by Wilbur Smith
suddenly seem of so little worth? He toyed with the idea of returning
to the revelry in the wardroom, and grimaced as he imagined the dismay
of his officers at the Master's inhibiting intrusion.
He turned away from the porthole and poured whisky into a glass, lit a
cheroot and dropped into the chair. The whisky tasted like toothpaste
and the cheroot was bitter.
He left the glass on his desk and stubbed the cheroot before he went
through on to the navigation bridge.
The night lights were so dim after his brightly lit cabin that he did
not notice Graham, the Third Officer, until his eyes adjusted to the
ruby glow.
Good evening, Mr. Graham. He moved to the chart table and checked the
log. Graham was hovering anxiously, and Nick searched for something to
say.
Missing the party? he asked at last.
Sir. It was not a promising conversational opening, and despite his
loneliness of a few minutes previously, Nick suddenly wanted to be alone
again.
I will stand the rest of your watch. Go off and enjoy yourself. The
Third Officer gawped at him.
You've got three seconds before I change my mind, That's jolly decent of
you, sir/ called Graham over his shoulder as he fled.
The party in the wardroom had by now degenerated into open competition
for Samantha's attention and approbation.
David Allen, wearing a lampshade on his head and, for some unaccountable
reason, with his right hand thrust into his jacket in a Napoleonic
gesture, was standing on the wardroom bar counter and declaiming Henry's
speech before Agincourt, glossing over the Passages which he had
forgotten with a Idurn-de-durn'. However, when Tim Graham entered, he
became immediately the First Officer.
He removed the lampshade and inquired frostily.
Mr. Graham, am I correct in believing that you are officer of the watch?
Your station at this moment is on the bridge!
The- old man came and offered to stand my watch/ said Tim Graham.
Good Lord! David replaced his lampshade, and poured a large gin for his
Third Officer. "The old bastard must have come over all soft suddenly.
Beauty Baker, who was hanging off the wall like a gibbon ape, dropped to
his feet and drew himself up with rather unsteady dignity, hitched his
trousers and announced ominously, if anybody calls the old bastard a
bastard, I will personally kick his teeth down his throat. He swept the
wardroom with an eye that was belligerent and truculent, until it halted
on Samantha. Immediately it softened. That one doesn't count, Sammy!
he said.
Of course not, Samantha agreed. You can start again. Beauty returned
to the starting point of the obstacle course, fortified himself with a
draught of rum, pushed up his spectacles with a thumb and spat on his
palms.
One to get ready, two to get steady - and three to be off! sang out
Samantha, and clicked the stopwatch. Beauty Baker swung dizzily from
the roof, clawing his way around the wardroom without touching the deck,
cheered on by the entire company.
Eight point six seconds! Samantha clicked the watch, as he ended up on
the bar counter, the finishing post. A new world record., A drink for
the new world champion- I'm next, time me, Sammy!
They were like schoolboys. Hey, watch me, Sammy! But after another ten
minutes, she handed the stopwatch to Tim Graham, who as a late arrival
was still sober.
I'll be back! she lied, picked up a plate with a large untouched hunk
of Angel's cake upon it and was gone before any of them realized it was
happening.
Nick Berg was working over the chart-table, so intent that he was not
aware of her for many seconds. In the dramatic lighting of the single
overhead lamp, the strength of his features was emphasized. She saw the
hard line of his jawbone, the heavy brow and the alert widely spaced set
of his eyes. His nose was large and slightly hooked, like that of a
plains Indian or a desert Bedouin, and there were lines at the corners
of his mouth and around his eyes that were picked out in dark shadow. In
his complete absorption with the charts and Admiralty Pilot, he had
relaxed his mouth from its usual severe line. She saw now that the lips
were full without being fleshy, and there was a certain sensitivity and
voluptuousness there that she had not noticed before.
She stood quietly, enchanted with him, until he looked up suddenly,
catching the rapt expression upon her face.
She tried not to appear flustered, but even in her own ears her voice
was breathless.
I'm sorry to disturb you. I brought some cake for Timmy Graham. I sent
him below to join the party. Oh, I didn't notice him. I thought he was
here. She made no move to leave, holding the plate in one hand, and
they were silent a moment longer.
I don't suppose I could interest you in a slice? It's going begging.
Share it/he suggested, and she came to the chart-table.
owe you an apology/ he said, and was immediately aware of the harshness
in his own voice. He hated to apologize, and she sensed it.
I picked a bad moment/ she said, and broke off a piece of the cake. But
this seems a better time. Thank you again, an( I'm sorry for all the
trouble I caused. I understand now that it nearly cost you the Golden
Adventurer. They both turned to look out of the big armoured glass
windows to where she lay.
She is beautiful, isn't she? said Nick, and his voice had lost its
edge.
Yes, she's beautiful/ Samantha agreed, and suddenly they were very close
in the intimate ruddy glow of the night lights.
He began to talk, stiffly and self-consciously at first, but she drew
him on, and with secret joy, she sensed him warming and relaxing. Only
then did she begin to put her own ideas forward.
Nick was surprised and a little disconcerted at the depth of her view,
and at her easy coherent expression of ideas, for he was still very much
aware of her youth. He had expected the giddiness and the giggle, the
shalowness an uninformed self-interest of immaturity, but it was not
there, and suddenly the difference in their ages was of no importance.
They were very close in the night, touching only with their minds, but
becoming each minute so much more closely involved in their ideas that
time had no significance.
They spoke about the sea, for they were both creatures of that element
and as they discovered this, so their mutual delight in each other grew.
From below came the faint unmelodious strains of Beauty Baker leading
the ship's officers in a chorus of:
The working class can kiss my arse I've got my. 12'12% at last. And at
another stage in the evening, a very worried Tim Graham appeared on the
bridge and blurted out, Captain, sir, Doctor Silver is missing. She's
not in her cabin and we have searched - He saw her then, sitting in the
Captain's chair and his worry turned to consternation.
Oh, I see. We didn't know - I mean we didn't expect - I'm sorry, sir.
Excuse me, sir. Goodnight, sir! And again he fled t
he bridge.
Doctor? Nick asked.
I'm afraid so/ she smiled, and then went on to talk about the
university, explaining her research project, and the other work she had
in mind. Nicholas listened silently, for like all highly competitive
and successful men, he respected achievement and ambition.
The chasm that he imagined existed between them shrank rapidly, so that
it was an intrusion when the eight to-twelve watch ended, and the relief
brought other human presence to the bridge, shattering the fragile mood
they had created around themselves, and denying them further excuse for
remaining together.
Goodnight, Captain Berg/ she said.
Goodnight, Doctor Silver/ he answered reluctantly.
Until that night, he had not even known her name, and there was so much
more he wanted to know now, but she was gone from the bridge; as he
entered his own suite, Nick's earlier loneliness returned, but with even
more poignancy.
During the long day of getting Golden Adventurer under tow, the hours of
trim and accommodation to the sea, until she was following meekly
settling down to the long journey ahead, Nick thought of the girl at
unlikely moments; but when he changed his usual routine and dined in the
saloon rather than his own cabin, she was surrounded by a solidly
attentive phalanx of young men, and, with a small shock of self-honesty,
Nick realized that he was actually jealous of them. Twice during the
meal, he had to suppress the sharp jibes that came to his lips, and
would have plunged the unfortunate recipient into uncomprehending
confusion.
Nick ate no desert and took coffee alone in his day cabin.
He might have relished Beauty Baker's company, but the Australian was
aboard Golden Adventurer, working on her main engines. Then, despite the
tensions and endeavours of the day, his bunk had no attractions for him.
He glanced at the clock on the panelled bulkhead above his desk and saw
that it was a few minutes after eight o'clock.
On impulse he went through to the navigation bridge, and Tim Graham
leapt guiltily to his feet. He had been sitting in the Master's chair,
a liberty which deserved at the least a sharp reprimand, but Nick
pretended not to notice and made a slow round of the bridge, checking
every detail from the cable tensions of the tow and power settings of
Warlock's engines, to the riding lights on both ships and the last log
entry.
Mr. Graham/ he said, and the young officer stiffened to attention like
the victim before a firing squad, I will stand this watch - you may go
and get some dinner. The Third Officer was so thunderstruck that he
needed a large gin before he could bring himself to tell the wardroom of
his good fortune.
Samantha did not look up from the board but moved a bishop flauntingly
across the front of David Allen's queen, and when David pounced on it
with a gurgle of glee, she unleashed her rook from the rear file and
said, Mate in three, David. One more, Sam, give me my revenge/ pleaded
David, but she shook her head and slipped out of the wardroom.
Nicholas became aware of the waft of her perfume. it was an inexpensive
but exuberant fragrance -'Babe', that was it, the one advertised by
Hemingway's granddaughter.
It suited Samantha perfectly. He turned to her, and it was only then
that he was honest enough to admit to himself that he had relieved his
Third Officer with the express intention of luring the girl up to the
bridge.
There are whales ahead/ he told her, and smiled one of those rare,
irresistible smiles that she had come to treasure. I hoped you might
come up.
Where? Where are they? she asked with unfeigned excitement, and then
they both saw the spout, a golden feather of spray in the low night
sunlight two miles ahead.
Balaenoptera musculus! she exclaimed.
I'll take your word for it, Doctor Silver, but to me it's still a blue
whale. Nick was still smiling, and she looked abashed for a moment.
Sorry, I wasn't trying to dazzle you with science. Then she looked back
at the humpy, uninviting cold sea as the whale blew again, a far and
ethereal column of lonely spray.
/one/ she said, only one. And the excitement in her voice cooled. There
are so few of them left now - that might be the last one we will ever
see. So few that they cannot find each other in the vastness of the
ocean to breed. Nick's smile was gone also, and again they talked of
the sea, of their own involvement with it, their mutual concern at what
man had done to it, and what he was still doing to it.
When the Marxist government of Mozambique took over from the Portuguese
colonists, it allowed the Soviets to send in dredges - not trawlers, but
dredges - and they dredged the weed beds of Delagoa Bay. They actually
dredged the breeding grounds of the Mozambique prawn.
They took out a thousand tons of prawn, and destroyed the grounds for
ever - and they drove an entire species into extinction in six short
months. Her outrage was in her voice as she told it.
Two months ago the Australians arrested a Japanese trawler in their
territorial waters. She had in her freezers the meat of 120,000 giant
clams that her crew had torn from the barrier reef with crow bars. The
clam population of a single coral reef would not exceed 20,000. That
means they had denuded six oceanic reefs in one expedition - and they
fined the Captain a thousand pounds. It was the Japanese who perfected
the "long line"/ Nick agreed, the endless floating line, armed with
specially designed hooks, and laid across the lanes of migration of the
big pelagic surface-feeding fish, the tuna and the marlin. They wipe
out the shoals as they advance - wipe them out to the last fish. You
cannot reduce any animal population beyond a certain point. Samantha
seemed much older as she turned her face up to Nick. Look what they did
to the whales. Together they turned back to the windows, gazing out for
a glimpse of that gentle monster, doomed in hope of another now to
extinction, one last look at another creature that would disappear from
the seas The Japanese and the Russians again/ said Nick. They would not
sign the whaling treaty until there were not enough blues left in the
seas to make their killing an economic proposition. Then they signed
it. when there were two or three thousand blue whales left in all the
oceans, that is when they signed. 'Now they will hunt the fill and the
seal and the minke to extinction. As they stood side by side staring
into the bizarre sun-lit for that spark of life in the watery night,
searching vainly wilderness, without thinking Nick lifted his arm; he
would have placed it around her shoulders, the age-old protective
attitude of man to his woman, but he caught himself at the last moment
before he actually touched her. She had felt his movement and tensed
for it, swaying slightly towards him in anticipation, but he stepped
away, letting his arm fall and stooped over the radarscope. She only
realized then how much she had w
anted him to touch her, but for the rest
of that evening he stayed within the physical limits which he seemed to
have set for himself.
The next evening she declined the wardroom's importunate invitations,
and after dinner waited in her own cabin, the door an inch ajar so she
heard Tim Graham leave the bridge, clattering down the companionway with
exuberance, relieved once more of his watch. The moment he entered the
wardroom, Samantha slipped from her cabin and ran lightly up to the
bridge.
She was with him only minutes after he had assumed the watch and Nick
was amused by the strength of his pleasure. They grinned at each other
like school children in a successful piece of mischief.
Before the light went, they passed close by one of the big tabular
bergs, and she pointed out the line of filth that edged the white ice
like the ring around a bathtub that had been used by a chimney sweep.
Paraffin wax/ she said, and undissolved hydrocarbons. No, he said,
that's only glacial striation.
It's crude oil/ she answered him. I've sampled it. It was one of the
reasons I took the guide job on Golden Adventurer, I wanted first-hand
knowledge of these seas. But we are two thousand miles south of the
tanker lanes. The beach at Shackleton Bay is thick with wax balls and
crude droplets. We found oil-soaked penguins on Cape Alarm, dead and
dying. They hit an oil slick within fifty miles of that isolated shore.
I can hardly believe -'Nick started, but she cut across him.
That's just itV she said. Nobody wants to believe it.
just walk on by, as though it's another mugging victim lying on the
sidewalk. You're right/ Nick admitted grudgingly. Very few people
really care. A few dead penguins, a few little black tar balls sticking
to your feet on the beach. It doesn't seem much to shout about, but
it's what we cannot see that should terrify us.
Those millions of tons of poisonous hydrocarbons that dissolve into the
sea, that kill slowly and insidiously, but surely. That's what should
really terrify us, Nicholas! She had used his given name for the first
time, and they were both acutely aware of it. They were silent again,
staring intently at the big iceberg as it passed slowly. The sun had
touched it with ethereal pinks and amethyst, but that dark line of
poisonous filth was still there.