Free North Star by Hammond Innes Page A

Sperm. ‘Pump holding?’ I asked him.
    ‘Aye.’
    ‘And the engines?’
    ‘They’ll no get her oot o’ here, if that’s what you mean.’
    So we just had to hope Jim Halcrow would risk bringing the supply ship right in on the tide. ‘Mrs Petersen told you the parts you ordered have arrived by air?’ He nodded and I asked him how his ribs were.
    ‘Strapped so tight I can’t hardly breathe. But it’s the electricsI’m worried aboot. That pipe to the cooling system is nothing by comparison. It could be the dynamos will have to be stripped doon, or even replaced, and God knows what’s happened to the wiring.’ He sniffed again at the breeze coming in down the voe. ‘Ach weel, I’ll get back doon again noo. That bluidy boy dinna ken the difference between an oil line and a fuel pipe.’
    ‘You’d better get some sleep,’ I told him.
    ‘A week in that bluidy morgue – what the hell ye think I been doing?’ And he disappeared into the night, heading for the door to the engine-room, his left arm held awkwardly to his body.
    It was still only a breeze when dawn broke. But by 09.00 it had strengthened to Force 4 and there were waves breaking on the seaward side of the spit. We grounded shortly afterwards, the keel bumping on boulders. The grating and clanging lasted almost half an hour. All we could do after that was wait, and hope that the wind wouldn’t increase before high water, which was at 16.05.
    But by then I had something else to worry about. Gertrude arrived just as we were completing the lifting of the anchor and she came aboard as soon as the work boat had dropped the anchor and chain under the bows. ‘Jim Halcrow says he will bring the supply ship in whatever the weather. He has the power and the manoeuvrability, also he draws much less than we do. But he needs to know the exact time you expect to be afloat.’
    ‘Tell him we’ll be bumping the bottom at about 15.35 and clear to tow off any time after 16.00.’
    She nodded. ‘Okay. I tell him that.’ There was a pause and then she said, ‘There was a man at the yard this morning. He was making enquiries.’
    We were standing in the starboard bridge gangway, watching the crew heaving in on the anchor chain, the trawler lying still now and the hills behind a diorama of shifting light as the clouds scudded over. An island scene, and all so peaceful thatthe industrial world I had lived in seemed unreal. ‘What sort of a man?’
    ‘A police inspector, but in plain clothes.’
    Not Bob Scunton then or the other man. That was something. Unless this inspector insisted on my going back to Hull. ‘What did he want?’
    ‘Just enquiring about you. What you were doing.’
    ‘Did he ask you any questions?’
    ‘No. He did not need to. He had already talked to me the previous day.’
    ‘Where?’
    ‘At Taing.’
    ‘You didn’t tell me.’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Why?’
    She looked at me then. ‘Why do you think? I don’t want to distract you.’ And she added, ‘He will see you when the ship is afloat and lying off the yard.’
    God! What a practical, soulless woman she was, not caring a damn about anything but her trawler.
    ‘What is it about?’ she asked. ‘You have done something?’
    I looked at her, feeling suddenly cold and hard inside. Was this what a whaling station did to you? She had been brought up in the stench of the flensing deck, and her father had rubbed his hands with glee and said it smelled of money. She had told me that herself, laughing, and I had seen her in my mind as a young girl with the guts and urine of dead whales spilling out at her feet, and her father beaming and rubbing his hands. ‘A little girl was nearly killed,’ I said.
    ‘And you were involved?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Then why is this inspector here from London?’
    ‘Better ask him,’ I said, and went down the ladder to give a hand for’ard.
    Gertrude Petersen left shortly after that. The warps were all ready aft, the anchor stowed and the chain flaked neatly