more than just your fingers. All revoir, Jules. Come and watch me in
the awards court. I still think that's a whore-house, not a tug you are
sailing. You can send over a couple of blondes and a bottle of wine
Goodbye, Jules. Good luck, mon vieux. Hey, Jules - you say 'good luck'
and it's the worst possible luck. You taught me that. 'Oui, I know.
Then good luck to you also, Jules. For a minute Nick looked after the
departing tug. It waddled away over the oily swells, small and
fat-bottomed and cheeky, for all the world like its Master and yet there
was something dejected and crestfallen about her going.
He felt a prick of affection for the little Frenchman, he had been a
true and good friend as well as a teacher, and Nick felt his triumph
softening to regret.
He crushed it down ruthlessly. It had been a straight, hard but fair
run, and Jules had been careless. Long ago, Nick had taught himself
that anybody in opposition was an enemy, to be hated and beaten, and
when you had done so, you despised them. You did not feel compassion,
it weakened your own resolve.
He could not quite bring himself to despise Jules Levoisin. The
Frenchman would bounce back, probably snatching the next job out from
under Nick's nose, and anyway he had the lucrative contract to ferry the
survivors from Shackleton Bay. It would pay the costs of his long run
southwards and leave some useful change over.
Nick's own dilemma was not as easily resolved. He put Jules Levoisin
out of his mind, turning away before the French tug had rounded the
headland and he studied the ice-choked bay before him with narrow eyes
and a growing feeling of concern. Jules had been right this was going
to be a screaming bastard of a job.
The high seas that had thrown Golden Adventurer ashore had been made
even higher by the equinoctial spring tides. Both had now abated and
she was fast.
The liner's hull had swung also, so she was not aligned neatly at right
angles to the beach. Warlock would not be able to throw a straight pull
on to her. She would have to drag her sideways. Nick could see that
now as he closed.
Still closer, he could see how the heavy steel hull, half filled with
water, had burrowed itself into the yielding shingle. She would stick
like toffee to a baby's blanket.
Then he looked at the ice, it was not only brash and pancake ice, but
there were big chunks, bergie bits, from rotten and weathered icebergs,
which the wind had driven into the bay, like a sheep dog with its flock.
The plunging temperatures had welded this mass of ice into a whole; like
a monstrous octopus, it was wrapping thick glistening tentacles around
Adventurer's stern. The ice had not yet had sufficient time to become
impenetrable, and Warlock's bows were ice-strengthened for just such an
emergency - yet Nick knew enough not to underestimate the hardness of
ice. White ice is soft ice was the old adage, and yet here there were
big lumps and hummocks of green and striated glacial ice in the mass,
like fat plums in a pudding, any one of which could punch a hole through
Warlock's hull.
Nick grimaced at the thought of having to send Jules Levoisin a Mayday.
