Atlanta Daily World

B.

BONITA DAMAO kept to her cabin on our first week out of Cape Town. I was thankful for her absence, since it gave her no chance to witness Peter Spenser's slave-driving when I returned to stand my watches.

Not that the captain's hard discipline passed the bounds of decorum (save for a single instance, when he sent me aloft in a squall with three daring members of my watch, to save a topsail). But there was no missing Spenser's intention to break my spirit—to prove, for all his crew to see, that I had fallen from grace and must swallow my humiliation to the last drop.

Ten days' sail from Cape Town, the ship rolled lazily in a dead calm.

At the captain's command I had put out three of our longboats to kedge us on our way: the crews were still cursing at their oars, their backs drenched in sweat and their spirits drooping. With the stealthy pounce of darkness, I called the hands aboard and one got a jury anchor dropped off the larboard bow.

Spenser was topside now, glaring at me as he always did while I helped the last man over the side. Prepared as I was for his next order, I felt the goose flesh rising along my arms as he barked it.

"I'll take over, Mr. Douglas. You're wanted below in Mr. James cabin."

I hesitated an instant at the companionway, wondering if I should risk thanking him for the message—if only to show I knew (quite as well as he) that we were about to part company. Discretion prevailed, as I saw there were other ears about. The chill had left my blood when I knocked on Sir Luke Metcalf's door, to my surprise, could even feel resigned to the thought that I would be dropping into one of those longboats by morning (with only Tom Hoyt as an ally) to fetch Cape Sainte Marie, the southernmost tip of Madagascar, as best I could.

Sir Luke lay in his bunk, with a vinegar-soaked cloth across his eyes as a defense against the cloying heat. One hand gripped a cutlass; he was slashing the air at intervals, as though remembering an invisible enemy. Tom Hoyt sat well out of harm's way, his eyes sleepy, his mouth drawn down in a familiar quirk. Spenser was a bluenose, and our grog had been under lock and key since he took command.

After I closed and barred the door, Metcalf bounced to his feet.

"You take off tonight, lad," he said. "Tom agrees you won't get a better chance."

"It's a ten-mile scull to land," I said. "Can't Spenser fetch us closer?"

"Spenser's itching to put the island behind us," said Sir Luke. "Believe me, he can't drop you soon enough."

Copyright © 1958, 1959 by Doubleday & Company, Inc., publisher of the novel.