Ocean Prize (1972) by James Pattinson Page B

on Loder’s chest and pushed him away. The mate was a little too close to be pleasant; his breath was offensive and what he was saying had a depressing effect on the chief engineer. Madden had no desire to go looking for a new appointment; in his heart of hearts he was not at all certain that he could get one, not at his age.He had hoped to serve out his time with Barling and Calthorp, whatever the shortcomings of that company might be regarding engine overhauls. But if Loder’s deductions were correct it looked as though Barling himself might soon be on the beach, and that was a dismal outlook indeed.
    “You could be wrong,” he said, but without conviction.
    “I could be, but I don’t think I am. Everything points that way, everything. If you’ve been counting on new boilers, Chief, or anything in that line, my advice to you is to forget it.”
    “Barling promised—” Madden began.
    “Yes?” Loder cocked his head on one side. “What did he promise?”
    “He said this was the last trip he’d be taking in this ship with the engines like they are. He—” Madden stopped again, aghast at the sudden realisation of the double meaning those words could have had.
    Loder was quick to seize on this revelation. “He said that, did he?”
    “Something of the kind.”
    “Well now, that’s interesting; that’s very interesting indeed. It bears out just what I’ve been saying.”
    “I don’t see—”
    Loder gave his twisted smile. “Oh, but I think you do, Chief. I think you see very well. Don’t you?”
    Madden turned away. He did see, and he did not wish to. It was too bleak a prospect.
    “Last voyage for the Hopeful Enterprise, ” Loder said softly. “Make the most of it.”
     
    At about the same time as the Hopeful Enterprise was leaving Montreal a much newer ship was setting out from Philadelphia with a cargo of electrical and other machinerydestined for Reykjavik in Iceland. The s.s. India Star was a vessel of 8,700 tons owned by a Greek millionaire, registered in Monrovia, flying the Liberian flag, manned by an Asiatic crew and commanded by a Dutch captain named van Donck.
    The fact that the India Star, by reason of her higher cruising speed and the course on which she was steaming, would, if all went according to plan for both ships, pass within a hundred miles or less of the Hopeful Enterprise somewhere between the thirtieth and fortieth parallels of longitude, was something of which neither Captain Barling nor Captain van Donck was aware. Not that the knowledge, even had they possessed it, would have been likely to excite either of them to any noticeable extent, since it was in the natural order of things that ships should pass other ships even in mid-ocean at no great distance. Yet to Barling at least the fact was to be of the utmost interest, and the India Star, of which he had scarcely even heard, was destined to float into his life and occupy a place of supreme importance in his plans.
    But all that was yet several days ahead, and as he stood on the bridge of his ship gazing at the grey wastes of the North Atlantic his thoughts were only of the uncertain future, of his daughter Ann and what was to happen to her when Barling and Calthorp went into liquidation and he was thrown up on the beach with nothing but a few hundred pounds to call his own. His thoughts were sombre indeed, the thoughts of a man who sees that all his labours, all his schemes, all his expectations have ended in one thing—failure. And he was at the age when the realisation of failure is perhaps hardest to bear. A younger man could have started again with fresh hope; an older man might have accepted the situation with resignation; he could do neither.
    As the Hopeful Enterprise headed eastward the weather was good, the winds moderate and the sea unusually calm for the time of year. The much maligned engines continued to give no trouble, despite Madden’s forebodings, and the ship steamed on at a steady speed of ten knots,