Now I'm reminded of Jorgensen, and I try to find the unkie in myself.

I would take my time hiding the stuff. I wouldn't be sloppy. I would be tempted to hide it outside my cabin. But I wouldn't be able to stand having it physically very far away. The way mothers are said to feel about their infants.

There's the air conditioner. The Kronos has a highpressure ventilation system that even now is humming softly. The intake vent is behind the perforated panels on the ceiling. There are at least forty screws in each panel. Forty screws would seem insurmountable every time I wanted to get to my baby.

For the second time today I go through his drawers.

With still no results. They hold writing paper, blue putty of the sort you use to hang up postcards, a few thick glitzy issues of Playboy, an electric razor, several decks of cards, a box of chess pieces, four clear plastic boxes each containing a flashy silk bow tie, quite a lot of foreign currency, a clothes brush, and a few extra gold chains like the one he wears around his neck.

On the shelf there is a Spanish-Danish dictionary, a Berlitz Turkish phrasebook, a handbook on contract bridge published by British Petroleum, a couple of books on chess. A dog-eared paperback with an illustration of a naked corn-fed blonde on the cover, entitled Flossy-Sweet Sixteen.

I've never been seriously interested in books that aren't reference books. I've never claimed to be particularly cultured. On the other hand, I've always thought that it's never too late to start a new life of learning. Maybe I should start with Flossy-Sweet Sixteen.

I take the pocketknife out of the drawer. On the edge of the blade are a few bottle-green specks. I open his closet and go through his clothes one more time. There's nothing in that color. In his bed, Jakkelsen gurgles softly.

I take the box of chess pieces out of the drawer. I pick up a white king and a black queen and put them on the desk. They are meticulously carved out of some kind of heavy wood. The chessboard is on the desk, covered with a thin metallic plate. On board a ship it's practical having a chessboard that's magnetic. There are magnets on the bottom of the chess pieces, a lead-colored disk at the base with a piece of green felt attached. I stick the knife blade in between the metal disk and the base of the king. It resists, but it comes off. A little dab of glue has been applied on each side. I put the disk on the desk. A little speck of felt remains on the knife, a few minuscule green fibers that you wouldn't notice unless you were looking for them.

The chess piece is hollow. It's about three inches tall and filled with a cylinder a half inch in diameter. It's probably not something Jakkelsen did; they were originally produced this way. But he has taken advantage of it. On top is a lump of putty. Underneath are three clear plastic tubes. I shake them out. There are four more under them.

I put them back in place, seal them up with the putty, and glue the magnet onto the chess piece. I could have searched the rest of the pieces. To see whether you could fit two or three vials in each of the pawns. To figure out whether he had enough for four or six months use. But I feel like getting out of there. A single woman shouldn't stay too long in a strange gentleman's cabin.

4

"That was my first trip. So I went to see a colleague. `How do I navigate to Greenland?' I asked him. He said, `You sail to Skagen and turn left. When you get to Cape Farewell, turn right."'

I twist the corkscrew into the cork. It's a bottle of white wine, its color yellowish-green, and Urs has let it travel alone in the dumbwaiter at the last minute, as if it were a temperature-sensitive icon. When I pull up the corkscrew, half the cork stays in the bottle. I'll have to screw it in again. Then the cork disintegrates and falls into the liquid. Urs said that Montrachet is a great wine. So a little cork shouldn't hurt.

"Then he took out a sea chart, placed one end of a ruler at Skagen, arched it up to Cape Farewell, and drew a line along the curve. `Follow this,' he said, `and you'll be sailing the great circle, And don't sleep the last fortyeight hours before you reach the cape. Drink black coffee and keep a look out for icebergs'."

Lukas is doing the talking. Turned away from his audience. But his air of authority holds their attention. There are three people besides him in the officers' mess: Katja Claussen, Seidenfaden, and engineer Kutzow. This is the first time in my life that I've waited on a table.

"In those days we sailed in April. We tried to hit the socalled Easter easterly. If you did, you'd have a tailwind the whole way. It was unheard of for anyone to choose the period between November and the end of March voluntarily."

There are rules about the order in which you're supposed to serve wine. Unfortunately, I'm not familiar with them. So I take a chance and serve the woman. She swirls the inch of liquid around in her glass, but her eyes are fixed on Lukas and she doesn't taste what she's sipping.

I try alternating from the right side to the left as I serve. To make sure everybody's happy.

They've dressed for dinner. The men have white shirts on, the woman is wearing a red dress.

"We can expect the first ice twenty-four hours out of Cape Farewell. That's where the Greenland Trading Company's Hans Hedtoft went down in 1959, and ninety-five passengers and crew perished. Have you ever seen an iceberg, Miss Claussen?"

I serve the cauliflower and Urs's sourdough bread. Everything goes tolerably well at the table. But out by the dumbwaiter I drop the rest of the cauliflower all over the poached salmon. It's lying there whole, its skin still on, staring at me expectantly. Urs explained that a Japanese chef taught him not to poach the eyes but to set them aside and then put them back in after the flesh is tender. And lightly brush the whole fish with egg whites so that it has a slimy sheen, as if it has come straight from the net to the table. I don't think much of this technique. I think the fish looks as though it died from natural causes.

I scrape off the cauliflower and carry in the fish. They're not looking at what they eat, anyway. They're looking at Lukas.

"Icebergs are pieces of glaciers that float down from the ice cap to the open sea and break off. If they're solid, the relationship between the part above water and the part below is one to five. If they're hollow, it's one to two. The latter are the most dangerous kind, of course. I've seen icebergs 130 feet tall, weighing 50,000 tons, that could be capsized by the vibrations from a ship's propelIer."

I burn my fingers on the potatoes au gratin. Lukas hasn't seen anything yet. In a rubber raft near the Antarctic, I've slipped past partially melted table icebergs that were 300 feet tall, weighed a million tons, and might explode if you whistled the first few bars of "In the Lovely, Joyful Summertime."

"The Titanic struck an iceberg in 1912, southeast of Newfoundland, and sank three hours later. Fifteen hundred people died."

In my cabin I placed a piece of newspaper in the sink, leaned over it, and cut eight inches off my hair so that it was all the same length as the part that grew out after the fire. For the first time since I came on board, I can take off my scarf. That's all I can do to prevent the woman from recognizing me.

I could have spared myself the trouble. I'm a fly on the wall; she doesn't see me. The man is looking at Lukas, the engineer is looking at his glass, and Lukas isn't looking at anyone or anything. For a moment the woman's eyes fall on me, giving me an appraising look. She's at least eight inches taller and five years younger than me. She's brooding and wary, and there's a slight tension around her mouth that tells a story-maybe the story of what it costs (contrary to popular opinion) for a woman to look good.