condensed master

Will Bonner
dark Will had no difficulty in avoiding him.
The following day the convoy got under way and during his off duty period in
the morning Will went up on the aft deck. The wake of the ship was leaving a
wide ribbon of turbulence for quite a distance in the calm sea, and it was easy to
detect any change in the ship's direction.
Will always came up here to concentrate, the wake acted as a form of
hypnosis shutting out other activities, allowing him to think more clearly. He was
sorting out the severity, or otherwise, of the previous night's encounter, coming
finally to the conclusion that things were not as bad as he had first thought, and he
could cope with what was expected of him.
"What are you doing up here?" It was Wes. "You look so serious, is
everything alright? Have you had mail from home?"
His last statement was a typical inference. When the mail was handed out men
used to disappear to their own private hideaways to read the news from home,
rushing back to tell if it was good, or spending time alone to cope with the bad.
Will had seen men on occasions, hiding under lifeboats and elsewhere, in tears
after getting bad news. Thanks Wes, he thought, for reminding me that there are
others worse off than myself. I'm still alive and the family back home are still
okay.
Will suddenly experienced the overwhelming desire to tell Wes about his
problems but everything seemed too complicated, and the ramifications too diverse
to cope with at that time.
"Everything's fine Wes, I'm just sitting here resting, watching the wake. It's just
plain hypnotic, and you can see how easy it would be if you were sitting on the aft
rail to lean and drop overboard." Troops were warned not to sit on the ship's rails
at night for this very reason, and some had fallen in and drowned on Will's
previous voyage.
"Let's talk about more pleasant things." Sitting down next to Will he began to
talk. "Did you have a good time last night?"
"Yes, I was talking to that man in the grey trousers. Do you know who he is?"
"I thought you knew. He's a war correspondent for one of the newspapers,
they come and go on the ships to get news back to England. Didn't he tell you
who he was?"
"No, we didn't get around to that."
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