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welded to the deck. It's nonsense, of course, spawned by a few
silly-clever people on the staff. The crews will never go along
with it. Degerand was sent to invite us in!"
Salter said nothing for a while and then: "I certainly hope
we'll have nothing to do with it."
"I'm sending him back at dawn with my compliments, and
a negative, and my sincere advice to his Commodore'that he
drop the whole thing before his own crew hears of it and has
him bowspritted." The Commodore gave him a wintry smile.
"Such a reply is easy to make, of course, just after concluding
an excellent harvest. It might be more difficult to signal a
negative if we had a couple of ships unnetted and only enough
catch in salt to feed sixty per cent of the hands. Do you think
you could give the hard answer under those circumstances?"
"I think so, sir."
The Commodore walked away, his face enigmatic. Salter
thought he knew what was going en. He had been given one
small foretaste of top command. Perhaps he was being
groomed for Commodore not to succeed the old man, surely,
but his successor.
McBee approached, full of big fish and drink. "Foolish
thing I said," he stammered. "Let's have drink, forget about
it, eh?"
He was glad to.
"Damn fine seaman'" McBee yelled after a couple more
drinks. "Best little captain in the Convoy! Not a scared old
crock like poor old McBee, 'fraid of every puff of wind!"
And then he had to cheer up MeBee until the party began
to thin out. McBee fell asleep at last and Salter saw him to
his gig before boarding his own for the long row to the bobbing
masthead lights of his ship.
Starboard Squadron 30-was at rest in the night. Only the
slowly moving oil lamps of the women on their ceaseless rust
patrol were alive. The brit catch, dried, came to some seven
thousand tons. It was a comfortable margin over the 5670
tons needed for six months full rations before the autumnal
swarming and harvest. The trim tanks along the keel had
been pumped almost dry by the ship's current prison popu-
lation as the cooked and dried and salted cubes were stored
in the glass-lined warehouse tier; the gigantic vessel rode
easily on a swelling sea before a Force One westerly breeze.
Salter was exhausted. He thought briefly of having his
cox'n whistle for a bosun's chair so that he might be hauled
at his ease up the fifty-yard cliff that was the "hull before
them, and dismissed the idea with regret. Rank hath its priv-
ileges and also its obligations. He stood up in the gig, jumped
for the ladder, and began the long climb. As he passed the
portholes of the cabin tiers he virtuously kept eyes front, on
the bronze plates of the hull inches from Ms nose. Many
couples in the privacy of their double cabins would be cele-
brating the end of the back-breaking, night-and-day toil. One
valued privacy aboard the ship; one's own 648 cubic feet of
cabin, one's own porthole, acquired an almost religious mean-
ing, particularly after the weeks of swarming cooperative
labor.
Taking care not to pant, he finished the climb with a floor-
ish, springing onto the flush deck. There was no audience.
Feeling a little ridiculous and forsaken, he walked aft in the
dark with only the wind and the creak of the rigging in his
ears. The five great basket masts strained silently behind
their breeze-filled sails; he paused a moment beside Wednes-
day mast, huge as a redwood, and put his hands on it to feel
the power that vibrated in its steel latticework.
Six intent women went past, their hand lamps sweeping
the deck; he jumped, though they never noticed him. They
were in something like a trance state while on their tour of
duty. Normal courtesies were suspended for them; with their
work began the job of survival. One thousand women, five
percent of the ship's company, inspected night and day for
corrosion. Seawater is a vicious solvent and the ship had to
live in it; fanaticism was the answer.
His stateroom above the rudder waited; the hatchway to
it glowed a hundred feet down the deck with the light of a
wasteful lantern. After harvest, when the tanks brimmed
with oil, one type acted as though the tanks would brim
forever. The captain wearily walked around and over a dozen
stay ropes to the hatchway and blew out the lamp. Before
descending he took a mechanical look around the deck; all
was well
Except for a patch of paleness at the fantail.
"Will this day never end?" he asked the darkened lantern
and went to the fantail. The patch was a little girl in a night-
dress wandering aimlessly over the deck, her thumb in her
mouth. She seemed to be about two years old and was more
than half asleep. She could have gone over the railing in a
moment; a small wail, a small splash
He picked her up like a feather. "Who's your daddy, prin-
cess?" he asked.
"Dunno," she grinned. The devil she didn't! It was too dark
to read her ID necklace and he was too tired to light the
lantern. He trudged down the deck to the crew of inspectors.
He said to their chief: "One of you get this child back to her
parents' cabin," and held her out.
The chief was indignant. "Sir, we are on watch!"
"File a grievance with the Commodore if you wish. Take
the child."
One of the rounder women did, and made cooing noises
while her chief glared. "Bye-bye, princess," the captain said.
"You ought to be keel-hauled for this, but I'll give you another
chance."
"Bye-bye," the little girl said, waving, and the captain
went yawning down the hatchway to bed.
His stateroom was luxurious by the austere standards of
the ship. It was equal to six of the standard nine-by-nine
cabins in volume, or to three of the double cabins for couples.
These however had something he did not. Officers above the
rank of lieutenant were celibate. Experience had shown that
this was the only answer to nepotism, and nepotism was a
luxury which no convoy could afford. It meant, sooner or later,
inefficient command. Inefficient command meant, sooner or
later, death.
Because he thought he would not sleep, he did not.
Marriage. Parenthood. What a strange business it must
bet To share a bed with a wife, a cabin with two children
decently behind their screen for sixteen years... what did one
talk about in bed? His last mistress had hardly talked at all,
except with her eyes. When these showed signs that was
falling in love with him, Heaven knew why, he broke with
her as quietly as possible and since then irritably rejected
the thought of acquiring a successor. That had been two years
ago when he was thirty-eight and already beginning to feel
like a cabin-crawler fit only to be dropped over the fantail