to take to their bunks within easy proximity of a toilet.
“JESUS. LOOK AT THOSE,” someone shouted. Everyone felt the new, higher band of waves at the same time as their arrival was announced. Row upon row, they passed under the barge. Just before she threw up in her sick bag, Jane Lavery likened it to traveling over a liquid cattle grid.
Fifteen other people lost their dinner. Pilot hoped they wouldn’t lose their nerve.
At three-twenty in the morning, sensing in his sleep that Ptolemy’s engines had stopped, Pilot got out of bed, hurried topside and found Serman, Mara and Bradingbrooke already in the wheelhouse.
Turner was trying to keep Ptolemy’s nose into the waves, which Pilot couldn’t see in the darkness, but which felt enormous. They were striking every seven seconds now.
“Don’t want to get ourselves broadside to those ,” Turner said. “Not enough ballast under the water line. I saw a light to the northeast earlier. Could be one of the other barges.”
“We’re to signal every fifteen minutes,” Serman said, leading the others out of the wheelhouse and placing a flare in its firing tube. With a thump and a whoosh it cut through the night, its magenta light hanging in the sky for nearly a minute before dropping. Pilot followed it down to extinction and for half a second, before the light died, he could see a barge three or four miles away. Almost immediately, the blackness was split by the rising trail of an answering flare.
“We have company,” Mara said.
By dawn, three barges were standing just off Ptolemy , with a further seven in sight. What Pilot also noticed when he came on deck after breakfast was the placidity of the sea. He wondered how the waves could have died so fast.
Not more than fifty yards away, the barge Julius was resting on the upturned image of herself. Pilot could feel his body tingle with the input of extra adrenalin the scene triggered. Not far behind Julius were Fort Lowell and Douro , the latter painted green from stem to stern.
The entire scene was softly lit by a low, orange sun on the horizon and covered by a fine muslin mist. The sun hadn’t been up for long and Pilot guessed it would burn through the mist as the morning went on. A few degrees off the line of the sun, seven dark specks marked what was otherwise a clean horizon.
An inflatable dinghy, with Highbell and Budd aboard, had been put in the water earlier and they were now directing the positioning of the barges in preparation for the trussing up operation scheduled for later.
Pilot went below, gathered his instruction sheets, inserted them into his plastic pocket necklace, and returned topside. He’d been wrong to think that the sun would burn away the mist. Instead of dissolving, it was thickening and rising, and by 0730 the sun was obscured. Already, the day was taking on that same oppressive yellow-grey emptiness that had beset England for most of July. In light of the close maneuvering they would soon be undertaking, Pilot was glad of the flat seas, but not so the stale, bell jar atmosphere, which he found sinister and portentous.
Josiah Billy, taking his turn as lookout, shouted down that he could make out three more barges on the horizon. That made fourteen in all, including themselves. One short.
There was plenty of preparation work to get on with and Pilot went through each procedure with as much calm as he could muster to mask his growing nervousness. It was Serman’s job to attend to the details and Pilot’s to direct the overall operation.
Bulldozer tyre fenders were manhandled over the sides of each barge – five crew to a tyre, such was their weigh t− and soon Ptolemy was ready to begin drawing the other barges in around her.
The vessel which hadn’t yet made the rendezvous was Shenandoah , one of the water carriers. As all the vessels in the central row were present, Pilot called them into position in readiness for the mooring operation.
First, Bimbo’s Kraal , which
“JESUS. LOOK AT THOSE,” someone shouted. Everyone felt the new, higher band of waves at the same time as their arrival was announced. Row upon row, they passed under the barge. Just before she threw up in her sick bag, Jane Lavery likened it to traveling over a liquid cattle grid.
Fifteen other people lost their dinner. Pilot hoped they wouldn’t lose their nerve.
At three-twenty in the morning, sensing in his sleep that Ptolemy’s engines had stopped, Pilot got out of bed, hurried topside and found Serman, Mara and Bradingbrooke already in the wheelhouse.
Turner was trying to keep Ptolemy’s nose into the waves, which Pilot couldn’t see in the darkness, but which felt enormous. They were striking every seven seconds now.
“Don’t want to get ourselves broadside to those ,” Turner said. “Not enough ballast under the water line. I saw a light to the northeast earlier. Could be one of the other barges.”
“We’re to signal every fifteen minutes,” Serman said, leading the others out of the wheelhouse and placing a flare in its firing tube. With a thump and a whoosh it cut through the night, its magenta light hanging in the sky for nearly a minute before dropping. Pilot followed it down to extinction and for half a second, before the light died, he could see a barge three or four miles away. Almost immediately, the blackness was split by the rising trail of an answering flare.
“We have company,” Mara said.
By dawn, three barges were standing just off Ptolemy , with a further seven in sight. What Pilot also noticed when he came on deck after breakfast was the placidity of the sea. He wondered how the waves could have died so fast.
Not more than fifty yards away, the barge Julius was resting on the upturned image of herself. Pilot could feel his body tingle with the input of extra adrenalin the scene triggered. Not far behind Julius were Fort Lowell and Douro , the latter painted green from stem to stern.
The entire scene was softly lit by a low, orange sun on the horizon and covered by a fine muslin mist. The sun hadn’t been up for long and Pilot guessed it would burn through the mist as the morning went on. A few degrees off the line of the sun, seven dark specks marked what was otherwise a clean horizon.
An inflatable dinghy, with Highbell and Budd aboard, had been put in the water earlier and they were now directing the positioning of the barges in preparation for the trussing up operation scheduled for later.
Pilot went below, gathered his instruction sheets, inserted them into his plastic pocket necklace, and returned topside. He’d been wrong to think that the sun would burn away the mist. Instead of dissolving, it was thickening and rising, and by 0730 the sun was obscured. Already, the day was taking on that same oppressive yellow-grey emptiness that had beset England for most of July. In light of the close maneuvering they would soon be undertaking, Pilot was glad of the flat seas, but not so the stale, bell jar atmosphere, which he found sinister and portentous.
Josiah Billy, taking his turn as lookout, shouted down that he could make out three more barges on the horizon. That made fourteen in all, including themselves. One short.
There was plenty of preparation work to get on with and Pilot went through each procedure with as much calm as he could muster to mask his growing nervousness. It was Serman’s job to attend to the details and Pilot’s to direct the overall operation.
Bulldozer tyre fenders were manhandled over the sides of each barge – five crew to a tyre, such was their weigh t− and soon Ptolemy was ready to begin drawing the other barges in around her.
The vessel which hadn’t yet made the rendezvous was Shenandoah , one of the water carriers. As all the vessels in the central row were present, Pilot called them into position in readiness for the mooring operation.
First, Bimbo’s Kraal , which
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