I felt somehow that I had trodden on thin ice. He replied impersonally. 'We have the Navy Adventure School for sail trainees. I sailed yachts belonging to the School round the world.' 'You mean, skippered?'
'That's right. They gave me the experience in sail necessary for Jetwind’
Something still eluded me about Tideman. 'As second officer,' I added.
He answered me a trifle defensively. 'Captain Mortensen was a very fine sailor. He'd graduated in square- riggers and knew deep-watermen. My background did not include them. Also, he was from the Aaland I sips. You know what that implies.' Holding the telephone still, he asked, 'Shall I call Kay?' 'Yes. Tell her to come quickly.'
He dialled 'S' on the intercom and said to me while the instrument rang, 'Jetwind's phones are automatic – all the main control-points have code-rings, 'S' for sail-maker, 'O' for bridge – officer of the deck, 'E' for engine room -and so on.'
We waited. 'I'll bet Kay is stretched out full-length on the deck stitching a sail,' he said. 'You must visit the sail-room – it's big enough to house a whole sail spread out. Kay's favourite habit is to lie down and work at them.'
The phone came alive. I heard a burst of background music and Tideman said, 'Kay! Switch that damn thing down, will you? The skipper wants you…' There was a pause and he eyed me. 'No, the new skipper, Captain Rainier. Yes, he's on the bridge now. At the double, please.'
'You will have common ground with Kay – she's another Cape Horner,' Tideman said.
'Was she one of the all-women crew yachts in the last Round the World?'
'No. She was sail-maker in Peripatetic II. There was one other girl aboard, the navigator. I reckon it must have been the Round the Worlder which threw Kay's marriage. Marriage and the deep sea don't go together.' ' She's divorced, then?'
'Aye. The guy was a starchy up-and-coming young London stockbroker, I heard. Couldn't stand the absence, and the adulation Kay got over the race. Peripatetic finally finished sixth, which was no mean feat.' 'Is that all that broke it up?' 'Kay's not that sort. Aboard Jetwind we sort of regard her as the Old Lady of the Sea.' 'Meaning?'
'Well, she's twenty-six, and that's a ripe old age amongst this crew. Their average age is twenty. They even look upon me as the Ancient Mariner – I'm twenty-seven.' 'Same as me.'
'Jack, our other sail-maker, is really our Old Man of the Sea – he's thirty.' He grinned. 'He's a wonderful practical sail-maker but he hasn't Kay's flair for the theory. I myself don't understand half the maths she talks when she gets on to sail aerodynamics.' 'Are there any more Cape Horners aboard?'
'Aye. Four of my own lads from the Adventure School. Then there's Pierre Roussouw, who sailed with Tabarly. And the bo'sun, Jim Yell. As you probably realize, a bo'sun in this sort of ship has a very special position. There are only two officers, apart from the captain – Grohman and myself. Yell is a sort of sergeant-major – not that this crew needs chasing. But they're fretting, and the sooner we get to sea, the better.'
Tideman's remarks about the chain of command made me wonder again where Grohman was. Protocol required that he should have been on the bridge to greet me in the first place. Nevertheless, I had resisted a temptation to summon him. I wanted to find out about things without him around. It seemed to me, however, that he was cocking a snook at me by his continued absence.
I said, brusque with inner tension, 'I hope they get their wish. There is an Argentinian destroyer on her way here to detain Jetwind’
Tideman stared at me in disbelief and then exclaimed, 'Detain!’
'That is my information. She will arrive tonight or tomorrow.'
I was saved from further explanation by Kay Fenton's arrival. I had been unprepared, in the light of Tideman's 'Old Lady of the Sea' description, for the person who came quickly through the bridge door. She was tallish, with a mod style hair-cut which made her blonde hair lighter than it really was where it had been sun-bleached above her ears. The long legs of her black velvet corduroy pants were dotted with scraps of dacron sail thread. Her slim breasts were free under a green woollen shirt. The Pacific seemed to have left something of its blue in her wide eyes, and Cape Horn something of its greyness. The damped-down turbulence at the back of them was her own.
She held out her hand to me. As I gripped it we both laughed. She had forgotten to remove her sail-maker's leather palm.
'I'm not really as horny-handed as all that,' she said. I welcomed the way she repeated the handshake after removing the palm. I also liked the low modulation of her voice. Like her eyes, it seemed to have a background of sadness.
She by-passed a whole ocean of social conventions by getting down to the subject which, basically, interested both of us.
'You made the correlation between the theoretical performance of the Venetian Rig and its practical one look a bit battered. Captain Rainier,’ she said. 'We tested your rig at the Schiffbau Institut. If we had had Albatros's actual performance figures then, we could well have plumped for a Venetian Rig for Jetwind’
Tideman added, 'It takes a sailor to achieve Albatros's results, Kay.'
Then she asked me with the same eager air as Tideman had shown previously, 'Now that you're here, will we be sailing soon?'
I dodged the question. 'Mr Tideman has given me a rundown on Jetwind’s controls. Now I want to see the sails themselves – the real power house. I would also like to see the exact place where Captain Mortensen met with his accident.' She flashed a glance at Tideman. 'John?'
His voice lacked any inflexion. 'I considered you'd be the best person aboard to explain the merits of the sails.'
'Let's make it as quick as we can,' I said. 'I have to see the chief magistrate shortly after lunch.'
She gave Tideman another inquiring look and then said, a little uncertainly, it appeared to me, 'Let's go.'
After operating one of a bank of switches on a nearby console, she led me down a ladder to a central well immediately abaft and under the wheel-house itself. The mast ran through it. Access to its interior was via a steel door which slotted into the curvature of the mast. Kay explained that this servicing door was held shut magnetically until released by the bridge control she had manipulated.
She put on the lights. I was surprised at the diameter of the mast inside. There was room for two people abreast, although it narrowed higher up. A steel ladder was clamped to the wall and a trunk of intertwined copper tubes, which combined were thicker than my leg, sprouted skywards out of sight above. These were the hydraulic pipes to control the yards. They were linked in twin, each pair with dials and valves. It looked more like a plumber's paradise regained than a ship's mast. 'Come!'
Kay started up the ladder. Her sneakers made no sound on the rungs. Within seconds she had outpaced me. Up and up we went, Kay drawing ahead at every step. Finally, out of breath, I reached her, perched in a compartment on what looked like a tiny steeple-jack's seat. This compartment was the juncture point of topsail yard and mainmast. Higher, the diameter of the interior narrowed to become the top-gallant mast, and the material changed from high tensile steel to light alloy. The top-sail yard-arm itself was largely hidden from view except via slits through which the sail rolled in and out along stainless steel runners.
Kay followed my inquiring scrutiny of the gleaming mechanisms and valves.
'These hydraulics are basically the same as are used to operate the rudders of large ships – suitably adapted, of course.'
I said, getting back my breath, 'I heard you're called the Old Lady of the Sea. If old ladies go up ladders like that, give me the advanced generation any day.'
She laughed with a mixture of humour and reserve. 'The guys all think I'm crazy. I have an exercise routine. I run up this ladder to the crow's nest every morning before breakfast.' 'What's that in aid of?'
'All day I sit at a sewing-machine stitching sails or at a desk doing maths. Put simply, the bottom doesn't benefit by it.'
I gestured at the servicing compartment. Its most unusual feature was a pair of what looked like gigantic vertical roller-blinds, about nine metres tall, tightly wound with sail.
'I suppose I'll get used to it,' I said, 'but at the moment it all seems like black magic to me. Strangest is having hollow masts.5
'They're correctly termed unstayed rotatable profiled masts,' she answered seriously. 'They've been custom-
