transparent.
How's the glass, David? Nick asked, trying to keep the weariness from
showing.
994 and dropping, sir. Nick looked across at Golden Adventurer. Below
that dingy low sky, she stood like a pier, unmoved by the big swells
that marched on her in endless ranks, and she shrugged aside each burst
of spray, hard aground and heavy with the water in her womb.
However, that water was being flung from her, in solid white sheets.
Baker's big centrifugals were running at full power, and from both her
port and starboard quarters the water poured.
It looked as though the flood gates had been opened on a concrete dam,
so powerful was the rush of expelled water.
The oil and diesel mixed with that discharge formed a sullen, iridescent
slick around her, sullying the ice and the pebble beach on which she
lay. The wind caught the jets from the pump outlets and tore them away
in glistening plumes, like great ostrich feathers of spray.
Chief/ Nick called the ship. What's your discharge rate? We are moving
nigh on five hundred thousand gallons an hour. Call me as soon as she
alters her trim! he said, and then glanced up at the pointer of the
anemometer above the control panel. The wind force was riding eight
now, but he had to blink his stinging swollen eyes to read the scale.
David/ he said, and he could hear the hoarseness in his voice, the flat
dead tone. It will be four hours before she will be light enough to
make an attempt to haul her off, but I want you to put the main
towing-cable on board her and make fast, so we will be ready when she
is., Sir. Use a rocket-line/ said Nick, and then stood dumbly, trying
to think of the other orders he must give, but his brain was blank.
Are you all right, sir? David asked with quick concern, and immediately
Nick felt the prick of annoyance. He had never wanted sympathy in his
life, and he found his voice again. But he stopped the sharp words that
came so quickly to his lips.
You know what to do, David. I won't give you any other advice. He
turned like a drunkard towards his quarters.
Call me when you've done it, or if Baker reports alteration of trim - or
if anything else changes, anything, anything at all, you understand. He
made it to the cabin before his knees buckled and he IV
dropped his terry robe as he toppled backwards on to his bunk.
At 6o south latitude, there runs the only sea-lane that circumnavigates
the entire globe, unbroken by any land mass. This wide girdle of open
water runs south of Cape Horn and Australasia and the Cape of Good Hope,
and it has the fearsome reputation of breeding the wildest weather on
earth. It is the meeting-ground of two vast air masses, the cold
slumping Antarctic air, and the warmer, more buoyant airs of the
sub-tropics. These are flung together by the centrifugal forces
generated by the earth as it revolves on its own axis, and their
movement is further complicated by the enormous torque of the coriolis
force.
As they strike each other, the opposing air masses split into smaller
fragments that retain their individual characteristics. They begin to
