fifteen minutes in the Captain’s cabin, leaving only when he saw the Lieutenant was having difficulty in keeping his eyes open, then had spoken in turn with Naseby, Patterson and Jamieson, who was again supervising the strengthening of the superstructure. All three had agreed that Ulbricht was almost certainly correct in the assessment he had made: and all three agreed with the Bo’sun that this fresh knowledge, if knowledge it were, served no useful purpose whatsoever. McKinnon had returned to the bridge when the snow came.
He opened a wing door in a duly circumspect fashion but, for all his caution, had it torn from his grasp to crash against the leading edge of the bridge, such was the power of the wind. The snow, light as yet, was driving along as nearly horizontally as made no difference. It was quite impossible to look into it, but with his back to it and looking out over the bows, he could see that the wave pattern had changed: the dawn was in the sky now and in its light he could see that the last semblance of serried ranks had vanished and that the white-veined, white-spumed seas were now broken walls of water, tending this way and that in unpredictable formless confusion. Even without the evidence of his eyes he would have known that this was so: the deck beneath his feet was beginning to shake and shudder in a rather disconcerting manner. The cold was intense. Even with his very considerable weight and strength, McKinnon found it no easy task to heave the wing door shut behind him as he stepped back into the bridge.
He was in desultory conversation with Trent, who had the helm, when the phone rang. It was Sister Morrison. She said she was ready to come up to the Captain’s cabin.
‘I wouldn’t recommend it, Sister. Things are pretty unpleasant up top.’
‘I would remind you that you gave me your promise.’ She was speaking in her best sister’s voice.
‘I know. It’s just that conditions have worsened quite a bit.’
‘Really, Mr McKinnon –’
‘I’m coming. On your own head.’
In Ward B, Janet Magnusson looked at him with disapproval. ‘A hospital is no place for a snowman.’
‘Just passing through. On a mission of mercy. At least, your mule-headed friend imagines she is.’
She kept her expression in place. ‘Lieutenant Ulbricht?’
‘Who else? I’ve just seen him. Looks fair enough to me. I think she’s daft.’
‘The trouble with you, Archie McKinnon, is that you have no finer feelings. Not as far as caring for the sick is concerned. In other ways too, like as not. And if she’s daft, it’s only because she’s been saying nice things about you.’
‘About me? She doesn’t know me.’
‘True, Archie, true.’ She smiled sweetly. ‘But Captain Bowen does.’
McKinnon sought briefly for a suitable comment about captains who gossiped to ward sisters, found none and moved into Ward A. Sister Morrison, suitably bundled up, was waiting. There was a small medical case on a table by her side. McKinnon nodded at her.
‘Would you take those glasses off, Sister?’
‘Why?’
‘It’s the Lothario in him,’ Kennet said. He sounded almost his old cheerful self again. ‘He probably thinks you look nicer without them.’
‘It’s no morning for a polar bear, Mr Kennet, far less a Lothario. If the lady doesn’t remove her glasses the wind will do the job for her.’
‘What’s the wind like, Bo’sun?’ It was Captain Bowen.
‘Force eleven, sir. Blizzard. Eight below. Nine-ninety millibars.’
‘And the seas breaking up?’ Even in the hospital the shuddering of the vessel was unmistakable.
‘They are a bit, sir.’
‘Any problems?’
‘Apart from Sister here seeming bent on suicide, none.’ Not, he thought, as long as the superstructure stayed in place.
Sister Morrison gasped in shock as they emerged on to the upper deck. However much she had mentally prepared herself, she could not have anticipated the savage power of that near hurricane force wind and the driving blizzard that accompanied it, could not even have imagined the lung-searing effect of the abrupt 80°F drop in temperature. McKinnon wasted no time. He grabbed Sister Morrison with one hand, the lifeline with the other, and allowed the two of them to be literally blown across the treacherous ice-sheathed deck into the shelter of the superstructure. Once under cover, she removed her duffel hood and stood there panting, tenderly massaging her ribs.
‘Next time, Mr McKinnon – if there is a next time – I’ll listen to you. My word! I never dreamt – well, I just never dreamt. And my ribs!’ She felt carefully as if to check they were still there. ‘I’ve got ordinary ribs, just like anyone else. I think you’ve broken them.’
‘I’m sorry about that,’ McKinnon said gravely. ‘But I don’t think you’d have much fancied going over the side. And there will be a next time, I’m afraid. We’ve got to go back again and against the wind, and that will be a great deal worse.’
‘At the moment, I’m in no hurry to go back, thank you very much.’
McKinnon led her up the companionway to the crew’s quarters. She stopped and looked at the twisted passageway, the buckled bulkheads, the shattered doors.
‘So this is where they died.’ Her voice was husky. ‘When you see it, it’s all too easy to understand how they died. But you have to see it first to understand. Ghastly – well, ghastly couldn’t have been the word for it. Thank God I never saw it. And you had to clear it all up.’
‘I had help.’
‘I know you did all the horrible bits. Mr Spenser, Mr Rawlings, Mr Batesman, those were the really shocking cases, weren’t they? I know you wouldn’t let anyone else touch them. Johnny Holbrook told Janet and she told me.’ She shuddered. ‘I don’t like this place. Where’s the Lieutenant?’
McKinnon led her up to the Captain’s cabin, where Naseby was keeping an eye on the recumbent Lieutenant.
‘Good morning again, Lieutenant. I’ve just had a taste of the kind of weather Mr McKinnon has been exposing you to. It was awful. How do you feel?’
‘Low, Sister. Very low. I think I’m in need of care and attention.’
She removed oilskins and duffel coat. ‘You don’t look very ill to me.’
‘Appearances, appearances. I feel very weak. Far be it from me to prescribe for myself, but what I need is a tonic, a restorative.’ He stretched out a languid hand. ‘Do you know what’s in that wall cupboard there?’
‘No.’ Her tone was severe. ‘I don’t know. I can guess, though.’
‘Well, I thought, perhaps – in the circumstances, you understand –’
‘Those are Captain Bowen’s private supplies.’
‘May I repeat what the Captain told me?’ McKinnon said. ‘As
