Carl Swedborg, skipper of the fishing trawler Molly Bender, rapped the barometer with his knuckles, regarded it stoically for a moment, then walked over to the chart table and picked up a cup of coffee. His mind visualizing the river ahead, he sipped at the coffee and gazed at the ice that was building on the deck. He hated miserable wet nights. The dampness seeped into his seventy-year-old bones and tortured his joints. He should have retired a decade past, but with his wife gone and his children scattered around the country, Swedborg could not bear to sit around an empty house. As long as he could find a berth as skipper he would stay on water until they buried him in it.

“At least visibility is a quarter of a mile,” he said absently.

“I’ve seen worse, much worse.” This from Brian Donegal, a tall, shaggy-haired Irish immigrant who stood at the helm. “Better we have rotten weather going out than coming in.”

“Agreed,” said Swedborg dryly. He shivered and buttoned the top button of his mackinaw. “Mind your helm and keep wide aport of the Ragged Point channel buoy.”

“Don’t you fret, Skipper. Me faithful Belfast nose can sniff channel markers like a bloodhound, it can.”

Donegal’s blarney seldom failed to raise a smile from Swedborg. The skipper’s lips involuntarily curled upward and he spoke in a stern tone that was patently fake. “I prefer you use your eyes.”

The Molly Bender swung around Ragged Point and continued her course downriver, passing an occasional lighted channel buoy that came and went like a streetlight beside a rain-soaked boulevard intersection. The shore lights glowed dully through the thickening sleet.

“Somebody coming up the channel,” announced Donegal.

Swedborg picked up a pair of binoculars and looked beyond the bows. “The lead ship carries three white lights. That means a tug with her tow astern. Too murky to distinguish her outline. Must be a long tow, though. I make out the two white thirty-two-point lights on the last vessel in line about three hundred yards astern the tug.”

“We’re on a collision course, Skipper. Her mast lights are in line with our bow.”

“What is the bastard doing on our side of the river?” Swedborg wondered out loud. “Doesn’t the damn fool know that two boats ap—

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preaching each other should keep to their starboard side of the channel? He’s hogging our lane.”

“We can maneuver easier than he can,” said Donegal. “Better we alert him and pass starboard to starboard.”

“All right, Donegal. Swing to port and give two blasts of the whistle to signal our intentions.”