- and now there was this.
He would be happy to maintain course and speed, and to run them down.
They were flaunting themselves, challenging him to do it - and, by God,
they deserved it, However, he was a seaman, with a seaman's deep concern
for human life at sea. It would go against all his instincts not to
make an effort to avoid collision, no matter how futile that effort
would be. Then beside him one of his officers triggered him.
There are women on board her - look at that! Those are women! That was
enough. Without waiting for confirmation, Randle snapped at the
helmsman beside him.
Full port rudder! And with two swift paces he had reached the engine
room telegraph. It rang shrilly as he pulled back the chromed handle to
Full Astern'.
Almost immediately, the changed beat came up through the soles of his
feet, as the great engine seven decks below the bridge thundered
suddenly under all emergency power, and the direction of the spinning
main propeller shaft was abruptly reversed.
Randle spun back to face ahead. For almost five minutes, the bows held
steady on the horizon without making any answer to the full application
of the rudder. The inertia of a million tons of crude oil, the immense
drag of the hull through water and the press of wind and current held
her on course, and although the single ferro-bronze propeller bit deeply
into the green waters, there was not the slightest diminution of the
tanker's speed.
Randle kept his hand on the engine telegraph, pulling back on the silver
handle with all his strength, as though this might arrest the great
ship's forward way through the water.
Turn! he whispered to the ship, and he stared at the fishing boat that
still lay, rolling wildly, directly in Golden Dawn's path. He noticed
irrelevantly that the tiny human figures along the rear rail were waving
frantically, and that the banner with its scarlet denunciation had torn
loose at one end and was now whipping and twisting like a Tibetan prayer
flag over the heads of the crew.
Turn, Randle whispered, and he saw the first response of the hull; the
angle between the bows and the fishing boat altered, it was a noticeable
change, but slowly accelerating and a quick glance at the control
console showed a small check in the ship's forward speed.
Turn, damn it, turn. Randle held the engine telegraph locked at full
astern, and felt the sudden influence of the Gulf Stream current on the
ship as she began to come across the direction of flow.
Ahead, the fishing boat was almost about to disappear from sight behind
Golden Dawn's high blunt bows.
He had been holding the ship at full astern for almost seven minutes
now, and suddenly Randle felt a change in Golden Dawn, something he had
never experienced before.
There was harsh, tearing, pounding vibration coming up through the deck.
He realized just how severe that vibration must be, when Golden Dawn's
monumental hull began to shake violently - but he could not release his
grip on the engine telegraph, not with that helpless vessel lying in his
