Smith tore his eyes from the man and back to the task in hand. He shouted against the wind, “Port four points!” And: “Midships!” And: “Ease on port engine!” Thunder’s bow swung around to point seawards and her stern swung to pass across the bow of the Mary Ellen. “Close. Close!”
From behind him Aitkyne’s voice came strangled, “Christ Almighty! She —”
But Smith knew she wouldn’t strike. The figures on the collier’s fo’c’sle scrambled away from the sudden towering steel cliff of Thunder’s stern hanging over them but that cliff eased away from them as the weighted line was hurled. It landed right across the men on the fo’c’sle and they tailed on to it and dragged it in. Both ships were driven towards the shore now, the Mary Ellen by the storm, Thunder because Smith held her close on the collier as if that thread-like line dragged her. The sea was setting Thunder down quicker than the collier because it exerted more pressure on Thunder’s vastly bigger hull and she wasn’t dragging anchors. Smith had to keep just enough way on her to balance that pressure. “Slow ahead together! … Ease on port engine! … together! …”
A messenger cable of grass rope was bent to the line and drawn over to the collier because the line would not take the strain of hauling in the weight of the wire towing hawser. A donkey engine, the auxiliary engine to power her windlass, hammered faintly on the collier and hauled in the messenger cable and then the towing hawser that was bent to it. And all the time came the stream of orders to engines and helm as Smith juggled with them and the pressures of wind and sea on Thunder’s twelve-thousand-ton bulk and the three-thousand tons of the Mary Ellen. A mistake could throw Thunder astern on to the collier — or send her lunging away to yank the tow from the collier before it was secured and leave the whole painful business to be done again. Outside of the dancing, swinging lights on the cruiser’s stern and the collier’s fo’c’sle the night was a howling darkness.
But they could see the shore and it was close, the breaking surf marked by a line of phosphorescence.
A lamp blinked morse from the collier’s fo’c’sle. The donkey-engine was silent. In confirmation of the signal Aitkyne called, “First Lieutenant reports ‘Tow secured’, sir.”
“Very good!” Smith did not take his eyes off the tow. “Slow ahead together. Cox’n! Watch for the strain coming on!” Because the Mary Ellen’s weight would act like a huge sea-anchor dragged astern of Thunder. “Ease on port engine … Slow ahead together.”
The strain came on. He saw the hawser slowly straighten, the slack loop of it lifting from the sea. It tautened as Thunder eased away from the collier, and they all felt the shudder and an instant’s check before Thunder paid off again. Smith’s orders went on as he watched the tow for the first signs of the collier yawing and ordered again and again to correct it. Someone aboard the Mary Ellen was doing his best to steer and that was helping but while Thunder pulled her one way sea and gale tried to shove her the other.
It took over an hour to tow her out and around the headland into the little bay beyond. Smith grew hoarse. Someone brought him a mug of cocoa, hot so that it burned his fingers and scalded his tongue, grease floating on the top of it. He gulped it down when he could and then was hoarse again.
“Rig fenders and boarding nets. When we secure I want a party of men forward and another aft, both under a good Petty Officer who knows what he’s about on this kind of business.”
“Aye, aye, sir.” And Aitkyne hesitated then burst out, “Congratulations, sir!” He still could not believe they had plucked the Mary Ellen off the shore. Smith saw no reason for congratulations. He had done what had to be done. Had to be done. He said tiredly, “For God’s sake get her people off as soon as you can.” And: “Hands to coal ship!”
In the, only comparatively, sheltered waters of the bay Smith laid Thunder alongside the Mary Ellen and anchored fore and aft. The ships were bound together forward and aft with securing warps, and ground on the fenders hung between them. The searchlights crackled and blazed out, beams flooding on the collier’s hatches and the working parties swarmed on to her deck.
Smith squinted against the glare. If the cruisers came up with them now —! But they were not so close — if they were there at all. He thrust aside the recurring doubt and shouted, “Mr. Garrick! Use the boat derrick as well!”
Garrick lifted one hand in acknowledgment.
Normally the collier’s derricks were rigged with the cruiser’s the winches of both of them working together to hoist the coal from the collier and swing it across and inboard. That would only work so long as the collier had steam for her winches. The big boat derrick that hoisted in the pinnace was the only one long enough to reach out over the collier’s hold and hoist out coal on its own. The hands were still setting up the rigging between cruiser and collier of the other derricks when the boat derrick yanked out the first load.
‘Hands to coal ship.’ It was a fact of life for the ship’s company that she coaled every week or ten days. It was heavy, filthy work and only the Captain was excused. But this time they would remember.
Because of the gale. Aboard the collier they threw off the hatch-covers and jumped down into the holds with their shovels. The coal was packed tight and the devil to break into as always but now they worked in a gale that rolled both ships together so that the coal shifted and slid in an oily, mountainous flow and they staggered and fell as they worked. They shovelled the coal into sacks and these were swung up out of the holds by the derricks, ten sacks to a strop, swayed over and lowered to Thunder’s deck.
Between the coaling scuttles in her deck and the bunkers far below were the mess-decks. So canvas chutes were rigged between scuttles and bunkers. The sacks were wheeled on barrows to the scuttles and the motion of the ship set the barrows grinding hard or trying to run away with the men. It was hard and it was dangerous. They emptied the sacks down the scuttles and the coal fell down the chutes into the bunkers. There was never a chute that did not leak but coaldust found its way anywhere, anyway, so the mess-decks were filthy.
In the dust-filled gloom of the bunkers they worked with smarting eyes, soaked sponges tied across noses and mouths, trimming the coal. They staggered with the lift and plunge of the ship and the groaning and creaking of the two ships working together was a hellish noise in the steel drums of the bunkers, punctuated by the roar and crash as the coal came down. They always counted men into and out of the bunkers because men had been buried by coal.
In spite of the gale they worked in a frenzied haste, coaling faster than they had ever done because there was not a man who did not know what coal meant to the ship, and that time was against them. This coaling was different because the collier was sinking. Aboard Thunder they could see it. They would glance at the collier and when they looked again they saw she was a little lower in the water. The Petty Officers and men on the securing warps could feel it because as the collier sank the warps had to be eased. While they held her in to Thunder’s side they would not hold her up from the sea that claimed her. It was delicate nerve-racking work. Ease the warp too much and the collier would swing away to slam back against Thunder’s side, ease it too little and the strain would part it and the whip-crack of a parting warp could kill a man.