Hungry as the Sea by Wilbur Smith Read Free Book Online Page A

grunted as he saw the new position report. Something had altered drastically in the liner’s circumstances.
MAIN ENGINES STILL UNSERVICEABLE. CURRENT SETTING EASTERLY AND INCREASING TO EIGHT KNOTS. WIND RISING FORCE SIX FROM NORTH-WEST. CRITICAL ICE DANGER TO THE SHIP. WHAT ASSISTANCE CAN I EXPECT?
    There was a panicky note to that last line, and Nick saw why when he compared the liner’s new position on the spread chart.
    “She’s going down sharply on the lee shore,” David muttered as he worked quickly over the chart. “The current and wind are working together — they are driving her down on to the land.”  He touched the ugly broken points of Coatsland’s shoreline with the tip of one finger.
    “Is he eighty miles offshore now. At the rate she is drifting, it will take her only another ten hours before she goes aground.”
    “If she doesn’t hit an iceberg first,” said Nick. “From the Master’s last message, it sounds as though they are into big ice.”
    “That’s a cheerful thought,” agreed David, and straightened up from the chart.
    “What’s our time to reach her?”
    “Another forty hours, sir,” David hesitated and pushed the thick white-gold lock of hair off his forehead, “if we can make good this speed — but we may have to reduce when we reach the ice.”
    Nick turned away to his canvas chair. He felt the need to pace back and forward, to release the pent-up forces within him. However, any movement in this heavy pounding sea was not only difficult but downright dangerous, so he groped his way to the chair and wedged himself in, staring ahead into the clamorous black night.
    He thought about the terrible predicament of the liner’s Captain. His ship was at deadly risk, and the lives of his crew and passengers with it.
    “How many lives?” Nick cast his mind back and came up with the figures.
    The Golden Adventurer’s full complement of officers and crew was 235, and there was accommodation for 375 passengers, a possible total of over six hundred souls. If the ship was lost, Warlock would be hard put to take aboard that huge press of human life.
    “Well, sir, they signed on for adventure,” David Allen spoke into his thoughts as though he had heard them, “and they are getting their money’s worth.”
    Nick glanced at him, and nodded. “Most of them will be elderly. A berth on that cruise costs a fortune, and it’s usually only the oldsters who have that sort of gold. If she goes aground, we are going to lose life!”
    “With respect, Captain,” David hesitated, and blushed again for the first time since leaving port, “if her Captain knows that assistance is on the way, it may prevent him doing something crazy!”
    Nick was silent. The mate was right, of course. It was cruel to leave them in the despair of believing they were alone down there in those terrible ice fields. The Adventurer’s Captain could make a panic decision, one that could be averted if he knew how close succour was.
    “The air temperature out there is minus five degrees, and if the wind is at thirty miles an hour, that will make it a lethal chill factor. If they take to the boats in that —” David was interrupted by the Trog calling from the radio room.
    “The owners are replying.” It was a long message that Christy Marine were sending to their Captain. It was filled with those same hollow assurances that a surgeon gives to a cancer patient, but one paragraph had relevance for Nick: all efforts being made to contact salvage tugs reported operating South Atlantic. David Allen looked at him expectantly. It was the right humane thing to do. To tell them he was only eight hundred miles away, and closing swiftly.
    Nervous energy fizzed in Nick’s blood, making him restless and angry. On an impulse he left his chair and carefully crossed the heaving deck to the starboard wing of the bridge. He slid open the door and stepped out into the gale. The shock of that icy air took his breath away and