CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE Providence My body craved sleep, but my mind wouldn’t slow down. I pulled the Aguiak gold nuggets from my small table drawer. I rolled them around in my hand, like rough-cut dice without numbers. Then I took the Leica out of my pocket and...
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE Chukchi I dressed in my Lindy-provided blue sweater. There was no name on the front of the beautifully knit Canadian wool, just an embroidered representation of the ship over the left breast, and the white stitched letters, “STAFF” on the...
CHAPTER FIFTEEN Golconda When I finished my delivery to the assembled passengers, the staff crew and the audience repaired to the back of the Lido deck. The World Discoverer’s (‘Lindy’) fantail was one flat teak surface, polished clean with brushes...
Dawn was breaking somewhere over the high parapet beyond the hill to my back, although the jungle down in the valley only glowed slightly with the coming of the light. The rain was gone. There would be sun. The radio handset hung down from my right hand, the dangling...
“There’s a lesson to be learned from this and I’ve learned it oh so well,” was coming out of any number of small radio speakers when we marched across the perimeter and into the temporary encampment Captain Casey referred to as his command post. I walked in the lead...