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shut, wondering if his head was going to split down the middle

or just fall off. When surprisingly it did neither, Wallis was able to

concentrate again on what the doctor was saying.

" . . . No way of knowing the exact attitude of the ship with all this

pitching and rolling, but I think we're down by the stern," Radford said

hurriedly. "I tried to open the pump-room hatch, but there's too big

a weight of water up there for me to push open the seal. We can't get

out at this and and I don't know anything about the geography of these

blasted tanks beyond the sick bay in Eleven. Is there another way out?"

The picture of what had happened was becoming clear to him, but somehow

he did not feel any of the uncontrollable panic that he expected to feel

in such circumstances. Perhaps he was just too tired for panic, or not

yet fully conscious. Dully, he said, "Amidships. Number Five saddle tank,

port side. . . . But no, we can't use that. . . ."

During the storm the cargo had shifted in that tank. The narrow, steep-sided

passage which had been dug out of the cargo and which joined the tank

entrances at floor level to the ladder from the deck above had disappeared

under an avalanche of dried-egg crates and bean sacks when its walls caved

in. It would be possible to clear a way to that ladder, but not with just

two men working on it, not in time . . .

"Forward of Number One, in the coffer dam," Wallis went on quickly,

stumbling away from the ladder and with Radford close behind him. "There's

a ladder running up the dam into the forepeak. It's going to be tricky

getting those people up it though: we'll have to take them up piggy-back.

The dam is less than three feet wide and there are structural members to

stop us swaying up the stretchers on ropes, but it's the best place to

get out. With that hit in the engine room we must be down by the stern,

and the foredeck will be the last to go under. . . ."

Wallis checked himself suddenly. He was talking too much and too fast.

Even to himself he was beginning to sound panic-stricken.

They went from Number Twelve, which was a saddle tank on the port side,

into Number Eleven, where the doctor had his special sick bay, and through

into Nine without stopping to look at the patients. They were in Seven,

another center tank, when the lights went out. But Radford produced his

pen-light and used this diagnostic tool with its tiny beam to light the

way forward to Number Six, where there were a workbench and a rack of

emergency lamps.

In the tanks where they did not trip over packing cases, bundles of cable

and scattered welding gear, they stumbled against and cursed and climbed

over portions of the Trader's cargo, because even in the sections where

modifications were currently under way there was food stacked in odd

corners. The whole point of the U-boat blockade was to starve Britain

into submission by cutting off supplies of food and war material;

consequently every available cubic foot of cargo space moving eastward

across the Atlantic had to be put to use. Not to have done so would have

been tantamount to treason, considering the frightful cost in lives and

shipping which had to be paid for the vessels successfully running the

gauntlet. In Gulf Trader's tanks the available cargo space was small in

relation to the ship's total capacity because of the modifications, but

the storm had tumbled it all over the place. Climbing over and around it

was like running one of the commando obstacle courses, with the darkness

and a heaving deck underfoot just to complicate things.

We'll never make it, Wallis thought desperately, we'll never do it

in time!

Wallis did not know how much time they had exactly, only that it was

taking them far too long to reach the fore-hold and that it would take a

whole lot longer to move Dickson and the two girls there. Since the fall

from the ladder his mind had been confused, but now it was beginning

to clear and he felt