It was a marvellous morning, clear as a mirror, warm as the promise of love, bright as heaven. - Nicholas Monsarrat

Ericson was a big man, broad and tough: a man to depend on, a man to remember: about forty-two or -three, fair hair going grey, blue eyes as level as a foot rule, with wrinkles at the corners — the product of humour and of twenty years' staring at a thousand horizons.

Just before Christmas, two Allied countries had sustained naval losses of shocking dimensions: Britain had lost two great ships—Prince of Wales and Repulse—in a single bombing attack, and America, at Pearl Harbor, had suffered a crippling blow that robbed her of half her effective fleet at one stroke. ("Proper uproar, it must have been," Lockhart overheard someone in the mess-decks say; and another anonymous voice answered: "Biggest surprise since Ma caught 'er tits in the mangle....") The attack brought America into the war, an ally coming to the rescue at a most crucial moment: but her principal war was never the Atlantic—that lifeline remained, from beginning to end, the ward of the British and the Canadian navies. America turned her eyes to the Pacific, where she had much to do to stem the furious tide of the Japanese advance: in the Atlantic, the battle of escort against U-boat still saw the same contestants in the ring, now coming up for the fourth round, the bloodiest so far.

Lockhart had already been in collision a number of times with the Russian interpreter, a small fiery individual who seemed to regard every request for stores or facilities as yet another example of the top-hatted capitalists milking the simple proletariat. On their last morning, an hour before sailing, there developed between them a row so furious and so all-embracing that it was difficult to remember that it had started with a complaint about the quality of the fresh meat supplied to Saltash for her return journey. When it had ranged widely, from a comparison of the Russian and the British standards of living, to an analysis of their respective war efforts, and fists had been shaken on both sides-for Lockhart found this habit of emphasis infectious—the interpreter took a stormy departure. At the head of the gang-way he turned, for a final blistering farewell.</br>"You English," he said, in thunderous accents and with extraordinary venom, "think we know damn nothing—but I tell you we know damn all."