Sea Fury (1971) by James Pattinson Read Free Book Online Page A

would have been too humiliating, and even if she had suggested such an arrangement she might have met with a rebuff. She had never got on well with her stepfather, and though her mother might possibly have been agreeable, he would undoubtedly have vetoed the suggestion.
    Thus, against all the probabilities, she had stayed with Lycett through good times and bad, despising him more and more as he became physically less attractive, and no longer troubling to disguise her contempt.
    Lycett, for his part, knew that he needed her. In spite of the contempt, which stung him more than he cared to admit, he had to have her there beside him. In all his uncertainties there had been this one person to whom he could turn, not for advice, nor for help, but simply for a kind of reassurance. Her mere presence was enough to give him that. And physically, of course, he had never ceased to be attracted to her.
    Perhaps in his own peculiar way he even loved her.
     
    He lay on the bunk, letting the smoke drift from his mouth and thinking back over the past. He had come a long way from the wholesale ironmonger’s office, but whether the journey had been worthwhile was another matter. He had had his successes, but add up the whole account and what did you get? Failure.
    There was no blinking the fact: he was a failure. EvenHong Kong, where he had gone with such high hopes, had turned out to be too hard a nut to crack. Those Chinese businessmen were no fools; they knew how to look out for themselves; too true, they did. Eighteen months he had stayed in the colony, scraping up a bit here and there, but never anything really big. It had been time to call it a day and pull out. Hong Kong was too crowded; everyone trying to make a fast million and working all hours to do it. That was the trouble; they were all too much like beavers; they had no time to stop and listen to a man like him. What he needed was a bigger territory, somewhere less cramped, somewhere he could spread himself, make full use of his talents. Australia.
    He lit another cigarette and thought about Australia.
    Soon he had brought himself to a more hopeful frame of mind. It was ridiculous to think of himself as a failure when there was so much opening out in front of him, so many opportunities. Australia was a big country with infinite opportunities for a man like him. Why, already he had made a start even before getting there. That young fellow, Tom Grade, could be useful; he had an uncle with big mining interests—nickel, so he said. There was a load of money in nickel. He would certainly continue to cultivate Grade, and eventually some of that money might dribble into his own ready pockets.
    Lycett wheezed out more smoke and felt decidedly more cheerful. The future was not all black, not by a long chalk.
    He was sweating. The cabin was too damned hot. Maybe he had better do something about that fan. One of the engineers would probably be the man to fix it.
    He rolled off the bunk and reached for a shirt.
    * * *
    Nick Holt was leaning on the rail at the after end of the so-called promenade deck. About all the promenading you could do on board the Chetwynd was to walk round and round the accommodation; up the starboard side, cross over, down the port side, cross over again; repeat until tired. Holt had done his stint for the day and was resting. He was indulging in the pleasant pastime of watching other people work.
    On the afterdeck half a dozen dark-skinned seamen were busy with chipping hammers and scrapers, cleaning the rust off the winches. Holt wondered why they troubled; there was so much rust on the Chetwynd that it would have been a mammoth operation to chip and scrape it all—and then the ship might have fallen apart.
    The dungarees of the seamen hung on their small, lean bodies like rags, and the sound of their chipping hammers reached Holt’s ears like the pecking of a flock of metal-beaked birds. He could see scales of rust as big as saucers falling to the deck, leaving