wave-tops and in the strange unnatural light of the heavens his face was
greenish grey and heavily furrowed with the marks of grief.
Then he sighed once, very deeply, and turned away, devoting all his
attention to guiding his pathetic limping little convoy to the safety of
Shackleton Bay.
Almost immediately it was apparent that the fates had relented, and
given them a favourable inshore current to carry them up on to the
coast. The lifeboats were strung out over a distance of three miles,
each of them with its string of bloated and clumsy rafts lumbering along
in its wake. Captain Reilly had two-way VHF radio contact with each of
them, and despite the brutal cold, they were all in good shape and
making steady and unexpectedly rapid progress. Three or four hours
would be sufficient, he began to hope. They had lost so much life
already, and he could not be certain that there would be no further
losses until he had the whole party ashore and encamped.
Perhaps the tragic run of bad luck had changed at- last, he thought, and
he picked up the small VHT radio. Perhaps the French tug was in range
at last and he began to call her.
La Mouette, do you read me? Come in, The lifeboat was low down on the
water of the little set was feeble in the vastness yet he kept on
calling.
They had accustomed themselves to the extravagant action of the disabled
liner, her majestic roll and pitch, as regular as a gigantic metronome.
They had adjusted to the cold of the unheated interior of the great
ship, and the discomfort of her crowded and unsanitary conditions.
They had steeled themselves and tried to prepare themselves mentally for
further danger and greater hardship but not one of the survivors in
life-raft Number 16 had imagined anything like this. Even Samantha, the
youngest, probably physically the toughest and certainly the one most
prepared by her training and her knowledge and love of the sea, had not
imagined what it would be like in the raft.
It was utterly dark, not the faintest glimmer of light penetrated the
insulated domed canopy, once its entrance was secured against the sea
and the wind.
Samantha, realized almost immediately how the darkness would crush their
morale and, more dangerously, would induce disorientation and vertigo,
so she ordered two of them at a time to switch on the tiny locator bulbs
and ice, on their life-jackets. it gave just a glimmering of light,
enough to let them see each others faces and take a little comfort in
the proximity of other humans.
Then she arranged their seating, making them form a circle around the
sides with all their legs pointing inwards, to give the raft better
balance and to ensure that each of them had space to stretch out.
Now that Ken had gone, she had naturally taken command, and, as
naturally, the others had turned to her for guidance and comfort. It
was Samantha who had gone out through the opening into the brutal
exposure of the night to take aboard and secure the tow-rope from the
lifeboat.
She had come in again half-frozen, shaking in a palsy of cold, with her
hands and face numbed. it had taken nearly half an hour of hard massage
