‘Sorry, sir,’ Patterson said. He had momentarily forgotten that the Captain couldn’t see. ‘Another blasted power-cut.’
‘Another. Jesus!’ The Captain sounded less concerned and angry than just disgusted. ‘No sooner do we think we have cleared up one problem than we have another. Flannelfoot, I’ll be bound.’
‘Maybe, sir,’ McKinnon said. ‘Maybe not. I don’t imagine the lights have failed because someone has been drugged or chloroformed. I don’t imagine they’ve failed because someone wanted to douse our topside Red Cross lights, because visibility is zero and it would serve no point. If it’s sabotage, it’s sabotage for some other reason.’
‘I’ll go see if they can tell me anything in the engine-room,’ Patterson said. ‘Looks like another job for Mr Jamieson.’
‘He’s working in the superstructure,’ McKinnon said. ‘I was going there anyway. I’ll get him for you. Meet you back here, sir?’ Patterson nodded and hurried from the ward.
On the now relatively stable upper deck the lifelines were no longer needed as such but were invaluable as guidelines, for, with the absence of deck-lights and the driving snow, McKinnon literally could not see an inch before his face. He brought up short as he bumped into someone.
‘Who’s that.’ His voice was sharp.
‘McKinnon? Jamieson. Not Flannelfoot. He’s been at it •again.’
‘Looks like it, sir. Mr Patterson would like to see you in the engine-room.’
On the deck level of the superstructure the Bo’sun found three of the engine-room crew welding a cross-plate to two beams, the harsh glare of the oxy-acetylene flame contrasting eerily with the utter blackness around. Two decks up he came across Naseby in the Captain’s cabin, a marlin-spike, butt end cloth-wrapped, in his hand and a purposeful expression on his face.
‘No visitors, George?’
‘Nary a visitor, Archie, but it looks as if someone has been visiting somewhere.’
The Bo’sun nodded and went up to the bridge, checked with Trent and descended the ladder again. He stopped outside the Captain’s cabin and looked at Naseby. ‘Notice anything?’
‘Yes, I notice something. I notice that the engine revs have dropped, we’re slowing. This time, perhaps, a bomb in the engine-room?’
‘No. We’d have heard it in the hospital.’
‘A gas grenade would have done just as well.’
‘You’re getting as bad as I am,’ McKinnon said.
He found Patterson and Jamieson in the hospital dining area. They were accompanied, to McKinnon’s momentary surprise, by Ferguson. But the surprise was only momentary.
‘Engine-room’s okay, then?’ McKinnon said.
Patterson said: ‘Yes. Reduced speed as a precaution. How did you know?’
‘Ferguson here is holed up with Curran in the carpenter’s shop, which is as far for’ard as you can get in this ship. So the trouble is up near the bows – nothing short of an earthquake would normally get Ferguson out of his bunk -or whatever he’s using for a bunk up there.’
Ferguson looked and sounded aggrieved. ‘Just dropping off, I was, when Curran and me heard this explosion. Felt it, too. Directly beneath us. Not so much an explosion as a bang or a clang. Something metallic, anyway. Curran shouted that we’d been mined or torpedoed but I told him not to be daft, if a mine or torpedo had gone off beneath us we wouldn’t have been alive to talk about it. So I came running aft – well, as fast as you can run on that deck – it’s like a skating rink.’
McKinnon said to Patterson: ‘So you think the ship’s hull is open to the sea?’
‘I don’t know what to think, but if it is then the slower we go the less chance of increasing the damage to the hull. Not too slow, of course, if we lose steerage way then we’ll start rolling or corkscrewing or whatever and that would only increase the strain on the hull. I suppose Captain Bowen has the structural plans in his cabin?’
‘I don’t know. I suppose he has but it doesn’t matter. I know the lay-out. I’m sure Mr Jamieson does as well.’
‘Oh dear. That means I don’t?’
‘Didn’t say that, sir. Let me put it this way. Next time I see a chief engineer crawling around the bilges will be the first time. Besides, you have to stay up top, sir. If an urgent decision has to be taken the bilges are no place for the commanding officer to be.’
Patterson sighed. ‘I often wonder, Bo’sun, where one draws a line between commonsense and diplomacy.’
This is it, you think, Bo’sun?’
‘It has to be, sir.’ Jamieson and the Bo’sun, together with Ferguson and McCrimmon, were in the paint store, a lowermost deck compartment on the port side for’ard. Facing them was an eight-clamped door set in a watertight bulkhead. McKinnon placed the palm of his hand against the top of the door and then against the bottom. ‘Normal temperatures above – well, almost normal – and cold, almost freezing, below. Sea-water on the other side, sir – not more than eighteen inches, I would think.’
‘Figures,’ Jamieson said. ‘We’re not more than a few feet below the waterline here and that’s as much as the compressed air will let in. That’s one of the ballast rooms, of course.’
‘That’s the ballast room, sir.’
‘And this is the paint store.’ Jamieson gestured at the irregularly welded patch of metal on the ship’s side. ‘Chief Engineer never did have any faith in what he called those Russkie shipwrights.’
‘That’s as maybe, sir. But I don’t see any Russian shipwrights leaving a time-bomb in the ballast room.’
Russian shipwrights had indeed been aboard the San Andreas, which had sailed from Halifax, Nova Scotia, as the freighter Ocean Belle, Ocean being a common prefix for American-built Liberty Ships. At the time of sailing, the Ocean Belle was neither fish nor fowl but was, in fact, a three-parts completed hospital ship. Its armament, at that stage, had been removed, its magazines emptied, all but the essential watertight bulkheads breached or partially cut away, the operating theatre completed, as were the cabins for the medical staff and the dispensary, already fully stocked: the medical store was almost finished, the galley partially so, whereas work had not yet begun on the wards, the recovery room and messes. The medical staff, which had come from Britain, were already on board.
Orders were received from the Admiralty that the Ocean Belle was to join the next fast convoy to Northern Russia, which had already assembled at Halifax. Captain Bowen had not refused – refusal of an Admiralty order was not permitted – but he had objected in a fashion so strongly as to be tantamount to refusal. He was damned, he said, if he was going to sail to Russia with a shipload of civilians aboard. He was referring to the medical staff aboard and, as they constituted only a round dozen, they could hardly have been called a shipload: he was also conveniently overlooking the fact that every member of the crew, from himself downwards, was also, technically, a civilian.
The medical staff, Bowen had maintained, were a different kind of civilian. Dr Singh had pointed out to him that ninety per cent of the medical staff of the armed forces were civilians, only they wore different kinds of uniforms: the staff on board the San Andreas wore different kinds of uniforms too, which happened to be white. Captain Bowen had then fallen back on his last defence: he was not, he said, going to take women through a war zone – he was referring to the six nursing staff aboard. A by now thoroughly irritated escort commander forcefully made three points that had forcefully been made to him by the Admiralty: thousands of women and children had been in war zones while being transported as refugees to the United States and Canada: in the current year, as compared to the previous two years, U-boat losses had quadrupled while Mercantile Marine losses had been cut by eighty per cent: and the Russians had requested, or rather insisted, that as many wounded Allied personnel as possible be removed from their overcrowded Archangel hospitals. Captain Bowen, as he should have done at the beginning, had capitulated and the Ocean Belle, still painted in its wartime grey but carrying adequate supplies of white, red and green paint, had sailed with the convoy.
As convoys to Northern Russia went, it had been an exceptionally uneventful one. Not one merchant ship and not one escort vessel had been lost. Only two incidents had occurred and both had involved the Ocean Belle. Some way south of Jan Mayen Island they had come across a venerable V and W class destroyer, stopped in the water with an engine breakdown. This destroyer had been a unit of the destroyer screen escorting a previous convoy and had stopped to pick up survivors from a sinking cargo vessel, which had been heavily on fire. The time had been about 2.30 p.m., well after sunset, and the rescue operation had been interrupted by a brief air attack. The attacker had not been seen but had obviously no difficulty in seeing the destroyer, silhouetted as it was against the blazing cargo ship. It had been assumed that the attacker was a reconnaissance Condor, for it had dropped no bombs and contented itself with raking the bridge with machine gun fire, which had effectively destroyed the radio office. Thus, when the engines had broken down some hours later – the breakdown had nothing to do with the Condor, the V and Ws were superannuated, overworked and much plagued by mechanical troubles -they had been unable to contact the vanished convoy.*