Except for a patch of paleness at the fantail.
“Will this day never end?” he asked the darkened lantern and went to the fantail. The patch was a little girl in a night dress wandering aimlessly over the deck, her thumb hi her mouth. She seemed to be about two years old, and was more than half asleep. She could have gone over the railing in a moment; a small wail, a small splash-He picked her up like a feather. “Who’s your daddy, princess?” he asked.
“Dunno,” she grinned. The devil she didn’t! It was too dark to read her ID necklace and he was too tired to light the lantern. He trudged down the deck to the crew of inspectors. He said to their chief: “One of you get this child back to her parents’ cabin,” and held her out.
The chief was indignant. “Sir, we are on watch!”
“File a-grievance with the Commodore if you wish. Take the child.”
One of the rounder women did, and made cooing noises while her chief glared. “Bye-bye, princess,” the captain said. “You ought to be keel-hauled for this, but I’ll give you»another chance.”
“Bye-bye,” the little girl said, waving, and the captain went yawning down the hatchway to bed.
His stateroom was luxurious by the austere standards of the ship. It was equal to six of the standard nine-by-nine cabins in volume, or to three of the double cabins for couples. These, however, had something he did not. Officers above the rank of lieutenant were celibate. Experience had shown that this was the only answer to nepotism, and nepotism was a luxury which no convoy could afford. It meant, sooner or later, inefficient command. Inefficient command meant, sooner or later, death.
Because he thought he would not sleep, he did not.
Marriage. Parenthood. What a strange business it must be! To share a bed with a wife, a cabin with two children decently behind their screen for sixteen years . . . what did one talk about in bed? His last mistress had hardly talked at all, except with her eyes. When these showed signs that she was falling in love with him, Heaven knew why, he broke with her as quietly as possible and since then irritably rejected the thought of acquiring a successor. That had been two years ago, when he was thirty-eight, and already beginning to feel like a cabin-crawler fit only to be dropped over the fantail into the wake. An old lecher, a roue, a user of women. Of course she had
talked a little; what did they have in common to talk about? With a wife ripening beside him, with children to share, it would have been different. That pale, tall quiet girl deserved better than he could give; he hoped she was decently married now in a double cabin, perhaps already heavy with the first of her two children.
A whistle squeaked above his head; somebody was blowing into one of the dozen speaking tubes clustered against the bulkhead. Then a push-wire popped open the steel lid of Tube Seven, Signals. He resignedly picked up the flexible reply tube and said into it: “This is the captain. Go ahead.”
“Grenville signals Force Three squall approaching from astern, sir.”
“Force Three squall from astern. Turn out the fore-starboard watch. Have them reef sail to Condition Charlie.”
“Fore-starboard watch, reef sail to Condition Charlie, aye-aye.”
“Execute.”
“Aye-aye, sir.” The lid of Tube Seven, Signals, popped shut. At once he heard the distant, penetrating shrill of the pipe, the faint vibration as one sixth of the deck crew began to stir in their cabins, awaken, hit the deck bleary-eyed, begin to trample through the corridors and up the hatchways to the deck. He got up himself and pulled on clothes, yawning. Reefing from Condition Fox to Condition Charlie was no serious matter, not even in the dark, and Walters on watch was a good officer. But he’d better have a look.
Being flush-decked, the ship offered him no bridge. He conned her from the “first top” of Friday mast, the rearmost of her five. The “first top” was a glorified crow’s nest fifty feet up the steel basket-work of that great tower; it afforded him a view of all masts and spars in one glance.