Evening in the North 289 



quite unseamanlike and altogether irregular, but it worked, and 

 within minutes the gray brute had spun completely around on her 

 stem and, with anchor still dragging, was barging straight out to sea, 

 full steam ahead. And she did not stop going full steam ahead for 

 five days and nights, impervious and apparently quite indifferent to 

 the elements. Captain Olsen was of a demeanor just as implacable as 

 his ship. He either spoke not at all, or gave staccato barks in Norsk. 

 He apparently stood watch twenty-four hours a day, and he ordered 

 a change of course every so often, but for no reason that could be 

 discerned by anybody. In fact, if these maneuvers had been plotted, 

 they would have been found to trace a course like a drunken ant 

 with a limp, wandering about a table top covered with honey. 



On the fifth day at dawn, however, the Boy, who had been sent 

 aloft into the little bucketlike crow's-nest at midnight, spotted just 

 what he had been told to watch out for. Far on the larboard quarter 

 three white plumes were rising from the sea like the fountains seen 

 in the gardens of French chateaux. The Boy yelled down to the 

 bridge and pointed, and he was careful to frame his announcement 

 in Highland Gaelic because nobody had so far addressed him in Eng- 

 lish since coming aboard five days before, and nobody had answered 

 him at all when he had asked a question or volunteered a remark in 

 that language. The response from below was immediate. 



The Vikfja changed course so abruptly the Boy was almost thrown 

 out of the nest. She literally turned half left, keeling over to an 

 angle of about forty degrees. Then she shook herself like an in- 

 furiated wart hog, and two tremendous white billows rolled from 

 under her bows. Men shouted and iron-clad boots rang on metal 

 decks. Captain Olsen charged out of the wheelhouse, vaulted the 

 canvas-fenced bridge, and set out along the raised catwalk over the 

 foredeck to the gun platform. The chief engineer emerged from a 

 black, rectangular hole in the metal wall below the bridge and 

 jumped into the cage behind the main-deck winches. Four seamen 

 catapulted out of the forecastle and deployed about the decked- 

 over forepiece, opening hatches and cranking levers. Then the Vikna 

 got down to business. 



If she had banged her way over the ocean before, she could now 

 only be described as plowing under its surface. Unlike other boats, 

 which rise above the waters with increasing speed, she literally bur- 



