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The Audacious' master had run her hard, like an overweight greyhound after the rabbit, homing in on the position updates provided by the Aussie missile cruiser. He'd kept radio silence during the race across the South Pacific, a routine ploy among tugboat captains racing toward the same wreck, because the winner received the Lloyds Open Form for salvage and 25 percent of the stricken vessel's value.
Now that Captain Jock McDermott was in sight of the smoldering cruise liner and the Australian guided-missile cruiser, he opened contact with the Blue Seas Cruise Lines officials, who after half an hour of bargaining accepted the "no cure, no pay" contract, naming Quest Marine as the principal salvage contractor for what was left of the Emerald Dolphin.
Closing on the liner that still glowed red, McDermott and his crew were stunned at the devastation. A pile of incinerated rubble floating on a restless turquoise sea was all that was left of the once-beautiful cruise liner. She looked like a photo of Hiroshima after the horrendous firestorm from the atomic bomb: blackened, misshapen and shriveled.
"She ain't worth nothin' more than scrap," spat the Audacious's first officer, Herm Brown, a former professional rugby player who'd gone to sea when his knees gave out. He stood under a shaggy mane of blond hair, his beefy legs showing under his shorts and a hairy chest visible through the unbuttoned shirt pulled taut by his shoulders.
McDermott pulled his spectacles down over his nose and peered over the lenses. A sandy-haired Scotsman with a narrow beaklike nose and hazy green eyes, he had spent twenty years in oceangoing tugs. But for the jutting jaw, and eyes that seemed to focus like light beams, he might have passed for Bob Cratchit, Scrooge's bookkeeper. "The directors of the company won't be happy with this job, that's for sure. I never thought a ship that big could burn itself into nothing more than a heap of soot."
The ship's phone buzzed and McDermott picked up the receiver. "Captain of the tug, this is Captain Harlow of the cruiser off your port beam. Whom am I speaking to?"
"Captain Jock McDermott of the Quest Marine tug Audacious."
"Now that you've arrived, Captain McDermott, I can leave station and head for Wellington. I've got five hundred survivors on board who are anxious to set foot on land again."
"You've had a busy time of it, Captain," McDermott replied. "I'm surprised you didn't depart two days ago."
"We've been busy picking up the bodies of the cruise liner's victims who died in the water. I was also asked by the International Maritime Commission to remain nearby and report on the wreck's position after it became classed as a menace to navigation."
"She no longer resembles a ship."
"A pity," said Harlow. "She was one of the most beautiful vessels afloat." Then he added, "Is there anything we can do to help you get her under tow?"
"No, thank you," answered McDermott. "We can manage."
"She looks in a bad way. I hope she stays afloat until you reach safe harbor."
"Without knowing how badly her hull was damaged by the heat, I won't bet the farm on it."
"Burning her guts out considerably lightened her. Riding high out of the water should make her an easy tow."
"No tow is easy, Captain. Be prepared for a welcoming committee and a horde of reporters when you reach Wellington."
"I can't wait," Harlow responded dryly. "Good luck to you."
McDermott turned to his first mate, Arle Brown. "Well, I guess we'd best get to work."
"At least the sea is flat," said Brown, nodding through the windshield of the bridge.
McDermott stared for several seconds at the wreck. "I have a feeling a flat sea may be all we have going for us."
McDermott wasted no time. After circling the derelict and seeing that the rudder looked to be set in the flat zero-degree position, he brought the Audacious to within two hundred feet of the Emerald Dolphin's, bow. He could only hope the rudder was frozen in place. If it moved, the hulk would shear off to the side and become impossible to control.
The tug's motor launch was lowered into the water. Brown and four of the tug's crew motored toward the wreck until they were directly under the great overhanging bow. They had visitors. The waters around the hull were teeming with sharks. Through some primeval instinct, they knew that if the ship went down there might be some tasty edibles left floating on the surface.
Climbing aboard the hulk wasn't going to be easy. She was still too hot to come aboard amidships, but the bow remained free from the worst of the fire. There were at least thirty ropes hanging from the railings above. Luckily, two of them were Jacob's boarding ladders with wooden rungs. As the boat's helmsman angled the launch under one of the ladders hanging from above, he kept the bow aimed into the waves to maintain better control.
Brown went first. Keeping a wary eye on the sharks, he firmly planted his feet on the gunnels and balanced his body. He stretched out his arms, grabbed the ladder and pulled it toward him. As the launch rose on the crest of the wave, he stepped onto a rope rung and climbed steadily upward, covering the vertical height of nearly fifty feet in less than three minutes. At the top, he caught the railing and pulled himself over onto the forepeak. Next, he swung one of the lines the survivors had thrown off the bow until it was caught by one of the men in the boat. The line was then tied to the end of another line that the launch had towed from the tug.
After three of his crew had ascended the Jacob's ladder to the forepeak, the line was pulled up and slipped around an enormous round towing bollard whose designers never expected it to be used this way. Then the end was passed back down to a man in the launch, who tied it off. Brown watched the launch as it returned to the tug, where the heaving line was passed up and secured to the end of a cable wound around a huge winch. Before Brown gave the signal to engage the winch, he watched as one of his crew smeared grease around the bollard.
With no power on board the Emerald Dolphin, it was no small chore to lift aboard the tug's massive eight-inch-diameter tow cable that weighed one ton per hundred feet. By using the bollard as a pulley, the winch was engaged and began pulling the line running between the two ships around a small drum attached to the main winch. A two-inch cable that had been attached to one end of the line soon began winding itself around the bollard and back to the tug again. The other end of this cable was connected to the big eight-incher, which was then pulled up to the bow of the cruise ship and clamped with a series of U-bolts to the anchor chains because the big liner did not have a capstan on the foredeck. It was mounted below on a deck that was burned and unreachable.
"Cable secured," Brown notified McDermott over his portable radio. "We're coming back aboard."
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"Acknowledged."
