staring fixedly ahead at the northern horizon, awaiting the reply to his
last telex, chafing openly at having to conduct the company's business
at such long remove, and goaded by the devils of doubt and impatience
and fear.
he Often seemed as though he were trying to forge the mighty hull
onwards, faster and faster the north, by the sheer power of his will.
In the north-western corner of the Caribbean basin, there is an area of
shallow warm water, hemmed in on one side by the island chain of the
great Antilles, the bulwark of Cuba and Hispaniola, while in the west
the sweep of the Yucatan peninsula runs south through Panama into the
great land-mass of South America - shallow warm trapped water and
saturated tropical air, enclosed by land-masses which can heat very
rapidly in the high hot sun of the tropics. However, all of it is
gently cooled and moderated by the benign influence of the
north-easterly trade winds so unvarying in strength and direction that
over the centuries, sea-faring men have placed their lives and their
fortunes at risk upon their balmy wings, gambling on the constancy of
that vast moving body of mild air.
But the wind does fail, for no apparent reason and without previous
warning, it dies away, often merely for an hour or two, but occasionally
- very occasionally - for days or weeks at a time.
Far to the south and east of this devil's spawning ground, the Golden
Dawn ploughed massively on through the sweltering air and silken calm of
the doldrums, northwards across the equator, changing course every few
hours to maintain the great circle track that would carry her well clear
of that glittering shield of islands that the Caribbean carries, like an
armoured knight, on its shoulder.
The treacherous channels and passages through the islands were not for a
vessel of Golden Dawn's immense bulk, deep draught and limited
manoeuvrability. She was to go high above the Tropic of Cancer, and
just south of the island of Bermuda she would make her westings and
enter the wider and safer waters of the Florida Straits above Grand
Bahamas. On this course, she would be constricted by narrow and shallow
seaways for only a few hundred miles before she was out into the open
waters of the Gulf of Mexico again.
But while she ran on northwards, out of the area of equatorial calm, she
should have come out at last into the et cool airs of the trades, but
she did not. Day after day, the calm persisted, and stifling still air
pressed down on the ship. It did not in any way slow or affect her
passage, but her Master remarked to Duncan Alexander: Another corker
today, by the looks of it. When he received no reply from his brooding,
silent Chairman, he retired discreetly, leaving Duncan alone on the open
wing of the bridge, with only the breeze of the ship's passage ruffling
his thick coppery hair.
However, the calm was not merely local. It extended westwards in a
wide, hot belt across the thousand islands and the basin of shallow sea
they enclosed.
The calm lay heavily on the oily waters, and the sun beat down on the
enclosing land-masses, Every hour the air heated and sucked up the
