I’ll just laugh and remind you of this moment.’ They stood, suitcases in hand, on the dock of the port. The wrong side of the dock. The bright white, multi-storey cruise liners all lined up on the far side. On this side the dirty barnacleencrusted freight liners slummed it. Hayden stared at the hulking great vessel in front of them, with its towering patchwork of sea-containers. ‘When you said pack for a sea voyage I had something very different in mind.’ Beside him, Shirley smiled. ‘What did you expect for a hundred bucks each way?’ He sighed and closed his eyes. What had he expected? He’d had vague dreams of crewing on a maxi-yacht, or working for their passage on one of the leisure behemoths on the far side of the port. ‘Not this.’ ‘I have a friend at the port authority. She gave me the tip about this vessel. It comes in fully laden and then offloads half its cargo and crew for shore leave before heading on to New Zealand to drop the rest and return half-full. Then they pick up their shore-rested crew and new cargo.’ She was staring at him with such enthusiastic expectation.
