Ferguson looked down at the injured man who was lying motionless on his back, arms spreadeagled. The red stains were spreading. It could have been that he was still bleeding quite heavily: but it could have been the effect of sea-water.
‘Reckon he’s a goner, Bo’sun?’
McKinnon reached down and touched the side of the pilot’s neck and after a few seconds he located the pulse, fast, faint and erratic, but still a pulse.
‘Unconscious. Fainted. Couldn’t have been an easy passage for him.’
Ferguson regarded the pilot with a certain grudging respect. ‘He may be a bloody murderer, but he’s a bloody tough bloody murderer. Must have been in agony, but never a squawk. Shouldn’t we take him back to the ship first? Give him a chance, like?’
‘I thought of it. No. There just may be survivors from the Andover and if there are they won’t last long. Sea temperature is about freezing or just below it. A man’s usually dead inside a minute. If there’s anyone at all, a minute’s delay may be a minute too late. We owe them that chance. Besides it’s going to be a very quick trip back to the ship.’
The San Andreas, slewing to port, had come around in a full half-circle and, under reverse thrust, was slowing to a stop. Patterson had almost certainly done this so as to manoeuvre the temporarily rudderless ship as near as possible to the spot where the Andover had been torpedoed.
Only a pathetic scattering of flotsam and jetsam showed where the frigate had gone down, baulks of timber, a few drums, carley floats, lifebuoys and life jackets, all empty and four men. Three of the men were together. One of them, a man with what appeared to be a grey stocking hat, was keeping the head of another man, either unconscious or dead, out of the water: with his other hand he waved at the approaching lifeboat. All three men were wearing life jackets and, much more importantly, all three were wearing wet suits, which was the only reason they were still alive after fifteen minutes in the ice-cold waters of an Arctic winter.
All three were hauled inboard. The young, bareheaded man who had been supported by the man with the grey stocking hat was unconscious, not dead. He had every reason, the Bo’sun thought, to be unconscious: there was a great swelling bruise still oozing blood just above the right temple. The third man – it seemed most incongruous in the circumstances – wore the peaked braided cap of a naval commander. The cap was completely saturated. The Bo’sun made to remove it, then changed his mind when he saw the blood at the back of the cap: the cap was probably stuck to his head. The commander was quite conscious, he had . courteously thanked the Bo’sun for being pulled out of the sea: but his eyes were vacant, glazed and sightless. McKinnon passed a hand before his eyes, but there was no reaction: for the moment, at any rate, the commander was quite blind.
Although he knew he was wasting his time, the Bo’sun headed towards the fourth man in the water but he backed off when he was still five yards away. Although his face was deep in the water he hadn’t died from drowning but from freezing: he wasn’t wearing a wet suit. The Bo’sun turned the lifeboat back to the San Andreas and touched the commander gently on the shoulder.
‘How do you feel, Commander Warrington?’
‘What? How do I feel? How do you know I’m Commander Warrington?’
‘You’re still wearing your cap, sir.’ The Commander made as if to touch the peak of his cap but the Bo’sun restrained him. ‘Leave it, sir. You’ve cut your head and your hat’s sticking to it. We’ll have you in hospital inside fifteen minutes. Plenty of doctors and nurses there for that sort of thing, sir.’
‘Hospital.’ Warrington shook his head as if trying to clear it. ‘Ah, of course. The San Andreas. You must be from her.’
‘Yes, sir. I’m the Bo’sun.’
‘What happened, Bo’sun? The Andover, I mean.’ Warrington touched the side of his head. ‘I’m a bit foggy up here.’
‘No bloody wonder. Three torpedoes, sir, almost simultaneously. You must have been blown off the bridge, or fell off it, or most likely been washed off it when your ship went down. She was on her beam ends then, sir, and it took only just over twenty seconds.’
‘How many of us – well, how many have you found?’
‘Just three, sir. I’m sorry.’
‘God above. Just three. Are you sure, Bo’sun?’
‘I’m afraid I’m quite sure, sir.’
‘My yeoman of signals – ‘
‘I’m here, sir.’
‘Ah. Hedges. Thank heavens for that. Who’s the third?’
‘Navigating officer, sir. He’s taken a pretty nasty clout on the head.’
‘And the First Lieutenant?’ Hedges didn’t answer, he had his head buried in his hands and was shaking it from side to side.
‘I’m afraid Hedges is a bit upset, Commander. Was the First Lieutenant wearing a red kapok jacket?’ Warrington nodded. ‘Then we found him, sir. I’m afraid he just froze to death.’
‘He would, wouldn’t he? Freeze to death, I mean.’ Warrington smiled faintly. ‘Always used to laugh at us and our wet suits. Carried a rabbit’s foot around with him and used to say that was all the wet suit he’d ever need.’
Dr Singh was the first man to meet the Bo’sun when he stepped out of the lifeboat. Patterson was with him, as were two orderlies and two stokers. The Bo’sun looked at the stokers and wondered briefly what they were doing on deck, but only very briefly: they were almost certainly doing a seaman’s job because there were very few seamen left to do it. Ferguson and his two fellow seamen had been in the for’ard fire-control party and might well be the only three left: all the other seamen had been in the superstructure at the time of the attack.
‘Five,’ Dr Singh said. ‘Just five. From the frigate and the plane, just five.’
‘Yes, Doctor. And even they had the devil’s own luck. Three of them are pretty wobbly. Commander looks all right but I think he’s in the worst condition. He seems to have gone blind and the back of his head has been damaged. There’s a connection, isn’t there, Doctor?’
‘Oh dear. Yes, there’s a connection. We’ll do what we . can.’
Patterson said: ‘A moment, Bo’sun, if you will.’ He walked to one side and McKinnon followed him. They were halfway towards the twisted superstructure when Patterson stopped.
‘As bad as that is it, sir?’ the Bo’sun said. ‘No eavesdroppers. I mean, we have to trust someone.’
‘I suppose.’ Patterson looked and sounded tired. ‘But damned few. Not after what I’ve seen inside that superstructure. Not after one or two things I’ve found out. First things first. The hull is still structurally sound. No leaks. I didn’t think there would be. We’re fixing up a temporary rudder control in the engine-room: we’ll probably be able to reconnect to the bridge which is the least damaged part of the superstructure. There was a small fire in the crew’s mess, but we got that under control.’ He nodded to the sadly twisted mass of metal ahead of them. ‘Let’s pray for cairn weather to come. Jamieson says the structural supports are so weakened that the whole lot is liable to go over the side if we hit heavy seas. Would you like to go inside?’
‘Like? Not like. But I have to.’ The Bo’sun hesitated, reluctant to hear the answer to the question he had to ask. ‘What’s the score so far, sir?’
‘Up to now we’ve come across thirteen dead.’ He grimaced. ‘And bits and pieces. I’ve decided to leave them where they were meantime. There may be more people left alive.’
‘More? You have found some?’
‘Five. They’re in a pretty bad way, some of them. They’re in the hospital.’ He led the way inside the twisted entrance at the after end of the superstructure. ‘There are two oxy-acetylene teams in there. It’s slow work. No fallen beams, no wreckage as such, just twisted and buckled doors. Some of them, of course – the doors, I mean – were just blown off. Like this one here.’
‘The cold room. Well, at least there would have been
nobody in there. But there were three weeks’ supply of beef, all kinds of meat, fish and other perishables in there: in a couple of days’ time we’ll have to start heaving them over the side.’ They moved slowly along the passageway. ‘Cool room intact, sir, although I don’t suppose a steady diet of fruit and veg. will have much appeal. Oh God!’
The Bo’sun stared into the galley which lay across the passage from the cool room. The surfaces of the cooking stoves were at a peculiar angle, but all the cupboards and the two work tables were intact. But what had caught the Bo’sun’s horrified attention was not the furniture but the two men who lay spreadeagled on the floor. They seemed unharmed except for a little trickle of blood from the ears and noses.