Chapter 11: Shake Down

Two days later, just as Henry was about to order the gangplank raised in preparation for his first training cruise, a car drew up and a woman in an abaya got out, accompanied by a large eunuch. Henry met them at the head of the gangplank.

"Master," the eunuch said, "His Magnificence, the Emir Mahmoud Abdullah, may he live for ever and have many sons, sends this concubine as a gift."

Henry paused for only a moment and then said gravely, "My most grateful thanks to His Magnificence, the Emir Mahmoud Abdullah, may he live for ever and have many sons."

This seemed to satisfy the eunuch and he left the ship and drove away. Contemplating the figure completely hidden in the black, all-concealing garment, Henry wondered what to do about her. Just then his personal eunuch appeared and took the woman away. Henry shrugged his shoulders and returned to the bridge.

"Take her out please, Mr. LeBoeuf," he ordered, and watched as the gangplank was raised, the mooring lines cast off, and the ship was expertly manoeuvred out of the harbour.

"No pilot, Mr. LeBoeuf?" he asked.

"Sir, I am a qualified pilot for this harbour, so none is needed."

"Useful."

"Well, frankly, Sir, there is little to do between cruises, so I took the necessary courses more to pass the time than anything."

Henry turned and noted that a destroyer had slipped her moorings and was accompanying them out to sea. As they passed the end of the harbour wall and came out into the open sea, Henry lifted the locked panel to which only he had access, and surveyed the buttons beneath it. The weapon controls were simplicity themselves. First it was necessary to sound action stations by pressing a red button on the top left of the panel. Beside it was a green button to cancel action stations. When the ship was at action stations, two sets of simple on-off red-green buttons enabled the firing of the fore and aft four pounders. The chaff launcher had three buttons, red for on, blue for automatic, which linked it to the escorting destroyer's weapons control centre, and green for off.

"Admiral, permission to speak, Sir?" asked the Second Officer very formally.

"No," said Henry, "Let me guess. You're going to tell me not to call action stations as a practice without first telling the destroyer. Why not?"

"They may over-react, Sir. That's how the last Emir and the late Crown Prince died."

Seeing the look of consternation on Henry's face he hastened to add, "Not here on the Imperial Voyager, Sir, at the airport. A chauffeur got too close to the Royal plane and everyone panicked. The pilot tried to take off again, but didn't have enough runway to make it."

Henry shut the weapons panel and went to relax in his ready room. He expected that there would be a lot of relaxing to do over the next few years.