the bridge, only green washes of sea water and banks of spray.
The full force of the hurricane Was on them once more, and a glance at
the radarscope showed the glowing image of Golden Dawn's crippled and
bleeding hull only half a mile astern.
Suddenly the glass of the windows was obscured by an blackness, and the
light in Sea Witch's navigation bridge was reduced to only the glow of
her fire-lights and the electronic instruments of her control console.
Jules Levoisin turned his face to Nicholas, his plump features haunted
by green shadows in the gloom.
Smoke bank/ Nicholas shouted an explanation. There I was no reek of the
filthy hydrocarbon in the bridge, for Sea Witch was shut down for fire
drill, all her ports and ventilators sealed, her internal
air-conditioning on a closed circuit, the air being scrubbed and
recharged with oxygen by the big Carrier until above the main engine
room. We are directly down wind of the Golden Dawn. A fiercer rush of
the hurricane winds laid Sea Witch over on her side, the lee rail deep
under the racing green sea, and held her there, unable to rise against
the careless might of the storm for many minutes. Her crew hung
desperately from any hand hold, the irksome burden of her tow helping to
drag her down further; the propellers found no grip in the air, and her
engines screamed in anguish.
But Sea Witch had been built to live in any sea, and the moment the wind
hesitated, she fought off the water that had come aboard and began to
swing back.
Where is Warlock? Jules bellowed anxiously. The danger of collision
preyed upon him constantly, two ships and their elephantine tows
manoeuvring closely in confined hurricane waters was nightmare on top of
nightmare.
Ten miles east of us., Nicholas picked the other tug's image out of the
trash on the radarscope. They had a start, ahead of the wind He would
have gone on, but the boiling bank of hydrocarbon smoke that surrounded
Sea Witch turned to fierce white light, a light that blinded every man
on the bridge as though a photograph flashlight had been fired in his
face.
Fireball! Nicholas shouted, and, completely blinded, reached for the
remote controls of the water cannons seventy feet above the bridge on
Sea Witch's fire-control tower.
Minutes before, he had aligned the four water cannons, training them
down at their maximum angle of depression, so now as he locked down the
multiple triggers, Sea Witch deluged herself in a pounding cascade of
sea water.
Sea Witch was caught in a furnace of burning air, and despite the
torrents of water she spewed over herself, her paintwork was burned away
in instantaneous combustion so fierce that it consumed its own smoke,
and almost instantly the bare scorched metal of her exposed upperworks
began to glow with heat.
The heat was so savage that it struck through the insulated hull,
through the double glazing of the two-inch armoured glass of her bridge
windows, scorching and frizzling away Nicholas eyelashes and blistering
