Geoffrey Jenkins: A Ravel of Waters

'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.

Trolltunga split, rolled, buckled, fell apart, in a thousand fragments, each tearing at the other like cannibal killer whales. There was a stupendous broadside of sound as the iceberg writhed in its death-agony — heaving, twisting, convulsing, ice platforms the size of islands clumping and inverting as if activated by vast unknown sources of energy. Only the last few kilometres of iceberg were visible to us — it was anyone's guess what was happening to the main body out of sight in the fog. I tore my eyes from the sight — the sub!

The world might be falling apart, but that Red skipper knew his job. His target was Jetwind, and he meant to get her. The submarine's blue-mauve bows steadied on target. This time he did not mean to miss.

'Brace those yards — quick!' As I shouted the order I wondered if the sound of my voice was audible to Tideman only a metre or two away.

Even as I got out the words, I knew it was too late. I had halted Jetwind; she could never gain enough way in time to evade the next shot.

The cutting-out boat broke clear of the fleet. What the torpedo didn't do, the boarding party would finish. The light of the searchlights was reflecting off their weapons. Kay's fingers bit into my arm. 'Look’'

The pinnace's sparkle of orange flame in the heart of the fleet was insignificant compared to the tumultuous spectacle of Trolltunga. Molot exploded.

One moment there were ships and men, living things, moving, plotting, aiming; the next they all stood still in death in front of our eyes. The world of Molot gave a single hideous orgasmic jerk and then stopped like a movie freeze. Everything pulsed in blinding relief for one explosive moment. Then the flames reached up into the overcast.

I had sense enough to remember the danger of Jetwind’s sail plan being exposed to a whirlwind blast of concussion. I scarcely recognized my own voice. 'Get the sails off her! Furl everything!'

The Shockwave passed like a wind out of hell. It arrived moments before the minor tidal wave Trolltunga threw up. I thought it would roll the masts out of the ship before I dared risk setting a couple of steadying top-gallants.

The burning fuel on the water drew a merciful curtain of thick black smoke over what was happening to the trapped ships. As Jetwind edged past the blazing holocaust to the escape route there was a brighter stab from amongst the blackness, and we saw Catherine wheels of exploding ammunition cartwheeling high into the air. Jetwind’s crew on deck heard screams from the men of Group Condor from deep inside the flames, they told me later, but on the enclosed bridge we were shut off from them.

'Course nor'east’ I ordered Tideman. 'Follow the iceberg channel.'

His face was grim and withdrawn; he operated the console switches like an automaton.

Kay came and hid her face against my chest. She did not speak; her dry sobs said everything.

Then the fuel-oil smut on the bridge windscreen cleared, and the wind came clean and fresh. Jetwind was free.

'Captain on the bridge!'

The harsh voice of the intercom rasped through the gathering taking place in the crew's day-room, which was situated over the stern. The summons was from the substitute radio operator, one of Tideman's men named Greg. Jim Yell had been left temporarily in command on the bridge; everyone else who could be spared from their duties was attending the get-together. Both Kay and Tideman were present; the self-appointed master of ceremonies was Sir James Hathaway.

It was the morning after the Molot break-out. There was enough flying overcast down-horizon astern to blot out the last traces of the pall of smoke over the secret bass. Jetwind was making a fair fifteen knots in the racing seas. I was pushing her hard, carrying everything I could, but Jetwind wasn't at her best. The missing mast which had catapulted me clear had created an imbalance in the sail plan aerodynamics. It had also affected the steering: she needed watching all the time to prevent a maverick sheer when a bigger-than-usual wave boiled under her counter. Jetwind wasn't at her best, nor was I.

A bitter, self-reproaching reaction had set in once Jetwind had skated clear of the last of the shoal-marker icebergs and the flaring pyre had dimmed astern to a glowing pink and, finally, to a sooty blackness indistinguishable from storm wrack. The clearing-up of Grohman's corpse and those of the two guards had been the final straw. The rest of the gang had surrendered. I could not help thinking, eyeing Grohman's contorted face, that perhaps he had died easily compared to the hundreds of others I had sent to a fiery, diabolical end with my own hands. In war, my action would have been justified, but this was peace — of a kind. Those who might have escaped the fire would have been mortified by the ice. I could not decide which was worse. I, I alone, was responsible.