Uncharted Seas Read Free Page A

their rosaries, but they knew him by his polished riding-boots and beautifully cut breeches.
    ‘Thank you,
Monsieur le Capitaine
,’ the eldest murmured, and he could only just catch her words above the pandemonium of the storm. ‘But we have placed ourselves in the hands of the Holy Virgin. You can only add your prayers to ours.’
    He managed a bow, rocked unsteadily for a moment, and in two quick strides was back clutching the bar. ‘
Encore une fine
,’ he grinned at Hansie, showing his magnificent white teeth.
    Turning, he stared again at the groups of miserable passengers. Unity Carden was sitting bolt upright beside her father. Game little devil—De Brissac thought—queer people the English, and particularly their colourless, flat-chested women. Looked as though they would faint at the sight of a spider, but actually tough as the horses they rode so well. She was pretty in her way, he conceded, but she lacked nearly all the feminine attributes which appealed to his Latin temperament. He wondered if she’d ever see those friends with whom she and her father were intending tospend a pleasant month in Jamaica before returning home to the English spring.
    Personally, he would not have staked a fortune on her chances, or his own of reporting for duty to the Military Commandant’s office in the French colony of Guadaloupe. It was all very well for that hulking Finn to keep a stiff upper lip and talk optimistically. He was one of the ship’s officers, so it was his job to do so, but M. le Capitaine De Brissac had travelled a bit in his time and he didn’t at all like the way things were shaping. The
Gafelborg
was an old ship and it was no reflection on her officers that she could not face up to these devilish seas which were throwing her about as if she were a cork in a mill-race.
    He stroked his small D’Artagnan moustache and began to make a mental list of the really vital things to collect from his cabin if it did come to the point where they had to abandon ship. There seemed no immediate urgency about the matter. The old tub was probably good for a few hours yet, but if the storm didn’t ease, the constant pounding on the sprung plate would loosen it further, and once the forehold had filled with water the position might become critical.
    A sudden thought caused his handsome face to cloud with acute annoyance. Among his heavy luggage in the hold there was a packing-case containing the parts of a new type of machine-gun; his own invention upon which he had been working for over two years. It was impossible to get the crate up now; if the ship did go down the precious gun would be lost. He decided swiftly that he had much better put any nightmare pictures of the ship actually sinking out of his mind, and at that moment his eyes fell on Synolda.
    She was sitting up now talking to the Venezuelan. De Brissac wondered vaguely what she could possibly see in such a bounder. He thought her most attractive and would have liked to have known her better but she had been almost offensively curt on the few occasions he had spoken to her, whereas she had accepted Vicente Vedras’s attentions right from the first day of the voyage.
    ‘Please, Synolda,’ Vicente was saying, his words inaudible to the others in the roar of the storm. ‘A little champagne and a dry biscuit. Something to fortify you and keep your insides going. Champagne of the best and the little biscuit; believe me that is the thing, ‘owever bad the sickness.’
    She looked at him through half-closed eyes. ‘I feel so ill I wishI were dead. We’re all going to die—aren’t we? The ship’ll be shaken to bits if this goes on much longer.’
    ‘No, no, no!’ he protested. ‘Things are not so bad. The Second Engineer ’as said there is no danger. ’E can judge—that one—the big, blond man.’
    Vicente was so passionately anxious to believe the best that he had accepted Luvia’s statement without question. The future was rich for him, rich beyond