it urgently with force enough to squeeze the last breath from her body. . . .
Two mornings later Shaw drove in a taxi through the main gates of Portsmouth Dockyard off the train from Waterloo. The taxi halted briefly while the Admiralty constable checked Shaw’s right of entry, then drove on past the boatyard and turned left for the South Railway jetty, where the masts and upperworks of the Cambridge were visible, a thin white trail of steam twisting upward. And as the taxi disappeared a loafer who had been leaning against the high brick wall of the dockyard as Shaw arrived lit a cigarette and strolled casually away, across the road and along the Hard past Gieves, the naval tailors, and Saccone and Speed, where the Fleet bought its wardroom bar stocks, and the Keppel’s Head Hotel . . . the Navy’s landmarks of departure and return. The loafer wandered aimlessly along to the bridge over the mud-flats leading to the Harbour station, and then he strolled casually back toward a coffee-stall near the bus-stop. He had a cup of coffee, lit another cigarette. He waited. Then, a little later, as the cruiser slipped from the berth and made out to sea past the old grey walls of Fort Blockhouse, he walked off towards a telephone-box.
CHAPTER FOUR
A cold wind knifed through Shaw’s body as he stood on deck off Ushant, comfortably dressed in an old leather-patched brown tweed jacket, eyes stinging with the salt, enjoying it, and breathing deeply as the cruiser headed south into the Bay of Biscay and the gathering storm. He appreciated the heave of a deck beneath his feet, the gale ruffling the greying brown hair into a curling mop sticky from the salt in the atmosphere, while white clouds streaked out across a clear blue sky above the tumbling, swooping water.
All last night Shaw had lain queasily, stretched out in his bunk as the Cambridge met the beginnings of the bad weather. Having no duties to perform, nothing to make him get on his feet, was a bad thing really. It had been nine hours of sheer misery, a misery of listening to the groans and creaks of the ship as she cut through the seas and took green water over her fo’c’sle-head, of listening to the wind’s shriek and the mounting rollers battering at the scuttle-glass beyond the deadlight’s steel, of watching his dressing-gown float out into the compartment from the hook behind the door, fall and then rise again until it stood almost at right angles, hovering there until the next slow drop back to remain unnaturally pressed against the woodwork. Bodily the bunk bore him upward, heaving hard into the under-side of his body and then dropping him with a swooping shudder which made the stomach pain worse. Nine hours, and then Shaw got up. He got up unsteadily, his face a pale green, hair rumpled and sweaty, and a foul taste in his mouth, his body cold with hunger and the fatigue which results from the constantly changing muscular efforts necessary to keep one’s body safely in a leaping bunk.
It was that sensation of hunger that made Shaw realize he was better. He washed, dressed, and went out on deck. He’d be in time for breakfast in the wardroom after a good blow. He stood there for a while, out on the quarterdeck, refreshing himself and blowing out the fug of the cabin and the shore, liking the keen wind and the tearing, white-capped waves which hit the ship and slopped aft from the fo’c’sle, or were whipped into spray by the mounting gale. Now that he’d got his sea-legs he could start to enjoy this heaven-sent interlude. The Cambridge was no destroyer, and her motion, though she rolled a lot, was quite different from what he recalled of those war-time North Atlantic days—slower and much more stately.
During breakfast Shaw’s mind went back to his recent interview with Captain Carberry—The Voice. Carberry, as usual, had done him proud. Carberry had put him right in the picture regarding recent developments in Spain—politically and diplomatically and
Two mornings later Shaw drove in a taxi through the main gates of Portsmouth Dockyard off the train from Waterloo. The taxi halted briefly while the Admiralty constable checked Shaw’s right of entry, then drove on past the boatyard and turned left for the South Railway jetty, where the masts and upperworks of the Cambridge were visible, a thin white trail of steam twisting upward. And as the taxi disappeared a loafer who had been leaning against the high brick wall of the dockyard as Shaw arrived lit a cigarette and strolled casually away, across the road and along the Hard past Gieves, the naval tailors, and Saccone and Speed, where the Fleet bought its wardroom bar stocks, and the Keppel’s Head Hotel . . . the Navy’s landmarks of departure and return. The loafer wandered aimlessly along to the bridge over the mud-flats leading to the Harbour station, and then he strolled casually back toward a coffee-stall near the bus-stop. He had a cup of coffee, lit another cigarette. He waited. Then, a little later, as the cruiser slipped from the berth and made out to sea past the old grey walls of Fort Blockhouse, he walked off towards a telephone-box.
CHAPTER FOUR
A cold wind knifed through Shaw’s body as he stood on deck off Ushant, comfortably dressed in an old leather-patched brown tweed jacket, eyes stinging with the salt, enjoying it, and breathing deeply as the cruiser headed south into the Bay of Biscay and the gathering storm. He appreciated the heave of a deck beneath his feet, the gale ruffling the greying brown hair into a curling mop sticky from the salt in the atmosphere, while white clouds streaked out across a clear blue sky above the tumbling, swooping water.
All last night Shaw had lain queasily, stretched out in his bunk as the Cambridge met the beginnings of the bad weather. Having no duties to perform, nothing to make him get on his feet, was a bad thing really. It had been nine hours of sheer misery, a misery of listening to the groans and creaks of the ship as she cut through the seas and took green water over her fo’c’sle-head, of listening to the wind’s shriek and the mounting rollers battering at the scuttle-glass beyond the deadlight’s steel, of watching his dressing-gown float out into the compartment from the hook behind the door, fall and then rise again until it stood almost at right angles, hovering there until the next slow drop back to remain unnaturally pressed against the woodwork. Bodily the bunk bore him upward, heaving hard into the under-side of his body and then dropping him with a swooping shudder which made the stomach pain worse. Nine hours, and then Shaw got up. He got up unsteadily, his face a pale green, hair rumpled and sweaty, and a foul taste in his mouth, his body cold with hunger and the fatigue which results from the constantly changing muscular efforts necessary to keep one’s body safely in a leaping bunk.
It was that sensation of hunger that made Shaw realize he was better. He washed, dressed, and went out on deck. He’d be in time for breakfast in the wardroom after a good blow. He stood there for a while, out on the quarterdeck, refreshing himself and blowing out the fug of the cabin and the shore, liking the keen wind and the tearing, white-capped waves which hit the ship and slopped aft from the fo’c’sle, or were whipped into spray by the mounting gale. Now that he’d got his sea-legs he could start to enjoy this heaven-sent interlude. The Cambridge was no destroyer, and her motion, though she rolled a lot, was quite different from what he recalled of those war-time North Atlantic days—slower and much more stately.
During breakfast Shaw’s mind went back to his recent interview with Captain Carberry—The Voice. Carberry, as usual, had done him proud. Carberry had put him right in the picture regarding recent developments in Spain—politically and diplomatically and
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