“Force 10, sir.” Bracing himself against the wild lurching of the Ulysses, the Kapok Kid smoothed out the chart on the Captain’s bunk.
“Backing slightly.”
“North-west, would you say, Pilot?” Tyndall rubbed his hands.
“Excellent. Now, my boy, our position?”
“12.40 west. 66.15 north,” said the Kapok Kid precisely. He didn’t even trouble to consult the chart. Tyndall lifted his eyebrows but made no comment.
“Course?”
“310, sir.”
“Now, if it were necessary for us to seek shelter for fuelling—–”
“Course exactly 290, sir. I’ve pencilled it in, there. Four and a half hours’ steaming, approximately.”
“How the devil——” Tyndall exploded. “Who told you to-to——” He spluttered into a wrathful silence.
“I worked it out five minutes ago, sir. It-er-seemed inevitable. 290 would take us a few miles inside the Langanes peninsula. There should be plenty shelter there.” Carpenter was grave, unsmiling.
“Seemed inevitable!” Tyndall roared. “Would you listen to him, Captain Vallery? Inevitable! And it’s only just occurred to me! Of all the… Get out! Take yourself and that damned comic-opera fancy dress elsewhere!”
The Kapok Kid said nothing. With an air of injured innocence he gathered up his charts and left. Tyndall’s voice halted him at the door.
“Pilot!”
“Sir?” The Kapok Kid’s eyes were fixed on a point above Tyndall’s head.
“As soon as the screen vessels have taken up position, tell Bentley to send them the new course.”
“Yes, sir. Certainly.” He hesitated, and Tyndall chuckled. “All right, all right,” he said resignedly. “I’ll say it again, I’m just a crusty old curmudgeon… and shut that damned door! We’re freezing in here.”
The wind was rising more quickly now and long ribbons of white were beginning to streak the water. Wave troughs were deepening rapidly, their sides steepening, their tops blown off and flattened by the wind.
Gradually, but perceptibly to the ear now, the thin, lonely whining in the rigging was climbing steadily up the register. From time to time, large chunks of ice, shaken loose by the increasing vibration, broke off from the masts and stays and spattered on the deck below.
The effect of the long oil-slicks trailing behind the carriers was almost miraculous. The destroyers, curiously mottled with oil now, were still plunging astern, but the surface tension of the fuel held the water and spray from breaking aboard. Tyndall, justifiably, was feeling more than pleased with himself.
Towards half-past four in the afternoon, with shelter still a good fifteen miles away, the elation had completely worn off. There was a whole gale blowing now and Tyndall had been compelled to signal for a reduction in speed.
From deck level, the seas now were more than impressive. They were gigantic, frightening. Nicholls stood with the Kapok Kid, off watch now, on the main deck, under the port whaler, sheltering in the lee of the fo’c’sle deck. Nicholls, clinging to a davit to steady himself, and leaping back now and then to avoid a deluge of spray, looked over to where the Defender, the Vultra and Viking tailing behind, were pitching madly, grotesquely, under that serene blue sky. The blue sky above, the tremendous seas below. There was something almost evil, something literally spine-chilling, in that macabre contrast.
“They never told me anything about this in the Medical School,”
Nicholls observed at last. “My God, Andy,” he added in awe, “have you ever seen anything like this?”
“Once, just once. We were caught in a typhoon off the Nicobars. I don’t think it was as bad as this. And Number One says this is damn’ all compared to what’s coming tonight, and he knows. God, I wish I was back in Henley!”
Nicholls looked at him curiously.
“Can’t say I know the First Lieutenant well. Not a very-ah-approachable customer, is he? But everyone, old Giles, the skipper, the Commander, yourself, they all talk about him with bated breath.
What’s so extra special about him? I respect him, mind you, everyone seems to, but dammit to hell, he’s no superman.”
“Sea’s beginning to break up,” the Kapok Kid murmured absently.
“Notice how every now and again we’re beginning to get a wave half as big again as the others? Every seventh wave, the old sailors say. No, Johnny, he’s not a superman. Just the greatest seaman you’ll ever see.
Holds two master’s-tickets, square-rigged and steam. He was going round the Horn in Finnish barques when we were still in our prams. Commander could tell you enough stories about him to fill a book.” He paused then went on quietly: “He really is one of the few great seamen of today. Old Blackbeard Turner is no slouch himself, but he’ll tell anyone that he can’t hold a candle to Jimmy… I’m no hero-worshipper, Johnny. You know that. But you can say about Carrington what they used to say about Shackleton, when there’s nothing left and all hope is gone, get down on your knees and pray for him. Believe me, Johnny, I’m damned glad he’s here.”
Nicholls said nothing. Surprise held him silent. For the Kapok Kid, flippancy was a creed, derogation second nature: seriousness was a crime and anything that smacked of adulation bordered on blasphemy. Nicholls wondered what manner of man Carrington must be.
The cold was vicious. The wind was tearing great gouts of water off the wave-tops, driving the atomised spray at bullet speed against fo’c’sle and sides. It was impossible to breathe without turning one’s back, without wrapping layers of wool round mouth and nose. Faces blue and white, shaking violently with the cold, neither suggested, neither even thought of going below. Men hypnotised, men fascinated by the tremendous seas, the towering waves, 1,000, 2,000 feet in length, long, sloping on the lee side, steep-walled and terrifying on the other, pushed up by a sixty knot wind and by some mighty force lying far to the north-west. In these gigantic troughs, a church steeple would be lost for ever.
Both men turned round as they heard the screen door crashing behind them. A duffel-coated figure, cursing fluently, fought to shut the heavy door against the pitching of the Ulysses, finally succeeded in heaving the clips home. It was Leading Seaman Doyle, and even though his beard hid three-quarters of what could be seen of his face, he still looked thoroughly disgusted with life.
Carpenter grinned at him. He and Doyle had served a commission together on the China Station. Doyle was a very privileged person.
“Well, well, the Ancient Mariner himself! How are things down below, Doyle?”
“Bloody desperate, sir!” His voice was as lugubrious as his face.
“Cold as charity, sir, and everything all over the bloody place. Cups, saucers, plates in smithereens. Half the crew——”
He broke off suddenly, eyes slowly widening in blank disbelief. He was staring out to sea between Nicholls and Carpenter.
“Well, what about half the crew? … What’s the matter, Doyle?’
“Christ Almighty!” Doyle’s voice was slow, stunned: it was almost a prayer. “Oh, Christ Almighty!” The voice rose sharply on the last two syllables.
The two officers twisted quickly round. The Defender was climbing-all 500 feet of her was literally climbing up the lee side of a wave that staggered the imagination, whose immensity completely defied immediate comprehension. Even as they watched, before shocked minds could grasp the significance of it all, the Defender reached the crest, hesitated, crazily tilted up her stern till screw and rudder were entirely clear of the water, then crashed down, down, down…
Even at two cable-lengths’ distance in that high wind the explosive smash of the plummeting bows came like a thunder-clap. An aeon ticked by, and still the Defender seemed to keep on going under, completely buried now, right back to the bridge island, in a sea of foaming white.
How long she remained like that, arrowed down into the depths of the Arctic, no one could afterwards say: then slowly, agonisingly, incredibly, great rivers of water cascaded off her bows, she broke surface again. Broke surface, to present to frankly disbelieving eyes a spectacle entirely without precedent, anywhere, at any time. The tremendous, instantaneous, up-thrusting pressure of unknown thousands of tons of water had torn the open flight-deck completely off its mountings and bent it backwards, in a great, sweeping “U,” almost as far as the bridge. It was a sight to make men doubt their sanity, to leave them stupefied, to leave them speechless, all, that is, except the Kapok Kid.
He rose magnificently to the occasion.
“My word I” he murmured thoughtfully. “That is unusual.”
Another such wave, another such shattering impact, and it would have been the end for the Defender. The finest ships, the stoutest, most powerful vessels, are made only of thin, incredibly thin, sheets of metal, and metal, twisted and tortured as was the Defender’s, could never have withstood another such impact.
But there were no more such waves, no more such impacts. It had been a freak wave, one of these massive, inexplicable contortions of the sea which have occurred, With blessed infrequency, from time immemorial, in all the great seas of the world whenever Nature wanted to show mankind, an irreverent, over-venturesome mankind, just how puny and pitifully helpless a thing mankind really is. . There were no more such waves and, by five o’clock, although land was still some eight to ten miles away, the squadron had moved into comparative shelter behind the tip of the Langanes peninsula.