Eagle Day - Robert Muchamore Page 0,69
the bow. The thick chain was wound around a pulley with an attached breaking lever, and finally linked up to an electric winch inside a building atop the embankment.
The next phase of the operation was the trickiest. The boat’s wooden hull would get shredded if it was dragged up the concrete, so two men rushed forwards and placed a wooden roller under the bow. As the boat was hauled up, more rollers were wedged under the hull.
Once a third of the vessel was out of the water, wooden props shaped like a pair of triangles were slid under the hull-rollers and then turned upwards to prevent the ship from toppling on to its side. The six Africans had done this dozens of times and Marc marvelled as their heavy physiques coordinated ropes, rollers and props while the electric winch moved the boat slowly up the embankment.
But as the rear of the ship emerged from the water, a metallic grinding sound ripped from the shed containing the main winch motor. Marc looked over his shoulder and heard rattling as the broken chain dragged over the concrete.
‘We lost it!’ the winch operator shouted desperately.
The operator pushed his whole weight against the brake lever, but the pulley wasn’t designed to support the weight of the boat and the juddering chain torn off the brake shoe. Realising that the end of the chain might lash back as it cleared the pulley, he dived backwards as the boat began rolling back towards the dock.
Marc saw the tension in the broken chain as it whipped around the pulley and feared it might fly in his direction as it broke loose.
‘Clear out!’ the foreman shouted.
As Marc ditched his soggy flan and dived back behind the winching shed, the crew pulling the cargo ship up the embankment abandoned their positions, as did the crew working on the next barge less than five metres away.
Marc and everyone else expected the end of the chain to slide around the pulley and break free, but its jagged end wedged in the brake mechanism. The sliding boat juddered to a halt halfway back in the water.
It seemed the end of the chain would remain jammed in the cogs, and the yard foreman stepped out gingerly to inspect it.
The shipyards were always full of noise, but Marc could hear his heart beating as he stood on the dockside surrounded by sweating prisoners. As the foreman crouched in front of the winch there was a sharp crack.
The twisted end of the chain remained jammed, but the weight of the boat had torn the brake lever and the pulley out of the concrete floor. As the cargo boat began sliding back on its rollers the chain whiplashed across the embankment with the pulley attached.
It catapulted several metres off the ground and crashed through the hull of the neighbouring barge. The momentum of the chain was enough to topple the cargo boat and it hit the bottom of the canal, leaning on its side.
The dilapidated hull had splintered and began flooding with water. To make matters worse a backwash rolled up the embankment, flushing everything from paint cans to welding gear into the canal.
‘Is anybody hurt?’ a foreman shouted.
Everybody had cleared the area in time, but the winch was wrecked, the little cargo ship lay on its side blocking the canal and the boat next to it had a lump the size of a motorbike ripped out of its hull.
Marc looked on as the foreman and the yard’s owner inspected the remains of the winching system, eventually reaching the conclusion that the Algerian named Houari who’d been operating the brake lever had let the clutch out too fast, causing the chain to snap.
Houari was a powerfully-built twenty year old and unofficial foreman for the African workers.
‘We’ve pulled boats three times that size up the ramp,’ Houari shouted furiously. ‘My work is good. It’s your equipment that’s decrepit.’
Foremen from neighbouring shipyards had come across. Some offered to send men over to help pull up the barge blocking the canal, others came to complain that they’d lost paint and tools in the backwash. The six Germans who guarded the prisoners had also come across to see what was going on and this was the melee into which Kuefer returned from lunch.
‘Where’s my translator?’ Kuefer shouted. ‘Get over here and tell me what’s going on.’
Marc pushed through the adults and saw his boss’s eyes bulge at him.
‘Tell me what they’re saying.’
Marc explained that the foreman blamed Houari for letting