“If you think,” Captain Bullen interrupted heavily, “that I’m going to listen to that bunch jangling their moneybags and bemoaning their hard lot from hors d’oeuvres right through to coffee, you must be out of your mind. We’ll have it in my cabin.” And so we had it in his cabin. It was the usual Campari meal, something for even the most blasé epicure to dream about, and Captain Bullen, for once and understandably, made an exception to his rule that neither he nor his officers should drink with lunch. By the time the meal was over he was feeling almost human again and once went so far as to call me “Johnny-me-boy.” it wouldn’t last.

But it was all pleasant enough, and it was with reluctance that I finally quit the air-conditioned coolness of the captain’s day cabin for the blazing sunshine outside to relieve the Second Officer. He smiled widely as I approached number four hold. Tommy Wilson was always smiling. He was a dark, wiry Welshman of middle height, with an infectious grin and an immense zest for life, no matter what came his way. Nothing was too much trouble for Tommy and nothing ever got him down. Nothing, that is, except mathematics: his weakness in that department had already cost him his master’s ticket. But he was that rare combination of an outstanding seaman and a tremendous social asset on a passenger ship, and it was for these reasons that Captain Bullen had insisted on having him aboard.

“How’s it going?” I asked.

“You can see for yourself.” he waved a complacent hand towards the pile of stacked crates on the quayside, now diminished by a good third since I had seen it last. “Speed allied with efficiency. When Wilson is on the job let no man ever.”

The bo’sun’s name is Macdonald, not Wilson,” I said.

“So it is.” he laughed, glanced down to where the bo’sun, a big, tough, infinitely competent Hebridean islander was haranguing the bearded stevedores, and shook his head admiringly. “I wish I could understand what he’s saying.”