It had been so very close, a matter of seconds and he would have
declared himself and given the advantage to La Mouette.
Through the door behind him, he heard David Allen s voice. Did you see
him? He didn't feel a thing - not a bloody thing. He was going to let
those poor bastards go into the boats. He must piss ice-water. The
voice was muffled, but the outrage in it was tempered by awe.
Nick kept his eyes shut a moment longer, then he straightened up and
pushed himself away from the door. He wanted it to begin now. It was
in the waiting and the uncertainty which was eroding what was left of
his strength.
Please God, let me reach them in time. And he was not certain whether
it was for the lives or for the salvage award that he was praying.
Captain Basil Reilly, the Master of the Golden Adventurer, was a tall
man, with a lean and wiry frame that promised reserves of strength and
endurance. His face was very darkly tanned and splotched with the dark
patches of benign sun cancer. His heavy mustache was silvered like the
pelt of a snow fox, and though his eyes were set in webs of finely
wrinkled and pouchy skin, they were bright and calm and intelligent.
He stood on the windward wing of his navigation bridge and watched the
huge black seas tumbling in to batter his helpless ship. He was taking
them broadside now, and each time they struck, the hull shuddered and
heeled with a sick dead motion, giving reluctantly to the swells that
rose up and broke over her rails, sweeping her decks from side to side,
and then cascading off her again in a tumble of white that smoked in the
wind.
He adjusted the life-jacket he wore, settling the rough canvas more
comfortably around his shoulders as he reviewed his position once more.
Golden Adventurer had taken the ice in that eight-to-midnight watch
traditionally allotted to the most junior of the navigating officers.
The impact had hardly been noticeable, yet it had awoken the Master from
deep sleep - just a slight check and jar that had touched some deep
chord in the mariner's instinct.
The ice had been a growler, one of the most deadly of all hazards.
The big bergs standing high and solid to catch the radar beams, or the
eye of even the most inattentive deck watch, were easily avoided.
However, the low ice lying awash, with its great bulk and weight almost
completely hidden by the dark and turbulent waters, was as deadly as a
predator in ambush.
The growler showed itself only in the depths of each wave trough, or in
the swirl of the current around it, as though a massive sea-monster
lurked there. At night, these indications would pass unnoticed by even
the sharpest eyes, and below the surface, the wave action eroded the
body of the growler, turning it into a horizontal blade that lay ten
feet or more below the water level and reached out two or three hundred
feet from the visible surface indications.
With the Third Officer on watch, and steaming at cautionary speed of a
mere twelve knots, the Golden Adventurer had brushed against one of
these monsters, and although the actual impact had gone almost unnoticed
on board, the ice had opened her like the knife stroke which splits a
herring for the smoking rack.
