this little island of her happiness. She worked on, but now her
pleasure was spoiled, and she cocked her head when she heard the roar of
the rotors as the helicopter rose from the deck again and she was left
with a sense of foreboding.
Angel came in from the deck, wiping his hands on his apron and he paused
in the doorway.
You didn't tell me he was going, dearie.
What do you mean? Samantha looked up at him, startled.
Your boyfriend, darling. Socks and toothbrush and all., Angel watched
her shrewdly. Don't tell me he didn't even kiss you goodbye., She
dropped the glass slide into the stainless steel sink and it snapped in
half. She was panting as she gripped the rail of the upper deck and
stared after the cumbersome yellow machine.
It flew low across the green wind-chopped sea, humpbacked and nose low,
still close enough to read the operating company's name COURTLINE
emblazoned on its fuselage, but it dwindled swiftly towards the far blue
line of mountains.
Nick Berg sat in the jump seat between the two pilots of the big S. 58T
Sikorsky and looked ahead towards the flat silhouette of Table Mountain.
It was overlaid by a thick mattress of snowy cloud, at the
south-easterly wind swirled across its summit.
From their altitude of a mere thousand feet, there were still five big
tankers in sight, ploughing stolidly through the green sea on their
endless odyssey, seeming to be alien to their element not designed to
live in harmony with it, but to oppose every movement of the waters.
Even in this low sea, they wore thick garlands of white at their stubby
rounded bows, and Nick watched one of them dip suddenly and take spray
as high as her foremast. In any sort of blow, she would be like a pier
with pylons set on solid ground.
The seas would break right over her. It was not the way a ship should
be, and now he twisted in his seat and looked back.
Far behind them, Warlock was still visible. Even at this distance, and
despite the fact that she was dwarfed by her charge, her lines pleased
the seaman in him. She looked good, but that backward glance invoked a
pang of regret that he had been so stubbornly trying to ignore - and he
had a vivid image of green eyes and hair of platinum and gold.
His regret was spiced by the persistent notion that he had been
cowardly. He had left Warlock without being able to bring himself to
say goodbye to the girl, and he knew why he had done so. He would not
take the chance of making a fool of himself. He grimaced with distaste,
as he remembered her exact words, You really are old-fashioned, aren't
you? There was something vaguely repulsive in a middle-aged man lusting
after young flesh - and he supposed he must now look upon himself as
middle-aged. In six months he would be forty years of age, and he did
not really expect to live to eighty. So he was in the middle of the
road.
He had always scorned those grey, lined, balding, unattractive little
men with big cigars, sitting in expensive restaurants with pretty young
girls beside them, the young thing pretending to hang on every
pearl-like word, while her eyes focused beyond his shoulder - on some
