mate here. Sir?”
“Captain here. Receiving you loud and clear.”
“Just going out onto the port…” Slope probably said more, but he cut himself off by switching to Receive too soon.
“Report when you reach the Sampson posts. Over. Can you see him, Ben? The port bridge wing’s in my way…”
“No, sir.”
“No? Strange. Must be thicker than I…”
“It’s not that, sir. I can see the deck. He’s not there.”
“Third Mate. This is the captain. Do you receive me?”
The R/T hissed. Nothing more. Like sand grains brushing over silk. A sinister sound. Something’s wrong, thought Richard.
“Slope?”
No reply. Nothing.
He was on his feet without further thought. His voice remained calm, but he let a little urgency into it. “She’s yours, Ben. I’m going to look for the third mate.” There was another R/T on the chart table. He gestured to it. “John. You monitor me.”
“Aye, sir. But take care. She’s a tricky ship.”
Richard gave a bark of laughter, then realized the Manxman was quite serious.
Crossing to the lift, he left the R/T on, but only a hiss came in, ghostly enough to make him think about John Higgins’s instinctive superstition.
The lift whispered down until the doors opened on A deck. Richard hurried across and stepped out onto the port side without pausing to think. Immediately, his face filled with sand. He had forgotten about this. Now that the Prometheus was at slow ahead, the wind was effectively gusting ten to fifteen knots; and freshening, by the feel of it. He slitted his streaming eyes and bundled his handkerchief over his nose and mouth, sneezing convulsively. The sand moved down his collar with a disturbing sense of personal invasion. Into his ears and up his nose. He sneezed again.
When his eyes cleared, he saw the monstrous tracks leading straight to the broken rail and understood at once the story they told of the third mate. Badly disoriented by the sand, he had stumbled forward into the rail which, like the Sat Nav, had not been all it seemed. Silently cursing the lackadaisical workmanship that had simply added another coat of varnish without checking the wood beneath, he shambled forward. There could be no mistake. “Man overboard! Stop engines! Man overboard!”
A second later, the whooping of the foghorn became the howl of the emergency siren. The throb of the engines stopped.
Richard was still by the broken rail, peering down into the red murk. Because of the sand he saw little. Because of the siren he heard nothing. Not the opening of the door behind him. Not the sand-muffled footsteps. Why he turned he would never know.
He saw Martyr’s face locked in a strange rictus: rage — horror — surprise. He could not tell. The man might simply have been going to sneeze, his face, like Richard’s face a minute before, unexpectedly full of sand.
Then their shoulders collided and Richard stepped back. Automatically, he caught the broken end of the rail. A substantial section of it filled his grasp, but then it simply crumbled as his full weight came upon it. Broke away and went to dust in his fist. One more step was enough and he was falling.
His mind spun as wildly as his body for a second. Images whirled like his arms and legs while the R/T sailed uselessly away. It occurred to him that Martyr might well have pushed Slope overboard in retaliation for this morning’s prank. Or he might be trying to revenge on Richard himself the humiliation of last night’s defeat in the Officers’ Lounge. He did not yet know the man well enough to make any sensible guess. Or of course John might be right. Maybe Prometheus was trying to get rid of her second crew that week.
He jerked in a desperate lungful of air.
Then the water exploded around him and he was, abruptly, thinking with absolute clarity.
He landed upright, facing in, ten feet from the tanker’s side. He plunged deep beneath the swirling surface, and was immediately sucked toward the huge metal wall. The black hull plunged down and down before him, curving away toward the keel. And that keel seemed to call to him, pulling him deeper and deeper still.
At the final end of his endurance, just as his lungs began to empty of their own accord, he felt the downward motion slow. He crossed his arms before his face and smashed into the unforgiving steel as he started up.
He exploded back into the air a bare few feet from the hull, still facing in. Immediately, even as he fought for the first, life-giving breath, he was half thrown, half sucked toward Prometheus as a wave worked with the ship’s movement.
He brought his feet up just in time, pushing his sodden desert boots against the slippery metal and kicking. His feet were snatched to the left. He wrenched shoulders and upper arms, paddling wildly to keep his feet between himself and his ship, choking in great ragged breaths as he did so. Much less than a quarter of the hull to go, he thought. And as the engine stopped, so the great propeller stilled. If he kept agile and lucky, he might get past the end of the ship alive.
Then there would only be the Gulf to contend with.
He could imagine Ben on the bridge, bringing Prometheus round in a Williamson turn. Probably swearing like a trooper. The thought made him smile.
He slid down another hugely buoyant, incredibly salty wave and kicked back, legs and belly smarting with the strain, water rushing in over his head and shoulders, exploding against the steel, foaming back to bury him.
Damn! The stuff even tasted of oil!
Abruptly, the most unexpected thing happened. The white bow of a lifeboat grazed down his left side and collided with Prometheus. There was a sound like the biggest gong in the world. Richard watched, overcome by it all.
Then arms reached down from the point and unceremoniously dragged him aboard, past a wildly whipping vertical length of rope. Miraculously, Martyr had managed to put the small port-side lifeboat down less than an arm’s length from him. Within seconds he had recovered himself and was kneeling beside the chief in the pitching little cockleshell. They leaned against each other gasping until another wave drove in, threatening to turn the boat to matchwood. Then their fingers were feverishly at work, trying to release the rope falls bow and stern before the sea ground the boat to splinters against the ship like a kernel of corn in a mill.
The next wave tumbled into them catching them still in the trough. Swamping them. Smashing them against Prometheus again. Something in the filthy foam wrapped itself lazily around Richard’s thigh. He kicked it free at once, thinking of the Gulf’s deadly sea snakes. It was only seaweed.
As soon as the fall whipped free of his hand, Richard pushed back past Martyr and swung the handle to start the engine. It caught at once. He opened the boat’s throttle and turned her head into the teeth of the next wave. It hurled them back to slam against the tanker once more, then rose beneath them, launching them down its back as though down a slipway. Water exploded up in great arcs on either side of the bow, and they were whirled away into the storm.
Even though the wind had strengthened, its action with the waves cleared the air down here. Richard could see farther now than he had been able to from the bridge. But it was Martyr, crouching in the bow like some misshapen figurehead, who saw Slope first, on the crest of a wave some fifty yards ahead. He turned, yelled, gestured. When he turned back, the third mate was gone.