Night Of Error

A plume of water suddenly shot up from the sea not ten feet to starboard and drops of warm gritty water fell on my head. Another waterspout shot up a little further out, and then another. It was for all the world as if we were under shell-fire.

The whole angry sea was pock-marked as though by a mighty rain. It was a welter of spouting water as rocks from Falcon's second vent, hurled high in the air, fell vertically and straddled the two ships. Smoke wreathed about us and steam coiled every where.

The falling tephra didn't straddle for long. There was a crash from midships. Splinters of wood leapt into the air to mix with the hail of ash and burning magma. As we stumbled forward we found a ragged hole on the galley roof and a huge glowing ember begi

'Fire, by God!' Nick said. 'How the hell do we cope with this?'

The answer was dramatic and swift. With a booming roar another vast wave engulfed us. We emerged miraculously still intact to find the embryo fire completely doused at the cost of a drenched and sodden galley.

At last we managed to join some of the others. By clinging to anything stable enough we were able to steady ourselves. Of cuts and bruises there were plenty, but everyone was on their feet again. Except Geordie who'd vanished. I caught someone's arm.

'Geordie – he was here. What's happened to him?'

'Gone to try and start the engine,' Taffy bellowed in my ear.

A moment later there was a steady rhythmic throb underfoot as our engine started, and the sound gave me a wild surge of hope.

A warm rain, condensing steam mixed with the slippery and treacherous ash, was falling all around us. The acrid stench was still heavy in my nostrils and the banshee sounds of the ships' timbers mingled with the high-pitched whistlings and rumbling from Falcon's new orifice, threatening to pierce our eardrums. A fresh rain of tephra assailed us. Three or four larger flaming rocks crashed down on Sirena's deck, a couple on ours. Sirena was almost level with us and her rails were lined with men. Several of them jumped, some into the sea itself, some trying to reach our decks.

'Bring lines!' Ian yelled, and I pounded after him to the strip's side as he and Nick began throwing them over the rails.

One man battling in the water seized a trailing end and Ian and Shorty dragged him on board. Nick threw another line out. Esmerelda was buffetted by a sudden wave and his feet slid across the ash-strewn deck. He ca

All the breath was knocked out of my body and for a moment I blacked out. Then I started to struggle to my feet, in time to see Nick about to topple clean over the ship's side into that raging sea. I got him in a tackle around his knees and wrestled to keep him on deck, but the slippery footing and his own weight were proving too much for me. He seemed to be unconscious.

Then another wave poured down across both of us, tipping Esmerelda the other way and doing what I couldn't manage, forcing Nick's body back inboard. We slid away from the railings together, half submerged in the gritty water that cascaded down over the deck.

I landed spitting and spewing up sickly-warm sea water. Hands helped me to stand up, and one of them was Clare's.

'Mike – are you all right?'

She was trembling and so was I.

'I'm okay. How's Nick?' I was still panting and spluttering. But I was comfortably aware that our engine was still ru

'Mike – you're hurt?'

'Don't worry, it's really nothing. But go carefully with those hugs for now.'

Campbell limped up to us, his face blackened with smoke, his clothes scorched and sodden. He and I exchanged a look over Clare's head and he smiled briefly.

'How's Paula?' I asked him. 'And Mark?'

'Both all right. We haven't lost anyone else,' he said grimly. 'The boys pulled two Spaniards aboard and two others jumped across.'

Taffy was helping Nick to his feet. Apart from his arm which was obviously crippled and the abrasion on his face there seemed to be little wrong with him. Again I marvelled at his strength. Taffy said, 'We've sent all the Spaniards below and Ian's got 'em locked in our homemade brig.' I said, 'Surely they aren't a danger to us now?' 'Well, there could be trouble,' said Taffy. 'We've got' A stu

I'll lay odds that Geordie Wilkins must be the best seaman ever to put his hands on a wheel. With consummate skill and an astonishing use of gear and throttle he edged Esmerelda nearer and nearer to the doomed Sirena, to aid the stricken men. As we closed in we saw that one of Falcon's barrages must have sheared through the rigging and brought down the main gaff. Struggling men lay pi

I don't know if he had given up all hope of surviving and was bent only on revenge, or if his mind had given way. I didn't believe that cold intellect, so unlike Hadley's unreasoning savagery, would break as easily as that. But there was an implacable singleminded purpose about him that was terrifying.

He aimed the rifle across the water.) I flung myself down shielding Clare – I had no idea who he would choose for a target – and I heard the gun fire, sharp and crisp against the background bedlam. It was followed almost instantly by a terrible grinding roar, louder than anything we had heard before. We staggered to our feet in time to see Falcon play its most horrible trick.

It was Geordie, intent on his delicate steering, who first saw the danger. I don't know if he'd even been aware of Ramirez. Esmerelda sheered off violently as he spun the wheel so that we turned in a half-arc as fast as the one in which the eddy tide-had taken us. Then he pushed the throttle in until the engine was pounding at maximum speed, to carry us away from the arena.

Behind us I saw Sirena jar to a sudden halt and Ramirez flung across the deck. The ship rose grotesquely in the air and tipped over on her side, looking like a small sailing boat stranded by the tide. But this was no sandbank. It was a bed of writhing red-hot lava. The sea recoiled from it in a tempest of steam.

In that last fraction of a second Ramirez rolled back down the deck, his clothes a mass of flame. He was flung straight overboard into the raging lava bed and vanished instantly. Sirena went up like a funeral pyre, before banks of smoke and steam rolled across to blot her out of our sight.* 4*

The rain of fire from Falcon continued. In all we were hit by four of those fiery bombs. An exhausted and shell-shocked crew was kept busy dousing fires, using the hoses for the biggest, buckets for the rest, and praying that we would not run out of fuel. The hoses worked only as long as the engine continued to run. And we knew that there wasn't the slightest possibility of rigging sail.