sidewalk. You're right/ Nick admitted grudgingly. Very few people
really care. A few dead penguins, a few little black tar balls sticking
to your feet on the beach. It doesn't seem much to shout about, but
it's what we cannot see that should terrify us.
Those millions of tons of poisonous hydrocarbons that dissolve into the
sea, that kill slowly and insidiously, but surely. That's what should
really terrify us, Nicholas! She had used his given name for the first
time, and they were both acutely aware of it. They were silent again,
staring intently at the big iceberg as it passed slowly. The sun had
touched it with ethereal pinks and amethyst, but that dark line of
poisonous filth was still there.
The world has to use fossil fuels, and we sailors have to transport
them/ he said at last.
But not at such appalling risks, not with an eye only to the profits.
Not in the same greedy thoughtless grabbing petty way as man wiped out
the whale, not at the cost of turning the sea into a stinking festerring
cesspool. There are unscrupalous owners! - he agreed, and she cut
across him agrily.
Sailing under flags of convenience, without control, ships built to
dangerous standards, equipped with a single boiler -she reeled out the
charges and he was silent.
Then they waived the winter load-line for rounding the Cape of Good Hope
in the southern winter, to enable them to carry that extra fifty
thousand tons Of crude. The Agulhas Bank, the most dangerous water sea
in the world, and they send overloaded tankers into it. that was
criminal/ he agreed.
Yet you were Chairman of Christy Marine, you had a representative on the
Board of Control. She saw that she had made a mistake. His expression
was suddenly ferocious. His anger seemed to crackle like electricity in
the ruby gloom of the bridge. She felt an unaccountable flutter of real
fear. She had forgotten what kind of man he was.
But he turned away and made a slow circuit of the bridge, elaborately
checking each of the gauges and instruments, and then he paused at the
far wing and lit a cheroot. She ached to offer some token of
reconciliation, but instinctively she knew not to do so. He was not the
kind of man who respected compromise or retreat.
He came back to her at last, and the glow of the cheroot lit his
features so that she could see the anger had passed.
Christy Marine seems like another existence to me now/ he said softly,
and she could sense the deep pain of unhealed wounds. Forgive me, your
reference to it took me off balance. I did not realize that you know of
my past history., Everybody on board knows., Of course/ he nodded, and
drew deeply on the cheroot before he spoke. When I ran Christy Marine, I
insisted on the highest standards of safety and seamanship for every one
of our vessels. We opposed the Cape winterline decision, and none of my
tankers loaded to their summer-line on the Good Hope passage. None of
my tankers made do with only one boiler, the design and engineering of
every Christy Marine vessel was of the same standard as that ship
there/he pointed back at Golden Adventurer, or this one here! and he
stamped once on the deck.
