"Bear Island" - читать интересную книгу автора (Maclean Alistair)

Mr. Stokes helped himself to some more rum, leaned back and deliberated He was as bereft of cranial and facial hair as Captain Imrie was overendowed with it. With his gleaming pate, tightly drawn brown face seamed and wrinkled into a thousand fissures and a long, thin, scrawny neck he looked as aged and as ageless as a Galapagos turtle. He also moved at about the same speed. Both he and Captain Imrie had gone to sea together-in minesweepers, as incredibly far back as World War I-and had remained together until they had officially retired ten years previously. Nobody, the legend went, had ever heard them refer to each other except as Captain Imrie and Mr. Stokes. Some said that, in private, they used the terms Skipper and Chief (Mr. Stokes was the Chief Engineer) but this was discounted as an unsubstantiated and unworthy rumour which did justice to neither man.

Moments passed, then Mr. Stokes, having arrived at a measured opinion delivered himself of it. "Seven," he said.

"Seven." Captain Imrie accepted the judgement as unhesitatingly as if an oracle had spoken and poured himself another drink: I thanked whatever gods there be for the infinitely reassuring presence of Smithy, the mate, on the bridge. "You see, Mr. Gerran? Nothing." As Gerran was at that moment clinging frantically to a table that was inclined at an angle of thirty degrees, he made no reply. "A storm? Dearie me, dearie me. Why, I remember the very first time that Mr. Stokes and I took the Morning Rose up to the Bear Island fishing grounds, the very first trawler ever to fish those waters and come back with full holds, 1928, I think it was--'

У1929," Mr. Stokes said.

У1929." Captain Imrie fixed his bright blue eyes on Gerran and Johann Heissman, a small, lean, pale man with a permanently apprehensive expression : Heissman's hands were never still. "Now, that was a storm! We were with a trawler out of Aberdeen, I forget its name?

"The Silver Harvest," Mr. Stokes said.

"The Silver Harvest. Engine failure in a Force 10. Two hours she was broadside to the seas, two hours before we could get a line aboard. Her skipper-her skipper-"

"MacAndrew. John MacAndrew."

"Thank you, Mr. Stokes. Broke his neck. Towed his boat-and him with his broken neck in splints-for thirty hours in a Force 10, four of them in a Force 11. Man, you should have seen yon seas. I tell you, they were mountains, just mountains. The bows thirty feet up and down, up and down, rolling over on our beam ends, hour after hour, every man except Mr. Stokes and myself coughing his insides up--"He broke off as Heissman rose hurriedly to his feet and ran from the saloon. Is your friend upset, Mr. Gerran?"

"Couldn't we heave to or whatever it is you do," Gerran pleaded. "Or run for shelter?"

"Shelter? Shelter from what? Why, I remember-"

"Mr. Gerran and his company haven't spent their lives at sea, Captain," I said.

"True, true. Heave to? Heaving to won't stop the waves. And the nearest shelter is Jan Mayen-and that's three hundred miles to the west-into the weather."

"We could run before the weather. Surely that would help?"

"Aye, we could do that. She'd steady up then, no doubt about it. If that's what you want, Mr. Gerran. You know what the contract says-captain to obey all orders other than those what will endanger the vessel."

"Good, good. Right away, then."

"You appreciate, of course, Mr. Gerran, that this blow might last another day or so?"

With amelioration of the present sufferings practically at hand Gerran permitted himself a slight smile. "We cannot control the caprices of mother nature, Captain."

"And that we'll have to turn almost ninety east?"

In your safe hands, Captain.Ф

УI don't think you are quite understanding. It will cost us two, perhaps three days. And if we run east, the weather north of North Cape is usually worse than it is here. Might have to put into Hammerfest for shelter

Might lose a week, maybe more. I don't know how many hundred pounds a day it costs you to hire the ship and crew and pay your own camera crew and all those actors and actresses-I hear tell that some of those people you call stars can earn a fortune in just no time at all-' Captain Imrie broke off and pushed back his chair. "What am I talking about? Money will mean nothing to a man like you. You will excuse me while I call the bridge."

"Wait." Gerran looked stricken. His parsimony was legendary throughout the film world and Captain Imrie had touched, not inadvertently, I thought, upon his tenderest nerve. "A week! Lose a whole week?"

УIf we're lucky." Captain Imrie pulled his chair back up to the table and reached for the malt.

"But I've already lost three days. The Orkney cliffs, the sea, the Morning Rose-not a foot of background yet." Gerran's hands were out of sight but I wouldn't have been surprised if he'd been wringing them.