And she was right. There was so much to be had. It was breathtakingly exciting.
As was she…
So, at 09.20. Cape time, August 17, with Robin still on watch, seemingly unaware of his hot gaze on her back, Richard pulled himself up out of his big captain’s chair and crossed to the chart table. For a few moments he stood studying the chart lying under the clear plastic sheet: the chart of the Southwest Atlantic. It was time to turn north for home.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
During the first ten days of sailing north they covered four thousand miles. As the long, glass-green Atlantic swells passed with monotonous regularity under her giant keel, Prometheus returned also to routine — except in one area: during that time she was redecorated from stem to stern, from keel to truck, wherever storm had damaged or sickness soiled her.
Only the Pump Room remained untouched.
The routine, of course, centered around the captain and his day. The routine had come into being early in the voyage. It had varied according to circumstance but it was honed to peak efficiency now. Even though he was surrounded by properly qualified officers, the quiet Englishman seemed to be involved with everything, available at all hours.
Richard’s day began at 06.30 when the chief steward brought him his teak-dark morning tea. At 07.00 he would appear on the bridge and relieve John Higgins of the last hour of his watch. At 08.00, when Robin came on watch, the captain went down to breakfast. He ate and chatted for half an hour then retired to his dayroom to put the finishing touches to the agenda for his daily conference, which began at nine on the dot and was attended by all officers except those on watch. It was a rigid ninety minutes long and concerned every aspect of the day-to-day running of the ship. It was here that the exhaustive — exhausting — work schedules for the ship’s redecoration originated; and everything else that affected the lives of all aboard.
At 10.30 coffee was served, and, in the more relaxed atmosphere, any other problems could be brought to the captain’s notice. At 11.00, Richard returned to his day-room to centralize and generate the paperwork arising from these meetings — notices read quietly but clearly over the ship’s PA system; notices punctiliously typed and individually signed to be displayed on the various notice boards.
At noon precisely, the PA would sound and the gentle but compelling tones would say, “Your attention. Your attention, please. This is the captain speaking…” and everything would come to a halt while officers and crew alike would listen to the daily notices; any items of news that Tsirtos passed up from the World Service of the BBC; the official figures of miles sailed since yesterday, exact position now, time left before destination was reached; the exact bearing of Mecca for the Moslems among the seamen; and — most importantly (at least, so suspected C. J. Martyr watching these eccentric English officers) — the latest score in the current test match.
He lunched lightly from a tray in his dayroom but always appeared on the bridge at one o’clock, when the first officer went to lunch. He would hold the bridge watch until three, pacing up and down, his eyes everywhere, restless fingers setting everything just as he liked it. Restless hands clearing the chart table of everything except the current chart (only on the rarest occasions was there anything else there: his officers respected his neatness in a way that many captains would envy to the foundations of their souls), setting out the pencils in regimented rows like Guards on parade. At first even Ben Strong thought this endless adjusting and readjusting petty and irritating. Then it occurred to him that in an emergency, the captain would know where everything was, right down to the smallest item that he might need.
At three, Strong returned to the bridge to complete the last hour of his watch and Richard was released to prowl the ship on an unofficial captain’s inspection. Between three and four, everyone aboard who was involved in anything of importance could expect a visit from the captain and a few quiet words of encouragement. On the rare occasions when something was not up to standard, corrections would be suggested mildly: only if corrections had not been instituted by the next visit was censure actually employed. Richard didn’t want them to think he was trying to catch them out. Actually, they thought nothing of the sort, vying like students with a popular professor, each trying to outdo the others and impress him most.
At four he returned to his dayroom to complete the day’s paperwork, sometimes visiting the bridge to check the logs, but never interfering at that time; “Not actually there at all,” as he put it.
At six, 18.00 hours, he and Martyr, newly showered and shaved, in clean uniforms, proceeded like some theatrical double act down to the Officers’ Lounge for Pour Out. Like the noon announcements, this was an unvarying ritual of the day. They drank and chatted for three-quarters of an hour. Dinner was served at 6.45. At 7.30, they would return to the Officers’ Lounge. Richard had not been absolutely idle — or utterly lovestruck — when in Durban. His negotiations with the owner had resulted in a laden relief ship coming out, as was routine, from Cape Town bearing all sorts of goodies, most welcome among them a library of two hundred books and a selection of watchable videos. Having arranged for them, however, Richard did not avail himself of them. He would chat for a further half hour, then go up to the bridge. From 20.00 to 22.00, while she had dinner and watched the film if she wanted, he kept the third officer’s watch. But Robin never actually watched a film either. Instead, she would eat as quickly as possible and return to the bridge.
Nobody made any comment about this. You would have thought it was the rule rather than the exception for captains and junior navigation officers to share two quiet hours of each others’ company around sunset each evening. Between 10.00 and 10.30—the only timing that was not particularly precise in the routine — the captain would silently leave the bridge.
In his dayroom, he would do paperwork or read until 11.55; then he would rise again and return to the bridge one last time. At the end of her watch, at midnight, Robin would accompany him below. Silently, almost like children about some secret adventure, they would creep down to the Officers’ Galley and make themselves a cup of cocoa.
Then if the third officer came back to his cabin with her captain, there was never any evidence of it next morning when the routine began all over again.
In the bustle of redecoration, Tsirtos found it easy enough to wander round the ship at odd hours without arousing too much suspicion. But he was always wary. A willing part of the late Captain Levkas’s plans, with responsibility for some action, he felt increasingly isolated from the rest of the crew as the time to take that action came inexorably nearer. As he had said to Martyr on the night the old officers died, Nicoli had found him this berth, got him involved in this lucrative business. But Nicoli had also been his only contact with what had been planned and now that he and the others had been replaced, nobody at all seemed to know what was going on. Tsirtos became nervous, then genuinely scared. He began to wander around the ship trying to discover — without asking too directly — who else was involved. Nobody at all rose to his bait. In the grip of an increasing sense of unreality, he began a systematic search of the ship, for he knew that, in secret places, there were things like life rafts hidden, left by those dead men who had wanted to make assurance double sure. It seemed to Tsirtos that if he were going to act alone and abandon ship alone, a life raft would serve him better than one of the lifeboats in any case.