You beauty/ whispered Nick dreamily, and felt the water shoot into his
throat, but there was no pain.
Another image formed before him, an Arrow head-class yacht with
spinnaker set, running free across a bright Mediterranean sea, and his
son at the tiller, the dense tumble of curls that covered his small neat
head fluttering in the wind, and the same velvety dark eyes as his
mother's in the sun-tanned oval of his face as he laughed.
Don't let her run by the lee, Peter/ Nicholas wanted to shout to his
son, but the image faded into blackness. He thought for a moment that
he had passed into unconsciousness, but then he realized suddenly that
it was the black rubber bottom of the Zodiac only inches from his eyes,
and that the rough hands that dragged him upwards, lifting him and
tearing loose the fastening of his helmet, were not part of the fantasy.
Propped against the pillowed gunwale of the Zodiac, held by the two
boatmen from falling backwards, the first breaths of sub-zero air were
too rich for his starved lungs, and Nick coughed and vomited weakly down
the front of his suit.
Nick came out of the shower cabinet. The cabin was thick with steam,
and his body glowed dull angry red from the almost boiling water. He
wrapped the towel around his waist as he stepped through into his night
cabin.
Baker slouched in the armchair at the foot of his bunk.
He wore fresh overalls, his hair stood up in little damp spikes around
the shaven spot where Angel's cat-gut stitches still held the scabbed
wound closed. One of the side frames of his spectacles had snapped
during those desperate minutes below Golden Adventurer's stern, and
Baker had repaired it with black insulating tape.
He held two glasses in his left hand, and, a big flat brown bottle of
liquor in the other. He poured two heavy slugs into the glasses as Nick
paused in the bathroom door, and the sweet, rich aroma smelled like the
sugar-cane fields of northern Queensland.
Baker passed a glass to Nick, and then showed him the bottle's yellow
label.
Bundaberg rum/ he announced, the dinky die stuff, sport!
Nick recognized both the offer of liquor and the salutation as probably
the highest accolade the chief would ever give another human being. Nick
sniffed the dark honey-brown liquor and then took it in a single toss,
swirled it once around his mouth, swallowed, shuddered like a spaniel
shaking off water droplets, exhaled and said: It's still the finest rum
in the world. Dutifully, he said what was expected of him, and held out
his glass.
The Mate asked me to give you a message, said Baker as he poured another
shot for each of them. Glass hit 103,5 and now it s diving like a dingo
into its hole - back to 102,0 already. It's going to blow - is it ever
going to blow!
They regarded each other over the rims of the glasses.
We've wasted almost two hours Beauty,, Nick told him, and Baker blinked
at the unlikely name, then grinned crookedly as he accepted it.
How are you going to plug that hull?
I've got ten men at work already. We are going to fother a sail into a
