Ride the Star Winds Read Online Free PDF Page A

Dorothea Taine over his coffee cup. He was taking this midmorning refreshment in the lounge; he did not see why he should be confined to his quarters, luxurious though they were, even though he was something of a social leper.
    “Use me?” he asked.
    The writer smiled. Her teeth were too large for her small mouth. The heavy-rimmed spectacles that she affected made her big, black eyes look even bigger in her sallow face.
    “I want to use you . . . John.”
    “How, Ms. Taine?” asked Grimes dubiously.
    “Dorothea, please. Or you may call me Dot. I’m starting a new novel. One of those If stories. If Dampier, the buccaneer and privateer, had established a settlement on the West Coast of Australia, long before the one was established at Botany Bay. After all, he was there. . . .”
    “And he didn’t think much of it.”
    “But something could, just could, have made him change his mind. He could have fallen madly in love with a beautiful Aboriginal girl. Perhaps she could have saved his life, just as the Princess Pocahontas saved the life of Captain John Smith in Virginia . . .”
    Grimes entertained a fleeting vision of a naked black girl getting in the way of a boomerang flung at the piratical Captain Dampier by her irate father.
    “Mphm,” he grunted around the stem of his pipe.
    “You see, John, I want to make Dampier a real character. I can’t go back in time to meet him. But there’s one real life character, aboard this very ship, who could serve as a model. You. Dampier wasn’t only a pirate and privateer, he was also an officer, a captain, in the Royal Navy. You’ve been a privateer and a pirate—and also an officer, commanding ships, in the Survey Service . . . If I could only get inside you . . .”
    I don’t want to get inside you, thought Grimes unkindly. You’re too skinny, for a start. And you gush.
    “Perhaps some evening, or evenings, after dinner . . . We could get away by ourselves somewhere and you could tell me all about yourself . . .”
    “It would be very boring for you,” said Grimes.
    “It would not, John. It couldn’t possibly be.”
    “I’m sorry,” he told her, “but all my evenings are fully taken up. I’ve all the spools on Liberia to study. After all, I’m being paid to be governor of the damn place so I’d better know something about it before I get there. . . .”
    * * *
    “Do you mind if I join you, Your Excellency? Joe’s gotten himself involved in a non-stop poker game and I’m just a bit lonesome.”
    “Please do, Mrs. Levy. What are you drinking? A Black Angel?” Then, to the bar stewardess, “Another pink gin, please, and a B.A.”
    “I like this little bar. . . . Your very good health, Excellency.”
    “And yours, Mrs. Levy.”
    “That sounds dreadfully formal.”
    “Vee, then.”
    “Only Joe calls me that. I prefer Vera.”
    “Your very good health, Vera.”
    “I only found this little bar a couple of days ago, John. (Do you mind?) It’s so . . . private. Not like the main bars, always crowded and always that so-called music so that you can’t hear yourself think. I guess that there’re still parts of this big ship that I haven’t seen. We—the Dog Star Line, that is—don’t have anything in this class.”
    “But you are getting into the passenger trades.”
    “Glorified cattle boats,” she sneered. “Nothing like this. But I don’t suppose that Joe will ever be important enough to qualify for the VIP suite. I would so like to see how the VIPs live. . . .”
    “I must throw an official cocktail party before we get to Liberia,” said Grimes. “You’re invited, of course. . . .”
    After all, he thought, I might want a job in the Dog Star Line some day. Mr. Levy, for all his apparent inattention to his wife, looked as though he might prove to be a very jealous husband. . . .
    “Never mind,” she said with sudden coldness. “I’ll just take my place in the queue. Goodnight, Your Excellency.”
    She finished her drink and