Phillip Hamnet rattled quickly down the two flights of stairs
from the bridge, his shoes skidding lightly across the steps
hollowed and smoothed by countless watch changes. The
master of the MV Shawould hit the deck at the bottom and
strode along the passage to his cabin. He grabbed the handle
and, with the deftness of practice, twisted and lifted.
The door, with its sadly sagging hinges, still opened unwillingly.
His wife, Anna, looked up at the noise and smiled
as he entered. The door fell shut behind him.

'Everything all right?' she asked, watching him carefully.
A white T-shirt was stuck to his wiry frame, and a
sheen of sweat and grease layered his tanned forehead. He
looked heroically exhausted, she reflected, the handsome
face stubbled and sagging off the high cheekbones, the hazel
eyes shadowed by bags. And the matted blond hair
needed cutting.

Hamnet dropped into a chair by the small dinner table
they had set up in his day room. 'I suppose. That damned
cargo never showed up. I just got the word from the company
to go anyway. We've slipped anchor and headed down
the channel. It looks like there's some bad weather coming,
but they want us moving, all antsy because we're late now,
when it's their phantom cargo that's caused it.' He paused.
'I left Richardson up there. It's his watch, and supper's
waited long enough.'

Anna nodded, and in silence served two portions of a
rice dish. Hamnet stared at the electric fan, brooding. It struggled
hopelessly to move the heavy air around the cabin, and
the full weight of the tropics bore down on them - at its
most oppressive and threatening in these moments before a
storm. Anna coughed lightly. Hamnet sighed, glanced round
and took the proffered plate.

'God, it's hot in here. Can I open the door?' he said,
putting the plate down and rising from his seat.

'Of course. I only closed it while I was showering,' replied
Anna.

Hamnet looked at his wife for the first time since entering
the cabin. She was cool and composed in her light silk
robe - an effect the water in the ship's tanks was just about
cold enough to produce. But it wouldn't last for long. He
pulled the door open and jammed a wedge under it to keep it
that way, kicking it into place with unnecessary aggression.
'Hey, cheer up, it's the last trip,' chided Anna as she
reached for a bottle of white wine and poured him a large
glass.

'Thank God. I hate this damn boat,' said Hamnet with
some feeling, returning to his seat.

'You've earned the holiday, and your new ship,' replied
Anna.

Hamnet picked up the wine and took a long sip. He
sighed heavily again, but the tension in his body eased visibly.
He looked at Anna. 'It's coming right, isn't it?' he asked,
with a hesitant smile.

Anna nodded.

'Thanks.' The smile was looser; he offered the glass.
'To us,' he toasted. The glass had little resonance. There
wasn't the full, fruity hum of Waterford crystal on Waterford
crystal, just the cheap chink of cheap glasses. Hamnet
drained his of the not-so-chilled white regardless.

'The four of us,' replied Anna. Her chocolate-brown eyes
flickered warmly, gazing through the loose fringe of her
black, bobbed hair as she sipped at her iced water. Hamnet
had a vague suspicion that it was bad luck to toast with
anything other than alcohol, but couldn't be sure. Perhaps
he should have got her to take a glass of wine. Just a sip
wouldn't hurt - not now, with only five weeks to go. Four
of us. Who would ever have guessed at twins? It was, he
considered, a bloody terrifying thought. That's why Anna
had wanted to do this trip. Last chance for a while.

Anna finished her meal first, refilled her glass from the
water jug and slid across onto the sofa that lined one wall
of the day cabin. Hamnet mopped up the last of the rice
with a finger and moved to sit beside her, kicking off his
deck shoes.

'How're you doing, Mrs Hamnet?'

'Pretty good, Mr Hamnet.' She smiled, and shifted to lie
back against the cushion, the silk robe falling away from
her smooth and amply distended belly.

'And all the little Hamnets?' He laid his hand gently on
the soft, warm skin.

'Kinda frisky tonight.' She twitched her eyebrows up
suggestively, sipped at her water and put the glass down on
the side table.

Hamnet could feel the motion. 'I guess they get that from
their mother.'

Her hand tugged at the buttons on his shirt, then slid up
and onto his chest. 'You need a shower, darling,' she said,
her pretty nose twitching.

'Maybe you should come with me,' he said, leaning forward
to meet her slightly parted lips, their eyes locked
together, his hand slipping down her belly, the open door
forgotten.

The buzzer went on the intercom.

'Damn,' he swore. Anna frowned as he pulled back and
leaned over to reach the handset.

It was the voice of the chief mate, Paul Richardson, that
greeted him. 'Skipper?'

'Yeah,' Hamnet replied shortly. He couldn't keep the
impatience out of his voice. This had better be good. Anna's
hand ran tantalisingly slowly down his chest to his navel,
and hesitated.

Richardson continued. 'Could you come up and take a
look? I'm not sure about this turn.'

Hamnet glanced skywards in resignation. His eyes
scanned the rusting rivet line that ran the length of the cabin.
He would be so happy to get off this worthless crate and
away from its mediocre crew. He covered the mouthpiece
with his hand. 'Anna, I'm sorry, you know what an old
woman he is. If I don't go now he'll be back on the line in
another five minutes.'

Anna rolled her eyes, and sighed loudly enough for those
on the bridge to hear her.

'On my way,' said Hamnet. He replaced the phone.
'Sorry, darling. I'll just go hold his hand for a while. I won't
be long.' He eased himself stiffly off the couch and fumbled
for his shoes. Behind him, Anna's sigh was transforming
itself into a rather steady heavy breathing. He stood up and
moved towards the door.

'I'll try and save you some dessert, honey,' murmured
Anna.

Hamnet kicked the wedge away, stepped outside and
quickly closed the door. He stood for a moment in the corridor
while his eyes adjusted to the red night-lights. The
engines rumbled in the depths below his feet. The moaning
of steel plates and wires was louder out here. The wind and
sea had continued to build. But the rain and the ship's motion
cooled the air, and Hamnet could feel the sweat start to
dry as he strode down the corridor and back up the steps,
two at a time, to emerge onto the bridge.

'The weather's really closed in, hasn't it?' he said curtly,
still thinking of Anna.

Richardson looked up from the chart table he was huddled
over. His stooped figure and lined face indicated a
lifetime of worry. Behind him, rain splattered suicidally
against the bridge glass. Beyond, it was completely black,
without even the reassuring glow of navigation lights. The
company's standing orders were to run without lights whenever
in close proximity to the Indonesian, Thai, Philippine
or Malaysian coasts. Which for this Singapore-based tramp
was most of the time. It was one of the precautions against
pirates. Hamnet always added a deck watch on the stern,
complete with shutters for the anchor hawsepipes, barbed
wire on the guardrail and a supply of beer bottles filled with
sand as missiles. The stern was always where they came
from, slinging grappling hooks from fast, open boats. Creeping
on board with machetes. Most of the time they could
come and go without a crew even realizing. The first they
knew was when the master returned to his cabin to find it
ransacked and the contents of the safe gone. The thought
had Hamnet reaching for the intercom just as it buzzed.

'Phil?' It was Anna's breathy voice.

'I was just about to call you.'

'Don't call me. Come on back down here, babe.' She
paused, breathing heavily, rhythmically.

Hamnet could feel his face flush. 'Darling, this is a ship's
intercom, not a phone-sex line.' He slapped the receiver back
down. Then thought, damn, he'd forgotten to tell her to lock
the door. But still, it was a filthy night - no one in their
right mind would be out there in an open boat.

Richardson was talking to him. 'She just blew up from
the northwest like we thought it would. Always bad, the
storms when the monsoon's changing.' There was a crack
and a flash of lightning, as if to emphasize his words.
Hamnet caught a glimpse of the cargo deck, lashed with
rain; beyond it, whipped-up, white-capped water. There was
more vibration now as the Shawould rolled off the occasional
bigger wave. 'Hmm,' he grunted, a hand on the
console to brace himself. 'So what's the problem?'

'Well.' Richardson drew out the word with his Texan
drawl, but Hamnet could see from the rapid tap, tap of his
hand on the chart that he was far from composed. 'We've
been heading down the channel as planned, and according
to the GPS we're here.' Richardson's finger finally came to
rest, and Hamnet moved over to the chart table to take a
look.

The Global Positioning System plot put them safely in
the middle of the Bangka Channel, headed just south of
east. 'So what's the problem?' Hamnet repeated.

'Well,' Richardson drawled again, 'I've been waiting to
pick up the light and the radio beacon here, before I commence
the turn to south-southeast round Selokan Point.'

Hamnet glanced at the chart again, at the Pelepasan Rock,
whose light should have been flashing at them three times
every thirty seconds, from as far as thirty-six miles away. It
should have been visible from the moment they had left
Muntok, on a clear night at least. He waited impatiently, his
fists slightly clenched. But experience had taught him that
rushing Richardson was worse. Then the Texan started to
stutter. It was an inability to perform under pressure that
had kept the old boy as chief mate on a boat like this.

'Now it should only be five miles away on the bow. And
I still don't have a visual or a radio contact,' finished
Richardson, finally.

'Not a huge surprise. The Indonesian buoyage isn't the
world's most reliable.'

'Well, that's what I figured too. So I thought I would
make the turn on the GPS, but that doesn't seem to agree
too good with the depth right now.'

Hamnet's eyes flicked over the depth gauge: sixty feet.
He turned back to the chart. If they were where the GPS
said they were, they should be in fifty feet of water. Not so
badly wrong as to get you in a panic. But not right either.
Perhaps Her Majesty's hydrographers had been a little rough
and ready down here, or, more likely, had used data from
someone else's survey. Hamnet checked the chart, then
grunted to himself: the sources were Indonesian government
charts. Another note confirmed the unreliability of the
navigational aids in Selat Bangka, a third the movement of
the mangrove swamp that lined the channel. He sighed. So
much for the radio direction-finding beacon and the light.
They were on their own.

'What about the radar?' he asked Richardson.

'Well, with all this weather I was having trouble getting
a picture worth looking at.'

Hamnet contained himself with difficulty. This was the
real reason Richardson had got him up here. He couldn't
confirm their position with the radar. Getting clear radar
vision in bad weather was an art, because the rain and sea
deflected the signal back at the detector. The result was a
wall of noise and clutter on the screen behind which genuinely
solid objects could hide with ease. But the art of
brushing aside that curtain of clutter was one you were supposed
to have mastered by the time you were a chief mate
in your mid-fifties.

Hamnet would deal with the radar in a moment; in the
meantime, he had to believe the GPS. The US Department
of Defense's ten billion dollar satellite position-fixing system
was to be trusted, even if some of the residents of the
Lone Star State were not. And the GPS said they would be
aground shortly if they didn't turn to the southeast now.
'Start the turn to sou'-sou'east please, Richardson. And
slow her down to half speed to give us a little time to figure
this out properly.'

Hamnet listened to Richardson step over to the wheel
and dial up the change. His eyes went to the chart; there
were some low hills on Bangka Island to the east that he
should be able to pick up on the radar. He checked the position
on the GPS so he could measure the distance it gave
from the hills. It was then he noticed the indicator light showing
that the GPS unit was receiving signals from a differential
radio-transmitter beacon. A differential beacon used a precisely
known position on land to check the accuracy of the
satellite signals. It then transmitted the necessary corrections
to all GPS units in the area, corrections that each GPS
automatically included in the calculation of its position.

Hamnet scanned the chart. Differential was used in places
where high navigational accuracy was required or helpful
- outside ports, along well-travelled coastlines. This didn't
seem the kind of place for someone to set up a beacon. The
only traffic through here would be the few ships headed to
Jakarta via Muntok, like the Shawould. Anyone else would
go round the outside of Bangka Island. There were some oil
installations further south - they could have installed differential,
perhaps that was it. Perhaps not. Could they be
picking up some rogue signals bounced long distance
through the atmosphere by the storm? Hamnet couldn't remember
if this was possible with differential transmissions.
He decided it was worth checking the GPS fix using the
satellite signals alone.

'Richardson, you know how to stop this thing switching
to differential automatically?' Hamnet turned to look at his
first officer, whose face was creased in puzzlement.

'It's getting a differential signal?' he asked, his heavy,
walruslike moustache twitching nervously.

'Yes,' snapped Hamnet, finally losing patience. 'And I
would appreciate it if you would shift it to manual reception
of satellite signals only, while I sort out the damn radar.'

Richardson moved forward to the GPS, the pain of a
decade-and-a-half of career stasis written all over his face.

Hamnet went back to the chart and measured the distance
to the hills from their GPS position. They were between
nine and fifteen miles away. There was also an island in the
channel; it wasn't as high as the hills but it was closer -
only seven miles in front. He glanced again at the depth
before he went back to the radar. It was shallowing quickly
- forty-five feet. They drew forty with this cargo. The turn
to the southeast should have meant the depth was increasing.
Now he was worried. Damn it, what the hell was going
on? He stepped over to the engine control and rang up neutral.
They were coasting, and would quickly lose
steerageway in the tight channel, but steerage was little use
to him when he had no idea what the error in their position
was or which way to turn.

The radar would help if he could pick up the island, or
the first of those hills, and get a distance and a bearing. That
and the depth should be enough for a position fix. The picture
was full of junk as the radar signal bounced off waves
and rain. He carefully tuned the display to remove the clutter,
then glanced over at Richardson, who was keying the
GPS from the manual.

'Bloody hell,' he muttered under his breath. But the radar
screen was clearing under his deft touch, and the line of
hills beginning to emerge. In front of them was a single blip
- Pulau-Pulau Nangka Island. He switched the range ring
on and dialled it in towards the dying glow of the radar
return. The distance measurement clocked down and settled.
Eleven miles. Adrenaline started to pump, and he
realised how fuzzy his head had been from the wine. But it
was clearing now - God knows it was clearing now. It
needed only the most cursory glance at the chart to tell him
what he already knew.

Hamnet had started moving when he heard Richardson's
startled splutter. The depth alarm went off a half-second
later. All three were too late. The Shawould stopped. Just
like that. Nine thousand tons of decaying general-cargo carrier
hit the mud bank at a little under nine knots and stopped
dead. Hamnet was halfway to the wheel when it happened.
He carried on at a little under nine knots, head first, and the
bulkhead stayed in place to meet him. The lights went out.