According to usage they were pumping the ship next morning; and lo! no inconsiderable oil came up with the water; the casks below must have sprung a bad leak.
“There were planes that were dropping bombs, helicopters that were dropping barrel bombs every day, and we didn’t know when disaster would come, ” Dado recalls.
Even the cabin table itself had been knocked into kindling-wood; and the cabin mess dined off the broad head of an oil-butt, lashed down to the floor for a centrepiece.
Blast walls of reinforced concrete or oil drums filled with coral protected the entrances to the caves, which often faced each other from the sheer walls of twisting gorges and were thus mutually supporting.