Read Hungry as the Sea for Free Online Page A

since leaving cape Town, and God knows he had slept little enough since then. He ran his tongue around his mouth with distaste before he returned the cheroot to his case, and crouched in his seat staring ahead, trying to work out why Warlock was running slow.
    Suddenly he straightened and considered a possibility that brought a metallic green gleam of anger into Nick’s eyes. He slid out of his seat, nodded to the Third Officer who had the deck and ducked through the doorway in the back of the bridge into his day cabin. It was a ploy. He didn’t want his visit below decks announced, and from his own suite he darted into the companionway.
    The engine control room was as modern and gleaming as Warlock‘s navigation bridge. It was completely enclosed with double glass to cut down the thunder of her engines. The control console was banked below the windows, and all the ship’s functions were displayed in green and red digital figures. The view beyond the windows into the main engine room was impressive, even for Nick who had designed and supervised each foot of the layout.
    The two Mirrlees diesel engines filled the white-painted cavern with only walking space between, each as long as four Cadillac Eldorados parked bumper to bumper and as deep as if another four Cadillacs had been piled on top of them. The thirty-six cylinders of each block were crowned with a moving forest of valve stems and con-rod ends, each enormous powerhouse capable of pouring out eleven thousand usable horsepower.
    It was only custom that made it necessary for any visitor, including the master, to announce his arrival in the engine room to the Chief engineer. Ignoring custom, Nick slipped quietly through the glass sliding doors, out of the hot burned-oil stench of the engine room into the cooler and sweeter conditioned air of the control room.
    Vin Baker was deep in conversation with one of his electricians, both of them kneeling before the open doors of one of the tall grey steel cabinets which housed a teeming mass of coloured cables and transistor switches. Nick had reached the control console before the Chief engineer uncoiled his lanky body from the floor and spun round to face him.
    When Nick was very angry, his lips compressed in a single thin white line, the thick dark eyebrows seemed to meet above the snapping green eyes and large slightly beaked nose. “You pulled the over-ride on me,” he accused in a flat, passionless voice that did not betray his fury. “You’re governing her out at seventy percent of power.”
    “That’s top of the green in my book,” Vin Baker told him. “I’m not running my engines at eighty percent in this sea. She’ll shake the guts out of herself.” He paused and the stern was flung up violently as Warlock crashed over the top of another sea. The control room shuddered with the vibration of the screws breaking out of the surface, spinning wildly in the air before they could bite again. “Listen to her, man. You want me to pour on more of it?”
    “She’s built to take it.”
    “Nothing’s built to run that hard, and live in this sea.”
    “I want the over-ride out,” said Nick flatly, indicating the chrome handle and pointer with which the engineer could cancel the power settings asked for by the bridge. “I don’t care when you do it — just as long as it’s any time within the next five seconds.”
    “You get out of my engine room — and go play with your toys.”
    “All right,” Nick nodded, “I’ll do it myself.” And he reached for the over-ride gear.
    “You take your hands off my engines,“howled Vin Baker, and picked up the iron locking handle off the deck. “You touch my engines and I’ll break your teeth out of your head, you ice-cold Pommy bastard.” Even in his own anger, Nick blinked at the epithet, When he thought about the blazing passions and emotions that seethed within him, he nearly laughed aloud.
    “Ice cold,” he thought, “so that’s how he sees