Neptune, on the other hand, was wearing only his mask and wig: the trunks, of course, had been his.
There was a moment of stunned silence; then two of the nymphs had torn off their masks and were cheering: John Higgins and Andrew McTavish. And all the rest joined in. Gentle hands grabbed her from behind and carried her shoulder high all the way down to the Officers’ Bar, singing, “For she’s a jolly good fellow.”
When they were gone, Richard stepped out of the shadows with the towel Robin wasn’t going to need after all. Knowing the instant they crossed the line, he had come down to see fair play. He climbed up onto the scaffold and looked down. Ben Strong had taken off the Neptune headdress and was standing, calculating what his shaken dignity and total nudity would allow him to do.
“Warned you, Number One,” said Richard.
Ben looked up and grinned ruefully. “She fooled me all along the line,” he admitted. “She’s quite a girl. An officer but no gentleman!”
Richard gave a bark of laughter and threw him down the towel.
General Purpose Seaman Hajji Hassan laughed quietly to himself, uncertain whether he was more pleased with the humiliation of his friend Kerem Khalil, with the attempted humiliation of the unbeliever woman, or with her unexpected revenge upon the unbeliever mate whom he did not like. What ever. It had been a memorable evening. One worthy of a little celebration.
Hajji was the last to have any hashish hidden aboard. The austere Salah Malik disapproved, and, while his attitude was not shared by all the seamen, his word was law. With all but Hajji. He would allow himself one swift indulgence, then he would retire happily to the uncomfortable berth with the others.
He had decided to hide his tiny cache in the Pump Room while helping the chief remove the corpses of the last lot of officers. None of the others was likely to come here unaccompanied after such an occurrence. Even Hajji, who was not in the slightest superstitious, found the atmosphere of the place oppressive. Especially this evening, for some reason. He hurried in, crossed to the Fire Control Room, and brought out the little silver packet from behind the sinister black canisters as fast as possible. The air around him seemed peopled with unnatural shadows. It seemed full of scarcely heard whisperings. Every now and then his heart would flutter as though something were just behind him, trying to steal his breath.
None of this was quite as imaginary as it appeared. In spite of the checks after the accident, in spite of daily maintenance, several of the cylinders had slow leaks. The air up to Hajji’s knees was heavy with carbon dioxide. When he left the door open, as now, it cascaded into the corridor and wound along the floor, sinking into guttering and runnels, seeping down and collecting in pockets where the air-conditioning could not reach, just as both Levkas and Martyr had feared it would; silent, invisible, odorless, deadly.
Still laughing quietly to himself, Hajji closed the Pump Room door and began to creep down the corridor. He had gone less than ten feet when Malik called his name.
Salah Malik stood, watching the man with distaste. At first he had seemed an excellent seaman, worthy of the pilgrim’s title his parents had given him as a name: Hajji — one who has made the pilgrimage to Mecca; but it had soon become clear that this was an illusion created by the fact that he always worked in a team with Kerem Khalil, who was seaman enough for both of them. “Go to the Engine Room, Hajji,” he ordered now. “You are late for your watch.”
This was not true, but Hajji went anyway, muttering viciously, unaware that Malik had just saved his life.
CHAPTER TEN
The last evening in July found Robin hanging over the port bow of the supertanker, twenty feet below deck level, suspended from the forecastle in a boatswain’s chair. In spite of the curve of the tanker’s stem, she was close enough to inspect the rust-blistered area a foot or two in front of her. The stem of a supertanker, never riding over the seas but always punching through them like a mobile pier, took unimaginable punishment. The slightest flaw down here had to be checked — even a rash of rust blisters. Kerem Khalil had reported it when he was repainting the ship’s name earlier in the afternoon. Robin had come down to inspect them: as was her duty and her pleasure. Behind her, on the darkening horizon, lay the purple mountaintops of Madagascar, dark as thunderheads. Around her lay the massive beauty of the nightfall, making even this routine inspection almost unbearably pleasurable.
Kicking against the side, she pushed herself out like a kid on a swing, feeling the bustle of life around her — something Prometheus normally managed to keep at a distance. A cormorant passed low overhead, having just launched itself from a Sampson post. The big black birds used Prometheus as an island, to the cheerful resignation of the seamen they kept swabbing day in and day out. Above the lonely cormorant, varying from specks to individual crosses, the gulls wheeled all the way up into the crystal sky. And if she twisted to look down into the equally clear, smooth sea, she knew she would see a school of dolphins playing in the great bow wave whose roaring filled her ears to the exclusion of all other sounds except the occasional keening of a low gull and the song of the wind in the ropes by her head. A warm, gentle south wind that had blown into their faces now unvaryingly for days; ever since they had pulled in toward the coast of Africa. This time of year there was a wind that seemed to blow from the Cape to the Gulf with hardly a break, following along the line of the coast; and even in midwinter at the Cape, the wind was rarely anything but warm. In Durban it might be as cool as sixty degrees Fahrenheit now. Here it was seventy-five.
Her reverie was broken by a muffled thump that made her jump as something hit the metal by her head and fell flapping into her lap. She had caught it with automatic revulsion and was just about to hurl it away when she stopped, realizing what it was. It was a flying fish. Holding tightly on to it now, she looked down over her shoulder just in time to see the whole shoal break surface and skim along the side of the ship, glittering like a golden rainbow, pursued by dolphins or a passing shark. As abruptly as they had appeared a foot or two above the swells, they were gone, sides glinting deeper and deeper until they vanished.
She swung back, looking up toward the tumblehome above, calculating whether or not she could lob the fish up and over the side. Probably not. It twisted in her hands again and she nearly dropped it so she thumped its head against the plank she was sitting on and it lay still, stunned. Impulsively she unbuttoned the top buttons of her shirt and stuffed it down to lie cold against her belly, held up by the waistband of her shorts.
They were a good team, the men on the forecastle deserving her loyalty as unstintingly as they gave theirs. She reached up and pulled the warning line. At once Salah Malik’s head was thrust into silhouette against the darkening sky. She waved. He nodded. Vanished. A moment later she began to rise. After a few feet, she began to walk up the metal.
By the time she reached the top, the fish was no longer waving its bright tail from her cleavage — that would have been no fun — it was thrust into the waistband of her shorts at the back. As she stepped aboard it gave a wriggle and caused her to gasp as though she had been pinched, but no one seemed to notice. In an instant, the fish was out of her clothing and sailing through the air to land at their feet. There was a moment of stunned disbelief, then they all pounced except for Salah, who turned to look at her. With a howl of glee, Hajji Hassan straightened, holding the thing aloft. Robin sighed mentally. It was always the way. The one who hadn’t earned it, always got it.