Nick signalled to his crew and the five of them shambled up into the
bows, bulky and clumsy in their electric-yellow oilskins and work boots.
With hand-signals, Nick positioned them around the shaggy head-high pile
of the collision mat before he signalled to the helmsman to throw the
gear in reverse and pull back from Golden Adventurer's side.
The mass of unravelled oakum quivered and shook as the two-inch cable
came up taut and they struggled to heave the whole untidy mass
overboard.
There was nearly five tons of it and the weight would have been
impossible to handle were it not for the reverse pull of the work boat
against the cable. Slowly, they heaved the mat forward and outward, and
the work boat took on a dangerous list under the transfer of weight. She
was down at the bows and canting at an angle of twenty degrees, the
diesel motor screaming angrily and her single propeller threshing
frantically, trying to pull her out from under her cumbersome burden.
The mat slid forward another foot, and snagged on the gunwale, sea water
slopped inboard, ankle-deep around their rubber boots as they strained
and heaved at the reluctant mass of coarse fibre.
Some instinct of danger made Nick look up and out to sea. Warlock was
lying a quarter of a mile farther out in the bay, at the edge of the
ice, and beyond her, Nick saw the rearing shape of a big wave alter the
fine of the horizon.
It was merely a forerunner of the truly big waves that the storm was
running before her, like hounds before the hunter, but it was big enough
to make Warlock throw up her stern sharply, and even then the sea
creamed over the tug's bows and streamed from her scuppers.
it would hit the exposed and hampered work boat in twenty-five seconds,
it would hit her broadside while her bows were held down and anchored by
mat and cable.
When she swamped, the five men who made up her crew would die within
minutes-, pulled down by their bulky clothing, frozen by the icy green
water.
Beauty, I Nick's voice was a scream in the microphone, heave all - pull,
damn you, pull. Almost instantly the cable began to run, drawn in by
the powerful winch on Golden Adventurer's deck; the strain pulled the
work boat down sharply and water cascaded over her gunwale.
Nick seized one of the oaken oars and thrust it under the mat at the
point where it was snagged, and using it as a lever he threw all his
weight upon it.
Lend a hand/ he yelled at the man beside him, and he strained until he
felt his vision darkening and the fibres of M his back-muscles creaking
and popping.
The work boat was swamping, they were almost kneedeep now and the wave
raced down on them. It came with a great silent rush of irresistible
power, lifting the mass of broken ice and tossing it carelessly aside
without a check.
Suddenly, the snag cleared and the whole lumpy massive weight of oakum
slid overboard. The work boat bounded away, relieved of her intolerable
burden, and Nick windmilled frantically with both arms to get the
