the wild anguished action of his ship and the tumult that he believed at
first was in his own ears, but was the violent uproar of the storm about
the tug's superstructure.
He forced himself up on one elbow, and his body ached in every joint. He
still could not open his eyes but he groped for the handset.
Captain to the after bridge! He could hear something in David Allen's
voice that forced him to his feet.
When Nick staggered on to the after navigation bridge, the First Officer
turned gratefully to him.
Thank God you've come, sir.
The wind had taken the surface off the sea, had stripped it away,
tearing each wave to a shrieking fog of white spray and mingling it with
the sleet and snow that drove horizontally across -the bay.
Nick glanced once at the dial of the wind anemometer, and then
discounted the reading. The needle was stuck at the top of the scale.
It made no sense, a wind-speed of 120 miles an hour was too much to
accept, the instrument had been damaged by the initial gusts of this
wind, and he refused to believe it; to do so now would be to admit
disaster, for nobody could salvage an ocean-going liner in wind
velocities right off the Beaufort scale.
Warlock stood on her tail, like a performing dolphin begging for a meal,
as the cable brought her up short and the bridge deck became a vertical
cliff down which Nick was hurled. He crashed into the control panel and
clung for purchase to the foul-weather rail.
We'll have to shear the cable and stand out to sea. David Allen's voice
was pitched too high and too loud, even for the tumult of the wind and
the storm.
There were men on board Golden Adventurer, Baker and sixteen others,
Nick thought swiftly, and even her twin anchors could not be trusted to
hold in this.
Nick clung to the rail and peered out into the storm.
Frozen spray and sleet and impacted snow drove on the wind, coming in
with the force of buckshot fired at point blank range, cracking into the
armoured glass of the bridge and building up in thick clots and lumps
that defeated the efforts of the spinning clear vision panels.
He looked across a thousand yards and the hull of the liner was just
visible, a denser area in the howling, swirling, white wilderness.
Baker? he asked into the hand microphone. What is your position? The
wind's got her, she's slewing. The starboard anchor is dragging. And
then, while Nick thought swiftly, You'll not be able to take us off in
this. It was a flat statement, an acceptance of the fact that the
destinies of Baker and his sixteen men were inexorably linked to that of
the doomed ship.
No/ Nick agreed. We won't be able to get you off. To approach the
stricken ship was certain disaster for all of them.
Shear the cable and stand off/ Baker advised. We'll try to get ashore
as she breaks up. Then, with a hangman's chuckle, he went on, 'Just
don't forget to come and fetch us when the weather moderates - that is
if there is anybody to fetch., Abruptly Nick's anger came to the surface
through the layers of fatigue, anger at the knowledge that all he had
