Alan Evans - Thunder at Dawn

“You said she would draw less’n twenty-five feet, Captain?”

“She’s drawing twenty-four feet three inches.”

“Fore and aft?”

“Fore and aft.” Smith did not add that thirty tons of coal had been moved from forward to aft at cost of sweat and cursing on the part of the stokers to achieve that trim.

“Ta.” Phizackerly was only slightly encouraged. He thought that it was one thing to stand safe in the sun full of wind and piss, and boast. It was another matter to prove that boast. He glanced furtively at Smith then quickly back to their heading. Smith seemed cool but that had to be an act, Phizackerly knew it. No master, no seaman could take his ship into this sort of trap without a sickening apprehension. Or rather no ordinary seaman could. Smith was a long way from ordinary and he would not want excuses. But then he thought that if he, Phizackerly, made a balls of this, Smith would not condemn. All at once he knew that and he had nothing to fear from Smith but it brought him no comfort at all. Now Phizackerly had no use for excuses either and felt he would die rather than offer them.

“Ease her a point to port.” His voice was husky but there was a new note in it that brought a quick, curious glance from Smith. The whine was gone and the authority lost for fifteen years was back. He was the pilot and this ship was his charge. “Steady.”

“And a half, five!” The hail came back, the voice disembodied, its owner unseen in the bow. Phizackerly nodded. That was right.

Thunder crept on through the channel that seemed narrow in any event between the cliffs of forest, was in fact desperately narrow where the deep water lay, where it counted. She seemed suspended, unmoving, in a small world of darkness and mist where even the clock was slowed to tick leadenly away the seconds of the night. The night went on for ever. Fractional changes of course, minute adjustments, with the bridge sparsely staffed by rock-still figures and the only sounds the slow-turning screws and the regular muted hail from forward, “By the mark, five!” … “And a half, five!” … “A quarter less five!”

They touched, the barest tremor rubbing gently at the skin of the ship beneath them and away. Touched again. And again. But always Thunder slid on.

They passed a village on the bank, the pin-point dull red glow of a fire’s embers there and a dog that howled and barked, startling the hand in the bow so his call came: “By the mark — Bloody hell ! — by the mark, five!”

And Smith said, “By the bark, five.” Nobody laughed. They grinned nervously in response to his tight grin, teeth white momentarily against pale blurs of faces. Garrick wondered how he could find a joke, however weak, at this moment, because Garrick, like all of them, was aware of the risk that Smith ran.

As also was Smith. If he failed in this then at best he would somehow have to try to take Thunder astern into the main channel and to the fate that awaited her there. At worst Thunder could be stranded and interned, probably to lie for ever in this swamp to rot.

But they were better than halfway through and with time in hand. He had taken one more calculated risk and it was going right. In three hours or less it would be dawn but by then —

“ And a half, four !” There was an urgency about that hail and the figures were sufficient to invest it with that urgency. Thunder was running into shoal water.

Phizackerly said, “’Ere!” And: “ Stop her !”

Smith snapped, “Call back the picket-boat!” And to Phizackerly: “Silted?”

Phizackerly scowled. “Sounds like it. Should be deeper than that.”

The screws were still, Thunder drifted with the little way on her, stopped. The pinnace slid alongside and Smith called down, “You’re certain about that last sounding?”

Buckley’s voice came up, “Dead sure, sir. Straight up an’ down. And we got another after: four an’ a half fathoms.”

The tide was at the full, slack water. Soon it would start to ebb and Thunder’s chance of running the channel would drain away with that ebbing.

Phizackerly said heavily, “She’s silted. Never did afore, though it was always a chance, like, cause the channel forks here. Straight ahead there — see that light?” And as Smith nodded, “Another village on the right hand bank where the channel goes on, that’s what that light is, but the true channel turns to port near ninety degrees and she’s silted out from that left hand bank. So there just ain’t the room to make that turn. Aw, hell! Of all the bleeding luck —”

Smith cut him off. “We’ll take a look at it.”

They went down into the pinnace and Manton took it creeping away from Thunder’s inert bulk to sound the channel. Phizackerly’s forecast was proved depressingly correct. Over the years a bar had built up, maybe it had been building in Phizackerly’s day, grain upon grain, running out from the left hand bank and cutting into the channel. The deep water was still there, just. If Thunder’s length had been less by fifty feet she might, just, have worked around that tight turn. As it was, she could not. They explored the channel where it ran straight ahead, the false channel, and proved it to be just that. The water was deep for about forty yards but then shelved rapidly. Phizackerly thought exploring it was a waste of time anyway. “It peters out. Another three, four hundred yards and you can walk across.”

The village on the bank had its dog. It barked, howled, paced restlessly on the bank opposite them, barked again.

Smith said, “Back to the ship, Mr. Manton.”

It meant feverish activity, furious work. Smith’s carefully hoarded time was being eaten away by this check, even if this check did not prove final and fatal, as it boded.

They cast off the boats that they had towed thus far and Thunder ran slowly ahead into the blind channel. So slowly. Her progress before had been creeping; now she barely moved. As she approached, lights blinked on in the village, and as she nosed into the channel, eased inching forward with barely a ripple at her bow, the population of the village stood on the bank, shrouded in blankets. They clustered together, eyes wide, fists to their teeth as Thunder grew on them out of the mist, first heralded by the distant, muffled slow drum-beat of her engines that came to them more as vibration than sound, felt rather than heard. Then a looming but unsubstantial spectral shape that became finally too real, black and huge, towering over them. Miles in the bow stared down at them and wondered what they made of it. Even the dog crouched, silent now, kicked into silence.

Thunder ran gently aground. Labouring they took a heavy cable aboard the pinnace, dragged its sagging unwieldy length to the right bank of the true channel and made it fast to a rock outcrop. Thunder went astern on both engines till she slid her bow off the oozing bottom, then slow astern on the starboard engine and dead slow ahead on the port while the capstan aft hauled in on the cable. It tautened, straightened and as Thunder came out of the blind channel her stern started to edge around towards the true channel.

Smith gave all his orders from the port wing of the bridge where he could see the channel and the slow-swinging stern and the pinnace anchored at the point of the spit that ran out from the far bank. The ship was still in darkness because any inordinate display of light might still be reflected and seen from Punta Negro, but he could see the water of the channel, slack water still — or was it ebbing now, pushing gently at the pinnace? He could see all he needed and they watched him. He saw the critical point and ordered, “Stop engines!”