stiffly, like those of an old man, as he started towards the gangplank.
The hell with them all/ he thought. I built her and she is strong and
good. Although it was an hour before midnight, the crew of the Warlock
watched him from every vantage point they could find; even the oilers
had come up from the engine room when the word reached them, and now
loafed unobtrusively on the stern working deck.
David Allen, the First Officer, had placed a hand at the main harbour
gates with a photograph of Nicholas Berg and a five-cent piece for the
telephone call box beside the gate, and the whole ship was alerted now.
David Allen stood with the Chief Engineer in the glassed wing of the
main navigation bridge and they watched the solitary figure pick his way
across the shadowy dock, carrying his own case.
So that's him/ David's voice was husky with awe and respect. He looked
like a schoolboy under his shaggy bush of sun-bleached hair.
He's a bloody film star, Vinny Baker, the Chief Engineer, hitched up his
sagging trousers with both elbows, and his spectacles slid down the long
thin nose, as he snorted.
A bloody film star/ he repeated the term with utmost scorn.
He was first to Jules Levoisin/ David pointed out, and in the note of
awe as he intoned that name, and he is a tug man from way back. 'That
was fifteen years ago. Vinny Baker released his elbow grip on his
trousers and pushed his spectacles up on to the bridge of his nose.
Immediately his trousers began their slow but inexorable slide
deckwards. Since then he's become a bloody glamour boy - and an owner.
Yes, David Allen agreed, and his baby face crumpled a little at the
thought of those two legendary animals, master and owner, combined in
one monster. A monster man which was on the point of mounting his
gangway to the deck of Warlock.
You'd better go down and kiss him on the soft spot/ vinny grunted
comfortably, and drifted away. Two decks down was the sanctuary of his
control room where neither masters nor owners could touch him. He was
going there now.
David Allen was breathless and flushed when he reached the entry port.
The new Master was halfway up the gangway, and he lifted his head and
looked steadily at the mate as he stepped aboard.
Though he was only a little above average, Nicholas Berg gave the
impression of towering height, and the shoulders beneath the blue
cashmere of his jacket were wide and powerful. He wore no hat and his
hair was very dark, very thick and brushed back from a wide unlined
forehead. The head was big-nosed and punt-boned, with a heavy jaw, blue
now with new beard, and the eyes were set deep in the cages of their
bony sockets, underlined with dark plumcoloured smears, as though they
were bruised.
But what shocked David Allen was the man's pallor. His face was
drained, as though he had been bled from the jugular. it was the pallor
of mortal illness or of exhaustion close to death itself, and it was
emphasized by the dark eye-sockets. This was not what David had
expected of the legendary Golden Prince of Christy Marine. It was not
the face he had seen so often pictured in newspapers and magazines
