THOSE EXTRA FORTY-FIVE minutes made it seem like half a day he’d been on watch, by the time Soames came clubbering out of the hatch. He told Olsen, ‘There’ll be a mutiny in this hooker, by midday.’
‘So?’ Olsen had the glasses at his eyes; they’d been there, with hardly a break, for more than two and a half hours. He searched slowly down the port side as Setter steadied on a new course. ‘For what?’
‘Captain and Number One spent an hour nattering. More. After you came up. Then Number One wrote out a lot of bloody stupid orders and I had to type ’em out. I only finished half an hour ago - the typewriter doesn’t work and every couple of lines I have to take the spools off and rewind the ribbon, or what’s left of it.’
‘You could put a new ribbon?’
‘Oh, yes. But it tears down the middle. I d
