'I work,' he pleaded, the eyes searching the immigration man's face for a glimmer of response. 'Please – I work good. Work in Canada.' He pronounced the last name awkwardly, as if he had learned it, but not well enough.

The immigration man shook his head negatively. 'Not here, you won't.' He addressed Captain Jaabeck. 'I'll issue a detaining order against this stowaway. Captain. It will be your responsibility that he doesn't go ashore.'

'We'll take care of that,' the shipping agent said.

The immigration man nodded. 'The rest of the crew are clear.'

Those who remained had begun to leave when Stubby Gates spoke up.

'Can I 'ave a word wi' you, guv?'

Surprised, the immigration man said, 'Yes.'

There was a pause at the doorway and one or two men edged back inside.

'It's abaht young Henri 'ere.'

'What about him?' There was an edge to the immigration man's voice.

'Well, seein' as it's Christmas in a couple o' days, an' we'll be in port, some of us thought maybe we could take Henri ashore, jist for one night.'

The immigration man said sharply, 'I just got through saying he has to stay on the ship.'

Stubby Gates' voice rose. 'I know all about that. But jist for five bleeding minutes couldn't you forget your bloody red tape?' He had not intended to become heated but he had a sailor's contempt for shorebound officialdom.

'That'll be enough of that!' The immigration officer spoke harshly, his eyes glowering.

Captain Jaabeck moved forward. The seamen in the room tensed.

'It may be enough for you, you stuck-up sod,' Stubby Gates said belligerently. 'But when a bloke 'asn't bin orf a ship in near two years, and it's bloody Christmas…'

'Gates,' the captain said quietly. 'That will be all.'

There was a silence. The immigration man had gone red-faced and then subsided. Now he was looking doubtfully at Stubby Gates. 'Are you trying to tell me,' he said, 'that this man Duval hasn't been ashore in two years?'

'It is not quite two years,' Captain Jaabeck interjected quietly. He spoke English clearly with only a trace of his native Norwegian tongue. 'Since this young man boarded my ship as a stowaway twenty months ago, no country has permitted him to land. In every port, everywhere, I am told the same thing: He has no passport, no papers. Therefore he cannot leave us. He is ours.' The captain raised his big seaman's hands, fingers outspread, in a gesture of interrogation. 'What am I to do – feed his body to the fishes because no country will have him?'

The tension had gone. Stubby Gates had moved back, silent, in deference to the captain.

The immigration man – no sharpness now – said doubtfully, 'He claims to be French – born in French Somaliland.'

'This is true,' the captain agreed. 'Unfortunately the French, too, demand papers and this man has none. He swears to me he has never had papers and I believe it's so. He is truthful and a good worker. This much one learns in twenty months.'

Henri Duval had followed the exchange, his eyes moving hopefully from one face to the next. Now they returned to the immigration officer.

'I'm sorry. He can't land in Canada.' The immigration man seemed troubled. Despite the outward sternness, he was not a harsh man and sometimes wished the regulations of his job were less exact. Half apologetically, he added, 'I'm afraid there's nothing I can do, Captain.'

'Not even one night ashore?' It was Stubby Gates, still trying with Cockney persistence.

'Not even one night.' The answer had a quiet finality. 'I'll make out the detaining order now.'

It was an hour since docking and, outside the ship, dusk was closing in.

A few minutes after 11.00 PM Vancouver time, some two hours after the Prime Minister had retired to bed in Ottawa, a taxi drew up, in pouring rain, at the dark deserted entry to La Pointe Pier.

Two men got out of the cab. One was a reporter, the other a photographer from the Vancouver Post.

The reporter, Dan Orliffe, a comfortable bulky man in his late thirties, had a ruddy, broad-cheeked face and a relaxed manner which made him seem, sometimes, more like an amiable farmer than a successful and occasionally ruthless newsman. In contrast, the photographer, Wally de Vere, was a lean six-footer who moved with quick nervous movements and affected a veneer of perpetual pessimism.

As the cab backed away, Dan Orliffe looked around him, holding his coat collar tightly closed as token protection from the wind and rain. At first the sudden withdrawal of the taxi's headlights had made it hard to see. Surrounding where they stood were dim, wraithlike shapes and patches of deeper blackness with, ahead, a gleam of water. Silent, deserted buildings loomed vaguely, their outlines blurring into gloom. Then slowly, eyes adjusting to the darkness, nearer shadows crept into focus and he could see they were standing on a wide cement ramp built parallel with the shoreline.

Behind, the way the cab had brought them, were the towering cylinders of a grain elevator and darkened dockside sheds. Nearby, piles of ship's cargo, tarpaulin-covered, dotted the ramp and, from the ramp, two docks extended outward, armlike above the water. On both sides of each dock, ships were moored and a few lights, dimly burning, showed that altogether there were five. But nowhere was there any sign of people or movement.

De Vere had shouldered his camera and equipment. Now he motioned in the direction of the ships. 'Which one is it?' he asked.

Dan Orliffe used a pocket flashlight to consult a note which the night city editor had handed him half an hour earlier following a phoned-in tip. 'We want the Vastervik,' he said. 'Could be any of these, I guess.' He turned to the right and the photographer followed. Already in the minute or two since leaving the cab their raincoats were streaming wet. Dan could feel his trouser legs becoming sodden and a trickle of water flowed uncomfortably beneath his collar.

'What they need here,' De Vere complained, 'is a doll in an information booth.' They picked their way cautiously through a litter of broken packing cases and oil drums. 'Who is this character we're looking for, anyway?'

'Name's Henri Duval,' Dan said. 'According to the desk, he's a man without a country and nobody'll let him off the ship.'

The photographer nodded sagely. 'Sob story, eh? I get it -Christmas Eve and no-room-at-the-inn stuff.'

'It's an angle,' Dan acknowledged. 'Maybe you should write it.'

'Not me,' De Vere said. 'When we get through here I'm getting in the dryer with the prints. Besides, I'll lay you ten against five the guy's a phoney.'

Dan shook his head. 'Nothing doing. You might win.'

They were halfway along the right-hand dock now, stepping carefully beside a line of railway freight cars. Fifty feet below, in blackness, water glistened and the rain splashed audibly on a sullen harbour swell.

At the first ship they craned upward to read the name. It was in Russian.

'Come on,' Dan said. 'Not here.'

'It'll be the last one,' me photographer predicted. 'It always is.'

But it was the next. The name Vastervik stood out on the flared bow high above. And below it, rusted, rotting plates.

'Does this bucket of bolts really float?' De Vere's voice was incredulous. 'Or is somebody kidding?'

They had clambered up a ramshackle gangway and were standing on what appeared to be the vessel's main deck.

Viewed from the dockside, even in darkness, the Vastervik had seemed a haggard ship. Now, at close quarters, the signs of age and accumulated neglect were even more startling. Faded paintwork had great patches of rust extending over superstructure, doors, and bulkheads. Elsewhere the last remnants of painting hung down in peeled strips. From a solitary light bulb above the gangway a layer of grime was visible on the deck under their feet and nearby were several open boxes of what appeared to be garbage. A short distance forward a steel ventilator had corroded and broken from its housing. Probably unrepairable, it had been lashed uselessly to the deck.