The Black Tide

There were no lights here and it took a moment for my eyes to become accustomed to the starlit gloom. The long chart table unit formed the back of the wheelhouse, just behind the steering wheel and the gyro compass. There was a chart on it, but even in that dim light I could see that it was the plans of the Persian Gulf, which included large scale details of the Musandam Peninsula, and no indication of where the ship had come from. This was the only chart on the table, and the one ready to hand in the top drawer, the big Bay of Bengal chart, was no help either. It was the log book I needed, but when I went to switch on the chart table light to search the shelves, I found the bulb had been removed. I think all the bulbs in the wheelhouse had been removed.

However, the books were the usual collection to be found on the bridge of any ocean-going ship, most of them immediately recognizable by their shape — the Admiralty sailing directions, light lists, tidal and ocean current charts, nautical almanacs, and the lists of radio signals and navigational aid stations and beacons.

I turned my attention to the radio room then. This was on the starboard side, and groping my way to it I stumbled against a large crate. It was one of three, all of them stencil-marked radio equipment. They had been dumped outside the entrance to the radio room which, even in the da’rkness, showed as a ragged gap boarded up with a plywood panel. Jagged strips

of metal curling outwards indicated an explosion and the walls and deck were blackened by fire.

The sight of it came as a shock, my mind suddenly racing. Radio shacks didn’t explode of their own accord. Somebody had caused it, somebody who had been determined to stop the ship from communicating with the outside world. The crates were obviously the ones Hals had loaded on to the dhow from the warehouse at Dubai. The larger one would be the single-sideband radio and the other two would contain the other replacements for instruments damaged in the explosion. Was that why I hadn’t seen any sign of a radio officer? Had he been killed in the blast? I was remembering Gault’s warning then, feeling suddenly exposed, the others all in the messroom drinking, only myself up here on the bridge trying to find out where the ship had come from, what had happened to her.

The need to be out of the wheelhouse and in the open air, away from those grim marks of violence, made me turn away towards the door on the starboard side, sliding it open and stepping out into the night. The starboard bridge wing was so close to the cliffs I could almost touch them with my hand, the air stifling with the day’s heat trapped in the rocks. The masts of the dhow lying just ahead of the portside gangway were two black sticks against the dull gleam of the khawr, which stretched away, a broad curve like the blade of a khanjar knife in the starlight. Deep down below I could just hear the muffled hum of the generator. It was the only sound in the stillness of that starlit night, the ship like a ghostly sea monster

stranded in the shadow of the cliffs, and that atmosphere — so strong now that it almost shrieked aloud to me.

Standing there on the extreme edge of the bridge wing, I suddenly realized I was exposed to the view of any hawk-eyed Arab standing guard on the deck below. I turned back to the shelter of the wheelhouse. No point in searching for that log book now. With the radio room blasted by some sort of explosive device, the log would either be destroyed or in safe keeping. Hals might have it, but more likely it was in the hands of the people who had hired him. In any case, it didn’t really matter now. The destruction of the ship’s means of communication could only mean one thing — piracy. She had been seized from her owners, either whilst on passage or else in some Middle Eastern port where the harbour authorities were in such a state of chaos that they were in no position to prevent the seizure of a 100,000-ton ship.

I had another look at the blackened fabric of the radio room. There was absolutely no doubt, it had been blasted by an explosion and that had been followed by fire. I wondered what had happened to the poor wretched Sparks. Had he been there when the explosion occurred? I didn’t attempt to break into the room, but at least there was no odour of putrefaction, only the faint smell of burnt rubber and paint. I checked the crates again, wondering why they needed to replace the radio equipment. For purposes of entering a port to sell cargo or for delivering the ship a small VHF set would be quite adequate.