at that moment a shadow passed over the ship, as though a vulture
wheeled above on wide-spread pinions, and as Nick glanced up he saw the
men on the fore-dec lift their heads also.
It was a single cloud seeming no bigger than a man's fist, a thousand or
fifteen hundred feet above them, but it had momentarily obscured the
lowering sun, before scuttling on furtively down the peaks of Cape
Alarm.
There is still much to do/ Nick thought, and he opened the bridge door
and stepped out on to the exposed wing.
There was no movement of air, and the cold seemed less intense although
a glance at the glass confirmed that there were thirty degrees still of
frost. No wind here, but high up it was be wind. Number One/ Nick
snapped into the microphone.
What's going on down there - do you think this is your daddy's yacht?
And David Allen's team leapt to the task of closing down the forward
hatch, and then tramped back to the double salvage holds on the long
stern quarter.
I am transferring command to the stern bridge. Nick told his deck
officers and hurried back through the accommodation area to the second
enclosed bridge, where every control and navigational aid was
duplicated, a unique feature of salvage-tug construction where so much
of the work took place on the afterdeck.
This time from the aft gantries, they lifted the loaded ballets of
salvage gear on to the liner's deck, another eight tons of equipment
went aboard Golden Adventurer. Then they pulled away and David Allen
battened down again.
When he came on to the bridge stamping and slapping his own shoulders,
red-cheeked and gasping from the cold, Nick told him immediately .
Take command, David, I'm going on board. Nick could not bring himself
to wait out the uncertain period while Beauty Baker put power and pumps
into action.
Anything mechanical was Baker's responsibility, as seamanship was
strictly Nick's, but it could take many hours yet, and Nick could not
remain idle that long.
From high on the forward gantry, Nick looked out across that satiny
ominous sea. It was a little after midnight now and the sun was half
down behind the mountains, a two dimensional disc of metal heated to
furious crimson. The sea was sombre purple and the ice-bergs were
sparks of brighter cherry red. From this height he could see that the
surface- of the sea was crenellated, a small regular swell spreading
across it like ripples across a pond, from some disturbance far out
beyond the horizon.
Nick could feel the fresh movement of Warlock's hull as she rode this
swell, and suddenly a puff of wind hit Nick in the face like the flit of
a bat's wing, and the metallic sheen of the sea was scoured by a
cat's-paw of wind that scratched at the surface as it passed.
He pulled the draw-suing of the hood of his anorak up more tightly under
his chin and stepped out on to the open boarding-ladder, like a
steeplejack, walking upright and balancing lightly seventy feet above
Warlock's slowly rolling fore-dec.
