San Andreas by Alistair MacLean Page B

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 defectiveheating 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.’
    â€˜Big job, sir?’
    â€˜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 beenbolted 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.
    â€˜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 alterego 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 deck-side.
    â€˜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