Then he understood. The eye, he croaked, we are into the eye/and his
voice resounded strangely in his own ears.
He stumbled to the front of the bridge.
Although the Golden Dawn still rolled ponderously, describing an arc of
almost forty degrees from side to side, she was free of the unbearable
weight of the wind and brilliant sunshine poured down upon her. It
beamed down like the dazzling arc lamps of a stage set, out of the
throat of a dark funnel of dense racing swirling cloud.
The cloud lay to the very surface of the sea, and encompassed the full
sweep of the horizon in an unbroken wall.
Only directly overhead was it open, and the sky was an angry unnatural
purple, set with the glaring, merciless eye of the sun.
The sea was still wild and confused, leaping into peaks and troughs and
covered with a thick frothy mattress of spindrift, whipped into a
custard by the wild winds. But already the sea was subsiding in the
total calm of the eye and Golden Dawn was rolling less viciously.
Nicholas turned his head stiffly to watch the receding wall of racing
cloud. How long would it take for the eye to pass over them, he
wondered.
Not very long, he was sure of that, half an hour perhaps an hour at the
most - and then the storm would be on them again, with its renewed fury
every bit as sudden as its passing. But this time, the wind would come
from exactly the opposite direction as they crossed the hub and went
into the far side of the revolving wall of cloud.
Nicholas jerked his eyes away from that racing, heavenhigh bank of
cloud, and looked down on to the tank deck.
He saw at a single glance that Golden Dawn had already sustained mortal
damage. The forward port pod tank was half torn from its hydraulic
coupling, holding only by the line of bows and lying at almost twenty
degrees from the other three tanks. The entire tank deck was twisted
like the limb of an arthritic giant, it rolled and pitched out of
sequence with the rest of the hull.
Golden Dawn's back was broken, It had broken where Duncan had weakened
the hull to save steel. Only the buoyancy of the crude petroleum in her
four tanks was holding her together now, expected to see the dark,
glistening ooze of slick leaking from her; he could not believe that not
one of the four tanks had ruptured monitor, Loads and and he glanced at
the electronic cargo gas contents of all tanks were still normal. They
had been freakishly lucky so far, but when they went into the far side
of the hurricane he knew that Golden Dawn's weakened spine would give
completely, and when that happened it must pinch and tear the thin skins
of the pod tanks. He made a decision then, forcing his mind to work,
not certain how good a decision it was but determined to act on it.
Duncan/ he called to him across the swamped and battered bridge. 'I'm
sending you and the others off on one of the life-rafts. This will be
your only chance to launch one. I'll stay on board to fire the cargo
when the storm hits again.
The storm has passed., Suddenly Duncan was screaming at him like a
madman.
The ship is safe now. You're going to destroy my ship, - you're
