Robin walked down the deck with a youthful spring in her step, tired after last night’s taxing searches but uplifted by the beauty of the day; utterly unaware of how close to death she was.
The chair itself was like a child’s swing: a short plank of wood served as a seat; another plank, a few feet above it, held the ropes far enough apart to allow one occupant, lashed safely, to sit on the lower. Above the top plank, the two ropes supporting the seat became one, rising through a pulley. The pulley was raised six feet above the deck and angled out over the side by a carefully anchored tripod made of metal bars.
The equipment and its arrangement were to be found on any ship. Its use was entirely routine. Robin was not even supposed to be using it this morning. She was simply supposed to be stowing it away. But what she saw as she came onto the forecastle head changed all that instantly.
It was a ship. A felucca, with tall castles fore and aft; with what once must have been a proud mast bearing a gull-winged sail now snapped off short and gone over the side. She was not small. From stem to stern she must have measured all of forty feet. Nor was she a weak or ill-found vessel. That was obvious from the fact that her hull was still in one piece, wedged across the tanker’s bow like that.
Robin stood on Prometheus’s prow and looked down upon her, scarcely able to believe what she was seeing. The others clustered round her, silently, also struck with awe. The two ships must have collided sometime during the night. After midnight, the forecastle head watch had been searching for Hajji Hassan with the rest. Such was the size of the supertanker that the shock of impact had gone unnoticed. The felucca’s lights, had she been carrying any, had gone unseen. The cries of her crew, had she been manned, had gone unheard. She had simply ridden up onto the bow-wave above the great torpedo-shaped protrusion at the base of the bow, and hit at its thinnest part.
And there, in spite of the width of the forecastle, of the bluntness of the upper bow; in spite of the weight of the felucca herself sitting well clear of the water, there she remained: wedged across Prometheus’s bows like a tiny cross on a huge capital T.
Looking straight down from her current position, Robin could see where the tanker had chopped into the little ship, crushing her planking out to either side exactly amidships on the starboard side, cutting in almost as far as the broken mast. Cracks, some of them ragged and wide, stretched left and right, nearly from stem to stern, showing here and there a glimpse of what lay below. Everything on the felucca was still and silent, except for the hollow thud of the swells against her bottom.
Robin looked across at Kerem Khalil. “You ever seen anything like this?”
The Palestinian shook his head.
“The rest of you?”
“I heard of something like this,” said one. Some of the others nodded. Robin found herself doing the same. They had all heard that it was possible. That it had happened before. None of them had ever seen it. Until now.
They stood, looking down at it for a few more seconds. Stories like this were once in a lifetime. They didn’t want to share this one yet.
And then the screaming started.
Again they did nothing, looking askance at each other, knowing that what they could hear was some kind of illusion. Had to be some kind of illusion. There could be no crew left aboard. There could be no one left aboard. Unless some youngster was there, too badly hurt to join the rest. Unless it was not a crew member, but someone else. A slave, perhaps; for the felucca must have been up to no good, running dark and silent in the night.
Robin thumped the rail once, hard, as she had thumped Angus El Kebir’s desk not so long ago, and was in action. “Swing the chair round here. I’m going down.”
Kerem was about to argue, but he asked himself — as Salah Malik would have done — Would I argue with the mate? The answer was no. He saw no reason to argue with the woman, therefore. She was perfectly competent.
And the screaming was that of a child.
“What’s that woman up to now?” asked Ben testily, looking down the length of the deck from the bridge.
“Checking your work, perhaps,” John needled cheerfully.
“Damn cheek. She’d better hurry, though. She’s due to relieve you in twenty minutes.”
“I don’t mind.”
“I do. I’ll have this run like a proper ship. Women or no women,” snapped the first officer, and stalked off the bridge.
Kerem looked down at the woman walking across the felucca’s deck, every bone in his body shrieking danger. He wished Salah was here. He glanced back at the bridge with an overwhelming feeling of frustrated impotence. There were four of the team now, instead of six. Himself and three others. He must keep an eye on the third mate. The other three must hold the rope. When the felucca went, they would have to pull her up at once, or she was dead.
He had no walkie-talkie and there was no one he could send for help.
Down here the noise was almost overwhelming. The drum roll of the bow wave sounded continuously against the felucca’s keel. Each separate BOOM! of a larger wave was followed by a cacophony of screeches and groans as planks and pegs strained to tear apart. It was a wonder the child’s screams could be heard above it all.
Yet there it was again: a plaintive, terrified howl. But where was it coming from?
Robin went down as though she were kneeling on broken glass. “Hello?” she called. Abruptly, the screaming ceased. “HELLO?” Louder. She knew the child wouldn’t understand English, of course. But at least it would know there was someone near. She paused. Silence. “Where are you?”
Silence.
She remained where she was, half kneeling, and looked very carefully around the deck. Both the fore and after castles were big enough to hold a child, and yet it seemed to her that the cries had come from straight ahead. And immediately in front of the stump of the mast there was an open hatchway. She crouched onto all fours, like a cat. Inch by inch, she began to crawl forward. Every now and then a wave slightly larger than the rest would explode against the bottom of the wreck, causing it to lift, causing great pieces of wood to spring free against Prometheus’s stem and fall rattling like dry bones into the sea, causing the hulk to scream even more loudly than the child. When this happened, Robin would freeze, watching her shadow on the deck, watching her sweat mark the dry planks beneath her as the drops cascaded off her face. And as they landed, increasingly frequently they would roll forward and down, away from her as the slope of the deck increased.
I’m going to die here, she thought. I’m going to bloody well die…I’m going to sodding well die…I’m going to…As she moved, so her language became fouler.
And the hatchway came closer.
At the lip of the hatchway, she was faced with a dilemma. Should she keep the chair on as she went down? The obvious answer seemed to be yes, and yet, if the felucca went while she was below and she was still tied in, she could all too easily be torn to pieces. On the other hand, if she untied herself, then went with the felucca, she would be just another man overboard.
And, of course, the rope would make it more difficult to reach the child if anything did go wrong.
It was that more than anything which decided her.
“What is she doing?” cried one of the others to Khalil as soon as he felt the rope slackening in his hands.
“She’s taking the chair off. I think she’s going below…” Kerem turned and deliberately started signaling to the bridge.