We, the Drowned - Carsten Jensen [302]
Knud Erik thought back to the time the Kristina had been trapped in ice. The heavy timber of the sailing ship had been pliable; it didn't need to prove its strength the way steel did, but instead let the ice push the vessel about until the weight that threatened to crush her ended up supporting her.
He ignored the Nimbus's screaming hull. Better ice than U-boats. He dreamt about letting the Nimbus freeze and stay frozen until the whole world began to thaw and the weapons fell silent. He'd fought the sea his whole life. Now he embraced the dangerous ice as a friend.
He switched on the radio and invited the crew to gather around it as they'd done when they listened to the RAF frequencies. They heard nothing but distress signals: one SOS after another, and each cry for help a funeral service. There were only minutes between a ship's being attacked and its sinking. No one came to its rescue. Their crews went down alone in the icy cold sea. The Carlton, the Daniel Morgan, the Honomu, the Washington, the Paulus Potter. They counted twenty ships. There was nowhere to hide, not even here in the freezing fog at the end of the world.
They got going again and the Nimbus followed the ice edge north of the seventy-fifth parallel until she reached Novaja Zemlja, then headed south toward the White Sea. The ship encountered four lifeboats containing survivors from the Washington and the Paulus Potter. Both ships had been sunk by a formation of Junker 88s. The planes had flown over them as they climbed into their lifeboats, and the airmen had waved to them cheerfully while a cameraman filmed them for the German weekly newsreels. They hadn't waved back.
Captain Richter from the Washington came on board to consult a chart. After a while bent over it, he asked if they could spare a compass. His crew were still crouching in the lifeboats.
"Why d'you want a compass?" Knud Erik asked. "We'll take you."
Richter shook his head. "We'd prefer to sail on alone."
"In an open boat? The nearest coast is four hundred nautical miles away."
"We'd prefer to get there in one piece," Richter said, eyeing him calmly.
Wondering if the captain was suffering from shell shock, Knud Erik addressed him in the kind of tone he might use to persuade a wayward child.
"We can't offer you berths, but of course we'll find you a warm place to sleep. We've enough provisions, and in this weather we can manage nine knots. We'll be there in a couple of days."
"You do realize what's happened to the rest of the convoy?" Richter said, in the same calm tone. Knud Erik nodded. "A lifeboat's the safest place to be. The Germans won't waste their bullets on men in a boat. They're only interested in ships. They'll get you too. I'm grateful for the offer, but we'd prefer to go it alone."
He climbed down the ladder with the compass. In the boat, his men were slapping themselves to keep warm. If the wind rose, they'd get splashed and become encased in an armor of ice. But still they preferred their lifeboats.
The men pulled at the oars while Knud Erik ordered the ship full speed ahead. He stood on the bridge and watched the boats as they disappeared.
The next day a solitary Junkers appeared on the horizon and headed straight for them. You could hear its machine guns rasping from a great distance. The gunners on the bridge answered back. The wheelhouse took several direct hits, but no one on the bridge was wounded. Then the Junkers dropped its bomb. The plane was so close, it almost collided with the mast. The bomb exploded in the water near to starboard, not near enough to tear up the side of the ship, but enough for the detonation to lift the Nimbus half out of the water and land her again with a force that snapped a steam pipe in the engine room, which made the engine cut out. They were no longer maneuverable.
The Junkers turned around and came back with a howl. The machine cannons on the Nimbus were firing at maximum capacity. The wheelhouse was pierced again,