The contempt was clear in his voice, his disdain for this haggling
between owners and salvors, when a great ship and six hundred lives were
-at risk in the cold sea.
He knew what he would do if the salvage tug made contact before Golden
Adventurer struck the waiting fangs of rock, he would override his owner
s express orders and exercise his rights as Master by, immediately
accepting the offer of assistance under Lloyd's Open Form.
But let him come/ he murmured to himself. Please God, let him come/and
he raised his binoculars and slowly swept a long jagged horizon where
the peaks of the swells seemed black and substantial as rock. He paused
with a leap of his pulse when something white blinked in the field of
the glasses and then, with a little sick slide, realized that it was
only a random ray of sunlight catching a pinnacle of ice from the
floating bergs.
He lowered the glasses and crossed from the windward wing of the bridge
to the lee. He did not need the glasses now, Cape Alarm was black and
menacing against the sow's-belly grey of the sky. Its ridges and
valleys picked out with gleaming ice and banked snow, and against her
steep shore, the sea creamed and leapt high in explosions of purest
white.
Sixteen miles, sir/ said the First Officer, coming to stand beside him.
And the current seems to be setting a little more northerly now. They
were both silent, as they balanced automatically against the violent
pitch and roll of the deck.
Then the Mate spoke again with a bitter edge to his voice, Where is that
bloody frog? And they watched the night of Antarctica begin to shroud
the cruel lee shore in funereal cloaks of purple and sable, She was very
young, probably not yet twenty-five years of age, and even the layers of
heavy clothing topped by a man's anorak three sizes too big could not
disguise the slimness of her body, that almost coltish elegance of long
fine limbs and muscle toned by youth and hard exercise.
Her head was set jauntily on the long graceful stem of her neck, like a
golden sunflower, and the profuse mane of long hair was sun-bleached,
streaked with silver and platinum and copper gold, twisted up carelessly
into a rope almost as thick as a man's wrist and piled on top of her
head. Yet loose strands floated down on to her forehead and tickled her
nose so that she pursed her lips and puffed them away.
Her hands were both occupied with the heavy tray she carried, and she
balanced like a skilled horsewoman against the ship's extravagant
plunging as she offered it.
Come on, Mrs. Goldberg, she wheedled. It will warm the cockles of your
Turn. I don't think so, my dear/ the white-haired woman faltered.
Just for me, then/ the girl wheedled.
Well/ the woman took one of the mugs and sipped it tentatively. 'It's
good/ she said, and then quickly and furtively, Samantha, has the tug
come yet? It will be here any minute now, and the Captain is a dashing
Frenchman, just the right age for you, with a lovely tickly mustache.
I'm going to introduce you first thing. The woman was a widow in her
late fifties, a little overweight and more than a little afraid, but she
