table.
Angel had put aside his camp airs, and worked with the brusque
efficiency of a man who had been trained at his task.
Then suddenly he stopped and stood back for a moment.
Would you believe! No fun gun! Angel sighed.
Nick turned just as Angel spread a thick woollen blanket over the pale
naked body on the table and began to massage it vigorously.
You better leave us girls alone together, Skipper/ said Angel with a
sweet smile and a twinkle of his diamond earrings, and Nick was left
with the memory of a single fleeting glimpse of the stunningly lovely
body of a young woman below the pale face and the thick sodden head of
copper and gold hair.
Nick Berg was swaddled in a grey woollen blanket, over the boiler suit
and bulk jerseys. His feet were in thick Norwegian trawlerman's socks
and heavy rubber working boots. He held a china mug of almost boiling
coffee in both hands, bending over it to savour the aroma of the steam.
It was the third cup he had drunk in the last hour - and yet the
shivering spasms still shook him every few minutes.
David Allen had moved his canvas chair across the bridge so he could
watch the Trog and work the ship at the same time. Nick could see the
loom of the black rock cliffs of Cape Alarm close on their port beam.
The morse beam squealed suddenly, a long sequence of code to which every
man on the bridge listened with complete attention, but it needed the
Trog to say it for them.
La Mouette has reached the prize. He seemed to take a perverse relish
in seeing their expressions. She's beaten us to it, lads.
salvage to her crew I want it word for word, snapped Nick irritably,
-and the Trog grinned spitefully at him before bowing over his pad.
La Mouette to Christy Marine. Golden Adventurer is hard aground, held
by ice and receding tides. Stop. Ice damage to plating appears to be
below surface. Stop. Hull is flooded and open to sea. Stop.
Under no circumstances will Lloyd's Open Form be acceptable. Emphasize
importance of beginning salvage work immediately. Stop. Worsening
weather and sea conditions. My final hire offer of $8000 per day them
plus .21/2% of salvaged value open until 1435 GMT. Standing by. Nick
lit one of his cheroots and irrelevantly decided he must conserve them
in future. He had opened his last box that morning. He frowned through
the blue smoke and pulled the blanket closer around his shoulders.
Jules Levoisin was playing it touch and hard now. He was dictating
terms and setting ultimatums. Nick's own policy of silence was paying
off . Probably by now, Jules felt completely safe that he was the only
salvage tug within two thousand miles, and he was holding a big-calibre
gun to Christy Marine's head.
Jules had seen the situation of the Golden Adventurer's hull. If he had
been certain of effecting salvage - no, even if there had been a
fifty-fifty chance of a good salvage, Jules would have gone Open Form.
So Jules was not happy with his chances, and he had the shrewdest and
most appraising eye in the salvage business.
It was a tough- one then. Golden Adventurer was probably held fast by
