“What the bloody hell—?” began Johnson.
“Shut your face!” ordered a CPO sternly.
Young William Spence, already putting on his asbestos suit and helmet with breathing apparatus, looked up at the CPO, a man he’d never seen before, and in that second the unfamiliarity of the man’s face and the noise were so disorientating that for Spence it momentarily took on the aspect of a nightmare.
“Get on your ‘casper’s’ pack like Spence here,” the CPO said to Johnson. “And follow me.” Spence was surprised the man knew his name until he remembered they all had their names on their shirts. “Come on, Johnson — between Spence and me. Move!”
“All right, all right,” moaned Johnson, pulling on the fire-retardant suit and tightening his head gear.
As the chief petty officer opened the hatch leading down to the engine room, they were enveloped in clouds of steam that instantly fogged their masks. They could hear men screaming and the rushing, bubbling sound of the water.
“We should abandon ship!” shouted Johnson, his voice nasal in his suit. “Bucket’s going to sink!”
“Shine your light over there!” the CPO ordered Spence. “Port side.”
One of the big gas turbines was still going, despite the captain ringing the telegraph to stop all engines, the torque on the prop enough to keep it turning, but jerking the ship, pushing and pulling it like an animal still moving though brain-dead. They couldn’t hear any more screaming, Johnson urging them to get out of it while they could. Then, just as suddenly as the explosion, the turbine stopped, telling the CPO that someone in the engine room had managed to reach the controls of the manual override after the automatic controls had been severed. Or perhaps the turbine had cut out of its own accord? Spence thought he heard a faint cry above the rushing water and the now creaking sound of the ship — but it was difficult to be certain when one wanted so much to help. Spence saw a subby, or junior lieutenant, walking up the incline of the slanting passageway, blowing high and low on his whistle, telling everyone to report to their boat stations immediately.
“See, I bloody told you,” began Johnson.
Spence had never been so petrified in all his life, but he could hear a voice. “Here, Chief,” he said to the petty officer, his voice dry, with an almost squeaky quality to it in his fear. “I’ll have a gander.”
“All right, lad. Here, loop this about you. I’ll take up the slack.” The CPO started feeding out the yellow nylon rope, taking a turn around one of the ladder’s rungs.
“Too short tugs from you,” he called out to Spence, “and I’ll haul. Make it snappy as you can.”
“Righto, Chief.”
“Righto, my arse,” said Johnson.
Spence was now up to his chest in surprisingly warm water, the ice-cold Atlantic momentarily heated by the dying gas steam turbines.
“Listen, mate,” yelled Johnson, “you want to play bloody hero, you go ahead, but I think—”
There was another explosion; this time the ship pushed hard aport fifteen degrees, its whole structure shuddering. Spence was off the last rung, underwater, the CPO and Johnson sucked off the ladder as well, the CPO barely managing to hold on to the rung around which he’d taken a turn with the nylon rope. In the thick fog that now filled the rapidly flooding engine room, Spence glimpsed Johnson’s fire-red air tank going past him, Johnson screaming. Spence made a grab, felt a boot, and hung on with his right arm, his left groping for a hold, any hold, as he felt his air supply cease, his mouth full of salt water and oil. He felt a violent wrenching, his shoulder driven so hard into a stanchion that, putting his left arm out to grab it before he was swept away again, he felt his hold on Johnson weakening, the seaman not helping by panicking and thrashing about. But with all his will Spence held fast to his shipmate. His left boot touched something and he let it take all his weight. It was one of the upper rungs on a stairway thirty feet farther down the engine room from where they’d entered. As he hauled himself up, not yet realizing he had been driven so far down the engine room, thinking he had somehow been hauled back to the first ladder entrance, Spence, straining to hold Johnson’s head above, looked about in the fog for the CPO.
He was gone, the yellow nylon rope floating now about him and Johnson like some great water snake in a lake that had only minutes before been Peregrine’s engine room. The petty officer’s single turn about the rung on the first stairwell had saved Spence, who in turn had saved Johnson from being sucked out like the CPO through the gash in the engine room’s side.
Johnson already had his helmet and air tank off as he lumbered up the last dozen rungs to the top, water rising quickly behind them. He swore violently at the inner tie of the asbestos trousers, which his fingers were plucking at frantically, his words a torrent of frenzied invective. Spence was now out of his suit but was still looking back to see if there was any sign of the CPO. A body washed past them, its face puffy, purple, and badly lacerated — an engineering officer, by his arm stripes, the facial wounds remarkably clean.
“My Gawd!” said Johnson, taking the last steps in twos, spinning open the ring lock door, stumbling out as the ship leaned farther to port, the door slamming shut, opening on the rebound, revealing a new hissing surge of water rising in the engine room. Spence, still inside, tripped on the second to top rung, a foot from the door’s sill, and instead of catching hold of the ring handle at the door’s center, his fall meant that he just managed to grab the sill. “Hang on!” he called to Johnson. Johnson paused for a second, heard the hiss of more water, slammed the hatch shut, spun the wheel, and bolted, knocking down an artificer on the now sharply inclined passageway.
Dazed, lifting himself up, the artificer saw the door of the engine room move, its high, mouselike squeal audible amid the deeper rumble of the ship that was now sinking, as millions of gallons sought to fill every possible space, ironically bringing the ship back to a stable position before it began listing again, this time to starboard. The artificer saw the wheel move again and was about to reach for it when the door flew open on the downward incline and a seaman came tumbling out, slamming against the opposite bulkhead. For a moment as the artificer leaned on the door, pushing it shut and spinning the wheel, water bubbling out about his feet like an overflowing toilet, he thought the seaman was wearing red Day-Glo gloves.
Coming up, splashing behind them, was a CPO from the combat control center. “Come on, you two. Topside. Old girl’s had—” He saw Spence collapse onto the deck, and now the artificer saw what he had thought were red gloves.
On the deck they laid William Spence down on a net stretcher, the roaring light above him so bright, it seemed he was entering the sun. A sick bay attendant struggled for several minutes beneath the down-blast of the helicopter’s blades and in the spray it was whipping up about them before he managed to give Spence a shot of morphine.
The OOD, his face bleeding, the cuts superficial, looking more serious than they were, cast a glance down at Spence. He thought he’d seen him in the galley once. He saw the seaman’s eyes open briefly, then shut. All about him there were men calling for help, some quietly moaning as the fury of the sea continued unabatedly, indifferently, to batter the dying ship.
The OOD was trying to decide the priority cases for the chopper’s first run. Amid the noise of the chopper, shouts of men dying around him, some washed overboard and lost already, the other ships unable to stop, the sick bay attendant realized that the officer’s glance at Spence was a silent question, but the attendant’s grimace was one of agonized indecision as he shouted above the roar of the helo, “Wouldn’t put money on it, sir. Then again—”