Free The White Voyage by John Christopher Page A

was that?’
    ‘Half an hour, maybe three-quarters.’
    ‘Try and raise her. Send this out as a CQ first. I’m going back up to the bridge. Let us know as soon as you have anything.’
    Lauring picked up his earphones, but stared at them instead of putting them on.
    ‘If we can’t steer,’ he said, ‘we’re helpless.’
    ‘As helpless as a cork. We may get a shaking, but that’s the worst that can happen.’
    Lauring put on the earphones. ‘I’ll try to raise someone,’ he said.
    ‘Yes,’ Mouritzen said, ‘I’m sure you will.’
    He ran into a work-party on deck; under Carling’s direction they were, as he had expected, rigging a sea-anchor. He stopped to see how things were going. They were proceeding with as much calmness and efficiency as was possible on the deck of a small ship swept by waves thirty and forty feet high, with a wind at Force 8 or 9. But Carling, he thought, looked strange – stranger than the conditions justified. In emergencies, Carling normally exceeded himself, cursing and encouraging with a zest that appeared to be the greater for the difficulties or danger encountered. Now he was shouting his orders to the men with a curtness that made it seem his mind was on something other than the task in hand.
    Mouritzen stayed to endeavour to give some kind of encouragement himself, but after a time he abandoned the attempt. He felt it was making Carling’s withdrawal more conspicuous. In any case, the work was proceeding well enough. He went back up to the bridge, but did not immediately remove his oilskins. He stood by the door, water dripping from him to form a pool. Olsen had abandoned the wheel and was watching the radar screen.
    ‘Anything from Lauring yet?’ Mouritzen asked.
    ‘A Swedish freighter, the
Västervik
– about seventy miles west of Esbjerg.’
    Mouritzen glanced at the chart. ‘Getting on for a hundred miles. What’s she making?’
    ‘Seven or eight knots. That’s good, against this.’
    ‘Nothing else?’
    ‘Borkum are ready to send out a lifeboat. I’ve told them there’s no need.’
    ‘No need yet. Are you sure it was wise?’
    ‘They could be here no sooner than the
Västervik
. It would be a needless risk. In any case, we are in good shape.’
    A wave broke up against the glass.
    ‘We are taking a hammering,’ Mouritzen said. ‘I wonder what shape we shall be in by morning?’
    ‘The same as now – with a few bruises, perhaps.’
    ‘Have the passengers been told anything?’
    ‘There is no need. It would be stupid to tell them, from their point of view as well as from ours.’
    ‘Yes, you are right. It’s a pity, Erik.’
    ‘What is a pity?’
    ‘You would have made a fine doctor.’
    Olsen looked at him coldly for a moment, and then smiled. ‘So I would. And I manage well enough as a sea captain, do I not?’
    ‘Yes. The sea-anchor – you will not pull her round with seas like these.’
    ‘I think not, also. It was the only thing to try.’
    Mouritzen nodded. ‘I’ll go down again, and see how it goes.’
----
    The hours went by while the
Kreya
lay helpless under the savage fingers of the giant. The gale veered to southerly, and then fractionally into the eastern quarter, but it showed no abatement. The
Västervik
, on the report that all was still well and that the
Kreya
was being carried north-east, into the path of British coastal shipping, abandoned the attempt to come up with her, and resumed her own original course for Amsterdam. Help was now being offered by a Scottish cargo ship, but there was little chance of her being on the scene before dawn.
    About one o’clock, with a noise as rending as though the ship itself were being torn in two, the foremast splintered and crashed. Mouritzen drained the coffee which Thorsen had just brought up, burning his tongue, and went forward to look at the damage. Although he went by the relatively sheltered port side, he had to hold the rail as the waves crashed over, and once, misjudging the