‘Signing on now,’ said Sally, and he knew it was midnight.
His hand was actually resting on the cool black box of the walkie-talkie when it squawked. His fingers jumped away, then grabbed the instrument, almost fumbling with tension.
‘Yes?’
‘It’s John here, Richard. Encountering very strong eastward current. Turning to counter it as agreed … Now.’
The collision alarm radar screamed. ‘He’s drifting down on us fast,’ warned Sally.
‘Steady as she goes, please, helmsman. You’re coming down fast, John.’
‘Yes, I can see. Christ, but this is fierce, Richard. You’d think we were white-water canoeing here!’
‘It’ll catch us at any minute. Any report from your line watch?’
All the ships had deployed a watch on the tow line; the greatest strain of the whole voyage was likely to come now as the tankers were jerked eastwards by a force which the iceberg did not yet feel. Richard had ordered the lengthening of the tows so that the ships would stay well ahead of the ice at this point. The alternative was to risk Niobe being crushed against the ice cliffs down-Stream of her.
‘Line’s fine. Still drifting down on you. Niobe doesn’t like this. She’s very hard to control.’
Titan’s deck quivered. Richard’s heart leaped.
‘If Niobe comes closer than three kilometres, then give me a countdown, Sally. I want lots of warning if we have to get out of her way.’
‘Aye, sir.’
The deck quivered again.
‘Helmsman, watch for—’
‘Bugger me! Sorry sir, but—’
‘Three kilometres now and closing. My God!’
Titan’s head slammed round as though America had punched her on the jaw. ‘Line watch, we’re coming left hard!’ snapped Richard into his walkie-talkie. Then he reached down for the engine room telephone and pressed it to his left ear. ‘We’ve hit the Wall, Chief. Watch her!’
Titan groaned. It was as though she was alive. Her decking trembled, the whole of her long body shook. The stress on her sides and frame twisted towards her design capabilities. She was almost half a kilometre long. In spite of the care with which they had angled their approach to this point in the deep trench east of Flemish Cap, the sternmost two hundred metres of the ship wanted to go south and the forward two hundred wanted urgently to go east.
‘Still coming down on us. Two and a half kilometres.’
‘Thanks, Sally. Come left, helmsman, take us into it. Line watch, report.’
‘Capstan’s groaning a bit, Captain, but it’s holding. I’ve never seen a cable so tight.’
‘Niobe’s falling back a bit now. Two and three-quarter kilometres.’
‘Good.’
‘How is it with you, John?’
‘All right, Richard. I see you’re running east as agreed. We’ll swing round as soon as we’re right in. We can’t fight it, really, in any case. You’re the lucky one just giving in!’
‘RICHARD!’ A new voice on the walkie-talkie breaking into the tense conversation on the open channel. Richard felt his heart clench.
‘Yes, Colin?’
‘Can you hear thunder?’
‘No. There’s no weather—’
‘Captain! Line watch here. I can hear… My God!’
‘Sally! You have her. Steady as she goes. I’m just going out…’
Richard ran to the bridgewing door and wrenched it open. As he did so, he reached across, with the walkie-talkie hanging from his wrist, and snatched a pair of binoculars out of their pouch by the watchkeeper’s chair.
He ran out into clear air where moments before there had been impenetrable fog but he was too concerned to notice the change in the conditions. He raced along to the overhanging end and turned. Looking back from the furthest point port, squinting along the side of his ship from a position well outside her hull, he could see the tow and the capstan. More importantly, he could hear. There was thunder, gathering on the calm air. A deep, unending rumble of it, intensifying.
He slung the binoculars unhandily round his neck. Pressed the walkie-talkie to his mouth.
‘Colin? I can hear it! What is it?’
‘It’s the ice! It’s shaking!’
‘Sally!’ he bellowed. ‘Check the bottom.’
‘Three thousand metres.’
‘We haven’t run aground then, Colin, we’re still well clear of the Cap.’
‘Then what is it? It’s getting louder here. The ice is shaking! It’s like an earthquake!’
The whole of Titan lurched left hard enough to make Richard stumble. He slammed his binoculars to his eyes. The tow line, a black, gleaming bar in the moonlight, jerked and swung, like the second hand on some giant watch. The great ship’s wake was snatched away, the straight line coming after them out of the fog bank, broken like the fault line in a cliff, where it crossed the North Wall.
Comprehension dawned. ‘It’s the current! The Stream must be running further northward the deeper it goes. We’re in it here now on the surface. The ice must be coming into it below the surface!’
As he spoke, Richard looked up and what he saw snatched away his breath and his words alike.
From out of the foundations of the solid fog wall astern, out into the clear blue moonlight here, came the prow of Manhattan as though she was a ship standing three hundred metres sheer to the forecastle head. The black cables leaped forward from their claw-like handholds to the groaning capstans on Niobe and Titan, and quivered visibly with the strain of holding firm. Below the handholds, the cutwater fell into the slick, bright surface of the sea. And as he watched, the glassy curve of die water’s back exploded upwards against the white bow as Manhattan surged on out of the fog with a foaming bow wave at her bow foot made up of white water piling against her starboard quarter and tumbling down a metre or more into the hole in the water at her port. Even as he watched, stunned by the scale of this meeting of iceberg and Gulf Stream, the bow wave in Manhattan’s teeth exploded anew. A school of sleek dolphins, gleaming, almost luminescent, flew into the air and tumbled with the blue-white surf. Time and again they jumped out of the wild swirl of water, flying, tumbling and sporting there, until the wave began to settle as the bow came well and truly into the new eastward flow. But still the sound of the thunder boomed as more and still more of the ice fought back against the pressure of the water, the huge sound of its victory over the crushing current booming across the clear rushing waters of the North Atlantic around them.
At last Richard turned his back on Flemish Cap and Newfoundland and looked due east three thousand kilometres towards Europe.
Right, he thought. Biscay, here we come!
Chapter Fourteen
Thirty-six hours later, they had just crossed forty degrees west, heading east with Manhattan still in one piece and all the lines in place, when Kraken and Psyche came steaming down from the north towards them.
As far as Richard was concerned, conditions could not have been worse. There was an Indian summer in the mid-Atlantic and the air was calm, the skies clear, the sea warm and dazzlingly blue. The North Atlantic Drift meandered lazily eastward, sometimes helping, sometimes not. It was becoming difficult to maintain speed and impossible to slow the deterioration of the ice. Even the runoff which Yves had promised would form a cool, protective pool in the thick salt water around the berg and slow the process of melting was only causing restless clouds of fog which came and went mysteriously, inexplicably and, above all, irritatingly.