There was no hydraulic pressure on the clamps of the starboard forward
pod tank. Somewhere in the twisted damaged hull the hydraulic line must
have sheared. Nicholas and one of the seamen had to work the emergency
release, pumping it open slowly and laboriously by hand.
Still it would not release, the hull was distorted, the clamp jaws out
of alignment.
Pull/ Nicholas commanded Jules in desperation. Pull all together. The
storm front was five miles away, and already he could hear the deadly
whisper of the wind, and a cold puff touched Nicholas uplifted face.
The sea boiled under Sea Witch's counter, spewing out in a swift white
wake as Jules brought in both engines.
The tow-cable came up hard and straight; for half a minute nothing gave,
nothing moved - except the wall of racing grey cloud bearing down upon
them.
Then, with a resounding metallic clang, the clamps slipped and the tank
slid ponderously out of its dock in Golden Dawn's hull - and as it came
free, so the hull, held together until that moment by the tanks'bulk and
buoyancy, began to collapse.
The catwalk on which Nicholas stood began to twist and tilt so that he
had to grab for a handhold, and he stood frozen in horrified fascination
as he watched Golden Dawnbegin the final break-up.
The whole tank deck, now only a gutted skeleton, began to bend at its
weakened centre, began to hinge like an enormous pair of nutcrackers -
and caught between the jaws of the nutcracker was the starboard after
pod tank. It was a nut the size of Chartres Cathedral, with a soft
liquid centre, and a shell as thin as the span Of a man's hand.
Nicholas broke into a lurching, blundering run down the twisting,
tilting catwalk, calling urgently into the radio as he went.
Shear! he shouted to the seamen almost half a mile away across that
undulating plane of tortured steel. Shear the tandem tow!
For the two starboard pod tanks were linked by the heavy chain of the
tandem, and the forward tank was linked to Sea Witch by the main
tow-cable. So Sea Witch and the doomed Golden Dawn were coupled
inexorably, unless they could cut the two tanks apart and let Sea Witch
escape with the forward tank which she had just undocked.
The shear control was in the control box halfway back along the tank
deck, and at that moment the nearest searn -in was two hundred yards
from it.
Nicholas could see him staggering wildly back along the twisting,
juddering catwalk. Clearly he realized the danger, but his haste was
fatal, for as he jumped from the catwalk, the deck opened under him,
gaping open like the jaws of a steel monster and the seaman fell
through, waist deep, into the opening between two moving plates, then as
he squirmed feebly, the next lurch of the ship's hull closed the plates,
sliding them across each other like the blades of a pair of scissors.
The man shrieked once and a wave burst over the deck, smothering his
mutilated body in cold, green water. when it poured back over the ship
s side there was no sign of the man, the deck was washed glisteningly
clean.
Nicholas reached the same point in the deck, judged the gaping and
