The Cruise of the Albatros

by E. C. Williams

  In addition, he tried to keep up with the progress of the conversion of the Joan of Arc and the recruitment of hands to fill out the crews of the two vessels. He was especially interested in Mr. Yeo's assignment to recruit two new engineers, one for each of the schooners, and followed this closely. Bill also sought his counsel in recruiting a suitable candidate for Navigation Officer of the Joan.

  This latter decision was complicated by the fact that a precedent had been set on the Albatros of making the Navigator a warrant officer. This was their solution to the problem that Mr. Mooney had been master and majority owner of Come, Angel Band, and had insisted on being included among the schooner's officers as a condition for her sale to the Republic to become the Albatros. The problem, more specifically, was the fact that both Sam and Bill thought that Mooney, although a shipmaster of long experience and recognized expertise, was ineligible for a commission by virtue of his age and lack of formal education. The solution was to make Mooney the senior warrant officer on the schooner, responsible for her navigation and the training of the midshipmen and junior lieutenants in navigation and seamanship.

  But Bill's favored candidate for this billet on the Joan, a Captain Benoit Murphy, was eminently qualified for a commission: still young, formally educated to the fullest extent available on Kerguelen, a respected shipmaster and, as well, acknowledged in Kerg maritime circles as a navigator of rare skill and talent. Sam and Bill finally decided that Murphy should be commissioned as the senior lieutenant and assigned the position of navigator, reasoning that a precedent they had set they could also break.

  Sam had little personal time during this week. He managed to get a message to his family on Long Island, assuring them of his health and well-being, inquiring after theirs, and apologizing for not making the trip home.

  Always in the back of his mind, however, was a personal call or visit he longed to make, but was unsure about whether it was either wise or proper. Should he make any further effort to stay in contact with Maddie Dupree? She was the widow of his best friend and chief mate, Johnny, who had been killed in a pirate attack on the merchant schooner Kiasu, Sam's last command before he became the first captain of the first warship of the Kerguelen Navy.

  Sam felt guiltily responsible for Johnny's death. Dupree was himself a master mariner, ashore only because of his recent marriage to Maddie, at which Sam had stood up as best man, and would not have been aboard the Kiasu at all had Sam been able to engage a qualified mate. Dupree had agreed to sail with Sam as his chief (and only) mate as a favor to a friend, and one that involved considerable sacrifice, since Johnny and Maddie had been in the midst of an extended honeymoon at the time. Sam feared that his physical presence could only be a painful reminder to Maddie of her husband's death.

  The situation was further complicated by the fact that Sam had retained strong feelings of attraction to Maddie, which dated from their first meeting at a cadet dance and had only grown stronger since in spite of all his attempts to suppress them. Johnny, his best friend, had been entranced by her, too, and the toss of a coin had determined which of the two friends would have a clear run at her. Johnny had won the toss, and had pursued her tirelessly until she agreed to marry him, a marriage that was delayed until Johnny felt financially secure enough to support a wife. Sam's strong attraction to her was not at all abated by her engagement and marriage to his best friend, creating an emotional conflict that caused him considerable internal turmoil.

  Sam's desire to see her again finally overcame his qualms about it, and he telephoned her to ask if he might pay her a visit. He rationalized that it was his duty to offer any support he could to the widow of his late friend. He had been apprehensive about how his call might be received, and listened intently for any slight intonation in her voice that might indicate reluctance. To his relief, she sounded sincerely glad to hear from him, and urged him to visit at his earliest convenience.

  Sam prepared with special care. His formal shore-going rig needed pressing, but his steward, Ritchie was still on leave, so he rushed it ashore to a tailor shop and paid double for immediate service while he waited. He then trimmed his beard and bathed thoroughly. In spite of all the time he took getting ready, he still found himself twenty minutes early when the cab dropped him in front of Maddie's stone cottage in a middle-class suburban neighborhood. He resigned himself to walking around the block until it was time for his arrival, but she must have seen the cab arrive from her window. She opened her door and cried, “Sam! Come in! I'm so glad to see you.”

  “Hello, Maddie. Sorry I'm so early. I...”

  “Nonsense! I'm glad you're early – I've been watching for you for half an hour!”

  Sam held out his hand, expecting her to take it, but she hugged him instead. The feel of her slender form in his arms was so pleasant that he had to force himself to release her when her slackening grasp indicated that the embrace had lasted long enough.

  “Come in, Sam, out of this bitter wind,” she said, and led him by the hand through her outer door into the entryway – sometimes called the “heat-lock”, because the double doors helped keep the warmth in – where she helped him off with his parka and boots and offered him slippers. This last was a universal practice on entering a Kerg home, to keep out the mud and slush of the street, Kerguelenian women being as particular about cleanliness as any sailor.

  “Now, just let me look at you. My, how tan you are! And I believe you've lost some weight; you look thinner. You should eat more, Sam. I suppose the food at sea isn't very appetizing, but now that you're home you must eat more.”

  “Maddie, dear, I'm no thinner than I ever was; I've always been a skinny guy. And my food could hardly be more appetizing, since my steward is a gourmet chef. I suppose I walk it off pacing the quarterdeck.”

  Sam took a good luck at Maddie while this exchange was taking place. She was still dressed in black – which made him realize with a start that, in spite of all that had happened since, Johnny had died less than a year before. But the pallor that had worried him when he had last seen her, that had contrasted so starkly with her bright red hair, was gone – the color had returned to her cheeks, restoring the rose-and-cream complexion that so contributed to her beauty. She had also regained the couple of kilos in weight she had lost during the first shock of her loss, leaving her looking rather gaunt. Sam thought these restored kilos were most fetchingly distributed – then pushed aside such thoughts, very improper when their object was a still-grieving widow.

  “Sit down, Sam. Tell me everything that's happened since I saw you last. I've followed the Albatros's exploits in the papers, but their descriptions are so scanty.”

  Mrs. Campbell, Maddie's mother, was nowhere in evidence; apparently Sam and Maddie were alone together. Sam's last visit had been chaperoned by Mrs. Campbell, who had been staying with Maddie to keep her company through the early stages of her grief.

  Sam began relating the cruise of the Albatros, haltingly at first, then warming to the tale. When he reached the point at which he was injured in the battle off Andilana, struck down by a piece of the shot-away mizzen topmast, she reacted in shock.

  “Oh, Sam, the papers never mentioned that you were wounded!” This was not surprising, since Sam had suppressed that fact in drafting his radio report to the Council describing the action. He suspected that the report would be released, or leaked, to the papers, and he didn't want to worry his friends and family back home unduly.

  “How badly were you injured? Did it take you long to recover?”

  “Oh, it was just a mild concussion, and I was up and about in no time,” Sam replied, shading the truth considerably. “And our Medical Officer, Doctor Girard, took great care of me; she's a marvelous physician, and the Albatros is lucky to have her.”

  Maddie had clearly not been aware that the Albatros's doctor was a woman, and questioned Sam closely about her, seemingly more interested in Girard's age, looks, dress, and manner than her professional qualifications. Sam wondered at the int
ensity of her interest in Doctor Girard's personal details, but dismissed it as natural feminine curiosity about a young woman who chose to leave a privileged status ashore to go to sea.

  Sam managed to bring the conversation back to the cruise, and held Maddie enthralled with details of the second battle off Pirate Creek, and the rescue of the Kerguelenian captives, only the bare facts of which had been made available to French Port's newspaper-reading public.

  When Sam had gotten the Albatros back to French Port and in the shipyard, and concluded with a brief and non-technical description of the planned changes, Maddie sat back in her chair and said, “That's incredible. Bravo, Sam – what amazing things you've accomplished!

  “But where are my manners? We've been talking for hours, and I've not offered you anything to eat or drink. Let me make us some supper – you must be famished.” Sam realized that the evening had arrived unnoticed; their engagement had been for mid-afternoon and they had been talking non-stop for several hours. And Sam, who had been too agitated about his upcoming call on Maddie to eat any dinner, was indeed feeling remarkably empty.

  “Not at all,” he lied stoutly. “But let me take you out to supper. We could go to Maxine's.” This was one of the posh restaurants at which Ritchie had trained, and Sam had been assured by his steward that he only had to drop his, Ritchie's, name to be immediately given a table with no need for a reservation.

  “Oh, Sam, that would be wonderful! I haven't been out of this house, except to shop for food, in ages.” Her eyes shone at the prospect. “But you'll have to wait for me to change my dress – I can't go out to supper in widow's weeds with a man I'm not related to.”

  “I forgot about that,” Sam said, horrified at his faux pas. “If it would be improper, maybe we shouldn't...”

  “Oh, pooh, Sam, you're one of my oldest friends – practically family. Besides, no one will care so long as I'm dressed appropriately. And I've been in mourning for nearly a year, anyway.”

  Sam reflected that it was probably true that no one would notice, or count the days to be sure she had been in mourning for a full year. An inconsistency of social life on the Rock – perhaps it was hypocrisy – was that Kerguelenians, though they could be stultifyingly bourgeois, were also quite tolerant of private behavior so long as the proper conventions were outwardly observed.

  Maddie excused herself to change, and Sam took this opportunity to make two phone calls – one to book a table at Maxine's, just to be on the safe side, and the other to arrange a cab. He had no need to use Ritchie's name to get a table. His own name seemed to carry enough weight for that – or perhaps they just weren't very busy that evening.

  “How do I look?”

  Maddie had reappeared, after what seemed to Sam enough time to make a dress as well as change into it. She was wearing a long woolen gown of a subdued greenish-gray shade and minimal jewelry: small golden earrings and a matching necklace in the form of a braided chain.

  “You look wonderful,” Sam said with such evident sincerity that Maddie blushed.

  Trying not to seem as if he were rushing her, yet conscious of how the waiting time was adding up on the meter of the taxi that had been parked outside Maddie's door for a good twenty minutes, Sam helped her into her parka and outdoor shoes, then donned his own outerwear. In his old wool-lined sealskin parka, worn both at sea and ashore for years, Sam felt positively shabby next to Maddie. Her parka was full-length and of thick woolen cloth, as the Rock's climate dictated. But it was the outer garment of a fashionable French Port lady: woven of the finest Falklands wool, pearl-gray, double-breasted, with gilt buttons, tailored to flatter her slim-waisted figure, and with a full hood to accommodate and protect the most elaborate hairdo. Sam knew that Maddie's people, the Campbells, were not rich, so her rig for the evening, which must have cost more than Sam's entire wardrobe, had to result from the indulgence of a loving husband. This reflection produced in Sam the usual mixture of guilt and sorrow whenever he thought of Johnnie Dupree and his death.

  Sam ushered Maddie into the back seat of the cab and saw her settled there, then slipped in beside her and gave the driver the address of the restaurant. The car moved off quietly, the compressed-air motor making only soft puffing noises. Since diesel and Stirling-cycle engines had been banned by the town fathers a few years before because the stench of the fish oil and lignite-slurry blend that fueled them had grown, with increasing traffic, to be unbearable, all self-propelled vehicles within the town ran on compressed air. The wind blew practically all the time on Kerguelen – the average wind speed was Force Five – so a network of wind-driven compressor stations around the ville provided plentiful energy. The technology of wind energy was one in which the Kerguelenians had actually progressed beyond their pre-Troubles ancestors; Kerg engineers had perfected a vertical-shaft generator with an automatic continuously-variable transmission that could operate safely and efficiently in winds of up to hurricane force.

  They rode in silence for a few minutes, then Maddie said, “Is there something wrong, Sam? You've gone awfully quiet all of a sudden.” She had clearly intuited Sam's spasm of guilt about Johnny.

  “No, nothing,” Sam replied, forcing a smile. “Just thinking about how nice it is to see you again.” Maddie responded with a complicated smile of her own, one that accepted the implied compliment without necessarily acknowledging the truth of the statement.

  They found the restaurant busy and apparently at capacity, full of fashionably-dressed denizens of French Port's upper crust. Sam wondered if he had made a wise choice; he felt distinctly shabby in his single weddings-and-funerals suit in the midst of so many expensively dressed people. Maddie, of course, looked right at home, indeed was among the most attractive women there.

  “Captain Bowditch of the Navy, and a lady, table for two,” the maitre-d' said to a waiter, with what Sam thought was a distinct emphasis on the phrase “...of the Navy”. The waiter ushered them toward what seemed to be the only vacant table in the place, which had a prominent “Reserved” sign on it.

  As they threaded their way through the crowded dining room, they suddenly came face-to-face with Doctor Girard, accompanied by a distinguished-looking older man, as they were clearly departing the restaurant.

  “Good evening, Captain,” Girard said.

  “Doctor Girard! A pleasant surprise.” There was an awkward pause, then Sam, remembering his manners, introduced the two women: “Madame Dupree; Doctor Girard.” Girard introduced her supper companion, whose name Sam instantly forgot, a doctor something-or-other.

  The two women appraised one another coolly and openly. Sam felt a strange tension, as if the two already knew and disliked one another, or alternatively that each had heard something to the discredit of the other, and he wondered at it.

  The little group drew the attention of the room. The women were by far the two best-looking females present, both strikingly attractive but in very different ways: Maddie, fair, with radiant red hair, tall; Girard petite, dark-haired and ivory-skinned. Both were slender, but with figures that were distinctly feminine, Maddie somewhat curvier, more buxom, with a narrow waist that emphasized those traits.

  After a brief exchange of pleasantries, the two couples parted, Sam and Maddie to their table and Dr. Girard and her escort to the cloakroom.

  When they were seated, Maddie said, “So that's the famous Doctor Girard! You didn't tell me she was so young and pretty, Sam.”

  “Yes, she is very attractive, isn't she? Quite a beautiful woman. I was afraid that would cause problems aboard, officers competing for her favors and so forth, but her behavior has been very correct, very professional.”

  For some reason this remark did not seem to please Maddie, so Sam hurriedly changed the subject. “What about her supper companion, Doctor Whoosis? Have you heard of him?”

  “Doctor McClennan? Yes. He's one of French Port's most prominent and wealthy physicians. And one of the Rock's most eligible bachelors, too, since he was widowed a couple of years ago
.” Maddie watched Sam's face closely while she spoke the second sentence, as if she were trying to gauge his reaction to this news. Sam's response – a politely uninterested “Really? I see.” – seemed to be satisfactory, for Maddie then turned to the conversion of the Joan of Arc, ex-Theotokos, and the refitting of the Albatros, questioning Sam about the details in the knowledgeable manner of a daughter and widow of shipmasters . These were subjects Sam could discuss enthusiastically and at length, and he did so all the way through the main course, when he began to sense a flagging of Maddie's interest in the technical details of the mounting of the 37 mm gun.

  “But forgive me, Maddie. I've been running on about ships for the entire meal. Tell me about you, and your family. What have you been doing since I saw you last?”

  “You haven't been 'running on', Sam – just answering my questions,” replied Maddie with a smile. “As for me … well, I don't do much. Read and sew and answer letters from friends and family.”

  “Speaking of letters, thanks for yours of a few months ago; it gave me much pleasure to hear from you. Please don't stop writing.”

  “So you received it! I'm so glad. When I didn't hear from you in reply, I assumed it was still chasing the Albatros from port to port and never quite catching her, as letters to sailors often do.”

  Sam blushed at the gently chiding tone in Maddie's voice. “I'm very sorry I didn't answer you – I sat down to write to you time and after time, but something always interrupted me before I could finish it properly, and I kept planning to mail it the next time we were in port. But it remains unfinished to this day – I have a couple of dozen pages, or even more, because I kept adding news as I thought of it. It's still in my desk drawer, back on the schooner.”

  “Then please do let me have it, Sam, dear. I'd love to read it.”

  “But you've already heard everything that's in it.”