Instantly Nick saw that as a symptom of his weakness and vulnerability.
He had never needed sympathy before, and he steeled himself against it
now.
His decision to maintain radio silence was correct. He was dealing with
two hard men. He knew he could not afford to give an inch of sea room
to Jules Levoisin. He would force him to open radio contact first. He
needed that advantage.
The other man with whom he had to deal was Duncan Alexander, and he was
a hating man, dangerous and vindictive. He had tried once to destroy
Nick - and perhaps he had already succeeded. Nick had to guard himself
now, he must pick with care his moment to open negotiations with Christy
Marine and the man who had displaced him at its head. Nick must be in a
position of utmost strength when he did so.
Jules Levoisin must be forced to declare himself first, Nick decided.
The Captain of the Golden Adventurer would have to be left in the
agonies of doubt a little longer, and Nick consoled himself with the
thought that any further drastic change in the liner's circumstances or
a decision by the Master to abandon his ship and commit his company to
the lifeboats would be announced on the open radio channels and would
give him a chance to intervene.
Nick was about to caution the Trog to keep a particular watch on Channel
16 for La Mouette's first transmission, then he checked himself. That
was another thing he never did - issue unnecessary orders. The Trog's
grey wrinkled head was wreathed in clouds of reeking cigar smoke but was
bowed to his mass of electronic equipment, and he adjusted a dial with
careful lover's fingers; his little eyes were bright and sleepless as
those of an ancient sea turtle.
Nick went to his chair and settled down to wait out the few remaining
hours of the short Antarctic summer night.
The radar screen had shown strange and alien capes and headlands above
the sea clutter of the storm, strange islands, anomalies which did not
relate to the Admiralty charts. Between these alien masses shone myriad
other smaller contacts, bright as fireflies, any one of which could have
been the echo of a stricken ocean liner - but which was not.
As Warlock nosed cautiously down into this enchanted sea, the dawn that
had never been far from the horizon flushed out, timorous as a bride,
decked in colours of gold and pink that struck splendorous splinters of
light off the icebergs.
The horizon ahead of them was cluttered with ice, some of the fragments
were but the size of a billiard table and they bumped and scraped down
the Warlock's side, then swung and bobbed in her wake as she passed.
There were others the size of a city block, weird and fanciful
structures of honeycombed white ice, that stood as tall as Warlock's
upperworks as she passed.
White ice is soft ice/ Nick murmured to David Allen beside him, and then
caught himself. it was an unnecessary speech, inviting familiarity, and
before the Mate could answer, Nick turned quickly away to the
radar-repeater and lowered his face to the eye-piece in the coned hood.
For a minute he studied the images of the surrounding ice in the
darkened body of the instrument, then went back to his seat and stared
