The Deep [antikvár]

1943 It was ten o'clock in the morning when the captain noticed that the wind had begun to die. In his cabin, leafing through a magazine brought aboard at Norfolk by one of the crew, he sensed a change in the ship's motion, a softening of the hiss of hull moving through water, a distant slapping of luffing sails. He rolled off his bunk, stretched, and started for the door. Mounted on the bulkhead to the left of the door was a panel of brass weather gauges. The needle on the barometer showed 29.75 inches of mercury. The captain tapped the glass, and the needle dropped quickly to 29.5. On deck he walked aft, sniffing the sluggish breeze and searching the horizon. The sky was clear, but a dim yellow haze thickened the air. The captain squinted. Way in the distance, high thin strands of cirrus clouds crept across the sky. The first mate, a young bearded Scot, stood at the helm, guiding the ship through the long swells. He nodded casually as the captain approached. "Trim the main?" asked the captain. "Aye, and the mizzen. She's slacked way off." "Not for long. There's weather." "How big?" "Can't tell. Not with this damn radio silence; this war goes on much longer, we'll forget how to use the bloody radio. But big, I'd venture. The glass is takin' quite a plunge." The mate looked at his watch. "How much farther we got to go?" "Fifty, sixty mile. That's to the Narrows. We get there, we'll have a look. Maybe try for Hamilton, maybe put into St. George's." "Nae worry," said the mate, smiling and patting the wheel. "She can ride 'er out." The captain spat on the deck. "This old wreck? Only fitting thing about her's her name. She's big and clumsy as the other Goliath." He looked at the sky. "Well, at least we're 'cross the bloody Stream." By one o'clock in the afternoon, thick, gray alto-stratus clouds covered the sky. The wind had risen to thirty knots, and it whipped whitecaps across the surface of the