the harbour mouth and, his engines already at full power, knew they would not make it.
Stratton looked at the fishing boat as they moved away from it. If it had a chance, it was a slim one. The VSV could get to the tour boat before the wave.The question was could they unload it in time? He was prepared to leave some people behind if he had to.
Jock looked back at the wave as they closed, mentally preparing himself for what was going to be a delicate procedure. He assessed it would be at the tour boat in less than a minute.
‘We’ve got about twenty seconds to load that lot and I’m pulling away,’ he said.
‘Understood,’ Stratton said. ‘You got the next bit worked out?’
‘Nope.’
Stratton patted him on the shoulder and headed for the back of the VSV.
‘Stratton,’ Jock said. ‘You’re a good man. But if I don’t get the chance to tell you later, you can also be a real arsehole at times.’
Stratton stepped through the rubber door flap to join Scouse and Jab outside.
All eyes in the tour boat fell on the strange vessel approaching at speed wondering if it had come to help, but as the VSV bore down on them, for a tense few seconds it looked as if it was going to smash right through.
Jock gauged the distance perfectly and half a dozen boat lengths away he slammed the engines into full reverse at the same time turning the VSV hard over. As it halted its forward progress it slammed broadside into the tour boat and Stratton immediately yelled at the passengers.
‘Get aboard. Now. Go, go, go!’
They needed no encouraging as Stratton, Scouse and Jab formed a chain and grabbed the first person, a woman, and pulled her violently on to the VSV and into the cabin.
‘Move yourselves!’ Scouse shouted. ‘Or we’ll leave you behind!’
It was enough to shift any doubters into top gear. They piled out of the boat as quickly as possible. A woman tried to jump on to the front of the VSV and slipped, landing brutally hard on the side of it, cracking several ribs, but managing to hold on. Jab scurried along the side, grabbed her unceremoniously and hauled her back and inside the cabin despite her groans of pain.
Stratton jumped on to the tour boat and pulled a man clutching his frightened wife up on to the side and across the small gap between the boats where Scouse took over and virtually rammed them inside the cabin.
Stratton snatched a look at the wave now only two hundred metres away.The VSV’s engines gunned, a message from Jock he was leaving any second.
The passengers fell into the VSV like lemmings. A man slipped out of Jab’s grasp and landed face first on the deck, his nose exploding on the metal surface.
When the wave was less than a hundred metres away, there were three people still in the tour boat: the pilot and his only crewmember, wrestling with a hysterical woman. The pilot finally punched her in the face and, as she staggered under the blow, with the help of his crewman threw her over the side and into Scouse’s arms.
The wave was now close enough for them to hear the deep lashing sound of tons of water rising up and curling over the frothing peak, coming on relentlessly and hungry to roll and crush the boats to pieces.
Stratton leapt off the tour boat and on to the VSV. ‘Go for it!’ he shouted back at the pilot and his crewman.
As the back of the VSV started to rise with the front of the wave it powered away and the crewman and pilot took Stratton’s advice and leapt into the growing void. Jab grabbed the crewman’s hands as they slapped on to the back of the VSV, but the pilot missed and plunged beneath the water. Scouse and Jab pulled the crewman in as the VSV screamed away from the tour boat, which angled up the slope of the vast wall of water into the vertical before flipping over. It tumbled once, pieces flying off it, and was then consumed by the wave.
The fishing boat was three lengths from the staggered mouth of the harbour when the wave hit it like a hammer coming down on a toy.The two crewmen leapt over the side in desperation just before it struck but the old captain remained in the doorway of his booth, holding the wheel, defiant to the last. The wave picked up