And the Deep Blue Sea by Charles Williams Read Free Book Online Page B

moral, and socioeconomic background of a man whose only visible status symbols were a watch and somebody else’s underwear.
    “What do you do for a living?” Barset asked, coming to the point at last.
    “Nothing at the moment,” Goddard said. “I used to work in pictures. Writer. Producer.”
    Barset came to attention. This was a live one, if he was telling the truth. “What pictures have you done?”
    “ Tin Can ,” Goddard said. “ The Amethyst Affair. And several others. The last one was The Salty Six .” And a bomb. A comedic idea that didn’t work.
    “Hey, I saw Tin Can ,” Barset said, excited. “Destroyers, in World War II. It was terrific. Well, look, you don’t want to stay down here in this dog-hole.”
    Goddard shrugged. “Why not?” It would be interesting to live in the fo’c’s’le with working seamen again.
    The Filipino boy, whose name was Antonio Gutierrez, was a good barber, an AB gave him a sport shirt, and one of the black gang the loan of an electric razor. His face was still raw from sun and salt, but he managed to mow off the crop without too much discomfort, and he looked considerably more presentable as he mounted to the boat deck shortly after eleven. He didn’t see anybody on the passengers’ deck as he passed it, but as soon as he finished with the skipper he’d look up Mrs. Brooke and express his thanks.
    It was a beautiful morning, sunny and hot, with just enough breeze out of the southeast to put a slight chop on the long groundswell as the Leander plowed ahead across an infinity of blue. Looked a lot better from up here, too, he thought, with the throbbing sound of power from the engine room ventilators and a solid deck under his feet; no matter how much you liked the sea, there was such a thing as getting too close to it.
    The third mate was walking the starboard wing of the bridge. The captain was up, he said, and his office was through the wheelhouse, the door on this side. Goddard nodded to the helmsman, and knocked on the facing of the door, which was open. “Yes?” a voice asked, and Captain Steen appeared. He was in tropical whites, the shirt having short sleeves and shoulder boards bearing four gold stripes. “Come in, Mr. Goddard.” He gestured toward a big armchair. “Sit down.” He was a gaunt, balding man with a solemn countenance, baby-blue eyes, and a long neck and prominent Adam’s apple, but to Goddard the impression was not so much the stern asceticism he had expected as it was a sort of self-righteous stuffiness and lack of warmth.
    There was another armchair, a threadbare rug, and a desk with a swivel chair in front of it. On the bulkhead above the desk were two framed photographs, one of a small, neat house set in the awesome beauty of a Norwegian fjord, and the other of a woman and two young girls. At the rear of the office another door opened into the stateroom. Captain Steen sat in the swivel chair and took notes as Goddard told him the story. It was obvious he disapproved of the whole thing.
    “You realize you were very foolish,” he said. “It’s a wonder to me your coast guard allows it.”
    Goddard pointed out that single-handed passages in small boats were commonplace by sailors of all maritime nations and sanctioned by yacht clubs, and that there had been a number of single-handed races across the Atlantic. There was a difference between a competent seaman going to sea in a sound boat and some nut going over Niagara Falls in a barrel. He stopped when he realized he was wasting his breath.
    “But you did lose your boat,” Steen said. “And it’s just the Lord’s infinite mercy you’re alive. Your passport was lost too, I suppose?”
    “Yes,” Goddard replied. “Somehow it didn’t seem important at the time.”
    “Very unfortunate.” Steen frowned and tapped on the pad with his pencil. “There will be complications, you realize, and a great deal of red tape.”
    Goddard sighed. “Captain, every maritime nation on earth