Scandinavian captains did not do bridge watch, customarily leaving the ship in charge of a single officer. Nillson quickly settled into a series of tasks. Pace the bridge. Check the righthand radar. Glance at the engine telegraphs on each wing of the bridge to make sure they were set Full Speed Ahead. Scan the sea from a wing. Make sure the two white masthead navigation lights were on. Stroll back into the wheelhouse. Study the gyrocompass. Keep the helmsman on his toes. Pace some more.

The captain came up around nine after having dinner in his cabin directly below the bridge. A taciturn man in his late fifties, he looked older, his craggy profile worn around the edges like a rocky promontory ground smooth by the unrelenting sea. His posture was still ramrod straight, his uniform razorcreased. Icebergblue eyes glinted alertly from the weathered ruins of his ruddy face. For ten minutes he paced behind the bridge, gazing at the ocean and sniffing the warm air like a bird dog catching the scent of pheasant. Then he went into the wheelhouse and studied the navigation chart as if in search of an omen.

After a moment he said, “Change course to eightyseven degrees.”

Nillson turned the oversized dice in the course box to read 087. The captain stayed long enough to watch the helmsman adjust the wheel, then returned to his cabin.

Back in the chartroom Nillson erased the ninetydegree line, penciled in the captains new course, and figured the ship’s position by dead reckoning. He extended the track line according to speed and time elapsed and drew in an, X. The new line would take them about five miles from the lightship. Nillson figured strong northerly currents would push the ship as dose as two miles.

Nillson went over to the radar set near the right door and switched the range from fifteen miles to fifty miles. The thin yellow sweep hand highlighted the slender arias of Cape Cod and the islands of Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard. Ships were too small for the radar to pick up at that range. He returned the range to its original setting and resumed his pacing.

Around ten the captain returned to the bridge. “I’ll be in my cabin doing paperwork,” he announced. “I’ll make the course change north in two hours. Call me to the bridge if you see the lightship before then.” He squinted out a window as if he sensed something he couldn’t see. “Or if there is fog or other bad weather.”

The Stockholm was now forty miles west of the lightship, close enough to pick up its radio beacon. The radio direction finder indicated that the Stockholm was more than two miles north of the captains course. Currents must be pushing the Stockholm north, Nillson concluded.