shipboard noises and routine actions only occasionally breaking through the haze of his reeling and tortured brain. He could still only vaguely remember clambering up to the bridge, as the ship made her way into the harbour approaches, and as the ragged sequence of events flashed before him, he saw again the anxious face of his First Lieutenant squinting up at him from the fo’c’sle.
Too fast, too fast, he had mumbled, as the ship bore down rapidly on the rough stone jetty, and in a last-minute effort he had tried to convey the correct orders down the misty voice-pipe. With a scream of tearing metal, the knife-like bows had torn and bumped along the wall, while the Maltese dockers had fled in confusion and panic. Somehow he had stopped the ship, and as officers bellowed orders, and a shaky crew had passed the lines ashore, he reeled faintly into his sea-cabin behind the bridge, the sour flood of vomit bringing no relief, only the final taste of failure and despair.
The next picture showed the quiet, dignified court-room. Again it was the face of his young First Lieutenant which came first to his mind. Pale and determined, he had desperately tried to defend his Captain. The grim faces of the Captains who comprised the court showed no compassion, as the Prosecuting Officer had completed his questioning.
“And did you not think that the ship was moving too fast for a safe approach, Lieutenant?”
“No, sir. The Captain always has been a marvel at ship-handling!”
One of the court permitted himself a wintry smile, and leaned forward.
“In the past? But not on this occasion?”
The witness squirmed and looked away. “It was an accident, sir!” he stammered hotly.
“We must not mistake the excellent quality of loyalty for blindness to duty, Lieutenant!” The Prosecutor’s voice had been like a saw.
Rolfe shook his head wonderingly. It was really amazing that his own drunken state at the time of the collision had been kept out of the evidence by the strange loyalty of his officers.
Perhaps they had suspected it? He frowned as he tried to think of one clue, or threat, in the summing-up of the court.
No, he decided, they had certainly been curious, but had confined themselves to the facts before them, and satisfied the interests of discipline with their findings.
I’ll be all right when I get to sea, he told himself, but, it seemed, without conviction. The nagging pain was still there, and he felt defenceless before its persistent onslaught.
He jumped, a loud knock on the cabin door jerking him from his painful self-examination.
Fallow poked his red face round the curtain, his loose chin sagging over the high collar of his tunic.
“S’cuse me buttin’ in, sir.”
He always seemed to start or end his sentences with an apology, Rolfe thought.
“But I’ve brought your steward, in case you’d like to give ’im some special instructions about ’ow you’d like your gear laid out?”
Rolfe nodded wearily, not really caring one way or the other, but realizing that the man was trying to make things start off well.
Fallow heaved his bulk through the door, tucking his cap beneath his arm. Rolfe was surprised to see that he had only one tongue of dark hair, slicked carefully across his otherwise bald head, as if it had fallen there by mistake, and was held down by a daily dose of water and hair oil.
Rolfe’s eyes widened in surprise at the diminutive figure which stepped from behind the First Lieutenant’s bulk. Thewhite jacket and trousers, which hung loosely on his small, thin body, helped to accentuate the boy’s appearance of frailty and lightness, and the round, serious face, with its almond-shaped, black eyes and wide mouth, completed a picture which was somehow appealing and rather pathetic.
“’E’s not much to look at, sir, but ’e’s a very good boy. Speaks English real well, too.” Fallow frowned down at the small figure beside him, as if defying him to claim otherwise.
To Rolfe,