LITMIR.BIZ

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thought.’ Jamieson shivered. ‘My word, it is fresh up here. What’s the temperature?’

      The Bo’sun looked at the thermometer. ‘Zero. That’s two degrees it’s dropped in a few minutes. I’m afraid, Mr Jamieson, that we’re going to be very cold tonight.’

      ‘Not in the engine-room,’ Jamieson said. He unscrewed the back of the telephone and started connecting it to the slender cable. ‘Mr Patterson thinks this is an unnecessary luxury and that you just want it so that you can talk to someone when you feel lonely. Says that keeping the stern on to wind and seas is child’s play and that he could do it for hours without deviating more than two or three degrees off course.’

      ‘I’ve no doubt he could. That way we’ll never see Aberdeen. You can tell Mr Patterson that the wind is backing and that if it backs far enough and he still keeps stern on to the wind and sea we’ll end up by making a small hole in the north of Norway and a large hole in ourselves.’

      Jamieson smiled. ‘I’ll explain that to the Chief. I don’t think the possibility has occurred to him – it certainly didn’t to me.’

      ‘And when you go below, sir, would you send up Naseby? He’s an experienced helmsman.’

      ‘I’ll do that. Need any more help up here?’

      ‘No, sir. The three of us are enough.’

      ‘As you say.’ Jamieson screwed the back of the telephone in place, pressed the call-up button, spoke briefly and hung up. ‘Satisfaction guaranteed. Are you through, McCrimmon? Stephen?’ Both men nodded, and Jamieson called the engine-room again, asked for power to be switched on and told McCrimmon and Stephen to switch on one heater apiece, one black, one radiant. ‘Still require McCrimmon as a runner, Bo’sun?’

      The Bo’sun nodded towards the telephone. ‘Thanks to you, I’ve got my runner.’

      One of McCrimmon’s radiant heaters had started to glow a dim red. Stephen removed a hand from the black heater and nodded.

      ‘Fine. Switch off. It would seem, Bo’sun, that Flannelfoot has knocked off for the day. We’ll go below now, see what cabins we can make habitable. I’m afraid there won’t be many. The only way we can make a cabin habitable – the clearing up won’t take long, I’ve already got a couple of our boys working on that – is to replace defective heating systems. That’s all that matters. Unfortunately, most of the doors have been blasted off their hinges or cut away by the oxyacetylene torches and there’s no point in replacing heating if we can’t replace the doors. We’ll do what we can.’ He spun the useless wheel. ‘When we’ve finished below and you’ve finished here – and when the temperature is appropriate for myself and other hothouse plants from the engine-room – we’ll come and have a go at this steering.’

      ‘Big job, sir?’

      ‘Depends upon what damage in the decks, below. Don’t hold me to it, Bo’sun, but there’s a fair chance that we’ll have it operational, in what you’ll no doubt regard as our customary crude fashion, some time this evening. To give me some leeway, I won’t specify what time.’

      The temperature on the bridge continued to drop steadily and because numbing cold slows up a man both physically and mentally it took McKinnon and his two men well over two hours to complete their task: had the temperature been anything like normal they could probably have done it in less than half the time. About three-quarters of the way through the repairs they had switched on all four heaters and the temperature had begun to rise, albeit very slowly.

      McKinnon was well enough satisfied with their end product. Five sheets of hardboard had been bolted into position, each panel fitted with an inlet oblong of plate glass, one large, the other four, identical in shape, about half the size. The large one was fitted in the centre, directly ahead of where the helmsman normally stood: two of the others were fitted on either side of this and the remaining two on the upper sections of the wing doors. The inevitable gaps between the glass and the plywood and between the plywood and the metal to which they had been bonded had been sealed off with Hartley’s compound, a yellow plastic material normally used for waterproofing external electrical fittings. The bridge was as draughtproof as it was possible to make it.

      Ferguson put away the last of the tools and coughed. ‘There was some mention of a couple of tots of Captain Bowen’s special malt.’

      McKinnon looked at him and at Curran. Their faces were mottled blue and white with cold and both men were shivering violently: chronic complainers, neither had complained once.

      ‘You’ve earned it.’ He turned to Naseby. ‘How’s she bearing?’

      Naseby looked at his hand-held compass in distaste. ‘If you can trust this thing, two-twenty. Give or take. So the wind’s backed five degrees in the past couple of hours. We don’t bother the engine-room for five degrees?’

      George Naseby, a solid, taciturn, dark-haired and swarthy Yorkshireman – he hailed from Whitby, Captain Cook’s home town – was McKinnon’s alter ego and closest friend. A bo’sun himself on his two previous ships, he had elected to sail on the San Andreas simply because of the mutual regard that he and McKinnon shared. Although he held no official ranking, he was regarded by everyone, from the Captain down, as the number two on the deckside.

      ‘We don’t bother them. Another five, perhaps, ten degrees off, then we bother them. Let’s go below – ship can look after itself for a few minutes. Then I’ll have Trent relieve you.’

      The level of Scotch in the Captain’s bottle of malt had fallen quite rapidly – Ferguson and Curran had their own ideas as to what constituted a reasonably sized tot. McKinnon, in between rather more frugal sips, examined the Captain’s sextant, thermometer and barometer. The sextant, as far as the Bo’sun could tell, was undamaged – the felt lining of its wooden box would have cushioned it from the effects of the blast. The thermometer, too, appeared to be working: the mercury registered I7°F., which was about what McKinnon reckoned the cabin temperature to be. The Captain’s cabin was one of the few with its door still intact and Jamieson had already had a black heater installed.

      He gave the thermometer to Naseby, asking that it be placed on one of the bridge wings, then turned his attention to the barometer. This was functioning normally, for when he tapped the glass the black needle fell sharply to the left.

      ‘Twenty-nine point five,’ the Bo’sun said. ‘Nine nine nine millibars – and falling.’

      ‘Not good, eh?’ Ferguson said.

      ‘No. Not that we need a barometer to tell us that.’

      McKinnon left and went down from deck to the officers’ quarters. He found Jamieson at the end of the passageway.

      ‘How’s it coming, sir?’

      ‘We’re about through. Should be five cabins fit for human habitation – depending, of course, upon what your definition of human is.’

      The Bo’sun tapped the bulkhead beside him. ‘How stable do you reckon this structure is, sir?’

      ‘Highly unstable. Safe enough in those conditions, but I gather you think those conditions are about to change.’

      ‘If the wind keeps backing and we keep holding to this course then we’re going to have the seas on the starboard quarter and a lot of nasty corkscrewing. I was thinking perhaps –’

      ‘I know what you were thinking. I’m a ship’s engineer, Bo’sun, not a constructive engineer. I’ll have a look. Maybe we can bolt or weld a few strengthening steel plates at the weakest points. I don’t know. There’s no guarantee. First of all, we’ll go have a look at the steering on the bridge. How are things up top?’

      ‘Draught-free. Four heaters. Ideal working conditions.’

      ‘Temperature?’

      ‘Fifteen.’

      ‘Above freezing, or below?’

      ‘Below.’

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