Free San Andreas by Alistair MacLean Page B

Bo’sun paused for a moment, then shook his head. ‘And just to make our cup overflowing, sir, we have the Andover ’s navigating officer aboard and he’s either concussed or in some sort of coma, we’ll have to ask Dr Singh. If a poker-player got dealt this kind of hand of cards, he’d shoot himself. Four navigating officers who can’t see and if you can’t see you can’t navigate. That’s why the loss of the radio is so damned unfortunate. There must be a British warship within a hundred or two miles which could have lent us a navigating officer. Can you navigate, sir?’
    â€˜Me? Navigate?’ Patterson seemed positively affronted. ‘I’m an engineer officer. But you, McKinnon: you’re a seaman— and twelve years in the Royal Navy.’
    â€˜It doesn’t matter if I had been a hundred years in the Royal Navy, sir. I still can’t navigate. I was a Torpedo Petty Officer. If you want to fire a torpedo, drop a depth charge, blow up a mine or do some elementary electrics, I’m your man. But I’d barely recognize a sextant if I saw one. Such things as sunsights, moonsights—if there is such a thing—and starsights are just words to me. I’ve also heard of words like deviation and variation and declination and I know more about Greek than I do about those.
    â€˜We do have a little hand-held compass aboard the motor lifeboat, the one I took out today, but that’s useless. It’s a magnetic compass, of course, and that’s useless because I do know the magneticnorth pole is nowhere near the geographical north pole: I believe it’s about a thousand miles away from it. Canada, Baffin Island or some such place. Anyway, in the latitudes we’re in now the magnetic pole is more west than north.’ The Bo’sun sipped some Scotch and looked at Patterson over the rim of his glass. ‘Chief Patterson, we’re lost.’
    â€˜Job’s comforter.’ Patterson stared moodily at his glass, then said without much hope: ‘Wouldn’t it be possible to get the sun at noon? That way we’d know where the south was.’
    â€˜The way the weather is shaping up we won’t be able to see the sun at noon. Anyway, what’s noon, sun-time—it’s certainly not twelve o‘clock on our watches? Supposing we were in the middle of the Atlantic, where we might as well be, and knew where south was, would that help us find Aberdeen, which is where I believe we are going? The chronometer, incidentally, is kaput, which doesn’t matter at all—I still wouldn’t be able to relate the chronometer to longitude. And even if we did get a bearing on due south, it’s dark up here twenty hours out of the twenty-four and the auto-pilot is as wrecked as everything else on the bridge. We wouldn’t, of course, be going around in circles, the hand compass would stop us from doing that, but we still wouldn’t know in what direction we were heading.’
    â€˜If I want to find some optimism, Bo’sun, I’ll know where not to look. Would it help at all if we knew approximately where we were?’
    â€˜It would help, but all we know, approximately, is that we’re somewhere north or north-west of Norway. Anywhere, say, in twenty thousand square miles of sea. There are only two possibilities, sir. The Captain and Chief Officer must have known where we were. If they’re able to tell us, I’m sure they will.’
    â€˜Good God, of course! Not very bright, are we? At least, I’m not. What do you mean—“if”? Captain Bowen was able to talk about twenty minutes ago.’
    â€˜That was twenty minutes ago. You know how painful burns can be. Dr Singh is sure to have given them painkillers and sometimes the only way they can work is by knocking you out.’
    â€˜And the other possibility?’
    â€˜The chart house. Mr Batesman was working on a chart—he