Wandering aft, the fading light was now allowing the first stars to appear and give further perspective to understanding his place and his purpose.

He reached the guardrails and took in lungfulls of the welcome cool breeze. Lowering his eyes he witnessed the white tumult rapidly moving away from him - a powerful disturbance to a deep blue tranquil sea, now churning white - courtesy of the tramping of eighty thousand galloping horses. The culmination of those many energy and force transfers taking place below decks; moving him and the twelve thousand tons of ship forward at half a mile a minute. Soon it would be his turn again to play his part in creating and keeping control of all that awesome power.

The next port of call though, would be his, and the ship's; first visit to Malta. He had no more expectancy about it, than there had been with any of the other places visited. He felt privileged to have seen so much already in his young life; and often thought about what life could have been like if he had stayed in his hometown. The range and boundaries of experiences he'd been so lucky to have had thus far though, were about to be vastly expanded: and the time frame in which it would be lived, so compressed; it would test the endurance of everything he consisted of. There was not an inkling of what emotional joy he would find there - in the arms of someone so unimagined - nor the depth of despair that was to await him.