officers bloom with unholy joy, like old-time pirates savouring the
prospect of a prize.
The strange voice went on, echoing oddly in his ears, 'Number One, ask
the Harbour Master for permission to clear harbour immediately - and,
Pilot, course to steer for the last reported position of Golden
Adventurer, please.
From the corner of his eye, he saw David Allen punch the Third Officer
lightly but gleefully on the shoulder before he hurried to the radio
telephone.
Nicholas Berg felt suddenly the urge to vomit. So he stood very still
and erect at the navigation console and fought back the waves of nausea
that swept over him, while his officers bustled to their sea-going
stations.
28 Bridge. This is the Chief Engineer/ said a disembodied voice from
the speaker above Nick's head. Main engines running. A pause and then
that word of special Aussie approbation. Beauty! - but the Chief
pronounced it in three distinct syllables, Be-yew-dy!'
Warlock's wide-flared bows were designed to cleave and push the waters
open ahead of her and in those waters below latitude 40 she ran like an
old bull otter, slick and wet and fast for the south.
Uninterrupted by any land-mass, the cycle of great atmospheric
depressions swept endlessly across those cold open seas, and the wave
patterns built up into a succession of marching mountain ranges.
Warlock was taking them on her starboard shoulder, bursting through each
crest in a white explosion that leapt from her bows like a torpedo
strike, the water coming aboard green and clear over her high fore-dec,
and sweeping her from stern to stern as she twisted and broke out,
dropping sheer into the valley that opened ahead of her.
Her twin ferro-bronze propellers broke clear of the surface, the
slamming vibration instantly controlled by the sophisticated
variable-pitch gear, until she swooped forward and the propellers bit
deeply again, the thrust of the twin Mirrlees diesels hurtling her
towards the slope of the next swell.
Each time it seemed that she could not rise in time to meet the cliff of
water that bore down on her. The water was black under the grey sunless
sky. Nick had lived through typhoon and Caribbean hurricane, but had
never seen water as menacing and cruel as this. It glittered like the
molten slag that pours down the dump of an iron foundry and cools to the
same iridescent blackness.
29 In the deep valleys between the crests, the wind was blanketed so
they fell into an unnatural stillness, an eerie silence that only
enhanced the menace of that towering slope of water.
In the trough, Warlock heeled and threw her head up, climbing the slope
in a gut-swooping lift, that buckled the knees of the watch. As she
went up, so the angle of her bridge tilted back, and that sombre
cheerless sky filled the forward bridge windows with a vista of low
scudding cloud.
The wind tore at the crest of the wave ahead of her, ripping it away
like white cotton from the burst seams of a black mattress, splattering
custard-thick spume against the armoured glass. Then Warlock put her
