CHAPTER 3
Hitting his head painfully on the back of the bed, John woke up. As an old sea dog who had spent most of his time away from dry land since becoming an adult, he usually did not react to the caprices of the weather when it decided to play around with the ship. So what, a bit of bad weather, it happened at least once a fortnight.
But this time the huge tanker was being tossed up and down as if it were a small fishing boat. If he hadn’t been so tired after a long shift that had ended several hours ago, he would probably have begun to worry – the icy waters of the leaden ocean outside were really throwing the ship around. The elements were raging in earnest. In spite of his nineteen years at sea, he could not remember a storm like this.
He stretched out his hand to the switch directly above his bunk and switched on the light, flooding the cabin with dim light. His neighbour’s towel, hanging on the back of his bed, was swinging from side to side in time with the ship. He couldn’t hear any snoring, so his neighbour must be on watch. He didn’t envy him that in such weather, he really didn’t.
John himself had been lucky this time. On taking up his post the previous morning, the first thing he did was to look at the weather forecast. Along their route, a fair-sized weather front was moving in from the south. Storm-force winds and intensive rain with thunder and lightning were expected. If the front held its course, there was a reasonably good chance that it would pass them by unnoticed.
Unfortunately, instead of the weather front slowing down, it had speeded up and covered their ship by the evening. The tanker maintained its course and found itself at the very heart of the bad weather.
After handing over the watch, John went outside briefly for some fresh air on the way back to his cabin. Standing on the deck and taking deep breaths to fill his lungs with oxygen and get ready for sleep, he groaned as he looked towards the south, from where leaden, almost black clouds were creeping in. Lightning flashed every now and then, illuminating the clouds from within and making the picture look even more ominous than before. The thunder could not yet be heard, but experience suggested that he would surely have to sleep with earplugs in tonight. As for the rocking... In this respect, experienced sailors are like children. The more it rocks, the better they sleep.
The extreme bad weather was throwing the tanker about on the waves, making her groan as if in real physical pain. Like a wounded beast, the ship shuddered along the length of its huge metal structure. Although mildly choppy seas were hardly noticeable on such a gigantic vessel, a severe storm could still stop you sleeping. Today, even his seagoing experience was not enough to guarantee undisturbed sleep.
A mighty wave struck the ship’s side once again, making the towel swing even more vigorously. The lamp flickered, plunging the cabin into semi-darkness for an instant, then came back on again.
Something was not right. An invisible mist of alarm hung in the air. John could not see it, and it was nothing to do with the dim light, but he could feel it subconsciously. At critical moments, he sometimes imagined he could smell danger, that he could literally sense its odour in the air.
It was nonsense, of course. Danger has no smell. Bad weather, thunder, storm-force winds – they have a smell. The turbulent ocean smells different at such moments. Severe bad weather had quite often caused emergency situations, or worse. Over the long years, his subconscious had got into the habit of filling his head with alarming thoughts as soon as the weather took a turn for the worse.
What had happened to Severin, for instance, some five years ago. This young lad, whose cabin had been at the other end of the corridor, had somehow got the bright idea of leaving the bridge during a storm without bothering about a safety line. The bridge itself was the height of a twenty-storey building above the surface of the water and the waves could not reach him. Its windows kept being splashed by waves hitting the ship below, but they were unable to reach the very top. Ship’s regulations strictly forbade such actions, but Severin was alone on the bridge and there was no-one around to stop him. He opened the door and went out, probably for a breath of fresh air or a smoke. At that moment, an unusually high wave covered the bridge from the very top, taking the young seaman with it.
An hour and a half later, when his replacement, Rajesh, found no-one on watch, he did not realise what had happened at first. As he explained later, he thought that Severin had gone to the head. But after five minutes had elapsed, he realised there was something wrong and quickly looked in every corner where his shipmate might be concealed. Failing to find him, he looked at the CCTV recording.
When it became clear what had happened, the tanker was already forty nautical miles from the ill-fated place where Severin had been swept into the sea. Even in a storm of moderate intensity, as on that day, a search would have been hopeless due to limited visibility, oncoming darkness, and ignorance of the precise coordinates of where the man had been swept overboard. Severin had been dressed in an ordinary sweater, sports shirt and jeans, which at a sea water temperature of five degrees Celsius meant certain death within half an hour. By the time the crew discussed plans to rescue him, he was certainly no longer alive. The master took the decision not to return to search for him and continued on course.
John listened with bated breath for a few seconds, not that it made any difference in the roar of the raging elements, and thought he could hear rapid steps somewhere above him. Someone ran past at full pelt, loudly slamming a door. There was nothing unusual in the crew dashing about on a night like this. When high seas are running, there is always something happening, or breaking loose, or smashing. The crew now on watch would have to run to put things right.
Something like a cry of despair suddenly reached John’s ears from the depths of the steel monster groaning under the impact of the waves. He screwed up his eyes as he strained to hear, but at the very next moment, another wave washed over the ship’s side, filling the interior with dull sound. The cry either stopped or was simply drowned out in the noise and when the wave fell back and settled down, it was no longer audible. Or had there never been a cry? He knew his ship well enough to be sure that when bending under the force of the elements acting on it from all sides, she might produce any sound, creating the impression that somewhere in her depths there was a wild beast roaring or a baby crying inconsolably.
John hunched up. It was always colder in his cabin than he liked. In all his time at sea, the only thing he had never gotten used to was the cold, although he didn’t mind it when jumping into icy water. Plunging into the foaming liquid, the first few seconds caught his breath and it seemed his heart was about to stop, but this quickly passed and left him feeling unusually exhilarated. What really irritated him was the light cold draught that sneaked in treacherously from the corridor and made the whole cabin as cold as a tomb. This cold ran across the floor and filled the space as it crept upwards. No, he had never managed to get used to it.
He lay where he was for a few more seconds, putting off the moment he would have to jump out from under the blanket, wondering if it was worth getting something warm from the closet. Then he threw the blanket off him quickly and stood up. He hurried across to the closet and got out a warm but exceptionally prickly blanket and ran back to his bunk. His feet felt frozen stiff at once. John threw on the blanket and, after a few seconds, felt a pleasant warmth enveloping him. Now even the bad weather outside didn’t bother him. As for the blood-curdling sounds... Well, you could ignore them if you tried.
As soon as he closed his eyes, he felt sleepy. In a little while, his consciousness would be immersed in the world of dreams, leaving unpleasant reality outside. The woollen blanket was doing its job splendidly and he was thoroughly warm now. He put out the light in the cabin. The sounds of the storm were gradually beginning to die away in his head when the sound of a shot penetrated his fatigued consciousness.
It was as if an electric shock had passed through his body and his sleepiness vanished instantly. What was it? Shooting? Or had he imagined it? Watches on board ship
often lasted for a day or more, and John knew that after a certain level of fatigue, the body, on hitting the pillow, would never get to sleep despite the fatigue. It seemed to be buzzing and wouldn’t let the brain relax. On such nights he would sleep superficially, periodically waking up from nightmares. Was his tired mind playing tricks on him or was there really something wrong happening on the ship?
Experience at sea suggested that when in doubt, check it out. Better not to waste time on useless guesses. He threw off the blanket and got out of bed, quickly put on his trousers, threw on a shirt and pulled a sweater over it. He groped for his shoes in the dark, put them on and tied his shoelaces. Then, trying not to make a noise, he went to the door, cautiously opened it a little and looked along the corridor as far as he could through the narrow crack, first one way, then the other.
There wasn’t a soul in the corridor. Everything looked normal, nothing suspicious. John opened the door a little wider. Of course, to an outsider, he would look like an idiot now, fearfully sneaking a glance into the corridor, but if there really was something wrong, it would not be very wise just to stroll around the ship. Better safe than sorry.
He carefully took a step into the corridor and closed the door behind him as quietly as he could. After thinking for a few seconds, he fetched the key and locked it. That flimsy lock would not even withstand a good kick, but at least if the door was closed, it would indicate that no-one else had been in there in his absence.
John slowly went in the direction of the stairway to the bridge. Here in the corridor, the severe weather made itself felt even more resoundingly than inside his cabin, making it sound even more ominous. The bright light illuminating the staircase gave him courage. In his attempt to move as quietly as possible, he had involuntarily stooped over. Now, he was rather ashamed of his fears. Good grief, just like a total greenhorn! He quickly ascended several flights, no longer paying attention to the sound of his footsteps, and soon reached the bridge.
To his surprise, there was not a soul there. He went up to the navigation instruments and glanced at the screens. Everything looked normal. The ship was proceeding along its course. It was more than a thousand kilometres to the nearest dry land, not counting some tiny uninhabited islands to the starboard.
The radar picture was constantly recorded by the computer throughout the voyage. He switched on the recording and wound it back several hours. Cargo ships and other tankers had passed them several times at a considerable distance, but not a single vessel of any kind had approached them in all that time. As was to be expected.
John went right up to the panoramic window and looked out. The ship was illuminated by powerful floodlights, but the bows could not be seen because of the heavy rain. The bright lighting inside the bridge prevented him from seeing the ocean. Instead, there seemed to be an absolutely black abyss all around him, with only occasional light wave crests visible here and there.
The ship, running into the next wave, rose up, reached the peak, stopped for a few moments and then rushed down the other side. As the bow end hit the water, tons of foaming water shot up into the air on both sides, clearly visible in the illumination of the floodlights. In such weather, there was no possibility of boarding the ship from the sea or the air.
He turned back to the monitors and started looking at the relays from the observation cameras. Pressing a button, he switched from one camera to another. Most of them were not providing images. This was strange. Cameras occasionally became unserviceable and this happened more frequently in bad weather, but not this many at once.
John switched to the next camera, which showed the crew room. Instead of the usual image of a large table in the centre and a number of sofas around the walls, there was only a blank screen. He pressed a button, trying to switch on the camera, and the image appeared at once. So it was not broken, it had only been switched off. Perhaps the others were not broken, either. Who on earth would want to switch off the cameras?
He looked more carefully at the picture. The cabin was empty and there was nothing suspicious about its appearance. He could see an open bottle in a cup holder standing on the table next to the long sofa on which Miguel usually sat. Although the image was not very clear, the choppy sea was shaking the beer about so that even from where he was, he could distinguish a layer of light foam close to the neck. Miguel had let an open bottle still full of beer out of his hands? Now that was something new!
Suddenly, in the corner of the image, something grey bolted towards the door. Had he imagined it? John pressed the recording rewind button, but all he saw was a message in the centre of the screen:
RECORDING NOT AVAILABLE
For some reason, the image from the camera had not been recorded...
He again began to feel worried. The crew room was six decks below the bridge and was accessible both by the internal staircase and the external one. If he chose the dry, warm and safe route – the internal one – he would not be able to reach the crew room without making a noise. Footsteps on the steel stairs could be heard inside the staircase from two decks above and below.
John considered if it was worth taking the risk to try and get there by going outside. The risk was considerable, since the storm was still raging furiously. Apart from the danger of being washed overboard, he might simply be blown off by the wind. The case of Severin was still fresh in his memory.
Although there were special ropes on board for use in extreme weather conditions, attachable to a broad belt around the waist, his body resisted the idea of going outside to face the raging storm. He didn’t want to, but it looked as if he’d have to... The thing was, his clothing was not suitable for walking about outside, where the air temperature could be as low as seven degrees.
John went to the closet where the emergency suits were kept. Taking the first one to hand, he slipped into it. It was of thick rubber, orange on the outside, and smelled not only of rubber but also of fish and the sea. Pulling the hood over his head, he quickly zipped up the suit from crotch to chin. It fitted snugly around his body and head.
Pulling the hood cord down, he tied it so that only the oval of his face was exposed, from just below his mouth to just above his eyes. All the rest was protected from the cold and water by a layer of rubber. Now for the safety rope.
He stepped right up to the closet. The rubber of the suit created a sound familiar to his ears with every movement he made. Feeling about in the closet, he pulled out a rope, put on its belt with a wide strap on one side, groped for the snap hook on the other end and moved towards the door to the outside.
No sooner had he got outside than he was hit in the face by a shower of icy splashes that beat all over his suit, but the rubber prevented the water and cold from reaching his body. The drops of water and rain beating mercilessly against the suit were even pleasant in a way, something like a massage.
John lost no time in taking the snap hook to the handrail and pressing hard on it until it clicked tight. Making sure he was firmly attached, he finally released the grip of his other hand on the rail and, stepping carefully, began to descend the iron staircase.
Every twenty seconds, a shower of splashes hit him as the next wave struck against the ship’s side. In the intervals in between, intense rain poured over him as if trying, in combination with the gusty wind, to deliberately knock him off his feet.
He descended the staircase placing his feet as far apart as his suit would allow, holding onto the handrails with both hands. The raging storm created such a roar that there was no fear of his heavy footsteps being heard. Stepping so unguardedly on the corrugated metal steps in clear weather, the noise would surely have been heard some hundred metres away, but now all sounds were drowned out by the roar of the wind and the noise of the leaden water of the ocean raging twenty metres below.
Having gone down four flights to the deck two decks below, he stopped to get his breath. The cookhouse, which would normally be empty at night, was on this deck. John went up to the porthole and looked in. Th
e main lighting was switched off, but the diode lights set in the floor still marked out the passageways. In the otherwise total darkness, their light was sufficient to enable him to see something of the interior.
There appeared to be some sort of movement in the far corner and he pressed closer to the porthole, but the drops of water on the glass made the already poor visibility even worse. He leaned back and passed one hand over the glass to wipe away the splashes, but the rubber suit could hardly have been worse for this purpose. It stuck to the glass and refused to slide across it.
He took one glove in his teeth and pulled his hand out of it, keeping his grip on the handrail with the other. Suddenly, there was a bright flash of lightning, illuminating everything around him for a moment. Out of the corner of his eye he could see the shadow of a huge wave. His heart instantly sank into his boots. He feverishly reached out with his bare hand for the nearest handrail, but his bare wet palm only slid along the metal without being able to grip it. At the next moment, the wave hit the ship’s side, broke up into a billion big splashes and came down on him like a waterfall. The impact was so strong that he could not hold on with one hand, was swept off his feet and thrown against the handrail. He was hit painfully in the stomach and caught his breath as the upper part of his body toppled over the handrail. He couldn’t hold on and flew down towards the ocean.