holds to the liner's deck; it was another hour before Captain Reilly
emerged from the radio room.
Can I offer you a drink, Captain? Nick led him to his day cabin, and
began with tact to deal with the hundred details which had to be settled
between them. It was a delicate situation, for Reilly was no longer
Master of his own ship. Command had passed to Nicholas as salvage
master.
The accommodation aboard Golden Adventurer is still quite serviceable,
and, I imagine, a great deal warmer and more comfortable than that
occupied by your passengers at present -'Nick made it easier for him
while never for a moment letting him lose sight of his command position,
and Reilly responded gratefully.
Within half an hour, they had made all the necessary arrangements to
transfer the survivors aboard the liner.
Levoisin on La Mouette had been able to take only one hundred and twenty
supernumeraries on board his little tug. The oldest and weakest of them
had gone and Christy Marine was negotiating for a charter from Cape Town
to Shackleton Bay to take off the rest of them. Now that charter was
unnecessary, but the cost of it would form part of Nick's claim for
salvage award.
I won't take more of your time. Reilly drained his glass and stood. You
have much to do. There were another four days and nights of hard work.
Nick went aboard Golden Adventurer and saw the cavernous engine room lit
by the eye-scorching blue glare of the electric welding flames, as Baker
placed his steel over the wound and welded it into place. Even then,
neither he nor Nick was satisfied until the new patches had been shored
and stiffened with baulks of heavy timber. There was a hard passage
through the roaring forties ahead of them, and until they had Golden
Adventurer safely moored. in Cape Town docks, the salvage was complete.
They sat side by side among the greasy machinery and the stink of the
anti-corrosives, and drank steaming Thermos coffee laced with Bundaberg
rum.
We get this beauty into Duncan Docks - and you are going to be a rich
man, Nick said.
I've been rich before. With me it never lasts long - and it's always a
relief when I've spent the stuff. Beauty gargled the rum and coffee
appreciatively, before he went on, shrewdly. So you don't have to worry
about losing the best goddamned engineer afloat. Nick laughed with
delight. Baker had read him accurately. He did not want to lose him.
With this Nick left him and went to see to the trim of the liner,
studying her carefully and using the experience of the last days to
determine her best points of tow, before giving his orders to David
Allen to raise her slightly by the head.
Then there was the transfer from the liner's bunkers of sufficient
bunker oil to top up Warlock's own tanks against the long tow ahead, and
Bach Wackie in Bermuda kept the telex clattering with relays from
underwriters and Lloyd's, with the first tentative advances from Christy
Marine; already Duncan Alexander was trying out the angles, manoeuvring
for a liberal settlement of Nick's claims, without, as he put it, the
