A Ravel of Waters

I thrashed and flailed onwards. Then I was against Jetwind’s side and a rope was in the water beside me. I snatched it up, snicked the loop under my arms. On the rail above, Jim Yell was grinning and gesturing. Once he was certain I was secure, he raised an arm to the bridge. That was the signal Tideman had been waiting for.

Even before Yell had dragged me inboard and freed me of my suit I could feel the sternway come off the ship and the beginning of headway take its place. 'You were great, sir!' Yell burst out. 'We'll lick 'em yet!'

I ran to the rail. Without the suit, I felt as light as a disembodied ghost. 'Where's their boat?'

It was there, all right. But it was not coming at Jetwind. It was heading towards the pinnace!

I stared in disbelief and anguish. I was brought to earth by a muffled tat-tat from Jetwind’s stern.

Yell spun on his heel. 'The gang is still fighting it out aft -I've got to help.'

I sprinted up a bridge ladder. I saw Kay first. For the eternity of one second our eyes locked. Neither of us said anything. There was no need.

Tideman stood at the control consoles. The bloodied mess that had been the bridge guard lay in one corner.

'Course as ordered, Peter? Same route?' Tideman asked without any show of agitation. 'Aye. Get the sails on the damaged mast also.' 'Think it will take it?' 'We need all the speed we can get. You've seen the boat party?' 'I have.'

'They've sheered away from the pinnace! They're coming this way!' exclaimed Kay.

I guessed what had happened – when the boarding party had got close enough and seen the pinnace unmanned, they had decided on Jetwind as their primary target. They knew – as we knew – that with all the fuel about they dared not risk a long shot. 'Oh, Jesus!'

I was accustomed to Tideman never raising his voice under almost any provocation: his breathed imprecation was as shattering as a close-up burst of automatic fire.

'Look!' he exclaimed. 'Look at the sub!' The blue.hull with its blue-mauve sail was swinging at its mooring near the destroyer. Its snout was turning deliberately, menacingly, slowly pointing towards Jetwind. 'She's going to fire!' 'She can't risk it…'

'Compressed air has no flash,' Tideman replied. 'Torpedoes are fired by compressed air.'

It took Jetwind twenty to thirty seconds to set sail. The damaged Number Two mast sails were in the process of slotting home; the other backed yards were swinging into position to pick up the wind on Jetwind’s starboard quarter. As yet the ship was barely under way. With half one mast missing, perhaps we accounted for the maximum scheduled time of thirty seconds. They were not thirty seconds; they were thirty years.

Jetwind seemed to hang. The sub's nose swung at her, round, round. There was a faint quiver through the hull as the wind gripped the aerofoils. Was Jetwind moving – at all? 'There!' Tideman pointed.

There was a white burst at the sub's bows. She was chancing a shot in a surfaced position. Perhaps the torpedo-men were over-eager, perhaps the skipper had miscalculated the running depth in Molot's shallow waters.

As it was, the silver-white tube leapt into the air. Then it plummeted back again in a flurry.

Tideman said unemotionally, 'Shooting is tricky when they run shallow like that.'

Half my mind noted one fact- Jetwind was moving! The other half seemed paralysed, fixated on the torpedo's progress. 'Give her two points of starboard helm!'

The long gleaming menace leaped clear of the water again. It shimmied, nose-dived. That leap gave away its target course. It would, I saw, intercept Jetwind a little onwards as she gathered speed. What a sub commander could not know was a windjammer's power to brake. 'Back the foremast! All aback!'

Tideman threw the toggle switches. Jetwind stopped as if held by a drag parachute.

The torpedo's trail streaked under Jetwind's bows. Now it headed straight for Trolltunga. It seemed to flash over the intervening distance I had laboured across in a matter of seconds. It detonated against the ice cliff.

It was not the concussion of a warhead filled with torpex TNT, cyclonite and aluminium powder which stunned and raped our sense of hearing. It was Trolltunga. Years of drifting, years of Antarctic weathering attrition, years of Southern Ocean corrosion, had shaken the interior architectural structure of the monster iceberg. Perhaps the final deep-down pummelling on the iron-bound tips of Molot seamount had also contributed to its inner break-up. Perhaps that very disintegration had been the reason why the Red scientists had been eager to probe its secrets.

Whatever it was, the torpedo completed the process. It was its coup de grace.

The warhead's explosion was a puny thing compared to what followed.