where the wooden crates that held the 144 Raleigh bicycles, a thousand cotton dresses and two tons of potatoes were all safely secured, and wouldn't be opened until after the ship docked in Cuba.
Finally, he descended a narrow ladder that led to the boiler room, and Mr Patterson's domain. He heaved open the heavy metal hatch and, like Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, marched boldly into the fiery furnace. He stood and watched as half a dozen squat, muscle-bound men, their vests soiled with black dust, sweat pouring down their backs, shovelled coal into two gaping mouths that needed to be fed more than four meals a day.
As Captain Havens had predicted, it was only a few minutes before Harry had to stagger back into the corridor, sweating and gasping for breath. It was some time before he recovered enough to make his way back up on to the deck, where he fell on his knees and gulped in the fresh air. He could only wonder how those men could survive in such conditions and be expected to carry out three two-hour shifts a day, seven days a week.
Once Harry had recovered, he made his way back up to the bridge, armed with a hundred questions, from which star in the Plough points to the North Star, to how many nautical miles the ship could average per day, to how many tons of coal were required for ... The captain happily answered them all, without once appearing exasperated by the young fourth officer's unquenchable thirst for knowledge. In fact, Captain Havens remarked to Mr Bradshaw during Harry's break that what impressed him most about the lad was that he never asked the same question twice.
During the next few days, Harry learnt how to check the compass against the dotted line on the chart, how to gauge wind direction by watching seagulls, and how to take the ship through the trough of a wave and still maintain a constant course. By the end of the first week, he was allowed to take over the wheel whenever an officer took a meal break. By night, the captain taught him the names of the stars, which, he pointed out, were every bit as reliable as a compass, but he confessed his knowledge was limited to the northern hemisphere as the Devonian had never crossed the equator in all her twenty-six years on the high seas.
After ten days at sea, the captain was almost hoping for a storm, not only to stop the endless questions but also to see if there was anything that could throw this young man off his stride. Jim Patterson had already warned him that Mr Clifton had survived for an hour in the boiler room that morning and was determined to complete a full shift before they docked in Cuba.
'At least you're spared his endless questions down there,' remarked the captain.
'This week,' responded the chief engineer.
Captain Havens wondered if a time would come when he learnt something from his fourth officer. It happened on the twelfth day of the voyage, just after Harry had completed his first two-hour shift in the boiler room.
'Did you know that Mr Patterson collects stamps, sir?' Harry asked.
'Yes, I did,' replied the captain confidently.
'And that his collection now numbers over four thousand, including an unperforated Penny Black and a South African triangular Cape of Good Hope?'
'Yes, I did,' repeated the captain.
'And that the collection is now worth more than his home in Mablethorpe?'
'It's only a cottage, damn it,' said the captain, trying to hold his own, and before Harry could ask his next question, he added, 'I'd be more interested if you could find out as much about Tom Bradshaw as you seem to have wormed out of my chief engineer. Because frankly, Harry, I know more about you after twelve days than I do about my third officer after three years, and until now, I'd never thought of Americans as being a reserved race.'
The more Harry thought about the captain's observation, the more he realized just how little he too knew about Tom, despite having spent many hours with him on the bridge. He had no idea if the man had any brothers or sisters, what his father did for a living, where his parents lived, or whether he even had a girlfriend. And only his accent gave away the fact that he was an American, because Harry didn't know which town, or even state, he hailed from.
Seven bells rang. 'Would you take over