Free Hungry as the Sea by Wilbur Smith

fact.” Samantha had a doctorate in biology and was one of the ship’s specialist guides. She was on sabbatical leave from the University of miami where she held a research fellowship in marine ecology. Passengers thirty years her senior treated her like a favourite daughter most of the time. However, in even the mildest crisis they became childlike in their appeal to her and in their reliance on her natural strength which they recognized and sought instinctively. She was to them a combination of beloved pet and den-mother.
    While a ship’s steward refilled her tray with mugs, Samantha paused at the entrance to the temporary galley they had set up in the cocktail room and looked back into the densely packed lounge. The stink of unwashed humanity and tobacco smoke was almost a solid blue thing, but she felt a rush of affection for them. They were behaving so very well, she thought, and she was proud of them.
    “Well done, team,” she thought, and grinned. It was not often that she could find affection in herself for a mass of human beings. Often she had pondered how a creature so fine and noble and worthwhile as the human individual could, in its massed state, become so unattractive.
    She thought briefly of the human multitudes of the crowded cities. She hated zoos and animals in cages, remembering as a little girl crying for a bear that danced endlessly against its bars, driven mad by its confinement.
    The concrete cages of the cities drove their captives into similar strange and bizarre behaviour. All creatures should be free to move and live and breathe, she believed, and yet man, the super-predator, who had denied that right to so many other creatures, was now destroying himself with the same single mindedness, poisoning and imprisoning himself in an orgy that made the madness of the lemmings seem logical in comparison.
    It was only when she saw human beings like these in circumstances like these that she could be truly proud of them — and afraid for them.
    She felt her own fear deep down, at the very periphery of her awareness, for she was a sea-creature who loved and understood the sea - and knew its monumental might. She knew what awaited them out there in the storm, and she was afraid. With a deliberate effort she lifted the slump of her shoulders, and set the smile brightly on her lips and picked up the heavy tray.
    At that moment the speakers of the public-address system gave a preliminary squawk, and then filtered the Captain’s cultured and measured tones into the suddenly silent ship.
    “Ladies and gentlemen, this is your Captain speaking. I regret to inform you that we have not yet established radar contact with the salvage tug La Mouette , and that I now deem it necessary to transfer the ship’s company to the lifeboats.” There was a sigh and stir in the crowded lounges, heard even above the storm. Samantha saw one of her favourite passengers reach for his wife and press her silvery-grey head to his shoulder.
    “You have all practised the lifeboat drill many times and you know your teams and stations. I am sure I do not have to impress upon you the necessity to go to your stations in orderly fashion, and to obey explicitly the orders of the ship’s officers.” Samantha set down her tray and crossed quickly to Mrs. Goldberg. The woman was weeping, softly and quietly, lost and bewildered, and Samantha slipped her arm around her shoulder.
    “Come now,” she whispered. “Don’t let the others see you cry.”
    “Will you stay with me, Samantha?”
    “Of course I will.” She lifted the woman to her feet. “It will be all right — you’ll see. just think of the story you’ll be able to tell your grandchildren when you get home.
     
     
    Captain Reilly reviewed his preparations for leaving the ship, going over them item by item in his mind. He now knew by heart the considerable list he had compiled days previously from his own vast experience of Antarctic conditions and the sea.
    The single