Hungry as the Sea by Wilbur Smith Read Free Book Online

stitch.
    “Where is he, where is the bastard?” slurred the Chief.
    “It’s all over, Chiefie,” Angel told him gently. “And you are lucky he bashed you on the head — otherwise he might have hurt you.”
    The Chief winced as Angel pulled the thread up tight and knotted another stitch.
    “He tried to mess with my engines. I taught the bastard a lesson.”
    “You’ve terrified him, Angel agreed sweetly. Now you take a swig of this and lie still. I want you in this bunk for twelve hours — and I might come and tuck you in.
    “I’m going back to my engines,” announced the chief, and drained the medicine glass of brown spirit, then whistled at the bite of the fumes. Angel left him and crossed to the telephone. He spoke quickly into it, and as the Chief lumbered off the bunk, Nick Berg stepped into the cabin, and nodded to the cook.
    “Thank you, Angel.” Angel ducked out of the cabin and left them facing each other. The Chief opened his mouth to snarl at Nick.
    “Jules Levoisin in La Mouette has probably made five hundred miles on us while you have been playing prima donna,” said Nick quietly, and Vin baker’s mouth stayed open, although no sound came out of it. “I built this ship to run fast and hard in just this kind of contest, and now you are trying to do all of us out of prize money!”
    Nick turned on his heel and went back up the companionway to his navigation deck. He settled into his canvas chair and fingered the big purple swelling on his forehead tenderly. His head felt as though a rope had been knotted around it and twisted up tight. He wanted to go to his cabin and take something for the pain, but he did not want to miss the call when it came. He lit another cheroot, and it tasted like burned tarred rope. He dropped it into the sandbox and the telephone at his shoulder rang once.
    “Bridge, this is the Engine Room.”
    “Go ahead, Chief!”
    “We are going to eighty percent now.”
    Nick did not reply, but he felt the change in the engine vibration and the more powerful rush of the hull beneath him.
    “Nobody told me La Mouette was running against us. No way that frog-eating bastard’s going to get a line on her first,” announced Vin baker grimly, and there was a silence between them. Something more had to be said. “I bet you a pound to a pinch of kangaroo dung,” challenged the Chief, “that you don’t know what a galah is, and that you’ve never tasted a Bundaberg rum in your life.”  Nick found himself smiling, even through the blinding pain in his head.
    “Be-yew-dy!” Nick said, making three syllables of it and keeping the laughter out of his voice, as he hung up the receiver.
     
     
     
     
     
    Dave Allen’s voice was apologetic. “Sorry to wake you, sir, but the Golden Adventurer is reporting.”
    “I’m coming,” mumbled Nick, and swung his legs off the bunk. He had been in that black death-sleep of exhaustion, but it took him only seconds to pull back the dark curtains from his mind. It was his old training as a watch-keeping officer. He rubbed away the last traces of sleep, feeling the rasping black stubble of his beard under his fingers as he crossed quickly to his bathroom. He spent forty seconds in bathing his face and combing his tousled hair, and regretfully decided there was no time to shave. Another rule of his was to look good in a world which so often judged a man by his appearance.
    When he went out on to the navigation bridge, he knew at once that the wind had increased its velocity. He guessed It was rising force six now, and Warlock‘s motion was more violent and abandoned. Beyond the warm, dimly lit capsule of the bridge, all those elements of cold water and vicious racing winds turned the black night to a howling tumult.
    The Trog was crouched over his machines, grey and wizened and sleepless. He hardly turned his head to hand Nick the message flimsy.
    Master of Golden Adventurer to Christy Marine, the Decca decoded swiftly, and Nick