'Oh sure, but I can watch a game any time. It's not every day you set sail on a voyage across the Atlantic Ocean.' For a moment Dave stared off the port side and then added, 'I feel I'm about to suffer a sea change, into something rich and strange.'
Kate smiled. 'Is that poetry?'
Dave, who reckoned becoming something rich was at least a strong possibility, supplied the complete quotation and said, 'It's Shakespeare. The Tempest.'
Kate raised her bottle, 'Here's to one not finding us.'
'Is that at all likely?'
'Not really. Not at this time of year. But sailing in the tropics, you never can tell.'
They fell silent for a minute or two as if immediately comfortable with each other, enough just to sit there and watch the Grand Duke's crew make ready to leave the mooring. Occasionally, Kate would glance to the stern of the ship where Rocky Envigado's boat, the Britannia, was now loaded and lashed. She was feeling a little more relaxed. The Britannia had been the very last boat to float into the Duke and, for an hour or so, it had seemed that she and her two colleagues might have found themselves setting sail without the target of their surveillance.
A tugboat tooted to port, lines were thrown off the quayside, a klaxon sounded, and Kate and Dave felt a low rumble on the starboard side as bow and stern thrusters began to turn over. There were now only two lines connecting them to land and seeing these slacken, men on the wharf lifted the eye of each rope clear of the bit and then dropped it into the rainbow streaked water.
'All gone and all clear,' someone shouted.
Having checked the whereabouts of Rocky's boat, Kate watched David out of the corner of her eye as he watched the thrusters push the ship gently away. Maximum points for quoting Shakespeare. And he was right, there was something rich and strange about a voyage like this one. Maximum points too, for not being interested in football. What did a game matter when there was the leaving of America by ship to contemplate? She had begun to believe that men like David Dulanotov simply didn't exist. Romantic men, who were content to sit in silence instead of trying to talk their way into your pants. Looking at his big brown eyes fixed on the distant horizon, she wondered what other surprises the voyage might have in store for her and how many of them might include this handsome man.
Chapter FOURTEEN
Some of the crew and yacht-owners stayed aboard their own vessels for dinner. But mostly they went to the accommodations block in the forehouse, curious to see more of the ship and to meet the captain, his officers and their crew. Officers and crewmen on the Duke ate separately and in different messrooms. In the British Merchant Navy, it had always been done this way. Now Jellicoe gave orders that owners and their captains would be permitted to dine in the officers' saloon. Crewmen, however, would have to eat with the crew of the Duke in the crewmen's mess. So it was that Dave found himself sitting down to dinner with Jellicoe, those of his officers who were not on watch, and a couple of dozen assorted owners and captains, including Al Carnaro, Kate Parmenter and the captain of the Jade, the handsome Rachel Dana.
Rachel said, 'Captain Jellicoe, I was wondering, what's the purpose of those two brass cannon on your fo'c'sle?'
'What the hell's a fo'c'sle?' grumbled Kent Bowen.
'It's the deck above the forecastle in the bows of the ship,' explained Jellicoe, and marked Bowen down as a complete idiot in all matters relating to the sea and seafaring. Turning toward Rachel, he smiled bleakly.
