Alistair MacLean - HMS Ulysses

"I'm sure you do," Carrington said absently. "Here, give me a hand, will you?"

He hooked his fingers under the hatch, took a deep breath. The seaman at one side of the cover, the other side was hard against the after bulkhead, did the same. Together they strained, thighs and backs quivering under the strain. Carrington felt his face turning crimson with effort, heard the blood pounding in his ears, and relaxed. They were only killing themselves and that damned cover hadn't shifted a fraction, someone had done remarkably well to open it even that far. But even though they were tired and anything but fit, Carrington thought, two men should have been able to raise an edge of that hatch. He suspected that the hinges were jammed, or the deck buckled. If that were so, he mused, even if they could hook on a tackle, it would be of little help. A tackle was of no use when a sudden, immediate application of force was required; it always yielded that fraction before tightening up.

He sank to his knees, put his mouth to the edge of the hatch.

"Below there!" he called. "Can you hear me?"

"We can hear you." The voice was weak, muffled. "For God's sake get us out of here. We're trapped like rats!". "Is that you, Brierley? Don't worry, we'll get you out. How's the water down there?"

"Water? More bloody oil than water! There must be a fracture right through the port oil tank. I think the ring main passage must be flooded, too."

"How deep is it?"

"Three quarters way up already! We're standing on generators, hanging on to switchboards. One of our boys is gone already, we couldn't hold him."

Even muffled by the hatch, the strain, the near desperation in the voice was all too obvious. "For pity's sake, hurry up!"

"I said we'd get you out!" Carrington's voice was sharp, authoritative.

The confidence was in his voice only, but he knew how quickly panic could spread down there. "Can you push from below at all?"

"There's room for only one on the ladder," Brierley shouted. "It's impossible to get any pressure, any leverage upwards." There was a sudden silence, then a series of muffled oaths.

"What's up?" Carrington called sharply.

"It's difficult to hang on," Brierley shouted. "There are waves two feet high down there. One of the men was washed off there.... I think he's back again. It's pitch dark down here."

Carrington heard the clatter of heavy footsteps above him, and straightened up. It was Petersen. In that narrow space, the blond Norwegian stoker looked gigantic. Carrington looked at him, looked at the immense span of shoulder, the great depth of chest, one enormous hand hanging loosely by his side, the other negligently holding three heavy crowbars and a sledge as if they were so many lengths of cane.

Carrington looked at him, looked at the still, grave eyes so startlingly blue under the flaxen hair, and all at once he felt oddly confident, reassured.

"We can't open this, Petersen," Carrington said baldly. "Can you?"

"I will try, sir." He laid down his tools, stooped, caught the end of the tommy-bar projecting beneath the corner of the cover. He straightened quickly, easily: the hatch lifted a fraction, then the bar, putty, like in its apparent malleability, bent over almost to a right angle.

"I think the hatch is jammed." Petersen wasn't even breathing heavily.

"It will be the hinges, sir."

He walked round the hatch, peered closely at the hinges, then grunted in satisfaction. Three times the heavy sledge, swung with accuracy and all the power of these great shoulders behind them, smashed squarely into the face of the outer hinge. On the third stroke the sledge snapped.

Petersen threw away the broken shaft in disgust, picked up another, much heavier crowbar.

Again the bar bent, but again the hatch cover lifted an inch this time.

Petersen picked up the two smaller sledges that had been used to open clips, hammered at the hinges till these sledges, too, were broken and useless.

This time he used the last two crowbars together, thrust under the same corner of the hatch. For five, ten seconds he remained bent over them, motionless. He was breathing deeply, quickly, now, then suddenly the breathing stopped. The sweat began to pour off his face, his whole body to quiver under the titanic strain: then slowly, incredibly, both crowbars began to bend.

Carrington watched, fascinated. He had never seen anything remotely like this before: he was sure no one else had either. Neither of these bars, he would have sworn, would have bent under less than half a ton of pressure. It was fantastic, but it was happening: and as the giant straightened, they were bending more and more. Then suddenly, so unexpectedly that everyone jumped, the hatch sprang open five or six inches and Petersen crashed backwards against the bulkhead, the bars falling from his hand and splashing into the water below.

Petersen flung himself back at the hatch, tigerish in his ferocity. His fingers hooked under the edge, the great muscles of his arms and shoulders lifted and locked as he tugged and pulled at that massive hatch cover. Three times he heaved, four times, then on the fifth the hatch almost literally leapt up with a screech of tortured metal and smashed shudderingly home into the retaining latch of the vertical stand behind. The hatch was open. Petersen just stood there smiling, no one had seen Petersen smile for a long time, his face bathed in sweat, his great chest rising and falling rapidly as his starved lungs sucked in great draughts of air.

The water level in the Low Power Room was within two feet of the hatch: sometimes, when the Ulysses plunged into a heavy sea, the dark, oily liquid splashed over the hatch coaming into the flat above. Quickly, the trapped men were hauled to safety. Soaked in oil from head to foot, their eyes gummed and blinded, they were men overcome by reaction, utterly spent and on the verge of collapse, so far gone that even their fear could not overcome their exhaustion. Three, in particular, could do no more than cling helplessly to the ladder, would almost certainly have slipped back into the surging blackness below; but Petersen bent over and plucked them clean out of the Low Power Room as if they had been little children.

"Take these men to the Sick Bay at once!" Carrington ordered. He watched the dripping, shivering men being helped up the ladder, then turned to the giant stoker with a smile. "We'll all thank you later, Petersen.

We're not finished yet. This hatch must be closed and battened down."

"It will be difficult, sir," Petersen said gravely.

"Difficult or not, it must be done." Carrington was emphatic.

Regularly, now, the water was spilling over the coaming, was lapping the sill of the wheelhouse. "The emergency steering position is gone: if the wheelhouse is flooded, we're finished."

Petersen said nothing. He lifted the retaining latch, pulled the protesting hatch cover down a foot. Then he braced his shoulder against the latter, planted his feet on the cover and straightened his back convulsively: the cover screeched down to 45ø. He paused, bent his back like a bow, his hands taking his weight on the ladder, then pounded his feet again and again on the edge of the cover. Fifteen inches to go.

"We need heavy hammers, sir," Petersen said urgently.

"No time!" Carrington shook his head quickly. "Two more minutes and it'll be impossible to shut the hatch cover against the water pressure. Hell!" he said bitterly. "If it were only the other way round, closing from below. Even I could lever it shut!"

Again Petersen said nothing. He squatted down by the side of the hatch, gazed into the darkness beneath his feet.

"I have an idea, sir," he said quickly. "If two of you would stand on the hatch, push against the ladder. Yes, sir, that way, but you could push harder if you turned your back to me."