Atlantic Fury (18 page)

He shook his head.

It was a silly question really, but I didn't know much about these craft. ‘There's a double bottom, isn't there? What's in between – fuel?'

‘Water, too. And there are ballast tanks.'

‘How much difference would it make?'

‘We'll see; I should think about eighteen inches up for'ard when we've pumped it out. Geoff's checking with the ballasting and flooding board now. About cancel out the amount we ran up the beach; give us a few extra minutes, maybe.'

Sitting there in the warmth of that comfortable little wardroom with the ship quite still and solid as a rock, it was hard to imagine that in little more than four hours' time so few minutes could possibly make the difference between getting off and being battered to pieces.

‘More coffee?'

I passed my cup and lit another cigarette. The radio operator came in and handed Stratton a message. ‘Coastal Command just came through with the supplementary forecast you asked for.'

Stratton read it aloud. ‘Winds northerly, force nine, decreasing to seven or eight. Possibly local troughs with rain squalls. Otherwise fair visibility.' He slapped the message form down on top of the others. ‘Same as the midnight forecast. Nothing at all about a polar air depression; no reference to winds of hurricane force.' He turned to the radio operator. ‘Anything new from Morgan?'

The operator shook his head. ‘I heard him calling
Viking Fisher
, but I couldn't raise him myself.'

‘Did the trawler reply?'

‘No.'

‘Well, see if you can get Morgan. Keep on trying, will you. I'd like to talk to him myself.' He reached for a message pad lying on the shelf below the porthole. ‘And there's a message I want sent to Base. When's the next contact? One o'clock, isn't it?'

The operator nodded. ‘But I can get them any time. They're standing by on our frequency.'

‘Good. Give them a buzz then. Say I want to speak to Colonel Standing. And don't be fobbed off. Understand? If he's in bed, they're to get him out of it. I want to speak to him personally.' As the operator left he tossed the message pad back on to the shelf. ‘Time these chaps who sit in their cosy offices issuing orders lost a little sleep on our account.'

I started in on the corned beef sandwiches then. I had a feeling this was going to be a long night. Stratton got up. ‘Think I'll go and see what the wind's doing. I'll be in the wheelhouse.' Later Perkins brought some more coffee. I had a cup and then took one through to Stratton. But he wasn't there. The door was open on the port side and the wind came crowding through it in a gusty roar. The duty watch stood sheltering there, clad in sou'wester and oilskins. ‘Where's Captain Stratton?' I asked him.

‘On the R/T. Radio Operator just called him.'

‘And the wind's still in the north, is it?'

‘Aye, just aboot. Varies a wee bit, depending which side of Tarsaval it strikes.'

I went over to the porthole and looked down on to the wet steel decks gleaming under the loading lights. They'd got about a third of the tank deck clear, but the men moved slowly now, all the life gone out of them. Stratton came in then. He didn't say anything but got his duffel coat. I handed him his coffee and he gulped it down. ‘Don't know what's going on at Base. Colonel Standing says he'd no idea we were evacuating. Sounded damned angry – what little I could hear. There was a lot of static.' He pulled his coat on. ‘I'd better have a word with Pinney.' He turned to the duty man. ‘If anybody wants me I'll be down on the loading beach.'

After he'd gone I went over to the chart table and had a look at the log. Barometer reading at midnight was given as 978, a fall of one millibar since the previous reading at eleven. I leaned over and peered at the glass itself – 977. I tapped it and the needle flickered, and when I read it again it was 976.

Time was running out; for the ship, for the men labouring on the tank deck to undo what they had done – for me, too. I could feel it in my bones, in the dryness of my tongue – a lassitude creeping through me, a feeling of indecision, of waiting. And all because a needle in a glass instrument like a clock had moved so fractionally that the movement was barely discernible. Long years at sea, standing watch on the bridges of ships, had taught me the value of that instrument, what those small changes of barometric pressure could mean translated into physical terms of weather. Somewhere in the bowels of the ship the cook would be sweating in his galley producing food to replace the energy those men on the tank deck had consumed. Deeper still the engineers would be checking their oiled and shining diesels, preparing them for the battle to come. And out there beyond the lights, beyond the invisible peaks and sheer rock cliffs of Laerg, out across the sea's tumbled chaos, the enemy was coming relentlessly nearer, ten thousand demon horsemen riding the air in a great circle, scouring the sea, flailing it into toppling ranges of water, spilling violence as they charged round that vortex pot of depressed air. Fantasy? But the mind is full of fantasy on such a night. Science is for the laboratory. Other men, who stand alone and face the elemental forces of nature, know that science as a shining, world-conquering hero is a myth. Science lives in concrete structures full of bright factory toys, insulated from the earth's great force. The priesthood of this new cult are seldom called upon to stand and face the onslaught.

The radio operator poked his head into the wheel-house, interrupting my thoughts. ‘Seen the Skipper? I've got that chap Morgan on the air.'

‘He's doon to the beach to see Captain Pinney,' the duty man said.

Between the wheelhouse and the beach was the littered tank deck, and Cliff Morgan wouldn't wait. ‘Can I have a word with him?' I suggested.

The operator hesitated. ‘Okay, I don't see why not – as one civilian to another.' He gave me a tired smile.

I followed him into the box-like cubby-hole of the radio shack. He slipped his earphones on and reached for the mike. ‘L8610 calling GM3CMX. Calling CM3CMX. Do you hear me? Okay, GM3CMX. I have Mr Ross for you.' He passed me the earphones. Faint and metallic I heard Cliff's voice calling me. And when I answered him, he said, ‘
Now listen, man. You're on board Eight-six-one-o, are you
?' I told him I was. ‘
And you're beached – correct
?'

‘Yes.'

‘
Well, you've got to get off that beach just as soon as you can. This could be very bad
.'

‘We're unloading now,' I said. ‘To lighten the ship.'

‘
Tell the Captain he's got to get off – fast. If this thing hits you before you're off …
' I lost the rest in a crackle of static.

‘How long have we got?' I asked. His voice came back, but too faint for me to hear. ‘How long have we got?' I repeated.

‘…
barometric pressure
?' And then his voice came in again loud and clear. ‘
Repeat, what is your barometer pressure reading now
?'

‘Nine-seven-six,' I told him. ‘A drop of three millibars within the last hour.'

‘
Then it's not far away. You can expect an almost vertical fall in pressure, right down to around nine-six-o. Watch the wind. When it goes round …
' His voice faded and I lost the rest. When I picked him up again he was saying something about seeking shelter.

‘Have you made contact with that trawler again?' I asked.

‘
No. But somebody was calling Mayday a while ago – very faint. Now listen. I am going to try and raise the Faeroes or weather ship “India”. It should be passing them, you see. And I'll phone Pitreavie. Tell the operator I'll call him on this frequency one hour from now. Good luck and Out
.'

I passed the message on to the operator and went back into the wheelhouse. Nothing had changed. The duty man was still sheltering in the doorway. The barometer still read 976. Another trailer had been unloaded, that was all. And the wind still northerly. It was ten past one. Four hours to go.

CHAPTER THREE

STORM

(October 21–22)

A few minutes later Stratton came in, his duffel coat sodden. ‘Raining again.' He went straight to the barometer, tapped it and entered the reading in the log. ‘And McGregor's dead. They're bringing his body on board now.' His face was pale and haggard-looking in the wheelhouse lights.

I passed Cliff's message on to him, but all he said was, ‘We're dried out for two-thirds the length of the ship and I can't change the tides.' His mind was preoccupied, wound up like a clock, waiting for zero hour. He went to his room and shortly afterwards a macabre little procession came in through the open tunnel of the loading doors – McDermott and the camp doctor, and behind them two orderlies carrying a stretcher. All work stopped and the men stood silent. A few moved to help hand the stretcher up one of the vertical steel ladders on the port side. The body on the stretcher was wrapped in an oiled sheet. It glistened white in the lights. Once it slipped, sagging against the tapes that held it in place. The orderlies stopped to rearrange it and then the procession moved aft along the side decking. I could see their faces then, the two officers' white and shaken, the orderlies' wooden. They passed out of sight, moving slowly aft. They were taking the body to the tiller flat, but I only learned that later when death was facing us too.

I went back into the wardroom and ten minutes later McDermott came in followed by Captain Fairweather. They looked old and beaten, grey-faced and their hands trembling. They didn't speak. They had a whisky each and then McDermott went to his bunk, Captain Fairweather back to the camp to get his kit.

By two-thirty the tank deck was clear, a wet steel expanse emptied of all vehicles. By three the incoming tide was spilling white surf as far as the loading ramp. The glass stood at 971, falling. No further contact with Cliff Morgan. Nothing from Coastal Command. And the wind still driving out of the north, straight over the beached bows. Pinney was arguing with Stratton in the wheelhouse. ‘Christ, man, what do you think we are? The men are dead beat. And so am I.' The decks were deserted now, all the men swallowed up in the warmth of the ship, and Stratton wanted them ashore. ‘My orders were to embark my men and all the equipment I could. We got the stuff on board and then you order it to be taken off again. And when we've done that …'

‘It's for their own good.' Stratton's voice was weary, exhausted by tension.

‘Like hell it is. What they want is some sleep.'

‘They won't get much sleep if this depression …'

‘This depression! What the hell's got into you? For two hours now you've been worrying about it. The forecast doesn't mention it. You've no confirmation of it from Coastal Command, from anybody. All you've got is the word of one man, and he's guessing on the basis of a single contact with some trawler.'

‘I know. But the glass is falling—'

‘What do you expect it to do in this sort of weather – go sailing up? All that matters is the wind direction. And the wind's north. In just over two hours now …'

It went on like that, the two of them arguing back and forth, Stratton's voice slow and uncertain, Pinney's no longer coming gruff out of his big frame, but high-pitched with weariness and frustration. He was a soldier and his men came first. Stratton's concern was his ship and he had a picture in his mind, a picture conjured by the falling glass and Cliff Morgan's warning and that information I had passed on about a faint voice calling Mayday on the International Distress frequency. But even in these circumstances possession is nine-tenths of the law. Pinney's men were on board. They had their oilskins off and hammocks slung. They were dead beat and they'd take a lot of shifting. Stratton gave in. ‘On your own head then, John.' And he gave the orders for the ramp to be raised and the bow doors shut.

Thirty-three men, who could have been safe ashore, were sealed into that coffin of a ship. The time was three-fourteen. Just over one and a half hours to go. Surely it would hold off for that short time. I watched figures in oilskins bent double as they forced their way for'ard and clambered down to the tank deck. The open gap, with its glimpse of the beach and the blurred shape of vehicles standing in the rain, gradually sealed itself. The clamps were checked. The half gate swung into place. Now nobody could leave the ship. And as if to underline the finality of those doors being closed, messages began to come through.

Coastal Command first:
Trawler ‘Viking Fisher' in distress. Anticipate possibility of very severe storm imminent your locality. Winds of high velocity can be expected from almost any direction. Report each hour until further notice
.

Then Cliff crashed net frequency to announce contact with Faeroes and weather ship
India. Faeroes report wind southerly force 10. Barometer 968, rising. ‘W/S India': wind north-westerly force 9 or 10. Barometer 969, falling rapidly. Very big seas
.

CCN again with a supplementary forecast from the Meteorological Office:
Sea areas Hebrides, Bailey, Faeroes, South-East Iceland – Probability that small, very intense depression may have formed to give wind speeds of hurricane force locally for short duration. Storm area will move southwards with the main northerly air stream, gradually losing intensity
.

The outside world stirring in its sleep and taking an interest in us. Stratton passed the messages to Pinney without comment, standing at the chart table in the wheelhouse. Pinney read them and then placed them on top of the log book. He didn't say anything. There wasn't anything to say. The moment for getting the men ashore was gone half an hour ago. Waves were breaking up by the bows and occasionally a tremor ran through the ship, the first awakening as the stern responded to the buoyancy of water deep enough to float her. And in the wheelhouse there was an air of expectancy, a man at the wheel and the engine-room telegraph at stand-by.