rising gusting wind and then dragging her out tail first into the deeper
water of the channel where she would have her best chance of riding out
the hurricane.
It was clear now that Golden Dawn lay directly in the track of Lorna,
and the storm unleashed its true nature upon them. Out there upon the
sane and rational world, the sun was rising, but here there was no dawn,
for there was no horizon and no sky. There was only madness and wind
and water, and all three elements were so intermingled as to form one
substance.
An hour - which seemed like a lifetime - ago, the wind had ripped away
the anemonmeter and the weather-recording equipment on top of the
navigation bridge, so Nicholas had no way of judging the wind's strength
and direction.
Out beyond the bridge windows, the wind took the top off the sea; it
took it off in thick sheets of salt water and lifted them over the
navigation bridge in a shrieking white curtain that cut off visibility
at the glass of the windows.
The tank deck had disappeared in the racing white emulsion of wind and
water, even the railing of the bridge wings six feet from the windows
was invisible.
The entire superstructure groaned and popped and whimpered under the
assault of the wind, the pressed aluminium bulkheads bulging and
distorting the very deck flexing and juddering at the solid weight of
the storm.
Through the saturated, racing, swirling air, a leaden and ominous grey
light filtered, and every few minutes the electrical impulses generated
within the sixty-thousand foot-high mountain of racing, spinning air
released themselves in shattering cannonades of thunder and sudden
brilliance of eye-searing white lightning.
There was no visual contact with Warlock. The massive electrical
disturbance of the storm and the clutter of high seas and almost solid
cloud and turbulence had reduced the radar range to a few miles, and
even then was unreliable.
Radio contact with the tug was drowned with buzzing squealing static. It
was possible to understand only odd disconnected words from David Allen.
Nicholas was powerless, caged in the groaning, vibrating box of the
navigation bridge, blinded and deafened by the unleashed powers of the
heavens. There was nothing any of them could do.
Randle had locked the ultra-tanker's helm amidships, and now he stood
with Duncan and the three seamen by the chart-table, all of them
clinging to it for support, all their faces pale and set as though
carved from chalk.
Only Nicholas moved restlessly about the bridge; from the stern windows
where he peered down vainly, trying to get a glimpse of either the
tow-cable and its spring, or of the tug's looming shape through the
racing white storm, then he came forward carefully, using the
foul-weather rail to steady himself against the huge ship's wild and
unpredictable motion, and he stood before the control console, studying
the display of lights that monitored the pod tanks and the ship's
