Free Cuttlefish by Dave Freer Page B

cutting.”
    â€œThe divers…”
    â€œToo small still.” He kept it short. It was easier to talk through his chattering teeth. “Two minutes.”
    The captain looked at him. “You need to recover, boy.”
    â€œSooner. Best. And I need a weight…to keep down.” Tim shivered. “We were floating away.
    Albert slapped his head. “Of course. We've got lead boots.”
    A submarine captain had to make fast decisions. “Give him your boots,” said Captain Malkis.
    â€œPart of the suit, sir.”
    â€œOh. Get a bunch of pry-bars from the engine room. Jump to it, man. And I'll want another man to go in with him. Not you, divers. You two get suited up. If the net can be cleared from the hatch, you'll be working on the rest as soon as they get in.”
    So, each with a belt with four heavy pry-bars hooked onto it, Tim and Submariner Smith, the bosun, had gone in to the escape hatch again.
    It was no less cold, and still dark outside in the watery moonlight. But it was only six wire strands, and then a dozen cord ones, with hands that were clumsy and stupid with cold, and then the hatchcould finally open properly. As it did that, the bosun reached up and pulled Tim back in.
    They closed the hatch and purged. This time Tim was the one who sat down, before he fell down.
    Smith helped him up, and soon he was out, stripped out of his wet breeches, bundled into a dry blanket, and half pushed, half carried down to the engine room. “Warmest place on the ship, boy,” said someone with rough kindness, pushing a steaming mug at him as they sat him against the big firebox. “Get that into you.”
    Tim's hands shook and his teeth chattered against the cup as he tried to drink. It was sweet tea, full of condensed milk and rum. “Albert says you'll be bone cold. Takes it out of you, and you weren't wearing all their layers.”
    It took him a full half mug of the brew before he realised that he was sharing the warm firebox backrest with someone else. The girl was there. As was her mother, holding her hand.
    The mother smiled at him. Took Tim's hand too. Felt it. “You're still very cold. You're a very brave young man. Thank you.”
    Tim nodded. It was almost all that he felt he could do. The rum was making his head muzzy, and it was spinning a bit. But fair was fair, he knew. “She did it. She got it open,” he managed to say.
    The woman stood up. “You both did well. Now, I am going to see if I can get you some bottles of hot water. Your core temperatures are very low. I don't think that the alcohol was a good idea.”
    â€œYou got me back inside,” said the girl, in a whispery voice. “Thanks.”
    â€œIt was…nothing,” said Tim awkwardly, cold and feeling remarkably stupid. He'd often dreamed of being a hero to some beautiful woman. Only the dream was a bit vague as to what happened afterwards.…Hopeful, but vague. And the damsels-in-distress hadn't been skinny ghost-pale girls who had already done what he could not. He hadn't set off to be a hero, either. Just been the smallest member of the crew. She was the one who had volunteered to do it.
    He wondered what came next. It would probably not be much like the dream either.
    It wasn't. Just as the girl's mother got back, the chief came along. “Going to have to move you two. The good news is we're starting the Stirlings again. The divers have cut us clear, but we're racing the tide, now. Just take you to back against the wall over there. It's still the warmest place on the ship, in here.”
    Tim was glad of it. Glad too when the chief decided that the two of them had been cluttering up his engine room for long enough, and should go and lie in their own bunks. It had been too busy with all the noise—greasers scampering to the rods with their buckets, and coal-monkeys filling the feed-hoppers—to fall asleep in the engine room, but Tim had come