expense of the arbitration court.
Tell him I'm going to roast him/ Nick answered with grim relish. 'Remind
him that as Chairman of Christy Marine I advised against underwriting
our own bottoms and now I'm going to rub his nose in it. The days and
nights blurred together, the illusion made complete by the imbalance of
time down here in the high latitudes, so that Nick could often believe
neither his senses nor his watch when he had been working eighteen hours
straight and yet the sun still burned, and his watch told him it was
three o'clock in the morning.
Then again, it did not seem part of reality when his senior officers,
gathered around the mahogany table in his day cabin, reported that the
work was completed - the repairs and preparation, the loading of fuel,
the embarkation of passengers and the hundred other details had all been
attended to, and Warlock was ready to drag her massive charge out into
the unpredictable sea, thousands of miles to the southernmost tip of
Africa.
Nick passed the cheroot-box around the circle and while the blue smoke
clouded the cabin, he allowed them all a few minutes to luxuriate in the
feeling of work done, and done well.
We'll rest the ship's company for twenty-four hours/he announced in a
rush of generosity. And take in tow at 0800 hours Monday. I'm hoping
for a two speed of six knots - twenty-one days to Cape Town, gentlemen.
When they rose to leave, David Allen lingered selfconsciously. The
wardroom is arranging a little Christmas celebration tonight, sir, and
we would like you to be our guest. The wardroom was the junior
officers, club from which, traditionally, the Master was excluded. He
could enter the small panelled cabin only as an invited guest, but there
was no doubt at all about the genuine warmth of the welcome they gave
him. Even the Trog was there. They stood and applauded him when he
entered, and it was clear that most of them had made an early start on
the gin. David Allen made a speech which he read haltingly from a scrap
of paper which he tried to conceal in the palm of one hand.
It was a speech full of hyperbole, cliches and superlatives, and he was
clearly mightily relieved once it was over.
Then Angel brought in a cake he had baked for the occasion. It was iced
in the shape of Golden Adventurer, a minor work of art, with the figures
121/2% picked out in gold on its hull, and they applauded him. That
121/2% had significance to set them all grinning and exclaiming.
Then they called on Nick to speak, and his style was relaxed and easy.
He had them hooting with glee within minutes - a mere mention of the
prize money that would be due to them once they brought Golden
Adventurer into Cape Town had them in ecstasy.
The girl was wedged into a corner, almost swallowed in the knot of young
officers who found it necessary to press as closely around her as was
possible without actually smothering her.
She laughed with a clear unaffected exuberance, her voice ringing high
above the growl of masculine mirth, so that Nick found it difficult not
to keep looking across at her.
She wore a dress of green clinging material, and Nick wondered where it
had come from, until he remembered that Golden Adventurer's passenger
