JOHANSEN attacked his breakfast with zest. There was nothing, he always maintained, like the morning watch to give a man an appetite for the first meal of the day. And the mate was not fussy about what he ate: curry and rice, bacon and eggs, toast and marmalade, it all disappeared into his voracious mouth. However little sleep he might have had during the night, he did not look tired. He had not shaved and there was golden bristle on his chin, but his eyes were clear and wide awake. Lycett watched him covertly with distaste. Lycett had very little appetite; he merely pecked gloomily at his food, as though he suspected that the Chinese cook might have slipped some deadly poison into it. Moira Lycett was not present; she seldom appeared for breakfast, preferring to sleep on until a later hour. Captain Leach was not in the dining saloon either, but his reasons for absence were different. Leach’s breakfast took the form of whisky and he consumed it in the privacy of his own quarters.
