One moment there were ships and men, living things, moving, plotting, aiming; the next they all stood still in death in front of our eyes. The world of Molot gave a single hideous orgasmic jerk and then stopped like a movie freeze. Everything pulsed in blinding relief for one explosive moment. Then the flames reached up into the overcast.
I had sense enough to remember the danger of Jetwind’s sail plan being exposed to a whirlwind blast of concussion. I scarcely recognized my own voice. 'Get the sails off her! Furl everything!'
The Shockwave passed like a wind out of hell. It arrived moments before the minor tidal wave Trolltunga threw up. I thought it would roll the masts out of the ship before I dared risk setting a couple of steadying top- gallants.
The burning fuel on the water drew a merciful curtain of thick black smoke over what was happening to the trapped ships. As Jetwind edged past the blazing holocaust to the escape route there was a brighter stab from amongst the blackness, and we saw Catherine wheels of exploding ammunition cartwheeling high into the air. Jetwind’s crew on deck heard screams from the men of Group Condor from deep inside the flames, they told me later, but on the enclosed bridge we were shut off from them.
'Course nor'east’ I ordered Tideman. 'Follow the iceberg channel.'
His face was grim and withdrawn; he operated the console switches like an automaton.
Kay came and hid her face against my chest. She did not speak; her dry sobs said everything.
Then the fuel-oil smut on the bridge windscreen cleared, and the wind came clean and fresh. Jetwind was free.
Chapter 30
'Captain on the bridge!'
The harsh voice of the intercom rasped through the gathering taking place in the crew's day-room, which was situated over the stern. The summons was from the substitute radio operator, one of Tideman's men named Greg. Jim Yell had been left temporarily in command on the bridge; everyone else who could be spared from their duties was attending the get-together. Both Kay and Tideman were present; the self-appointed master of ceremonies was Sir James Hathaway.
It was the morning after the Molot break-out. There was enough flying overcast down-horizon astern to blot out the last traces of the pall of smoke over the secret bass. Jetwind was making a fair fifteen knots in the racing seas. I was pushing her hard, carrying everything I could, but Jetwind wasn't at her best. The missing mast which had catapulted me clear had created an imbalance in the sail plan aerodynamics. It had also affected the steering: she needed watching all the time to prevent a maverick sheer when a bigger-than-usual wave boiled under her counter. Jetwind wasn't at her best, nor was I.
A bitter, self-reproaching reaction had set in once Jetwind had skated clear of the last of the shoal-marker icebergs and the flaring pyre had dimmed astern to a glowing pink and, finally, to a sooty blackness indistinguishable from storm wrack. The clearing-up of Grohman's corpse and those of the two guards had been the final straw. The rest of the gang had surrendered. I could not help thinking, eyeing Grohman's contorted face, that perhaps he had died easily compared to the hundreds of others I had sent to a fiery, diabolical end with my own hands. In war, my action would have been justified, but this was peace – of a kind. Those who might have escaped the fire would have been mortified by the ice. I could not decide which was worse. I, I alone, was responsible.
Kay tried to talk me out of my mood; even her warmth and love were not enough. The reality was like coming back to earth after a high: I could not share the smiling euphoria of everyone on board.
I had reminded Tideman when he, too, had come to my rescue that the Molot death-or-glory break-out might have saved our skins and secured the Falklands flank of the Drake Passage – but who would ever know, or believe, the implications? Neither Argentina nor Russia would admit that Group Condor had ever existed. Who but Grand Admiral Sergei Gorshkov, head of the Soviet Fleet, and his staff would be aware of the loss of two warships and two fleet auxiliaries? Molot had been a victory as secret as the wild wastes where it had taken place.
My slough of despond bit keenest over Seascan. I reproached myself for failing to make the rendezvous when the spy satellite would be at nadir – overhead – to prove beyond all doubt that Jetwind was invisible to infra-red and micro-wave surveillance. The rendezvous was still an impossible near half-day's sail away at Jetwind’s maximum speed. Perhaps the way I was flogging the guts out of the ship now was symptomatic of my sense of failure, because I knew in my heart that unless Jetwind's protective secret were sealed and delivered by actual observation test, there would never be another ship of her kind built. No Cape Horn Patrol. No commercial fleet either. After what he had been through Sir James would, I felt certain, be only too glad never to set eyes on a sailing ship again.
For these reasons, I had stalled off signalling Thomsen in detail about the happenings. I had merely despatched a cryptic message saying the ship was safe and on her way to Gough. For the rest, how much or how little should I tell him? If officialdom got word of Jetwind's exploits, the questions would become intolerable. What, too, should I do with the bodies of Arno, Brockton, Grohman and the two guards? Bury them at sea on the basis that their secrets would remain safe until the sea gave up her dead, or continue to convey them to the Cape in the sick-bay where now they all lay shrouded? I dodged the question by telling myself that Jetwind could not afford the time to stop for a mass sea burial because, by some extreme of luck, there was still an outside chance that Jetwind might make the Seascan rendezvous, and while that chance existed I meant to keep her going. In my heart, however, I knew she never would.
I had been so withdrawn from the general life of the ship that I missed the preparations which must have preceded the ceremony I was now confronted with. The fact that it was in the crew's day-room meant that Tideman had not organized it. Less than twenty minutes previously I had been astonished on the bridge to have been handed a written invitation by one of Tideman's paratroopers – one of the men who had finally disarmed the last of the Group Condors.
The invitation read: ‘Sir James Hathaway and the officers and crew of Jetwind request your presence without fail at a function in the crew's day-room, to be held at 10.30 sharp.'
I had been more astonished still at the sight which had greeted me on arrival. The day-room was a kind of recreation room above the afterpeak adjoining the crew's mess. Big portholes gave a splendid sight of Jetwind's creaming wake. Beneath them a table had been arranged. Its centre-piece was Robbie Lund's old ship's bell. Presiding like a chairman at a board meeting was Sir James, flanked by Kay and Tideman. There was a burst of applause as I entered; it was led by a smiling Sir James, who came forward and conducted me to a seat next to Kay. If my mood had not been so black, I would have realized that I had never seen her look so lovely.
Perhaps Sir James had got to the top because he was something of a showman as well as a business-man. He reached for the bell, which had been hastily mounted between two wooden blocks, and struck it with the clapper.
At that moment, as if on cue, the bitch-box came alive. 'Captain on the bridge!'
However, Sir James was not to be put off. He gestured me back into my seat as I rose to go.
'This is more important – the bridge can do without you for a couple of minutes’
There was a burst of applause from the men. My reaction said, the blood is on my hands, not yours.
Sir James resumed his showman's attitude. 'Gentlemen – and Kay Fenton’ They were in the mood to laugh, and they laughed at his singling out Kay. There is no need to tell you why we are gathered here, but for the record I want to say that all of us – yes, each one of us – owes our being here at all to the super-human courage and personal effort of Captain Rainier. That means, in fact, our lives’
I couldn't handle it. I wanted to excuse myself, get away from the grins and acclaim.
Sir James silenced his audience with another stroke on the bell.
'This bell hung for many years on a windjammer wreck near Cape Horn’ he said. 'It is a relic of the days of sail when Cape Horn was one of the great ocean routes of the-world. From the time it ceased to be until Jetwind took the water, the sailing ship was a thing of the past’ I speculated what might be coming.
'You all know that this voyage was to have been the acid test of whether the sailing ship was to make a come-back in the twentieth century, whether it could become a viable economic proposition when bunker fuel has
