great sea anchor.
He knew then that what he had dreaded had happened.
The storm had been too powerful, it had snapped the steel cable like a
thread of cotton, and Golden Dawnwas loose, without control, and this
wild and savage wind was blowing her down swiftly on to the land
Nicholas felt suddenly exhausted to his bones. He lay flat on the deck,
closed his eyes and clung weakly to the severed cable. The wind wanted
to hurl him over the side, it ballooned his ollskins and ripped at his
face. It would be so easy to open his fingers and to let go - and it
took all his resolve to resist the impulse.
Slowly, as painfully as a crippled insect, he dragged himself back
through the open, shattered doorway into the central passageway of the
stern quarters - but still the wind followed him. it roared down the
passageway, driving in torents of rain and salt water that flooded the
deck and forced Nicholas to cling for support like a drunkard.
After the open storm, the car of the elevator seemed silent and tranquil
as the inner sanctum of a cathedral. He looked at himself in the wall
mirror, and saw that his eyes were scoured red and painful-looking by
salt and wind, and his cheeks and lips looked raw and bruised, as though
the skin had been rasped away. He touched his face and there was no
feeling in his nose nor in his lips. The elevator doors slid open and
he reeled out on to the navigation bridge. The group of men at the
chart-table seemed not to have moved, but their heads turned to him.
Nicholas reached the table and clung to it. They were silent, watching
his face.
I lost a man! he said, and his voice was hoarse and roughened by salt
and weariness, He went overboard. The wind got him. Still none of them
moved nor spoke, and Nicholas coughed, his lungs ached from the water he
had breathed.
When the spasm passed, he went on.
,The tow-cable has parted. We are loose - and Warlock will never be
able to re-establish tow. Not in this. all their heads turned now to
the forward bridge windows, to that impenetrable racing whiteness beyond
the glass, that was lit internally with its glowing bursts of lightning.
Nicholas broke the spell that held them all. He reached up to the
signal locker above the chart-table and brought down a cardboard packet
of distress flares. He broke open the seals and spilled the flares on
to the table. They looked like sticks of dynamite, cylinders of heavily
varnished waterproof paper. The flares could be lit, and would spurt
out crimson flames, even if immersed in water, once the self -igniter
tab at one end was pulled.
Nicholas stuffed half a dozen of the flares into the inner pockets of
his oilskins.
Listen! he had to shout, even though they were only feet away. We are
going to be aground within two hours.
This ship is going to start breaking up immediately we strike. He
paused and studied their faces; Duncan was the only one who did not seem
to understand. He had picked up a handful of the signal flares from the
table and he was looking inquiringly at Nicholas.
