and there was accommodation for 375 passengers, a possible total of over
six hundred souls. If the ship was lost, Warlock would be hard put to
take aboard that huge press of human life.
Well, sir, they signed on for adventure/ David Allen spoke into his
thoughts as though he had heard them, and they are getting their money's
worth. Nick glanced at him, and nodded. Most of them will be elderly.
A berth on that cruise costs a fortune, and it's usually only the
oldsters who have that sort of gold. If she goes aground, we are going
to lose life!
With respect, Captain/ David hesitated, and blushed again for the first
time since leaving port, if her Captain knows that assistance is on the
way, it may prevent him doing something crazy! Nick was silent. The
Mate was right, of course. It was cruel to leave them in the despair of
believing they were alone down there in those terrible ice fields. The
Adventurer's Captain could make a panic decision, one that could be
averted if he knew how close succour was.
The air temperature out there is minus five degrees, and if the wind is
at thirty miles an hour, that will make it a lethal chill factor. If
they take to the boats in that -'David was interrupted by the Trog
calling from the radio room.
The owners are replying. it was a long message that Christy Marine were
sending to their Captain. It was filled with those same hollow
assurances that a surgeon gives to a cancer patient, but one paragraph
had relevance for Nick: all efforts being made to contact salvage tugs
reported operating South Atlantic. David Allen looked at him
expectantly. It was the right humane thing to do. To tell them he was
only eight hundred miles away, and closing swiftly.
Nervous energy fizzed in Nick's blood, making him restless and angry. On
an impulse he left his chair and carefully crossed the heaving deck to
the starboard wing of the bridge.
He slid open the door and stepped out into the gale. The shock of that
icy air took his breath away and he gasped like a drowning man.
He felt tears streaming from his eyes across his cheeks and the frozen
spray struck into his face like steel darts.
Carefully he filled his lungs, and his nostrils flared as he smelt the
ice. It was that unrnistakeable dank smell, he remembered so well from
the northern Arctic seas. It was like the body smell of some gigantic
reptilian sea monster and it struck the mariner's chill into his soul.
He could endure only a few seconds more of the gale, but when he stepped
back into the cosy green-lit warmth of the bridge, his mind was clear,
and he was thinking crisply.
Mr. Allen, there is ice ahead. I have a watch on the radar, sir. Very
good/ Nick nodded, but we'll reduce to fifty percent of power. He
hesitated, and then went on, and maintain radio silence. The decision
was hard made, and Nick saw the accusation in David Allen's eyes before
he turned away to give the orders for the reduction in power. Nick felt
a sudden and uncharacteristic urge to explain the decision to him.
He did not know why - perhaps he needed the Mate's understanding and
sympathy.
