The Nylon Pirates

PART TWO "Your travelling companions are like you—gracious, fun-loving, eternally young at heart"

1

Captain William George Harmer, master of the Alcestis, sat at his desk in the cabin high above the foredeck, dealing with the thing he liked least in the whole world—his pre-sailing paper-work.

Ashore or afloat, in uniform or street clothes, he could not have been anything but a sailor. He was small, and broad, and tough; his skin was wind-roughened and sun-tanned from one end of the year to the other; he had walked with a roll since he was six years old. The habit of command sat easily in his face, and in the way he moved his head, chin up, when he had to face a man or a situation. He was fifty-five, not far from retiring-age; he had been facing men and situations, in war and in peace, for all his working life. To take charge, to deal with, to dispose of—all the hallowed names of action —were by now so much second nature that he could not have imagined any other alternative.

If his ship were in hazard, he pulled her out; if a pilot proved inefficient, he was tapped on the shoulder and told to get out of the way. If a man got drunk, he was punished; if one of his officers botched a job, he was shown how never to do it again. When passengers grew obstreperous, they were quietly reminded that they could, within the law, be locked up indefinitely at the captain's sweet will. If a woman overstepped the permissible limits of misconduct, the fact was pointed out to her in crude terms which seldom proved ineffective.

Men liked him because they felt safe in his hands; women, because they did not. But the women could not have been more wrong. He was good-looking still, and, like most sailors, deeply sentimental; but William George Harmer was only sentimental about one person— his wife—and the rest of the sex existed only as fare-paying passengers who either did, or did not, behave themselves.

Before him on his desk was a mound of papers, some important, some nonsensical, fed to him in an unending series by the First Officer, the Chief Steward, the Purser, the booking agents, and the various officers in charge of stores, baggage, charts, catering, entertainment, security, and hygiene. Mostly they only needed his signature; sometimes they needed attention; occasionally they needed memorizing. None of them needed action; the only action required from him would be in two hours' time, when he would take his ship down river, Past the Statue of Liberty, past Sandy Hook Light, and due south-east towards Bermuda.

The ship's noises, now loud, now subdued, were comforting; they meant efficiency, organization, smooth-running order. The shadow of a derrick moved across the carpet at regular intervals; that was the last of the stores coming aboard. The dull clattering, more distant, was the hand-baggage trolleys running up the after gangway. The whining rise-and-fall was a pump somewhere (what pump? a compression engine—something to do with the heating); the steady hum of a generator, one deck below, meant that the radio office was open for business.

He signed his name four more times—"W. G. Harmer, Master" in firm large script—and then he threw down his pen and walked across to the shore-side porthole.

The view was of the grey customs sheds of Pier 26, and above them the skyline of New York on a drab winter afternoon. It was a skyline he could never quite believe in; and he did not like it anyway. In truth, he did not really like anything except certain isolated parts of the South Atlantic, and the small house in distant Birkenhead which he knew as home. Anything else was either the sea, the element he earned his living on, or simply land— to be avoided, visited only when necessary, and left behind as soon as possible.

He turned, crossed to his desk, and rang his bell. In answer, his cabin steward appeared, with that promptness which, in stewards, could only seem suspicious.

"Sir!" said the steward, whose unlikely name was Brotherhood.

"Brotherhood!" barked Captain Harmer, and pointed.

He was pointing towards a side-table on which were ranged the various bottles necessary to a ship's captain who, working through his invitation list, must be ready to entertain anyone, from the president of Specific Motors to a Bolshoi Theatre ballerina. There was whisky (Scotch, rye, and Bourbon), gin, sherry, vodka, rum, vermouth, Dubonnet, Kina Lillet, and Angostura bitters. There was not, however, any ice, and this was what had caught his eye.

As Brotherhood, trim and spotless in his white uniform, assumed the professionally injured air of a man certain that he could have forgotten nothing, the Captain said:

"Ice!"

"Sorry, sir," said Brotherhood promptly. "I thought you'd ring."

"God damn it!" said Harmer. "I always need ice. You know that."

"Yes, sir," said Brotherhood, and withdrew.

Left to himself, Captain Harmer frowned, but only at his own irritation. Of course, he always rang for ice when he needed it, and so far none of his visitors had rated a drink of any kind. Brotherhood would never make this, or any other kind of mistake; he was the best steward in the ship, otherwise he would not have held down his honourable and highly influential job, nor would he have been trusted, as he was, to garner for the Captain's benefit appropriate titbits from the ship's most efficient grapevine—the body of two hundred stewards and stewardesses who, with access to every cabin, kept tally of everything from the number of drinks served before 10 a.m. to the number of people in any one bed at any one time.

It was not Brotherhood who was at fault; it was the fact of being in harbour, where the Captain was always uncomfortable and irritable, and the other fact, more annoying, more disturbing still, that this time there would be no real relief even when they put to sea. For they were going on a cruise, which was something Captain Harmer loathed with all his heart and soul.

He should not have done so; to take the Alcestis, flagship of the line, on her annual Caribbean and South African cruise, was meant to be the plum assignment of the year, a reward for braving the bleak North Atlantic run for the other nine months. The crew, to a man and to a boy, certainly thought so; each year, they were on their best behaviour for fully four weeks beforehand. But the Captain could never see it that way. For him, it meant that he had to change from being a sailor to being a glorified maitre d'hotel; he had to drop the sextant and pick up the martini shaker; he had to forget he was commanding a ship and learn the trick of running a three months' non-stop party. And, above all, there was always a woman, sometimes several of them, who interpreted her current mission in life as the duty of bringing comfort and warmth to the lonely sex-starved hero on the bridge. That was the worst hazard of all.

Of course, the peak of sea-going, for him, had been the war, and the dedicated masculine world to which command of a destroyer had confined him. Twenty years earlier, as Commander Harmer, with an escort group to run in the wild and murderous North Atlantic, and a D.S.O. to prove that he did it well, he had been a fundamentally happy man—a seaman in a seaman's tough job. Now, as senior captain of Myth Lines, his reward for good behaviour was to triple as Santa Claus, Charles Boyer, and John Paul Jones, for the benefit of three hundred super de luxe passengers, whose idea of fun was to bombard each other with paper streamers, to get intoxicated in paper hats, and to gamble on the ship's daily run at a minimum one hundred dollars a chance.

His jaundiced eye left the skyline of New York, the towering jungle which probably housed the majority of these characters, and travelled down the length of his ship. Her, at least, he loved. ... He had been master of the Alcestis for eight years; she would be his last command, and she had certainly been the best. As he looked at her, he saw more than the newly-painted funnel with its golden Myth Lines crest; more than the long row of canopied lifeboats, centred to an inch underneath their davits; more than the clean sweep of the decks and the controlled bustle of embarkation. He saw an idea, an idea which was his own creation; the idea that one could take 16,000 tons of steel, twenty miles of wiring, and a mass of complicated machinery, and turn the whole thing into a living, assessable personality.

After eight years, Harmer knew every rivet of Alcestis, but she was more than rivets, more than steel. She worked. . . . Built on the Clyde, manned predominantly from her home port of Liverpool, she was no longer in the first flush of youth; indeed, she was fourteen years old now, a little creaky here and there, a little old-fashioned in her ways. But those who sailed in her always grew fond of her, whether they were top-flight tourists or apprentice-engineers; she had that element more valuable than any speed-record or split-second schedule; she had a name that people warmed to. Everyone nodded or smiled when they heard the name Alcestis; it was shorthand for something good, something glamorous, something of quality. She had been built as a luxury "one-class" ship and she had always kept that distinction; she lost money steadily for most of the year, unable to compete with the bigger tourist ships and even less with a 6J-hour jet service and an "economy" air-fare, between London and Montreal, of S247. But she made it up, with something to spare, on this once-yearly millionaire's cruise, when she carried half her usual complement at much more than triple her usual price. She was about to make it up now.

The phrase "millionaire's cruise" was of course never used in the advertisements, where a decent British reticence spoke only of traditional courtesy and the best service in the world. But the phrase reappeared time and again in the newspapers and in conversation, and it was implicit in an Alcestis booking. If you were on board, it was presumed firstly that you were having a wonderful time, and secondly that you were loaded. The shore-prices of everything, from curry to coconut carvings, tripled accordingly. There was even a rumour, which Captain Harmer had never been able to check, that the taxi-drivers of Johannesburg, in South Africa, made an annual 930-mile trek down to Cape Town, especially to gyp the Alcestis passengers when they came ashore. Whether true or false, it was part of the legend. But that 'traditional British service', whether it concerned swinging out a lifeboat or serving twelve different kinds of canape between 6 p.m. and 7.30, was certainly true. The Captain saw to that.

There was a step in the passageway, and when he turned, it was Brotherhood again, bearing, by way of rebuke, not one but two buckets brimming with ice.

The Captain, smiling inwardly, offered an olive-branch for his earlier irritation by asking something which he knew Brotherhood would have attended to.

"Did you get those pipe-cleaners for me?"

"Yes, sir," answered Brotherhood.

"And the Gent's Relish?"

"Yes, sir."

Not only the passengers had their particular tastes and foibles; Captain Harmer had a weakness for a certain kind of English sandwich-spread with the odd name of "Gentlemen's Relish", and, being the captain, he was entitled to have it taken care of. It could hardly be said that the passengers were stinted of such individual care, either. Earlier, he had been leafing through a list of stores which had had to be topped up in New York; it was a formidable reflection of the kind of cosseting which was Alcestis's pride. There were sides of beef from Calgary; salmon from the Gaspe, soft-shell crab from San Francisco; five hundred pheasants which a sister-ship had brought out from Scotland; thirty cases of Beluga caviar; champagne, rye whisky, and Coca-Cola; 20,000 Frankfurters, 500 lb. of hamburger meat, ice-cream by the ton; an entire truck-load of South African lobster-tails; prunes, bottled snails, canned Vichyssoise, small complimentary tubes of striped toothpaste. ... It would keep them happy for a while, Harmer reflected, and then they would grow restive, and start complaining about the food; and at that point, with luck, they could go ashore and break the monotony by gorging themselves on fly-specked West Indian village cooking. Passengers. . . .

Brotherhood, the watch-dog, hearing a movement outside, walked to the doorway and peered out. Then he turned back.

"That's Mr. Barrett now, sir."

"Ask him to come in."

Jack Barrett, the chief booking agent and usually the last man from "shore-side" to call on the Captain, was an energetic, fast-talking man with an air of tremendous self-confidence. Everything about him was at the alert: the spotted bow-tie, the wiry crew-cut, the bouncing walk. Only the protuberant belly gave the lie to the picture ^{ol ta}ut efficiency; and he contrived to carry even this as if he had won it at cards. The Captain sometimes wondered if Barrett actually woke up looking like this, or whether he achieved it gradually between breakfast-time and his office—firming up stage by stage, tightening he muscles with some Rotarian draw-string, steeling the jaw, glinting the eye. Harmer always found him annoying to deal with: his obvious conviction that he had done every single thing himself was sometimes hard to take; but there was no doubt that Barrett knew his job, as Alcestis's perennially full passenger-lists testified.

They shook hands. "Hi, Bill!" said Barrett, as if he were giving an order to fire. "All set to take off?"

The Captain nodded. Only in America was he called "Bill", and he could never quite get used to it; in England his friends called him "Willy", but that again was really quite unsuitable to the captain of the Alcestis. He said, briefly: "Drink, Jack?" and motioned to Brotherhood.

"Just a thin Scotch on the rocks," answered Barrett. He sat down at the table, and opened his briefcase. Over his shoulder he said: "Thought I'd run through the list with you."

Jack Barrett always "ran through the list" before sailing, as though it were a brand-new alphabet he had invented, engraved, and illuminated. Once again, as usual, the Captain found it vaguely annoying; the implication, that he would be utterly lost without this fatherly briefing, was obvious and mortifying. He remembered feeling the same way during the war, when the shore-gang made it clear, before each convoy, that he and his escort-group were only the blunt instruments—the real skill, the true finesse, lay enshrined in their parting words, which he could disregard at his peril. Indeed, this whole present interview reminded him of those wartime pre-convoy sessions. Jack Barrett, implying that the voyage of 20,000 miles which lay ahead was only entrusted to him as a last resort, inevitably recalled Lieutenant-Commander Binghampton, back in the early 'forties, instructing him that if he were really serious about getting his convoy across to Halifax in the face of persistent U-boat attacks, this last-minute contact with brains might just see him through.

He awoke from his brief, bad-tempered daydream to hear Jack Barrett say:

"—got a nice group for you this time, Bill, a real top-notch group. Should be a fine trip, from that angle. Of course, there's bound to be the odd-ball here and there. F'r instance, that van Dooren dame drinks like a fire-horse. The way I heard it, she showers in eight-to-one martinis. You might have a snitch of trouble there."

"The weather," said Lieutenant-Commander Binghampton, portentously, his voice like treacle running over enormous boulders of self-importance. "You should have no difficulty—ah—Harmer. There's a low-pressure area south of Iceland. Of course, it might break up. I wouldn't waste any time if I were you."

"Three hundred-eight passengers," said Jack Barrett. "Couple dropped out from Tacoma, Washington. Illness or something. We kept their dough. There was a bit of a run-in about who should have the Princess Suite. I gave it to the Tillotsons, finally. After all, he is the president of Steel & Tool."

"Eight escorts, sixty-seven ships," said Binghampton. " We put the Commodore in a Danish packet called the Elsevier. She's not the biggest, but the accommodation's better, we think, from the communications point of view. Of course, he kicked up a row about it. Silly old sod."

"I'm told the Bancrofts don't get on well with the Gersons," said Barrett. "So, what the hell! If they start feuding, you know what to do. At least, I would hope so. Anyway, it wouldn't be a cruise without some sort of brawl, would it?"

"You can expect trouble HERE and HERE," said Binghampton, stabbing the chart with his pencil. "There have been eight U-boat sighting-reports since noon yesterday. Frankly, we're not too happy about the position west of forty-two degrees. However, that's your worry. We can't do everything."

"Walham is a big shot from Chicago," said Barrett, running his finger down the passenger-list. "Something to do with farm equipment. The Beddingtons—well, you know about them. They're taking that homely daughter along again. Mr. and Mrs. Kincaid; he ran for Governor in Florida, way back, but it came unstuck. She's a real bitch. Carl Wenstrom—that's a party of five, cousins or something. Nothing on them. Sir Hubert and Lady Beckwith. He's a long, snooty bastard. She's American, and tough as old boots. They say he was broke, and she bought him and the title. Don't know who won out on that package deal. . . . George M. Simms. Broker. He's an old guy, been sick for a long time. Got a nurse with him. Maybe—well, we'll see."

"The biggest ships are the Wensleydale, the Empire Buttress, and the Shroveport," said Binghampton. "The rest are just run-of-the-mill. There's one we're not sure of—the Arkwright Courier. She's been reported in trouble twice before—making too much smoke, and bad station-keeping. If she can't keep up, send her in." "Mrs. Consolini is making the cruise again," said Barrett, grinning knowingly at the Captain. "And Mrs. Stewart-Bates. They both particularly asked after you when they made the bookings. You should be all set there."

" We're sending an escort tanker with you," said Binghampton. "You can top up with fuel any time."

Jack Barrett turned in his chair, and began to tap his nose lightly his pencil. It was a sign, the Captain knew, that Barrett was about to step into some area of delicacy, to broach a subject which even he, with all his brashness, recognized was really none of his business. It wasn't much of a sign, thought Harmer grimly, but at least it was something.

"Then there's your table," said Barrett, with smooth self-confidence, as though this were the next item on the agenda, which it patently was not. "Usual thing, nine places for ninety candidates. . . . But the competition's real tough this time."

"I'll arrange who sits at my table," said Harmer coldly. This was a recurrent tussle, now dormant, now in full swing. "With my purser and my chief steward. You know quite well that I always do that."

"Yes, I appreciate that, Bill, but I just thought I'd mention a few names." As the Captain said nothing, he continued: "You know how it is—the front-office gets first sight of these people. We can give you a useful steer sometimes. . . . First, there's the Tillotsons. Like I said, they've booked the Princess Suite. They rate a seat with you."

The Captain still said nothing. Indeed, he was only half-listening, just enough to memorize Jack Barrett's candidates, who might or might not be his own. This was one area where, within limits, he pleased himself; the decision as to who, out of three hundred and eight passengers, sat at the captain's table, had never belonged ashore, and he was going to keep it that way, for as long as he had a sea-going command.

"Then there's the Beckwiths," Barrett went on. "Handle to their name. You can't very well pass them up. Then the Kincaids. He's still pretty big in politics, even if he didn't make Governor. That's six." He saw the Captain frown. "I mean, it's six if you see it my way."

"I don't see it any way, so far," said Captain Harmer. Somewhere inside, he was enjoying this minor collision; it marked the division between shore-side and ship-side, and very soon every single thing in sight, from people to places, from the bridge to the distant horizon, would be ship-side—his side.

"Then," said Barrett, with exceptional care, "I half-promised the Beddingtons."

The Captain awoke with a jerk at that.

"You had no business to do anything of the sort," he said hardly. "I've told you before, this is my table."

"I know that," said Barrett. "But hell, Bill, I've got to sell this cruise! It's public relations!" He said this as another man might say: It's in the Bible! "The Beddingtons have made two trips with the Alcestis already. I thought this would make a kind of dividend for them."

"If I have Mr. and Mrs. Beddington," said Harmer, with curt emphasis, "—who incidentally never utter a word—I would have to have the daughter as well." His jaw came up. "I will not look at that girl twice a day for eighty-four days."

"What's wrong with the daughter?"

"You know damn' well what's wrong with the daughter! She is, without exception, not only the plainest human being I have ever set eyes on, but also the silliest. That laugh alone is enough to turn the cream. I won't do it, Jack, and that's all there is to it."

"Well, think it over," said Barrett gamely, as if the Captain had expressed interest instead of returning this flat negative. He gathered up his papers, stuffed them into his briefcase, and swallowed the remainder of his drink, all in one swift series of movements which looked as though they were part of a time-study run-through. Then he stood up.

"That's it, then, I guess," he said. "Unless you've anything for me."

"Nothing," said Captain Harmer.

"You're sure, now? You wouldn't like me to come along as cruise-director?"

This was a traditional joke: the Alcestis was one of the few ships of any line which never carried a cruise-director; it was Captain Harmer's boast that his men could, without shore-side aid, take care of any problem in any area.

"Quite sure," he said.

"O.K. I'll get back to the jailhouse." Barrett held out his hand. " 'Bye now, Bill. Have fun!"

Fun, thought Harmer angrily, looking at his retreating back; this cruise is fun!. . . Then he sat down at his desk again, prepared to continue with his paper-work. It was a mistake to let these things get under one's skin. Jack Barrett, by way of working a farewell point, might draw a distinction between the "jailhouse"—Myth Lines' glass-and-chromium palace on 57th Street—and the "fun" supposedly involved in piloting a big ship, with one thousand people on board, in and out of thirty-eight assorted harbours; but it was not important, it was childish stuff, suitable to landsmen. The comparative level of achievement must be clear to anyone with a grain of sense in their head. . . . And anyway (he smiled to himself as he took up his pen) he had made his own point, once again, about his table.

He was not left in peace for long; indeed, with less than two hours to sailing time, he did not expect to be. Within a few moments, as Brotherhood was tidying up the bar, there was a knock at the door, and a deep, rather fruity voice said:

"Captain, sir!"

Tiptree-Jones. . . . Captain Harmer frowned briefly, as much at the exaggerated Royal Navy style of the greeting as at the man who made it. First Officer Tiptree-Jones was everything that the illustrations to Myth Lines' advertisements promised: tall, dark, good-looking, wavy-haired—just the man to accompany the caption: "Our officers are there to see that you have a perfectly wonderful time on board." Harmer did not like him—he could not like him, though he acknowledged his competence and was forced to agree that he was an undoubted asset on a trip such as this. But there was too much of a contrast between the two of them. Tiptree-Jones was smooth where the Captain was rough, at ease where he was awkward; he was social, in a way that Harmer could never attain to, and secretly envied.

He remembered one of the woman passengers, a few trips back, saying, between martinis: "That first officer of yours is a living doll!" For the Captain, this just about summed it up. He did not like dolls, living or otherwise. He only liked sailors, and not too many of them. One day Tiptree-Jones would have his own command, and then he could be whatever kind of a doll he chose. But in the meantime . ..

"What is it, T.J.?" he growled. With Tiptree-Jones, he always exaggerated his own roughness; sometimes he went so far as to use the old-style Merchant Service title "Mister", simply to see the look of pain cross those noble features.

"Sir," announced Tiptree-Jones, tremendously correct, "we've finished storing. I've secured number two hatch."

His voice had a reassuring, leave-it-all-to-me tone which the Captain did not appreciate. The fact that he himself could remember taking the same encouraging line, twenty years earlier, with his own superiors, made no difference at all. Points of view tended to change, and a damned good thing too.

He said grumpily: "What took so long?"

It was possibly the one sentence which Tiptree-Jones had not expected to hear; but he did not falter. Instead, standing erect in the doorway, cap under arm, heels together, he answered:

"I think the men did well, sir, considering. Some of the stuff was late in arriving."

The Captain, recognizing a soft answer, made a noise which sounded like "M'm", and Tiptree-Jones continued:

"There's one man still ashore, sir. Absent over leave."

"Who's that?"

"Barkway, sir. Steward."

The Captain glanced at his watch. "I'll log him when he turns up. If he turns up. . . . Are the passengers coming on board yet?"

"Some, sir. About twenty so far. They're just moving through immigration now."

"I want to know when the Tillotsons arrive. And Sir Hubert Beckwith."

"The Purser's got that in hand, sir."

"All right." The Captain got up from his chair, and walked towards the doorway. Tiptree-Jones stood aside, gracefully, deferentially. The Captain stared aft. He had to find something. He was in that kind of mood. And he was the Captain, anyway. . . . His eye was caught by the ensign-staff, at least four hundred feet away. A cross-wind had whipped the flag several times round the staff, where it hung forlornly, limp and unrecognizable.

"Mister!" growled Captain Harmer, and pointed. "If you're not proud of that ensign, I am!"

Tiptree-Jones swallowed. "Sorry, sir. I'll have it seen to immediately."

"Ship looks like a Liberian tramp." In his maritime dictionary, the scale went no lower. "It's the quartermaster's job to watch out for that sort of thing."

"I'll see to it, sir," repeated Tiptree-Jones, and turned to leave.

By way of farewell, the Captain said: "I'm putting the Beddingtons at your table."

Tiptree-Jones, scarcely pausing to answer "Yes, sir", walked aft with the gait of a shaken man. Captain Harmer grinned to himself. That would take care of the living doll.. There were certain moods when he enjoyed the pleasures and vices of autocracy, and this was one of them.

Knowing that Brotherhood must have remained within earshot from force of habit, he called out: "Brotherhood! What's happened to Barkway?"

Brotherhood came to the doorway from his small pantry alongside. His face, normally thin and inquisitive, was now impassive, almost theatrically so.

"I couldn't say, sir."

The Captain recognized the gambit, the conventional loyal disclaimer. "Think," he commanded. "He's late reporting back. The only one of the stewards, the only one of the whole crew. Spoilt our record. And he may even miss the ship. Do you know what he does in New York?"

Brotherhood shrugged, wrinkling his pointed nose slightly. "I've seen him ashore, sir."

"And?"

If you'll excuse the expression, sir, he's got this woman."

The Captain looked at him. "Tell me something new. What sort of woman?"

"She does this act, sir?"

"Act? Is she an actress?"

"Sort of, sir. It's like a music-hall, 52nd Street. She plays the accordion, but she's got nothing on behind it, just beads. See what I mean, sir?"

"I think so," said Captain Harmer. "What else does she do?"

"She puts down the accordion and plays the flute."

"Is she any good?"

"Oh yes, sir! She's not young." He said this as if it would have made the whole thing highly irregular. "I saw the act once. It's really quite refined, sir."

"How does Barkway come into this?"

"He carries her accordion home, sir."

The Captain sighed. "All right. I think I've got the picture. Well, Barkway's in trouble. And if he misses the ship, he'll be in trouble with the British Consul as well as me."

"Sir," said Brotherhood formally.

"What is it?"

"Could I slip ashore and make a phone call?"

"Yes, but be quick."

"Yes, sir." As Brotherhood backed away, intent on whatever sort of rescue operation he had in mind, he said: "Here's Mr. Mansell, sir."

There were times when the Captain, looking at Tim Mansell, his Fourth and junior Officer, was seized with an almost violent wish to be twenty-four again, full of the vitality and the incomprehensible optimism of youth; and other times when he thanked his stars that he was quit of such nonsense for good. If the Captain had any favourites among his four deck officers, three apprentices, and sixteen engineers, it was Mansell; though the latter would scarcely have guessed it during nine-tenths of his working day, when he seemed to draw as much invective, scorn, and impatient correction from the Captain as from anyone else in authority, including First Officer Tiptree-Jones.

But though he was the dog's-body on board the Alcestis (for so he phrased it ruefully, and so it was phrased for him, when there was any question of overtime on watch or extra duty in harbour), yet he was a resilient young man, and seemed to thrive on it. His boyish good looks always made him a great favourite with passengers; above all, he had that unassailable good humour, that intense physical well-being, which could carry young men of his age past any danger, any despair short of death itself. It was obvious that he loved the life of a sailor, that he loved the sea; there was on his face now a glowing satisfaction that they were about to set out on another voyage, another adventure—and this time to the Caribbean, to Africa! The Captain did not find the feeling infectious, but he found it endearing. If he had had sons, he would have hoped to have such a one as this. Though that did not mean that he would have spared the rod, at any time.

Tim Mansell was smiling, entirely without reason, as he said:

"Sir, the Purser's compliments, and Mr. and Mrs. Tillotson have just come on board."

"Are they being looked after properly?"

"Yes, sir. Purser's shown them to their suite."

The Captain nodded. "What are they like, Fourth?"

"Rather small, sir. But lots of luggage."

For some reason the Captain found that an entirely adequate picture of the Tillotsons.

"All right," he said. "I'll come down in a minute."

"Very good, sir." Mansell turned to go.

"And Fourth—"

"Yes, sir?"

"See that you sweat up on navigation, this voyage."

"Oh yes, sir!"

"Yours is terrible. Worst I've ever seen. You'll never get a mate's ticket at this rate."

"I'll work on it, sir."

"See that you do." He nodded in dismissal, and Tim Mansell strode off down the passageway as if making straight for his books.

Left alone once more, the Captain thought briefly of the Tillotsons. "Small, with lots of luggage"—the description fitted countless passengers who thronged the Alcestis, year in and year out. Small men made money—it was a law of nature, it failed only with ship's captains. . . . Pursers made money, too; pursers, chief stewards, and head-barmen. It was another law of nature, with the same mortifying exception. But if his own purser were looking after the Tillotsons, then the Tillotsons were getting the full treatment, the way he wanted it. A good purser, money-maker or not, was in many ways the mainspring of a ship, and Alcestis had one of the best.

There was a quick step in the passageway, reminding him that even short daydreams were out of place, so close to sailing time. It was Brotherhood returning again, breathing rather heavily with the effort of speed.

"Well?" asked Captain Harmer curtly.

'Barkway's on his way now, sir."

"I should bloody well think so!"

"His alarm didn't go off, sir."

"I'll make his alarm go off," said the Captain grimly. But secretly he was pleased at the outcome. A man left on shore, particularly at the beginning of a long voyage, was a damned nuisance, posing endless problems with reports, cables, and explanations; everyone from the Labour Exchange to the local Consulate General had to hear about it in triplicate. At least he had been saved all that bother.

He was pleased in another way also, on a less official plane. Barkway had been rescued from really bad trouble by a shipmate on board the Alcestis. Harmer was always glad to know that his crew were ready to dig each other out of such holes as these. It marked the difference between a crew, and a collection of six hundred and forty-two men. Essential during the war, it often proved a blessing in peacetime also.

Brotherhood, seeing the Captain relaxed, less grim of brow, added:

"Sir, the First Officer told me to tell you, the other passengers you were waiting for just came aboard."

"The Beckwiths?"

"That's them, sir."

Captain Harmer picked up his cap.

"All right. I'm going aft. Let me know when the pilot comes on board."

"Very good, sir."

"And give him a drink if I'm not here. One."

"Yes, sir."

"I'll be in the Princess Suite. Or next door in A6."

It was time to start wooing the customers.

2

In a broadening, talkative stream, the passengers moved along the quay, up the gangway, and into the warm embrace of the Alcestis. For them, preparing to escape New York's raw winter air, she was more than a handsome ship; she was the whole promise of the future, she was spring and summer rolled into one. Once aboard her, and in a few hours—days at the most—they would be installed in a glamorous tropical haven where nothing could harm them. No ship ever sailed without excitement and expectancy, but this was something special. For when the Alcestis sailed, she sailed straight into paradise, and everyone knew it.

Among the passengers and their friends, some were frolicsome— it was only three o'clock, farewell lunches had a tendency to prolong themselves, and precautions had to be taken against bars which could not legally be open for business until the ship sailed. Some, again, were sad—almost incomprehensibly, until one remembered that, like weddings and christenings, all sailings were vaguely sad. Some were efficient and determined, others dropped their tickets and mislaid their hand luggage. Some were blase, some were impressed. But they all had one thing in common. There was a prosperous air about this invasion which stuck out like a church spire on Wall Street. These were solid citizens on the move, and everything about them—the complicated cameras, the pigskin luggage, the voices, the massive purple orchid-corsages—proclaimed it at full strength.

Above the gangway, discreetly masked by a boat-awning, a handful of young officers, Tim Mansell among them, watched with care as the passengers trooped aboard. They were gauging the ordeal of their future.

It was in many ways a crucial moment. From this time onwards, they were assigned to full-time duty; company rules dictated that for the next eighty days they had to exert themselves at every conceivable aspect of shipboard sociality, from playing bingo to escorting shore-trips, from shuffleboard to fancy dress, from deck-tennis in the sun to cha-cha in the twilight. They had, in fact, to knock themselves out amusing the customers, and they wanted to see which, if any, of the customers might possibly repay the trouble. It was a time-honoured embarkation drill known as "inspecting the talent". Though other company rules, less explicit but formidably clear, forbade them to compete with the male paying passengers in the realm of love, yet there was always a chance that the male paying passengers—so ancient, so decrepit, so indisputably over thirty years of age—might not recognize a good thing when they saw one. The phrase for this particular slice of good luck—"broaching the cargo"— did not need elaboration in any ship over 500 tons.

So far, however, the exercise as observed from the boat-deck had not been rewarding. Indeed, within the framework of "talent inspection", the assorted female passengers had stirred no single ripple of any kind.

"All these old trouts look exactly alike," said Fleming, a young engineer-officer who should by rights have been at least four decks below, checking pressure-gauges. "Have you noticed?"

"We've noticed," said Tim Mansell.

"It's their hair, really," said Beresford, an apprentice, who was included among his seniors because he was over six feet tall and a terror on the dance-floor. "It's blue. And those curls. . . . Looks like steel wool."

"They must all buy it at the same shop."

An old man, propelled along the dock in a wheel-chair, now came into view. His knees were covered by a rug, and the nurse pushing the chair bent over him with professional solicitude as they traversed a rough patch of concrete. Under an old-fashioned travelling cap, his face was yellowish-grey, skull-like in its bony emaciation.

"Typical," observed Fleming unfeelingly.

"Burial service," said Beresford, an equally hard-hearted young man. "Somewhere near Cape Town. Rig-of-the-day, dress whites with black armbands."

"Stop engines!" intoned Fleming. "For as much as it has pleased Almighty God—"

"But the nurse is pretty," said Tim Mansell suddenly.

At that moment the nurse looked up and caught their eye. She was pretty, slim and demurely attractive in her blue uniform; the slight smile which crossed her face as she observed their interest seemed to promise something short of an absolute, twenty-four-hour dedication to her job.

"We'll count her," said Fleming. "Name?"

Tim Mansell consulted his copy of the passenger-list. "The old boy must be Simms," he announced. "I remember the office putting in a slip about him. All meals in his cabin. ... Yes, here he is. 'George M. Simms,' " he read out. "Bracketed with Miss F. Bartlett, Registered Nurse."

"Nurses know everything," said Fleming, with authority.

"I wonder what F. stands for," said Beresford.

"Didn't your mother tell you?"

The nurse and the wheel-chair and the old man disappeared from view below them. Next up the gangway was a man and a woman, engaged in brisk argument with a horrible-looking youth of about fifteen. He wore a white cowboy hat and ornamental spurred boots, and he carried a leather switch with which he lashed rhythmically at the gangway-stanchions.

The voices came up to them clearly.

"Quit horsing around with that thing!" commanded the man. "You'll hurt somebody."

"Wish I could," said the youth. He looked up at the tall, towering side of the Alcestis. "Gee, what a crummy outfit! Why we sailing in a British ship, for Chris-sakes?"

"Because we are, that's all," said the woman.

"Bunch of nose-bleeds," said the youth. "Pip, pip, old fruit. . . . Hah d'yew dew? . . . Oh, veddy well indeed!"

The woman, who was small and muscular, gave him a powerful shove from behind. "Move on, can't you? You're blocking the doorway."

"Aw, crap, Ma!" muttered the youth.

The woman gave him a second, more vindictive push. "How many times have I told you?" she shrilled, with violent emphasis. "Don't call me Ma!"

Tim Mansell consulted his passenger-list again. "Master Barry Greenfield," he reported after a moment. "The only child on board."

"That's a child?" asked Fleming.

"There'll be trouble with that one," said Beresford.

"It'll be a pleasure."

"All right for engineers," said Tim Mansell. "We have to keep the little stinker happy."

"Get him a horse."

"One that bites."

Now there was a disturbance at the bottom of the gangway; a tall blonde woman, forty-ish, brilliantly dressed in cream and red, had embarked upon a scene of classic proportions. It seemed to concern a ticket or a pass; whatever piece of paper the dock-policeman wished to see was not available or had been lost. As the woman waved her arms, heavy gold bracelets caught the wan sunlight; as she argued, rocking slightly on her heels, snatches of invective reached them, ripping through the air like poisoned darts. When the phrase, "I'll tell you one thing—this God-damned hooker won't sail without me!" reached their ears, the bustling figure of First Officer Tiptree-Jones appeared, hastening down the gangway to the rescue.

"Don't look now," said Blantyre, the Third Officer, who had so far been watching in silence, "but this one's drunk."

"I know her," said Tim Mansell suddenly. "That's Mrs. van Dooren. I've seen her photo in the papers."

"Doing what?"

"Drinking, mostly."

Presently the scene resolved itself. Tiptree-Jones remained behind to appease the policeman, who was sulkily fingering his revolver; Mrs. van Dooren, with an air of triumph, negotiated the modest slope of the gangway as if she were conquering Everest, and stumbled out of their line of sight. To the very last moment, she continued to argue with thin air, and her load of jewellery, storm-tossed, sent out recurrent call-signs.

"Tight as a tick," said Blantyre appreciatively. "Sort of starved-looking, too. She'll be selling tickets for it, by the time we get to

Bermuda." "Not a bad looker, all the same," put in Tim Mansell. "We count her?"

"Too old," said Beresford.

"Too rich," said Fleming.

"Too tight," said Blantyre.

"We count her," said Tim Mansell, and pencilled a note on his passenger-list. "You've made her sound ideal."

There was a pause now, while Mrs. van Dooren's voice faded out, and peace was restored. First Officer Tiptree-Jones made his way up the gangway again, forcing his watching juniors to withdraw from view behind the nearest boat; when next they were able to look down, a small dark woman in a magnificent mink coat was half-way up the slope.

"Ah!" said Blantyre. "Mrs. Consolini. The merriest widow of them all. . . . Stand by to repel boarders!"

"Always nice to see an old friend," said Fleming.

"She's not our old friend," said Tim Mansell. "She's the skipper's old friend."

"Do you really think so?"

"He was fighting her off with a fire-axe, all last trip."

"Why fight?" asked Beresford, world-weary. "Sit back and enjoy it."

"He's a funny old sod," said Mansell. "He wouldn't enjoy it."

"Talking of old friends," interrupted Fleming, who was long-sighted, "here comes Bernice."

"Oh, God!"

They all watched, with no great enthusiasm to be nearest the rail, as the Beddington family made their way along the dock and approached the gangway. The parents were small, quietly dressed, unobtrusive; the daughter, a full head taller, plodded in their wake like a laden scow. She was a big girl, but that was about all one could say for her; for the rest, the pasty moonlike face, the beefy legs, the gleaming spectacles, needed only a single caption: "Miss X., before attending our Charm School."

"Well, thank God it's not my turn," said Fleming, with satisfaction. "I had it last time."

"You had it?" asked Beresford, astounded.

"Be your age," said Fleming austerely. "I was stuck with the privilege of leaving no stone unturned to see that Bernice Beddington enjoyed the voyage. Never again. Someone else can get that medal."

The family drew nearer; while the parents attracted no special attention, Bernice Beddington seemed to loom into view like a mournful lighthouse, warning them all never to go to sea. With one accord they edged back from the rail, as if fearful of coming within the beam of that foreboding gaze; so that the girl, mounting the gangway at a heavy shambling walk, was met by the odd sight of four disembodied naval caps poised above the edge of a lifeboat. It could have been something which, with variations, she had seen many times before, for she gave no sign as she passed into the entrance-foyer below.

"What a huge girl!" said Beresford. It was his first cruise in the Alcestis, and he had not yet encountered the Beddingtons. "I'd hate to go ten rounds with her."

"I'd hate to go one of anything with her," said Fleming. "I tell you, that girls dances like a ton of steak-and-kidney pudding."

"But lots of money," said Blantyre. "Old man Beddington makes hearing aids."

"The news falls on deaf ears."

"You'd think that someone would marry her."

"There are times when you can't give it away."

Tim Mansell fingered his passenger-list, and then looked along the quay towards the customs sheds.

"I hope that isn't all," he said anxiously. "We really must do better than this."

Captain Harmer paused before knocking at the door of the Princess Suite, and listened to the sounds of his ship. They were not sea-going sounds, the best sounds in the world, but they were at least the noises of departure, and these—even if it was only departure on a cruise— were still heartening to a sailor who loathed the land. There was the usual internal hum of any ship—the dynamos, the forced-draught ventilation. There was the scurry of baggage-porters with trolleys of luggage, stewardesses with flowers, stewards with telegrams; there were people wandering up and down the corridors, greeting their friends, comparing their cabins with others. There were early good-byes being said, and the sound of an orchestra, two decks above, playing selections from H.M.S. Pinafore. There was above all the smell of a ship—salty, painty, exciting; the warm smell of boilers, the warm whiff of oil.

No matter how many times it happened, thought the Captain as he raised his hand to knock on the cabin door, sailing time was the best moment in all the world.

The voice which called "Come in!" was forceful, and the man who turned towards him as he entered was forceful also. At a swift glance, Tillotson was almost a caricature of American power and prosperity. He was small and compact; the wiry grey hair was crew-cut, the jaw Prominent, the blue eyes direct and level. Any whisky advertiser would have been glad to feature him (head and shoulders) as a Man of Distinction. At the moment he was holding a tiny microphone in his hand, and dictating into a small portable tape-recorder. He finished a sentence—"I do not agree, and therefore do not choose to proceed with it" were the final words—before he stood up and gave attention to his visitor. But then, as he glanced down at the four rings on the Captain's sleeve, his expression altered on the instant, from one of preoccupied arrogance to a hearty good-fellowship, and he held out his hand with a smile.

"Afternoon, Captain."

"Good afternoon, Mr. Tillotson," said Harmer, shaking hands. "I just looked in to see if you were comfortable."

"Very good of you. I appreciate that." Tillotson turned, and raised his voice slightly. "Honey! Here's the Captain come to see us."

"Well, isn't that nice?" came an answering voice from the adjoining cabin, and within a few seconds Mrs. Tillotson appeared. She was as the Captain had imagined her; the wife of a very rich man who had not been rich, thirty years earlier. She might have been pretty in those early days; now, in middle-age, Mrs. Tillotson was simply a work of art—the conformist art of the cosmetician, the hairdresser, the masseur, the makers of perfume and foundation-garments and shoes and jewellery. She was small, plain, undeniably plump; she gave the impression of being held together—by her clothes, by her tight blue-grey curls, by dollar bills. But she was simple and pleasant at the same time, and the Captain warmed to her as she came forward, with a rather shy smile, and said:

"Well, isn't this the nicest thing... ."

"Just looked in to see if you were comfortable," said the Captain again, on a more gallant note. He waved his hand round the panelled magnificence of the Princess Suite. "I hope you like your quarters."

Mrs. Tillotson nodded vigorously. "It's the most elegant thing I've seen in years! Those chair-covers are just a dream! And the bathroom!" She giggled, eyeing the Captain uncertainly. "You can tell I'm just a home-maker. . . . We always heard the Alcestis was wonderful. But my goodness!"

"She's a fine ship, Captain," said Tillotson, plainly impressed.

There was an agreeable deference in both their voices which Harmer, though he had heard it countless times before, always reacted to. Ashore, Tillotson could probably buy the Alcestis five times over, just by initialling a contract, while he himself was a poor man who would never have got past the chairs in the outer office of Steel & Tool, Incorporated. But once on board, the roles were reversed; passengers were only people, but the Captain was the Captain, and Tillotson was a big enough man, and a simple enough man, to recognize the fact.

Harmer, on an impulse, said: "I've arranged for you to sit at my table, if you'd like that."

"We'd be honoured, Captain," said Mrs. Tillotson, and her husband nodded.

"Excellent," said Harmer, and turned towards the door again. "Well, I can see you're busy," he said to Tillotson. "And even I have one or two things to see to." It was a mild joke he had used innumerable times before, and it was answered according to the usual pattern.

"Well, I should just think so," said Mrs. Tillotson, with a laugh.

"You go right ahead," said Tillotson heartily. "You must have a whole raft of things to do. . . . Thanks again for visiting with us."

"We'll meet later, then," said the Captain. It was a good moment to trot out another hallowed joke. "But if I'm not down to dinner, don't worry. Someone's got to point the ship in the right direction. And to begin with, it has to be me."

Their appreciative laughter followed him as he closed the cabin door. So far, so good. . . . He had liked the Tillotsons on sight, and he was glad that they had been given the best suite in the ship.

He was even more glad a few moments later, when he made himself known to Sir Hubert and Lady Beckwith in Suite A6 next door. This time it was a woman's voice, harsh and irritable, which answered his knock; and the fact told him half the story, just as the first few moments with this infinitely sordid couple told him the rest. Part of his sudden liking for the Tillotsons had sprung, he realized, from the fact that, though inordinately rich, they had been impressed by their surroundings, and deferential to him as the Captain; now he had the feeling that if both the Beckwiths had fallen on their knees as he entered, he would still have found them intolerable.

Lady Beckwith was a grim-looking woman with the kind of ravaged face sometimes to be glimpsed over other people's shoulders at nightclubs. If she had been beautiful when young, no trace of it now remained; her expression alone—supercilious, selfish, almost vindictive in its air of settled boredom—must long ago have destroyed all elements of grace. She was clearly very rich; everything about her—the wonderful chinchilla stole, the open jewel-cases spread on the table, the masses of flowers that filled one entire wall of the cabin—proclaimed an almost frantic opulence. But her manner proclaimed, with equal clarity, something else: that the opulence was all hers, and hers alone. A single glance at her husband confirmed the fact abundantly.

Sir Hubert was a type, an English type; the Captain recognized it, and him, with an immediate sinking dislike. He was tall, grey-haired, beautifully tailored; he had an ex-Army air, a touch of polo, a whiff of India before the coolies took over. At a first glance, he seemed to have everything: monogrammed shirt (he was for the moment coatless), boned shoes, heavy gold cuff-links, a platinum watch-chain, an elegant topaz signet-ring. But then suddenly, at a closer look, he had nothing, nothing at all. A few seconds' inspection made it blindingly clear that he was a dependant, a creature of another's whim; as clear as if everything he wore had been shamefully labelled "hers". He had been rented, hired at the price of the things he wore, the money he jingled.

The facts were implicit in his manner; the suave grooming was synthetic, the coolness was plainly faked. All he really had left was an expression of public disdain. It was as if, having ceased to fool other people, he was now concentrating, with forlorn desperation, upon himself.

Captain Harmer recalled Jack Barrett's words—"He was broke; she bought him, and the title"—but he would have known the truth anyway. Sir Hubert proclaimed his status in a dozen ways; his wife proclaimed hers in one—the look she now gave the Captain as he stood in the doorway, and she snapped out, with consuming impatience:

"What is it?"

He was not going to take that, the Captain decided instantly; not from this haggard bitch, not from anyone. He came forward a couple of steps, so that they could see his uniform beyond a doubt, and said simply:

"Good afternoon."

Sir Hubert Beckwith muttered: "Afternoon," in an off-hand way, jerking his shoulders irritably as he said it. If his wife were annoyed at the interruption, then he had to be annoyed too. . .. Lady Beckwith continued to stare at her visitor as if he were a steward who had come in not only without knocking, but with a lot of his buttons undone as well. Then something in his manner, unimpressed, entirely unmoving, broke through to her; and with a flicker of a glacial smile, a second's fractional unbending, she said:

"I guess you must be the Captain."

Harmer nodded, somewhat bleakly. "Yes."

"I'm Lady Beckwith."

Her accent was curious; a basic American, overlaid with the kind of phoney gentility affected by the more refined type of English streetwalker. For a moment Captain Harmer had a wild idea that she might be a tremendously bad American actress impersonating one of the English upper classes. Then he took a second look at the chinchilla stole, and he knew that, for good or ill, Lady Beckwith was real. He said: "I know."

Lady Beckwith frowned. Clearly he had failed her; he had not fainted dead away, he had not even bowed deeply from the waist. As at many other moments of frustration, Harmer guessed, she spoke brusquely over her shoulder to her husband:

"Cigarette, Hubert!"

Sir Hubert's hand went swiftly to his trouser pocket, following, for the millionth time, his private drill-manual. Click! went the gold cigarette-case as it was opened: snap! went the gold lighter as he leant over to proffer the flame: pouf! went the elegant expulsion of breath as he extinguished it. With a curt nod, and through a cloud of blown smoke, Lady Beckwith said:

"Is it about the suite?"

"What suite is that, Lady Beckwith?" Harmer felt he could relax now; the only point of status which he wished to make had been made. "As a matter of fact, I just looked in to see if you were comfortable."

"I told them at the head office, I wanted the something Suite—" she snapped her fingers at her husband, "—what's that damn'-fool name?"

"Princess," said Sir Hubert readily.

"The Princess Suite. Isn't that supposed to be the best one in the ship?"

"It's certainly very comfortable indeed," answered the Captain reasonably. He gestured round the plush splendour of Suite A6, which was panelled in rosewood and carpeted in a soft shade of pink. "But don't you like this one?"

"That's not quite the point, is it, old boy?" said Sir Hubert, with extreme hauteur.

"Hubert!" said his wife sharply. And then: "I asked for the Princess Suite. What happened to it?"

"It was allocated to someone else."

"Who?"

"Mr. and Mrs. Tillotson."

"Never heard of them. Who are they?"

Captain Harmer looked at her. It was not his job to snap at the customers—the reverse, in fact—but sometimes the temptation was overwhelming.

"The Tillotsons are an American couple," he answered coldly. 'They also asked for the Princess Suite. Probably their application went in earlier, so they got it. First come, first served, you know." He decided, with regret, that he was doing less than justice to Myth Lines and the Alcestis. "I'm sure you'll be comfortable here," he went on. "We chose it specially for you. The Princess Suite and this one are almost identical."

"What does 'almost' mean?" asked Lady Beckwith tartly.

"You can hardly tell them apart."

"But is the other one any better?"

"It is six feet wider," answered the Captain, with sarcastic, painstaking accuracy. "It has an extra armchair. It has a fixed bar instead of a side-table. It costs four hundred dollars more. And it has a name instead of a number."

"Ah!" said Sir Hubert, as if the Captain had at last confessed his crime. "That's rather the point, what?"

"I don't quite understand," said Harmer politely.

"Hubert!" said Lady Beckwith. "Go fetch my manicure set. It's in the alligator case, someplace. And for the love of God put your coat on!"

"Yes, my sweet," said Sir Hubert, and disappeared into the cabin next door.

Lady Beckwith expelled another cloud of smoke, and looked levelly at the Captain. The light caught the jewels at her throat, and less flatteringly, the etched lines from nostrils to mouth, the collapse of pleasure into discontent.

"Not such a hell of a good start," she observed, disagreeably.

"How do you mean?"

"I'm paying top prices," said Lady Beckwith. "I expect to be looked after properly. Your ads certainly talk enough about it. . . . Now I find that the best suite, the only one I wanted, has been given to God-knows-who from Kokomo. What sort of deal is that?"

"Lady Beckwith," said the Captain firmly, "you really cannot expect me to turn people out of the accommodation assigned to them, just because you want it yourself."

Lady Beckwith looked at him as if this were just what she did expect. But the firmness of his tone forbade her to make the point; she knew she would have lost, and that would have been intolerable.

"Well, I hope they appreciate it," she said unpleasantly. "Though it doesn't exactly sound—"

Her husband appeared at the communicating door. "Sweetheart," he began hesitantly.

"What is it?"

"I can't find it."

"Look again. Get the stewardess. And I want my fur coat, too. This place is like a morgue."

"Yes, my darling."

"Well," said Captain Harmer, "I must get back to work." It would have been bliss to add: And thank God I'm not working for you, like that poor chewed-up piece of string. But there were certain luxuries which a ship's captain could not afford, and this was one of them.

Lady Beckwith suddenly came to the alert.

"Thanks for calling, Captain," she said unexpectedly.

"Not at all," said Harmer.

"We'll be seeing you at dinner," said Lady Beckwith, with unblinking confidence.

It would have been further bliss, a whole mountain of it, to have answered:Yes—I'll wave to you across the dining-saloon. But once again, it had to be foregone. Jack Barrett was right: Sir Hubert and Lady Beckwith, by virtue of their rank, had to be seated at his table, even if they appeared in rags and ate with their feet. It was unfair, it was disgusting; but it was a fixed item in that adroit social blandishment which (it must be faced) kept the Alcestis afloat. Rich people had to be flattered; people with titles had to be appeased. The end-result was a full passenger-list at the highest prices in the world: dollars for Britain, dividends for stock-holders, material joy at an official level. If it meant excruciating headaches for captains at the same time, that was what they were paid for.

He said: "I'll look forward to that," and turned towards the door. As he opened it he heard Sir Hubert's voice, plaintive yet appeasing, saying: "Are you sure you packed it, old girl?" and as it closed behind him he caught the beginnings of an answering snarl. The Beckwiths were en famille once more.

Alone in the corridor, Captain Harmer drew a long breath, conscious of relief and of a vague discomfort at the same time. There were not many passengers like the Beckwiths, thank goodness; but they could too easily make their destructive mark, they could poison a whole cruise if they were not closely watched. There was a choice of two things to be done with people like that; they could be disciplined, or they could be flattered and appeased. The latter was preferred company policy; he, and every man under him, had to lean over backwards to avoid a clash—even the negative clash of criticism—and to satisfy any whim which did not inconvenience other passengers. It was like the company policy on love, he reflected. It had to be accepted that people slept with other people; sometimes they came on board with nothing else in mind; it was a fact of life, and therefore a fact which had to be catered for. In so far as he set any rules, they could be summed up as no open scandals, and no screams in the night. Apart from that, the passengers were free to tear each other to ecstatic ribbons. At sea, love did no damage, and it was generally held to be good for the bar trade.

He began to walk forward slowly along the corridor, making for his cabin again. Stewards stood aside formally as he progressed; stewardesses smiled at him; passengers stared in his direction and sometimes whispered. At the corner of the main foyer, a mink-coated figure detached herself from a group of other people, and waylaid him with a firm determination. It was Mrs. Consolini.

She was a good-looking woman; she seemed to admire him tremendously; it was her third cruise. The three facts knitted together into a pattern which the Captain had found distinctly trying in the past. He did not want Mrs. Consolini; he did not want anybody except his wife. But it had proved difficult to make the fact plain, and still retain feminine good-will during a close-quarters voyage of eighty-four days.

She was looking at him now with those magnificent brown eyes, her face mysteriously alight. His heart sank as he saw it. It was clear that Mrs. Consolini was already coming up for the third round, fighting fit and as fresh as ever, her footwork unimpaired.

But he had a job to do, and this was part of it.

"Why, Mrs. Consolini!" he exclaimed. "How very nice to see you again!"

She smiled at him as if they shared a secret, standing almost touching him.

"How could I possibly miss the Alcestis?" She had a pretty voice, an Italian lilt to her speech; not for nothing did his officers (as he knew) call her the Merry Widow. "I've been looking forward to nothing else, the whole of this awful winter."

"That's very flattering indeed." He saw that other passengers, and some of his crew, were looking at them, and he fell back a pace, seeking to disengage. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed Tiptree-Jones standing at the head of the gangway, and he lifted his hand. The First Officer hurried over.

"Please excuse me," said the Captain to Mrs. Consolini, and half-turned aside. Foolishly, he could think of nothing of any consequence to say to Tiptree-Jones, and he was reduced to asking:

"Everything all right?"

"Yes, sir," answered Tiptree-Jones, faintly puzzled.

"You remember Mrs. Consolini?"

'Oh yes!" Tiptree-Jones smiled his best smile directly at her. "We've said hallo already."

"Well . . ." Captain Harmer shifted from one foot to the other. This was the only sort of situation which ever embarrassed him. Women, he thought irritably; they ought to be locked up, every last one of them, and the key thrown over the side.. ..

Annoyingly, it was Mrs. Consolini herself who rescued him.

"I'm sure you're busy, Captain," she said, with an understanding air which was somehow a public demonstration of their intimacy. "Don't let me keep you now. We'll be seeing lots of each other, won't we?"

"I certainly hope so," answered the Captain, and smiled before he turned away. As he moved off, he thought: Now why in God's name did I have to say that? But at least he was temporarily freed.

He began to climb the companionway leading to the promenade deck. Then, at the head of the stairs, he paused, attracted by loud voices—or rather, by one loud voice and one soft one. When he came level with the next deck, he saw that the loud voice belonged to Mrs. van Dooren, whom he had recognized earlier. The soft answers, as usual, were being supplied by Edgar, the head-barman of the Alcestis.

Edgar, like all head-barmen, was a character; and, by unspoken protocol, he was allowed to be. It was Edgar whom people chiefly remembered, after a voyage in the Alcestis: "Give my best to Edgar" was the standard message, from any former passenger to any prospective one. He was fat, he was cheerful, he was a wonderful listener; and he had that fantastic, flattering memory which persuaded each customer that he was Edgar's personal favourite. If a man ordered a pink gin with eight drops—no more, no less—of Angostura, then he was given eight drops the next time; if he liked a touch of Pernod in his martini, the same touch of Pernod greeted him the following lunch-time. It was a professional trick, of course; but it paid off every time. The amount that Edgar made in tips each voyage was more than four times his basic salary.

He was other things besides a highly talented head-barman; some of them were legitimate, from the Captain's point of view, others were marginal. Edgar ran things. He ran the daily sweepstake on the ship's run during the preceding twenty-four hours. He held large, under-cover raffles for cases of whisky and bolts of Chinese silk. He introduced people who wanted to play cards, people who wanted to dance with the pretty girl entrenched behind her family at Table 8. He fixed things. He took messages. He sold Irish Sweep tickets. At every port of call, from Liverpool to Montreal, from New York to Barbados, from Cape Town to Teneriffe, he could be ready with fool-proof introductions: to shops that sold suspect jewellery, to gambling clubs, to chiefs of police, to people's sisters.

He presided, like a jovial fat spider, over the core of the Alcestis— the Tapestry Bar. He had six men working under him, smart as paint, willing as ponies; but none of them stirred a finger without a nod from Edgar. Of course, he had too much power, too much influence, too much squeeze. But he was a prodigious asset to the ship; and the Captain, recognizing him for what he was—a rare man in a rare job— gave him free play to an extent allowed to no one else on board.

Just now, the Captain observed, Edgar was standing at the doorway of the Tapestry Bar, engaged in a standard routine—refusing a passenger a drink. In his best social manner, he was dealing with Mrs. van Dooren, a formidable if handicapped opponent. Mrs. van Dooren wanted a rye and water: not outside the three-mile-limit, which was legal; not as soon as they sailed, which was practically legal; but then and there—illegal.

"What's the matter with this hooker, anyway?" demanded Mrs. van Dooren discontentedly. "You mean I can't get a drink!"

"It's regulations, madam," said Edgar, with smooth insistence. "If it was just myself, I'd start pouring for you now. But it's the customs."

"The customs!" Mrs. van Dooren's voice was suddenly strident with indignation. "You know what?—they tried to stop me coming on board!"

"I can hardly believe that, madam."

"They said I hadn't paid my income-tax."

"I'm sure you have, madam."

"Well, I haven't. It's deducted at source by my ex-husband." She swayed slightly, and Edgar put out a practised hand to steady her. "That's what threw them, the sons of bitches! Deducted at source."

"It must be very convenient, madam."

"What's your name, George?"

"Edgar, madam."

"How about that rye and water, Ed? Just a little one. Who's to know the difference?"

Across the twenty yards of space between them, Edgar caught the Captain's eye. But even if he had not done so, the Captain knew that Edgar would not have transgressed this particular rule. There were rules that could be broken, rules that could be bent, rules that were rules. Customs regulations about liquor in bond were the latter.

"You don't want me to lose my job, madam, do you?' he asked persuasively.

"I just want a rye and water, that's all," said Mrs. van Dooren, and collapsed into the chair nearest the doorway.

Edgar arranged the cushions round her shoulders, and then stood back, a benign, understanding presence.

"It won't be long now, madam," he assured her. "It really won't be long."

Indeed, it would not be long. Blue Peter, the sailing flag, had gone to the yard-arm; the first gongs for "All ashore" were now sounding faintly along the lower reaches of B deck; a few premature paper streamers already stretched from ship to shore. But a fair number of passengers were still arriving—life at the Alcestis level did not breed habits of punctuality; and among the slow-moving voyagers, a single weaving figure, a small furtive man in a hurry, could be momentarily glimpsed. Sighted by a deck-hand in the stern, pointed out to other shipmates, greeted by cat-calls from cheerful men in chefs' hats poking their heads out of portholes—Barkway the missing steward made his embarrassed way on board. The Master-at-Arms touched him briefly on the shoulder as he disappeared from sight.

Up on the boat-deck, the group of young officers were still maintaining their watch for "talent", though with increasing despondency. A single solitary girl had been added to Tim Mansell's quota; they had not been able to identify her from the passenger-list, but she was at least slim, moderately good-looking, and under thirty years of age. Now, with the flow of newcomers easing off, depression had set in; it seemed likely to be one of those voyages which made Jack a dull boy. Beresford, the young apprentice, voiced it for all of them when he observed dejectedly:

"I don't know about you, but I feel like missing this trip altogether."

"Romance!" intoned Blantyre, sardonically. "Glamour. Sundrenched days. Never-to-be-forgotten nights. Once-in-a-lifetime thrills. Boloney!"

"I wonder who writes those ads," said Tim Mansell.

"Some bloody liar!"

"He should try dancing with Bernice Beddington."

The long-sighted Fleming, scanning the length of the quay, suddenly exclaimed: "Wow!"

"What is it?" asked Blantyre.

"Dawn is breaking," said Fleming. "Just look at those two girls!"

They watched with interest, and then with goggle-eyed concentration, as Carl Wenstrom's party of five approached the foot of the gangway. The three men they scarcely saw, though the Professor, his white hair topping a magnificent old-fashioned travelling ulster, was an arresting figure. But it was the girls who claimed the attention, and held it irresistibly. Diane Loring, quietly dressed in grey, still failed to disguise her air of sensual readiness; the pretty pale face was composed, but the walk was a mobile invitation, the figure a challenge to every male within range. Beside her, Kathy looked remarkably lovely; her blonde hair shone brilliantly against the drab dockside, her face was a grave oval, delighting the eye, promising infinite pleasures. Work seemed to stop, enraptured silence seemed to fall, as she first smiled at the dock policeman, and then set foot on the gangway, leading them all on board.

When she was half-way up, and Diane a few paces behind her, she chanced to raise her eyes to the level of the boat-deck. The four young men gazing down at her were almost ludicrous in their combined air of admiration, their hungry unanimity. Kathy was used to such glances, from almost every man she encountered; but the quartet above her, united in their longing, suspended in space like love in aspic, were suddenly disconcerting. Carl had coached them all towards making a delayed, eye-catching entrance; but this was almost too successful. . . . Her chin rose a fraction; she caught Tim Mansell's glance, and held it coolly for a moment, before passing out of sight.

"Gee!" said Tim Mansell, almost whispering. "What a girl!"

"Both of them."

"Probably come to see their father off, or something," said Fleming, pessimistically.

"I couldn't bear that," said Tim Mansell. "Gee!"

A formidable voice behind them said: "Well, gentlemen?"

They turned as one body, though they did not need to do so in order to recognize the voice. It was the Captain, surveying them from a distance of a few feet, his expression bleak.

"If you have nothing to do," he said after a moment's awkward silence, "you ought to have more sense than to advertise the fact in public."

Blantyre, the senior of the four, summoned his courage. "We were just checking up, sir."

"I know damned well you were just checking up!" said the Captain, on a note of the sternest discipline. Then his face relaxed suddenly and he smiled, the sort of smile which, on its rare appearance, could make a simple hero-worshipper out of any man on board. He looked directly at Tim Mansell, still holding the passenger-list. "How many, Fourth?"

"Sir?" said Tim, abashed.

"You heard me. How many?"

"Four, sir."

"Five, if we stretched it a bit," said Fleming, who sometimes took chances with the Captain's humour.

"We must be slipping," said the Captain. "Alcestis ought to do better than that."

Tim Mansell grinned, still rapt in his private joy. "But sir—one's an absolute knock-out!"

The tugs nosed up and took their lines, and then waited, while the last gong sounded, the last visitors walked ashore, the last gangway was hoisted and swung out-board. The orchestra played "Auld Lang Syne", and then "A Life on the Ocean Wave"; the coloured paper streamers, doled out by busy stewards, bound the ship tenuously to the land in a last brief contact. Up on the bridge, the pilot cocked an eye at the wind-indicator, and put his whistle to his lips; a plume of steam came from the huge siren, and then a shattering, deep-toned roar as the Alcestis made her farewell salute to New York. At the pilot's side, the Captain hunched his shoulders deeper into his greatcoat, conscious of satisfaction, conscious of the weight of command, and of the nervousness which not a thousand sailings could ever cure.

Up on the fo'c'sle-head, in the very eyes of the ship, First Officer Tiptree-Jones stood staring at the bridge, waiting for the signal to cast off; far aft, out of sight, Tim Mansell pressed the telephone closer to his ear, awaiting the same order. The pilot, a small noncommittal man in a shabby peaked cap, glanced sideways at the Captain.

"O.K.?"

Captain Harmer nodded. "Go ahead." And then, to the quartermaster at the telegraphs: "Stand by engines!"

Outside the Tapestry Bar, two decks below, Mrs. van Dooren stirred in her chair, looked out of the nearest big porthole, and sat up with a start.

"We're afloat!" she said.

"I certainly hope so, madam," said Edgar.

"I mean, we've started."

Edgar glanced down at the receding dock wall. "That is so, madam."

Mrs. van Dooren levered herself upright. "How about it, then?"

"Rye and water, madam," said Edgar promptly, and advanced a loaded tray. As she took the glass, he continued: "Can I interest you in the first sweepstake ticket on the day's run?"

"Sure," said Mrs. van Dooren readily, between gulps. "How much?"

"One hundred dollars, madam. We divide it up into pools of ten people each. The prize is nine hundred dollars."

"Nine hundred?"

"We always deduct ten per cent, madam," answered Edgar, with Practised smoothness. "Ship's charities."

3

Passing the Statue of Liberty, the passengers flocked to the rail, cameras clicking and whirring like castanets, like crazy clocks. They even left the haven of the Tapestry Bar, where Edgar was now doing a roaring trade in late lunch-time liqueurs, early cocktails, and the first harvest of his endless series of sweepstakes. To Mrs. van Dooren, who did not leave her station at the brass rail, Edgar remarked:

"They say it's built on top of a prison."

"What's that, George?" asked Mrs. van Dooren.

"The Statue of Liberty. There used to be a prison underneath it, in the old days."

"So?" said Mrs. van Dooren, rather belligerently.

"Nothing really, madam. It's just an interesting fact. Sort of symbolic."

"Are you a radical?" asked Mrs. van Dooren.

"Far from it, madam."

An inwardly brooding man, sitting a few feet away down the bar, said: "There's an elevator going up inside the arm, too. Sensational!"

"Facts, facts," said Mrs. van Dooren.

Above their heads, the siren suddenly sounded, in a series of ear-splitting blasts which rattled every glass in the bar.

"Who in God's name is sounding off now?" asked Mrs. van Dooren peevishly.

"Boat drill, madam," answered Edgar. "You may have seen a notice about it in your cabin. Passengers are asked to assemble on the boat-deck."

"Boloney."

"Do you know your station, madam?"

"White Plains," said Mrs. van Dooren.

The brooding man got down from his stool. "Well, I guess we ought to obey orders," he remarked uncertainly. "Like they say, noblesse oblige."

"The Captain doesn't actually insist on it," said Edgar, in a confidential undertone. "He knows he can rely on all of you in an emergency."

"I buy that," said the man. "Integrity." He walked unsteadily towards the door.

"Integrity?" queried Mrs. van Dooren, astonished.

"That's Mr. Zucco," Edgar informed her. "He's in the film business. Hollywood."

"Gee whiz!" Mrs. van Dooren looked at Edgar with sudden, owlish concentration. "Has this ship ever been sunk?"

"No, madam."

"Just keep that up! And give me a rye and water."

Boat drill was indeed a somewhat sketchy affair, a sort of marine get-together with very slight overtones of crisis and actuality. It was true that Captain Harmer never insisted on a hundred-per-cent turn-out; he had long ago realized that many of his passengers resented it, that they considered themselves either too comfortable to be disturbed or too rich to drown. His officers went through the motions of mustering their crews and checking their allotted passengers; at least one of them—Tim Mansell—was delighted to find that he had drawn a winner, the beautiful blonde girl, together with her stepfather. (A lightning check at the Purser's office had established this relationship, and their names as well.) He did not speak to Kathy; she seemed aloof, unapproachable, staring about her at the unfamiliar scene as if it were something she did not choose to be involved in.

The truth was that she was cold, and also somewhat nervous. Everything so far—the size and luxury of the ship, the number of passengers, their air of sureness and consequence—had conspired to make her feel that they had taken on something too big, too complicated, too dangerous. They would hardly be able to make a dent in this quality of armour. . . . But when she mentioned this to Carl, after the drill was over and they were back in their day cabin, he scoffed at the idea.

"Nonsense, my darling!" He was sitting back in a comfortable armchair, leafing through the wine-list which was part of the ship's "directory". "In a week we'll be running this ship—or as much of it as we want to. You're going to be a tremendous success, Kathy— I can see it already."

"What makes you think that?"

"The way people look at you." He put out his hand to touch her shoulder. "You really are extremely decorative, you know."

She shrugged slightly, unconvinced, irritated. "But that's nothing, Carl, that's just the beginning of it. This is all so—" she frowned, "—so organized. As if they could deal with anything, including us."

"They've never had people like us," answered Carl decisively. "That I can guarantee."

"I wonder. I still get the impression that nothing is new around here. They've seen it all before. They've got answers to everything."

"Not to us," he said again.

The cabin door lifted suddenly, a slight rocking movement, and a patter of spray sounded against the plating outside. There was a knock at the door, and their steward, a small, rather harassed man, entered.

"Barkway, sir," he said to Carl. "Just checking the portholes."

"Please go ahead," said Carl.

Barkway crossed the cabin and started to put a few extra turns on the fastenings of the main porthole, which was already closed.

"Is it going to be rough?" Carl asked.

Barkway, turning, shook his head, summoning a weak grin. "Oh 110, sir. We wouldn't do that to you. It's just a little lift. We're outside now."

"Does she roll much?"

"No, sir. The Captain takes care of that."

Kathy laughed. "Now how can he do that?"

"Captain Harmer takes care of everything, miss," answered Barkway, a trifle dispiritedly, and withdrew.

He spoke with feeling; the Captain had already found time to have him brought up, logged, scathingly rebuked, officially reprimanded, and fined to the limit that the regulations allowed. Barkway, who would have had a hangover anyway, was already sick of the sea.

Mr. Cutler, the Purser, sat in his small cubbyhole of an office, just off the "entrance foyer" of the Alcestis, and waited for the first complaint. He knew exactly what that complaint would be about; he knew the extent to which it was justified; he knew what his answer would be. It was the duty of the best pursers never to be surprised, and Mr. Cutler, Senior Purser of Myth Lines, was one of the very best. He was a very small, very sharp, very grey man of fifty; he was known to anyone who had anything to do with big liners, the world over, as "Foxy" Cutler, but the nickname was admiring and affectionate, never derogatory. For Foxy Cutler knew it all—that was a matter of common agreement; the pointed, questing look had, over the years, ferreted out all conceivable answers.

He knew, down to the last packet of pins, how to run the inside of a ship; how to see that people—any number of people between one and one thousand—were bedded down, woken up, fed, amused, financed, mollified, kept happy, and unobtrusively disciplined.

He could tell a bouncing cheque before it hit his desk for the first time. He knew the kind of cosseting which made honeymoon couples happier still in their entrancement. He knew about stewards—all about all of them, from the good eager youngsters to the snivelling old drunks. Looking at any pair of passengers, he could smell out benefit of clergy, or the lack of it, and tell whether it really mattered or not. He knew the exact extent of Edgar the head-barman's various rackets, and at what point they stopped being good for the Alcestis, and were simply good for Edgar. He had his own rackets, naturally; they were monumental in some cases, modest in others; they were reflected in his No. 2 bank-account ashore, which was a remarkable monument in itself. He had always remained a bachelor—"the purser is married to the ship" was his explanatory comment upon this but the truth was far different. The simple fact was that he knew how to do too many things too perfectly. Mr. Cutler, the all-competent housekeeper, organizer, banker, and disciplinarian, would have driven any woman round the bend in six weeks.

In ships of the size and complexity of the Alcestis, there were sometimes feuds between the purser's side of the ship—the organizational, administrative side—and the seamen up top who worked her. In Foxy Cutler's mind, there was no such feud, and no occasion for it; and he took good care to communicate this to everyone around him. He knew that he could not have done the Captain's job; and the Captain could not have done his. Similarly, a good deck-hand would make a terrible steward, or no steward at all; and the oldish men who ran the elevators with ceremonial courtesy could never change jobs with the oldish men who watched the pressure-gauges, four decks below. But they were all, every last one of them, essential to the Alcestis. That was his personal creed; and an endlessly repeated You do your job, I'll do mine was the phrase which enshrined it. While Mr. Cutler was around, no one traded inter-departmental insults, no one swore that stewards were free-wheeling loafers, or deck-hands the dregs of the Liverpool waterfront; and, on board the Alcestis, they said it very seldom when he was out of hearing, either.

Now, while he waited for that first foreseeable complaint, he tuned his ear to his part of the ship, and was satisfied. He could hear cabin doors being opened and closed—that was the stewards obeying the bridge-order "Secure ports and deadlights". He could hear the restless creak of woodwork, as for the thousandth time the Alcestis faced the open sea. He felt the laboured motion as she shouldered her burden, and heard the wash and drip of spray, and the gentle working of her ribs and joints, and he was glad of all of them.

A slight sea to begin with always had a settling, salutary effect; it made people realize they were in a ship, part of her lading, and no longer sheltered by a run-of-the-mill roof ashore. It made them behave better, and stop whooping it up aimlessly, and drink for comfort instead of hilarity. It took the edge off bad behaviour; it would even do this for the child, young Master Barry Greenfield, whom an hour earlier a steward had observed in two separate misdemeanours—peeping through a keyhole into an adjoining cabin (which was traditionally fruitless, since there were protective flaps on either side), and poking his whip, or whatever it was, into one of the big electric fans in the corridor, which could be dangerous, or expensive, or both. Master Greenfield, with luck, would sooo feel slightly queasy; he would be given two tablets of dramamine, and wake up a better boy. The whip itself might well disappear, sunk (literally) without trace.

Presently Mr. Cutler's phone rang; answering, he said: "Purser's office," and then: "Yes, Mr. Walham." He had known all along that it would be Walham, because Walham was in Cabin B23, and B23 had a kind of primal curse upon it—a steam-joint which, for some reason locked deep in the hearts of the builders, picked up and magnified a rhythmic thudding sound from a valve at least forty feet away. They had tried everything with that steam-joint, and with the valve too; they had repacked them, altered their arc of curve, turned them sideways and then upside down, adjusted the pressure, invented an entirely new type of spring-loaded valve as gentle as a butterfly's kiss; all to no avail. The steam-joint still thudded, steadily and metallically, from one end of a voyage to the other, and B23 was its sounding-board.

Thus Mr. Cutler had known that his first complainant would be Walham; and he knew quite a lot about Walham, too. He was a Chicago industrialist with interests in steel and farm equipment; he was very rich; he would probably be seated at the Captain's table; and though married, he was travelling alone. What Mr. Cutler could not have foreseen about Walham was his voice, a sort of nasal bark like a petulant sergeant-major; and his outlook on life, which came through with alarming clarity in the first few sentences. Mr. Walham was mean; not poor-mean, which was often forgivable, but rich-mean, which was invariably odious.

"There's some damn' pipe or other making a racket, just outside my door," began Walham, as soon as he had announced himself. "I want it stopped."

Mr. Cutler, soothing, courteous, explained as well as he could, from a well-worn rubric, that unfortunately this particular pipe always made that noise, and there was nothing he could do about it.

"Like hell!" said Walham disagreeably. "I don't pay good money for that sort of thing. How do you expect me to get to sleep nights?"

"We have found," said Mr. Cutler patiently, "that people grow used to the noise."

"I don't care aboutpeople." Walham made his point very clearly. "I want you to take care of me. I didn't pay nearly five thousand bucks, just to listen to some damned steam hammer. I can get that sort of racket back home in the boiler factory."

"I'm very sorry—" began Mr. Cutler.

"You'll be sorrier still," barked Walham, "if you don't see this thing my way." "But fortunately," continued Mr. Cutler, controlling himself with a practised hand, "1 can offer you another cabin."

"I should damn' well hope so."

"We happen to have one free. It's a double-cabin. Slightly larger. B14."

There was a silence, suspicious, loaded. Then:

"Same price, though," said Walham. It was a command rather than a query. "You're not going to railroad me into paying—"

"Same price," said Mr. Cutler. Occupation of Cabin B14 did in fact involve an extra two hundred dollars, but there was (as Cutler sometimes phrased it to himself) a time to go fishing and a time to dry the nets. This particular net, if he was any judge at all, was worth two hundred dollars to Myth Lines; it was certainly worth it, in the general interests of harmony on board. "If you would like to make the move, I'll send a message to your cabin-steward."

"Sure I'd like to make the move." Walham did not sound in the least grateful; the grudging, nasal twang was unaltered. I'm getting what I paid for, the tone said unmistakably; you're not doing me any favours. . . . "Can't be too soon for me, with this damned racket going on all the time. And there's another thing. Afternoon tea."

"Afternoon tea?" queried Cutler, surprised.

"Yes, afternoon tea!" There was a rustle of papers over the telephone. "It says here, afternoon tea is served daily in the Olympic Lounge."

"That is so, Mr. Walham."

"I went there at half after four," said Walham deliberately, as if he were giving evidence in some massive crime. "I waited. No tea. I waited a full half-hour. No tea. Then I asked a steward. He had the gall to tell me they weren't serving it today."

"That is so," said Cutler again. "You see—"

"Now what sort of a deal is that?" demanded Walham, his sharp voice rising a full half-octave. "You put out this catalogue, or whatever it is, saying what you're going to give us. Then when the time comes to deliver, we're told it's not available. Like hell it's not available! You make a contract, you've got to stick with it. You can't chop and change, just the way it suits you. If I ran my business like that, would I be in business? No, I'd be in jail! Afternoon tea daily means—"

"Mr. Walham!" Cutler, faced with this rising tide, decided that he must stem it somehow, and his voice was loud and clear and crisp.

^What is it?" asked Walham, caught in mid-sentence.

"We didn't sail till four o'clock," said Cutler, going straight into his explanation while he had the chance. "By the time we were clear of harbour, it was nearer five, well past tea-time. We don't serve tea on the first day. We never do. The times just don't fit in."

"The first day is a day like any other day," said Walham stubbornly, "and this trip started at four p.m. You can't get round that, whatever you say."

Cutler sighed. "Mr. Walham, I don't want to get round anything. That's not our policy at all." He made his decision. "Would you like to have some tea now?"

"I'd like the afternoon tea that's in the catalogue," said Walham, suspicion in his voice. "Not a special tea, or an extra tea. Just tea, like it says in the book."

"You mean, a free tea?"

"Just that."

"I'll have it sent along directly. And then we'll move your cabin."

"I'll be waiting," said Walham, with simple churlishness, and hung up.

Passengers, thought Mr. Cutler, as he lifted the receiver again to make these minor dispositions;dear passengers. . . . The Alcestis had six hundred crew members to look after three hundred of them. Somehow, every time she put to sea, they still discovered new things to bitch about.

4

The first dinner on board the Alcestis at the start of a cruise was never an easy affair; it was the first "shake" of the shake-down process, and thus a period of trial, not the least for Chief Steward Vincent, who had a large number of things on his mind. Vincent, a fat man who was an excellent advertisement for the Alcestis menus, had first of all to produce a satisfactory meal; this would be, for nearly all the passengers, their first sample of their projected "way of life" for the next few months, and it was necessary to give them confidence and set an appropriate tone—in spite of supplies that might have failed to arrive, cooks who might have hangovers, and stewards who could take an immediate dislike to their customers. There was also the table plan, a fruitful source of argument and embarrassment.

The Captain had picked his own table; in thirty years afloat, Vincent had only known this to be changed once, when one of the elect was so invariably drunk at meal-times that he was relegated to his cabin half-way through the voyage. The First Officer had had his table picked for him; the Chief Engineer and the Purser took what was left of the cream; the rest of the passengers had to be settled in their allotted places and persuaded that these were ideal. It was never easy. Some of them wanted to be alone; some objected to being behind pillars, or too near the door, or too far from it; some did not like the people they were with, and spent this first meal-time making the fact plain and scheming how to change their table. Some had fads, often extraordinary: special foods, special sauces, special brands of aerated water, boxes of pills, flowers which relieved their allergies, cushions at their backs, even foot-stools; they all had to be catered for.

Some, owing to the slight roll, had no appetite, but sweated out the meal notwithstanding, queasy and ominous; some ate too much, or got drunk, or were drunk already, and thus grew boisterous or troublesome. Some table-hopped, spilling wine or upsetting glasses in the process. Some thought they ought to be seated at one of the officers' tables, and sneered at the usurping incumbents. When a young steward dropped a heavy metal dish-cover with a reverberating clang, and a momentary silence fell, it reminded Vincent of the start of a new round, with the contestants glaring at each other and flexing their muscles. It was a daunting thought that he would have to preside at a minimum of two hundred and fifty ensuing meals.

Nowhere was this air of unease more apparent than at the Captain's own table.

The Captain himself was not present. He never came down to dinner on this first evening; his excuse, that the Alcestis was still weaving her way across half a dozen busy shipping lanes and that he was required on the bridge, was valid enough, but the real reason was personal—he was somewhat shy, even after so long in the service, and he preferred to leave it to his guests to get acquainted, rather than to assume the burden himself. Sir Hubert and Lady Beckwith, Mr. and Mrs. Tillotson, and Mr. Walham were the first to arrive at table; characteristically, when Vincent announced that the Captain would not be coming down, only Walham commented on the fact.

"Fine thing!" he said disagreeably. He was surveying—perhaps he was even counting—the supply of olives, salted almonds, and sticks of celery which lay on a dish in the middle of the table. Then he looked up at the chief steward. "You mean, the Captain's missing dinner?"

"He will have his up on the bridge, sir," answered Vincent.

Walham's face, which was thin and pursed, as if he had just bitten on a lemon, tightened even further. "Why not here? Isn't this the Captain's table?"

"I'm sure he has plenty to do," said Mr. Tillotson, "at the beginning of the voyage."

"He's got to eat," said Walham.

"He always stays on the bridge," explained Vincent, in faint reproof, "when we're anywhere near land, or near other ships."

"The Captain's table," repeated Walham. "At least, that's the way I heard it."

Sir Hubert Beckwith, tall, aloof, supercilious, leant across the table. "The Captain never comes down, the first evening," he said coldly. "Most people know that."

Walham looked at him. The Beckwiths were the only ones who had changed for dinner, which was traditionally optional on this occasion; it gave them a dividing superiority which nothing in their manner diminished. He set his thin jaw, and helped himself to celery. Then he said suddenly:

"What's your line?"

"Line?" repeated Sir Hubert.

"Yeah, line. I'm in farm equipment, biggest in the middle west. Mr. Tillotson here is Steel & Tool—" he cocked an eye at Tillotson, "—in fact, we do business together, when there is any business. What's your business?"

"I have no business," answered Sir Hubert after a pause. "Not in the accepted sense."

"You're lucky," said Walham. His eyes swivelled round to Lady Beckwith, whose bracelets, ear-rings, and three-tier necklace, all of emeralds, were exceptionally prominent. His lips pursed again. "I'd say you were very lucky."

Round them, the clatter of dishes and the buzz of conversation was suddenly loud as silence fell on their table. Lady Beckwith, her face set in a furious scowl, concentrated on her soup. Sir Hubert was staring at a point six inches above everyone's head. Tillotson consulted a wine-list as if it were the most engrossing thing he had ever clapped eyes on. It was left to Mrs. Tillotson to step in.

"I wonder," she said, gesturing round the empty places, "who else is sitting with us."

"Whoever it is," said Walham, who was not sensitive to the atmosphere around him, "they'll miss the soup if they don't watch out."

"Oh, surely not," said Mrs. Tillotson. "It's right here on the menu."

"So was afternoon tea," said Walham, his mouth full.

"How's that again?" asked Tillotson, looking up.

"Did you have afternoon tea?"

"I guess not."

"You could have. It's on the menu."

"I didn't want it."

"Well, I did. And they tried to give me the run-around. Said it wasn't being served today. But I got it." He looked around him, in triumph. "I tell you, you have to watch out for these things! Otherwise they'll gyp you every time. That's why they're in business."

"Who?" asked Lady Beckwith, coming belligerently to the surface.

Walham waved his hand round the room. "The shipping line. They have to shave their costs all the time. And they don't care how they do it."

"I doubt if they'll go bankrupt over one afternoon tea," said Lady Beckwith, with disdain.

"It all adds up, percentage-wise," said Walham. "But I guess you wouldn't know about that."

"As it happens," said Sir Hubert austerely, "my wife has an acute business sense."

Walham grinned, as if in the bitten lemon, he had hit suddenly on a brief, thin rind of saccharine. "That must come in handy," he said, "in the circumstances."

Now there was an interruption, welcome for many reasons, as Chief Steward Vincent led forward two more of their fellow-guests. He stood over them as they sat down.

"I'd like to introduce Mr. and Mrs. Kincaid," he said, professionally hearty. "Sir Hubert and Lady Beckwith, Mr. and Mrs. Tillotson, Mr. Walham."

The newcomers were greeted with slightly overdone enthusiasm; in the circumstances, any dilution of the table could only come as a relief. Kincaid looked what he was: a tough professional politician who had failed to make the grade from medium to top rank, from the hatchet to the walking-stick. The shock of grey hair and the gaunt face might have suited a governor or even a senator, if Kincaid had ever succeeded in becoming either; as he had failed, in circumstances of some notoriety, the hair looked, subtly, like a wig, and the gaunt face seemed merely hungry. His wife had that disappointed look peculiar to women who, goading their husbands by every means short of a spear between the shoulder-blades, see the goal receding, the world passing them by, the plums of office shrinking like raisins in the sun. But whatever the setbacks, the betrayals, the deals that came unstuck, the Kincaids were still in the ring, as their manner showed unmistakably; their reaction to "Sir Hubert and Lady Beckwith" was little short of a round of cheers, and their greeting of the others was on the same scale of buoyant good-fellowship. The habit of vote-snagging clearly died hard. On this occasion, they only lacked babies to kiss.

"Well, well, well," said Kincaid heartily, rubbing his hands. "Looks like we're all set for a wonderful trip."

This had not been the general impression a few seconds earlier; but such was the power of suggestion, the contagion of good humour, that for several minutes all was love. Tillotson and Kincaid discovered some mutual acquaintances in New York; Mrs. Kincaid was so determinedly obsequious to Lady Beckwith that the latter actually gave her a faint sketch of a smile; and Walham, burrowing his way into a second helping of the fish course, was for the moment neutralized. Then two spanners, one of them obscure, alighted in the works with successive thuds.

The first came when Mrs. Kincaid made the error of assuming that the Beckwiths had the Princess Suite.

"I hear it's lovely," she said enthusiastically. "How wonderful for you!"

"It certainly would be wonderful," said Lady Beckwith, with a return of her most acid manner, "if we had it. But we haven't. There was some stupid mix-up over the bookings."

"Oh," said Mrs. Kincaid, uncertainly. "I was sure—"

Mrs. Tillotson, who had overheard, leant forward, unwisely happy. "We have the Princess Suite," she said, with ingenuous satisfaction. "And you're quite right—it's a dream!"

"There was some mix-up," repeated Lady Beckwith, busily murdering a soft roll.

"I hadn't heard that," said Mrs. Tillotson quietly.

"Well, obviously there must have been," said Lady Beckwith. She made a gesture which somehow managed to include her husband's dinner-jacket, her own extensive jewellery, and Mrs. Tillotson's modest cocktail dress. "I mean to say . . ."

There was a glacial silence. It was broken by Walham, who leant across the table towards Kincaid, his mouth crammed, and asked:

"How are things in Dade County?"

Kincaid's expression changed, from public well-being to a kind of wary hostility. "You know Dade County?" he asked curtly.

"Only what I read in the newspapers." Walham's tone was offensively loaded. "But that's enough, for sure."

A hood seemed to come down over Kincaid's eyes. "You have to know all the circumstances—" he began.

His wife interrupted him. "The chief of police was a crook," she said, almost snarling. "That was proved!"

"I only asked," said Walham. "You've got to admit, Dade County was in the news."

Sir Hubert Beckwith, who had been dissecting his pheasant with the grace and skill common to all titled Englishmen eating off the cuff, looked up.

"Am I the only one," he asked superciliously, "who knows nothing at all about Dade County—not even where it is?"

"It's in Florida," said Walham. He grinned, unpleasantly. "Or it _was, up till the time we sailed."

"Now just a minute—" began Kincaid angrily.

"The whole thing was a frame-up," said Mrs. Kincaid, near to shouting. Gone with the wind were public relations. "Those photostats were all fakes. What would my husband want with land-options? Just tell me that! Everyone knows this other gang had every hoodlum in Miami working for them! It was just smear, smear, smear, from beginning to end. Even the call-girls were fixed!"

In the interested silence that followed, Sir Hubert said coldly:

"I have never really understood American politics."

Unseen by him, a man and a woman had approached their table and now stood behind him, waiting uncertainly. The chief steward was busy with another table, and had not noticed their entrance. Finally the man, who was the sombre man from the Tapestry Bar, came forward a pace, bowed formally, and said:

"Zucco."

"No, thank you," said Sir Hubert, without turning his head.

"Zucco, Transaction Pictures," said the man again. He was now wearing a white tuxedo, a red bow-tie, and a scarlet cummerbund edged with sequins, but his expression of gloom was unaltered. "We're proud to be sitting with you fine people," he went on, as if he were the heavy lead in some stark Biblical drama. "And now I'd like you all to meet my lovely wife." -

The men stood up awkwardly as the introductions were made. Mr. Zucco's lovely wife was an exceptionally ugly woman of about fifty, the planes of whose face seemed long ago to have dissolved like melting gelatine. The wardrobe department of Transaction Pictures might well have had a hand in her jewellery, which was uniformly barbaric—enormous single-stone rings, bangles like slave-shackles, ear-rings like dwarf chandeliers. As she sat down she said: "I hope we haven't missed all the go-go-go stuff."

Her husband remained standing, looking down at the table-full of glum or angry people. Suddenly he stepped back, "sighting" them through his half-clenched hand against a background of cold ham and Stilton cheeses on a centre table. Then he shook his head and said: "Meaningful."

"Hannibal never stops running," said his wife in explanation.

Mr. Zucco said: "I'd like to get a shot of this whole significant group. Gracious living goes to sea. Fabulous! I can see it visually."

Sir Hubert Beckwith, whose expression indicated unmistakably that he feared the Zuccos were Jews, inquired acidly:

"How else would you see it?"

Mr. Zucco turned the full force of his sombre gaze on Sir Hubert. "That's something you can never get on film," he said finally. "No matter how hard you try."

"Try what?" asked Sir Hubert. "I don't understand."

"The British sense of humour," said Mr. Zucco, sitting down at last. "It just doesn't translate. Controlled! Razor-sharp! And subtle as hell!"

"I can assure you—" began Sir Hubert.

"Hubert!" said his wife crisply.

"Yes, dear?"

"Break off this scintillating conversation," said Lady Beckwith, "long enough to order some wine."

"Of course, dear."

"And I'd like a cigarette."

"Sorry, darling."

"And I want my other stole from the cabin."

"I'll get the steward."

"And pass the salt," said Walham.

First Officer Tiptree-Jones, in spite of an impeccable social manner, was having a hard time, and he was beginning to show it. At his table there was (as he privately phrased it) a really ripe collection of deadbeats; the three Beddingtons, who were uniformly speechless, the Gersons and the Bancrofts, who loathed each other, Mrs. Consolini, who thought she ought to be at the Captain's table, and Mrs. van Dooren, who by now had gone about as far as she could, alcoholically, without actually falling head first into the fruit basket. In the intervals of trying to entertain this truly remarkable melange of misfits, Tiptree-Jones brooded on the fact that the Captain must have done it to him on purpose. But why? It was not reassuring that he had eighty-four days in which to find out the answer.

The Bancrofts and the Gersons came from the same smart suburb of Chicago; if they had been told that, as married couples, they were as unique and as distinguishable from each other as two pairs of hard-boiled eggs, they would have laughed the idea to scorn, but it was depressingly true. The men were both bald, fat, and talkative; the women were smart, grey-haired, blue-rinsed, community-minded. Back home, the Bancrofts and the Gersons lived a half-mile from each other in identical split-level, ranch-type homes, built on commodious estates of acres each; the Gersons boasted a luminous sundial, the Bancrofts a barbecue-pit with terrazzo-style tiling; in both their two-car garages, a 1958 Cadillac nuzzled a 1960 Ford station-wagon. The Bancrofts went for hi-fi, the Gersons for home-movies. They all went for vodka martinis, the higher reaches of country club life, and marathon sessions of bridge.

The men were much given to the kind of self-conscious "joshing" which took the place of conversation over large tracts of America. Mr. Gerson was in oil—"though not very deep" was Mr. Bancroft's reiterated comment. Mr. Bancroft manufactured a well-known brand of bar supplies, including ornamental bone-handled corkscrews. ("Even the products are crooked," said Mr. Gerson, on every possible occasion.) Their invariable greeting to each other was: "Putting on a little weight, eh?" Then Mr. Bancroft would tell the story about Mr. Gerson and the oilmen's convention at Edmonton, Alberta, in 1951 ("They sold him the drilling rights, all right—he was in the wrong hall—they were dentists") and Mr. Gerson countered with the one about Mr. Bancroft and the two male cabaret dancers in Paris in 1948 ("You know, there's something queer here."). Then, with luck, they got drunk, and quarrelled, and their wives hauled them off to bed, while they made wild backward threats to kick each other's teeth in. In the morning they would say, almost simultaneously: "Boy, you certainly tied one on, last night."

At the moment, to a listless audience of nine at Tiptree-Jones's table, Mr. Bancroft was trying to get Mr. Gerson to admit that he had been drunk at a certain party in New York about three years previously.

"Boy, you certainly tied one on, that night."

"I was cold sober," said Mr. Gerson. "I drove home."

"You drove home! That doorman had to pour you into the back seat. Millie drove home. Didn't you, Millie?"

"I don't remember," said Mrs. Gerson.

"I'll bet Jack doesn't remember, either."

"I remember every little thing," said Mr. Gerson. "Including you and that hat-check girl."

"It wasn't a hat-check girl, it was a cigarette girl," said Mr. Bancroft triumphantly. "That's how much you remember. I told you, Jack, you shouldn't have switched to Bourbon. You can't take it." He turned to Tiptree-Jones. "That was his trouble, see? He switched to Bourbon."

"Really?" said Tiptree-Jones, laughing heartily. "It sounds rather unwise."

"I can switch to Bourbon, any time," proclaimed Mr. Gerson.

"He thinks," said Mr. Bancroft, with heavy sarcasm. "But boy, you should have seen him that night!"

"Well, who picked up the check, anyway?"

"The waiter picked up the check. It was on the floor." Mr. Bancroft bellowed with sudden laughter. "You knocked it on to the floor, and the waiter had to pick it up. Boy, you certainly tied one on, that night."

"I was cold sober," said Mr. Gerson. "It was you that tied one on."

"In a pig's ear!" said Mr. Bancroft. "You tied one on, Jack, and you might as well admit it."

"I drove home," said Mr. Gerson. "All the way from that crummy joint to that crummy hotel on 56th Street."

"And all the way into the fire hydrant," said Mr. Bancroft. "Boy, you certainly had a skinful, that night."

Silence fell all around the table; the topic, significant, absorbing, seemed to have been exhausted. The Bancrofts and the Gersons, smiling reminiscently on one side, scowling slightly on the other, went on with their meal; Bernice Beddington continued to stare straight ahead, rapt in some interior dream from which her spectacles kept the prying world; Mrs. van Dooren, weaving slightly, fished for her lost shoes under the table. Mrs. Consolini might have helped things out, but she had, in a relatively charming way, turned sulky. She had expected to be seated at the Captain's table; she did not like the one she was at; the fact that her long-term rival, Mrs. Stewart-Bates, was only at the Purser's table did little to assuage a feeling of time wasted, opportunity lost, indifference and cowardice in high places. She was prepared to smile if need be, but no words, no contribution. . . . Tiptree-Jones finally broke the silence, addressing himself bravely to the most forlorn quadrant of all, the Beddingtons.

"I expect," he said to Mr. Beddington, with exceptional brightness, "that you've been looking forward to this trip?"

Mr. Beddington, a stolid man who gave the impression that he was smoking a pipe even when this was not the case, considered the question at a comfortable length. Then he nodded ponderously, and said:

"I reckon that's a fair statement of the facts."

"What about you, Miss Beddington?" inquired Tiptree-Jones, when it was clear that Mr. Beddington was not going to add to this pronouncement.

Bernice Beddington, who was sitting directly opposite to him, continued to stare at a nearby pillar as if it had some compelling symbolism which a girl of her age ought to appreciate. She had eaten well of lobster cocktail, soup, fish, and saddle of lamb; she was waiting now for a choice ofBombe Surprise, meringues a la glace, or Cherries Jubilee, and after that for release, or Alka-Seltzer, or something—anything—whatever came next. In her huge myopic world, she was content, or at least reconciled. She was certainly not listening.

Her mother, who had for years worn the guilty, beaten look of a very small woman with a six-foot daughter, nudged her unobtrusively.

"Bernice."

Bernice Beddington broke surface slowly, like a suet dumpling coaxed towards the boil.

"Yes, Mother?"

"Mr. Tiptree-Jones was speaking to you, dear."

Bernice Beddington looked at him, blinking. Then she turned to her mother. "What did he say?"

Mrs. Beddington searched her memory, which was unreliable. Finally she asked: "What was it you said, Mr. Jones?"

Tiptree-Jones smiled manfully, caught in a lunatic realm of reported speech. "I said, was she looking forward to the trip?"

Mrs. Beddington turned back to her daughter, waiting. The rest of the table waited also, staring at the girl as if willing her to formulate a reply. Finally it came, accompanied by a scarlet blush which might have been the onset of indigestion.

"I don't know," she said.

Tiptree-Jones tried again. "I hope you enjoyed it last time, anyway."

"Oh, she did!" said Mrs. Beddington, filling another lengthy pause.

"I'm so glad," said Tiptree-Jones. "It makes a lot of difference to us, you know."

Mr. Beddington took the spectral pipe out of his mouth. "What does?"

"If people enjoy it," said Tiptree-Jones. "It makes a difference."

A disturbance by his side resolved itself into Mrs. van Dooren who, having reclaimed her shoes, was finding difficulty in putting them on again. But presently, having won this private wrestling match, she straightened up, and asked:

"What makes a difference to what?"

Tiptree-Jones felt he could not go through it all again. "Ar. you all right, Mrs. van Dooren?" he asked, by way of a change of pace.

"Why wouldn't I be all right?"

"I thought you were looking for something."

"You're damn' right I was looking for something! My shoes. Some jerk kicked them away to hell and gone."

Tiptree-Jones, conscious of a certain lack of decorum at his table, decided to apply a minor measure of discipline. He looked at Mrs. van Dooren with as much hauteur as the regulations would stand for, and asked coldly: "You have them on now?"

"Wouldn't you like to know. . . . What's this thing that makes such a difference?"

"I was saying to Miss Beddington," answered Tiptree-Jones heavily, "that it makes a lot of difference to us—the ship's personnel—if people enjoy these cruises."

"It would make a damn' sight more difference if we didn't enjoy them." Mrs. van Dooren snapped her fingers suddenly, and then, as no steward appeared, rapped smartly on the table.

"Is there anything you want?" asked Tiptree-Jones.

"Rye and water," said Mrs. van Dooren.

"Do you find," asked Tiptree-Jones guardedly, "that rye whisky really goes with a meal like this?"

"It goes with me," said Mrs. van Dooren. "East, west, old friends are best."

Mr. Bancroft looked at his old friend Mr. Gerson. "Maybe if you'd stuck to rye," he said, "you wouldn't have started all that uproar, that night."

"I started no uproar," said Mr. Gerson.

"Boy, it was certainly a good imitation. You even fooled the management."

"Now look here—" began Mr. Gerson angrily.

"Boys, boys," said Mrs. van Dooren. "If youboth got loaded to the eyeballs, what's the difference? Look at me! I've been loaded since November nineteen-forty-eight."

"What happened then?" asked Tiptree-Jones, as no one else seemed inclined to lift this dubious stone.

"Truman was re-elected."

At Carl Wenstrom's table, by contrast, a happy relaxation ruled. It was a good table, under the central skylight of the dining-room; collectively, they could see and be seen from every angle, and Carl was conscious, as when they had boarded the ship earlier, that they were making a good start. The two girls were indisputably the best-looking in the room; Louis—a much-improved Louis—was attracting the speculative glances which indicated that he looked "eligible", in the ship-board sense; even the old Professor managed to shed an air of romantic, old-time gallantry. His eyes were bright as he sipped his wine and talked about his hobby, the history of piracy. His audience was not at all attentive, but it did not seem to matter. Everything was benign, this evening; even the manifest rocking motion of the Alcestis was rhythmical and kindly.

"Then there was Ned Teach," said the Professor, to no one in particular. "An unusual character—I am giving him a whole chapter in my book. He went by the name of Blackbeard, and he operated in these very waters. A most bloodthirsty villain. . . . He marooned his own crew, every last man of them, in order to steal their share of the general plunder. He used to have the hair on his chest made up into small pigtails, and tied with coloured ribbon."

"What was that?" asked Diane, her attention caught at last.

"Ned Teach the pirate," said the Professor. "They say he was covered with thick black hair from head to foot. And he went into battle with flaming sulphur matches stuck into his beard. People thought he was the devil himself."

"That figures," said Louis.

"What was that about the hair on his chest?" asked Diane again.

"He had it curled and tied into pigtails."

"Why? Was he queer or something?"

"That I would doubt," answered the Professor, in a mellow mood of reminiscence. "His aim, I think, was to present a bizarre appearance to his enemies."

Louis turned from a roving-eye survey of the neighbouring tables. He had been doing well, even at this early stage; there was a woman nearby—elderly, beautifully made up—whose glance seemed especially ready to meet his. This was going to be a breeze.. ..

"Are you really writing a book, Prof?" he asked, more attentively.

"Certainly," answered the Professor. "I have been working on it for more than twenty-five years."

"With all these nutty characters?"

"Many of the old-time pirates were distinctly eccentric."

"So who's interested?"

The Professor stared at him over the rim of his wine-glass. He was too contented to take offence, and he was not going to have his evening spoiled by argument.

"It is a field which has always intrigued me," he said finally. "I hope that will prove true for other people."

"And you make a million dollars? This I wish to see!"

Kathy interrupted. "Lots of people will be interested," she said encouragingly. "How far have you got, Professor?"

"Page two hundred and twenty-five," answered the Professor, from an exact, painstaking memory. He gestured, spilling a few drops of wine down his ancient cream flannel suit. "It goes slowly, of course. The scope of research is tremendous. But it is worth it. It is well worth it."

"Excuse me, sir," said a voice at his elbow. It was Vincent, the Chief Steward, whose eagle eye had caught the small mishap. He advanced with a napkin, and gently mopped up the spilled wine.

"Thank you, thank you," said the Professor, courteously. "Entirely my fault."

"Accidents will happen, sir," Vincent reassured him. It was a phrase he had to use at least fifty times on each voyage. He smiled and straightened up, looking at Carl, the natural head of the table. "Everything all right, Mr. Wenstrom?"

"Oh, yes," said Carl. "We have had an excellent dinner. That saddle of lamb was delicious." He glanced round his table benevolently, very much the senior member of the family. "At this rate, we shall have to consider going on a diet."

"Plenty of time to think about that, sir," said Vincent heartily. He also looked round the table, professionally inquisitive. "Excuse me, sir—I was just wondering—are you all one family?"

Carl smiled, with considerable charm. "Not exactly, but we are related." With a careless finger he indicated each of them in turn. "My stepdaughter—my nephew—my niece. . . ." Coming to the Professor, he added: "And my business associate."

Vincent beamed on them all impartially. "How lucky for you to be able to take a holiday together."

"It just worked out right," said Carl.

The voice of young Master Barry Greenfield rose from a nearby table, changing every subject within earshot.

"I don't want any old ice-cream," he proclaimed disagreeably. "It stinks. I want a piece of pie."

"There isn't any pie," said his mother. "Eat up your ice-cream."

"No pie?" The voice was now an incredulous whine. "What sort of a crummy outfit—"

"Excuse me, sir," said Vincent, and turned swiftly away towards the centre of crisis.

Louis glanced sideways after him. "Nosy bastard," he said.

Carl shook his head. "That sort of thing doesn't do any harm. It saves us a lot of explaining. He's the talkative kind. The word will get around."

"You can say that again."

Kathy, chin on hand, dreamily beautiful in pale green, stirred and sat up straight. This was the first mention that evening, even indirectly, of their plans for the voyage, and she was not yet in the mood for it. The ship had captured her now; sitting at ease in the huge dining saloon with its banks of flowers and multiple mirrors and superb service, she wanted the enchanted moment to last for ever, she wanted never to wake up. The idea of using a talkative chief steward to broadcast details of the family set-up was somehow intrusive and gross. She looked round the table.

"Let's go up," she said. "It must be beautiful outside."

"You want to get to work?" inquired Louis, eyeing her.

"What else?" Refusing to surrender her mood, she could only give a flippant answer. "Remember, only eighty-three shopping days till Christmas."

5

After dinner, an unmistakable air of lethargy pervaded the Alcestis, the nine hours of intermittent drinking since lunch-time meant that afternoon hangovers had now reached their peak, and the ship's steady rolling induced sleep, prudent inactivity, a comfortable sense of well-being—everything but energy. Wexford, the Assistant Purser, who was running the first bingo game of the voyage (there would be at least fifty others) was having a hard time injecting life into the time-honoured pattern of jollity.

All the traditional jokes fell flat; and the new ones, which might develop during the voyage, were not yet born. Wexford, Tim Mansell who was helping him, and the steward who was producing the numbers from the wire cage, all beamed universally upon the customers; but the customers were not yet ready to be wooed. "Legs—eleven!" called out Wexford, with an air of epigram; and "Doctor's orders— number nine!" and "Any way up—sixty-nine!" and "Life begins at—forty!" But there was no reaction, no confederate giggling. When, on the third game, the prize of thirty-eight dollars was carried off by Master Barry Greenfield, who called out "Bingo!" with a piping malevolence which won him very few friends, it was obvious that al change of pace was needed.

"Better pack this up," said Wexford, out of the side of his mouth. "We're never going to get it off the ground."

"Orchestra?"

"Orchestra."

Presently the orchestra filed in—six players in dinner-jackets which had a seedy, somewhat rented air. Their first few bars of "On the Street Where You Live" were enough to produce an inescapable suspicion that their instruments might be rented also. They sounded terrible.

"Oh God!" said Tim Mansell, back at the officers' table. "Have we had union trouble again?"

"They need practice," said Fleming, the Engineer Officer, who was ^ln a generous mood.

"They need shooting," said Wexford. He looked round the half-filled room, and the space which had been cleared for dancing in the middle. "Is this going to take, do you think?"

"Like yellow fever."

Mr. Cutler the Purser, passing their table on his way to the bar, looked down at them with mock sternness.

"Gentlemen, do your duty," he commanded.

"Do we have to?" asked Beresford, the young apprentice. "This band is worse than the last lot."

"Nonsense," said Cutler, who had hired them. "Three of them are straight from the Palladium."

"The police must have moved them on."

Tim Mansell also looked round the room. He saw that the only girl he wanted to dance with, Kathy, was not at the moment in view, and might have gone to bed already. The other girl, the dark one with the sit-up-and-beg figure, was circling the floor with her uncle, or whatever he was. Mansell sighed, conscious of bereavement, and of duty not yet fulfilled. The band, launching out into "Time On My Hands", hit a clinker which made even the bass-player wince. Wexford stood up.

"All right, boys," he said bravely. "We dance. . . . You take the one with the squint, Tim, and I'll have a crack at the six-footer."

Later, after talking idly with Carl, Diane Loring danced with three of the young officers. At this stage, she performed sedately, holding her partners at arm's length, setting her figure in well-defined profile, exhibiting her wares within a cool, self-evident vacuum. For her, it was a practice run, using these uniformed children as pace-makers. But presently it paid off: a man whose name she did not catch—a middle-aged, middle-weight, middle-definition man— came up and asked if he might dance with her. On the second turn around the floor, to the music of "Begin the Beguine", the man, who up till then had been rather drunk, gave her waist a small, speculative squeeze. Diane responded with a movement which, as she phrased it later, nearly made him jump out of his underwear. Within a few moments, looking thoughtful, they disappeared in the direction of the boat-deck, while Carl, noting that Kathy was not in view and that Louis, busy on the dance-floor, was not disgracing himself, made for the Tapestry Bar. It was possible that Diane was moving too fast, but he was prepared to take that chance. Their first night on board was not an appropriate occasion for cracking the whip.

Kathy was not moving too fast; on this first evening, she was scarcely moving at all. The mood of enchantment had persisted, inducing a sense of deep contentment; tomorrow would bring its problems and its manoeuvres, but tomorrow was still over the horizon, tomorrow could keep its place. Tonight she would, and could, be solitary. She had watched the bingo game briefly, but it had seemed a forced and silly enterprise; then she had set out on a slow, wandering tour of the ship, down the long alleyways lined with cabins, through the near-empty public rooms, up to the deserted sun lounge under the stars.

She met a few people, wanderers like herself, she smiled at stewardesses, she watched, from outside an uncurtained window, four people playing cards with slow, ridiculous absorption. Deep down in one of the B-deck corridors, an old steward asked: "Are you lost, miss?" and she answered: "Yes," and they had both laughed with the same delight. Then she had climbed up to the sun lounge again, and sat in a deep chair, her head back, and watched the mast and funnels rocking through their slow majestic arc against a canopy of a million cold stars. For a brief moment she wanted to cry, and then she wanted to sit there for ever, lapped in this private heaven.

Much later, a movement near by disturbed her, an intrusion; two people—and one of them was Diane—out on the boat-deck, closely entwined, writhing in preliminary skirmish. So soon, so early? She could not watch them; this was the task of tomorrow, and was not yet due. She walked slowly back to her cabin, and presently lay in her bed in the half-darkness, still private, still uncommitted, still dreamily happy. She was waiting for Carl, and she loved him; but if he did not come to her tonight, it would not matter, il

Louis Scapelli said: "Would you like to dance?" and the oldish woman who had caught his eye in the dining-room looked up, unsurprised but slightly flustered, and answered: "That would be very nice." She put aside her petit point evening bag, and stood up. She was small and, in spite of tremendous aid from science, almost shapeless.

Within the first few moments they agreed that the band was awful, but might improve; they agreed further that there were difficulties about dancing on a floor which shifted its position rhythmically at every third step. Then it was time for the introductory confidences, and nearly all of them came from her, in a free-flowing stream. She was Mrs. Stewart-Bates, she told him; it was her third voyage in the Alcestis; she knew the Captain very well, but this time she was sitting at the Purser's table, really (with a laugh) so as to give somebody else a chance. She lived in Connecticut, near Georgetown; she had lost her husband, a banker, three years earlier; she was absolutely crazy about travelling. She always had been. It really did broaden the mind—didn't he agree? Of course, there were difficulties now. A woman travelling alone. . . . When her husband was alive it had all been different. He had taken care of everything. They had been ideally matched, too, in every way. He had been interested in physical culture. Now it was often so lonely.

Louis listened carefully, taking in the facts, estimating the right speed of advance, pacing himself to match it. The old bag was obviously nuts; a woman of fifty pretending she was thirty-five, acting up like an old movie, stretching out and asking for it; she probably hadn't been laid for ten years, and then it was just for Christmas. But the rocks were really something—diamond rings, diamond bracelets, drop ear-rings, the lot. It would be worth closing his eyes for. ... He came out of his daydream to hear her asking:

"Is that your family you're sitting with?"

He looked away, conscious of delicate ground. The band wound up their rendering of "Arrivaderci Roma" with a Latin flourish and an entirely inappropriate shout of"Ole!"; the dance-floor shifted gently but decisively under their feet; then they stood together with the half-dozen other couples, waiting to see if the band would continue. He said:

"We're a family party, sure. Mr. Wenstrom is my uncle. The girls are cousins."

"They're both very pretty," said Mrs. Stewart-Bates, watching him with close attention.

Louis gestured carelessly. "Oh, they're just kids. . . . Not my type."

The band put down their instruments, to mark the end of the current session. Louis and Mrs. Stewart-Bates remained where they were, smiling at each other. His hand was still loosely on her arm.

"Just what is your type, Mr. Scapelli?" she inquired archly.

Louis looked at her, making a conscious effort to keep out of his eyes the derisive contempt which now flooded in. Imagine making a pass like that, at her age. . . . Under the enamelled make-up and the elaborate pyramid of hair, a disgusting oldness peeped through: "falling to bits" was how Louis phrased it to himself; she must be nuts to think that any man of any age would make a bid for it. And yet that was just what he was going to do. In cards and spades.

He said: "You ought to know," and gently, very gently, squeezed her arm.

They were still sitting on the sofa an hour later, sipping their drinks, talking companionably. "You just don't know how careful I have to be," Mrs. Stewart-Bates was saying, her eyes swimming. "A woman travelling alone. . . ."

There were not more than a dozen people left in the Tapestry Bar, and Carl Wenstrom was the only one sitting up at the counter. It was eleven o'clock; according to invariable custom he was drinking brandy and soda, and smoking his last cigar before going to bed. He felt tired, but pleasantly so; the first day seemed to have gone very well, and he was sure that Diane, off to a romping start with a man he had identified as Mr. Bancroft from Chicago, would not become too heavily involved before getting the signal to go ahead. That was the understanding, and the understanding was law. . . . Now, in this leisurely hour, he would have liked to have talked to Kathy; but Kathy, when he had glanced into her cabin, had been asleep already. Instead, Carl talked, or rather listened, to Edgar the head-barman.

He had said: "A very quiet evening." It was enough to precipitate one of Edgar's celebrated monologues.

"Usual thing, sir—first night out. There's four classes of customer tonight, if you care to work it out." Edgar was polishing an ashtray, slowly and deliberately; the glass of whisky which he felt entitled to accept at this time of night was discreetly masked by an ice-bucket. "People who don't like any kind of motion—they've turned in already. People who don't mind the sea, but who've been at it since lunch-time, if you'll excuse the expression. They're mostly asleep, by now. People who don't like to drink anyway—you'd be amazed how many that is, even on a cruise like this. Even—" he coughed, having decided to size Carl up as a man of the world, "—even among Americans. That leaves people like yourself, who always have a drink at this time of the evening; you haven't got anything better to do, since there's no entertainment, and you don't have to worry about a bit of seaway. But that's not so many." He glanced round the room, figuring with an expert eye. "In fact it's eleven people exactly, which is a fair average. Of course, later on—"

The gossipy, rather self-satisfied voice continued, bridging all gaps, bruising no egos, breaking no bones. Carl recognized Edgar for what he was—a competent operator, smooth, expert, accustomed to his own way. It was a type, a useful type, a type to be enlisted, if possible, on one's own side. He decided that it would be wise to over-tip Edgar (twenty dollars? even fifty?) rather early in the voyage. People like Edgar were inquisitive, and often privately vindictive, but they had a blind spot. They could be bought; by flattery, or by money, or by both. Money was quicker and, in this particular case, more certain. It would be a worth-while expense, a small shading of the odds, to be in Edgar's good books.

During a pause, he said: "I see you've made quite a philosophical study of us. How long have you been in the Alcestis?"

"Since she was first commissioned, sir." Edgar put down the polished ashtray, picked up his glass, sipped it without seeming to move either his hands or his lips, put it back behind the ice-bucket. The series of movements were at once apologetic and determined, like a conjurer before royalty, like a hangman. This won't hurt, he seemed to be saying. And if it does, it goes with my job, doesn't it? Standing behind a bar for twelve hours on end. Of course I can have a drink. ... "I remember it like yesterday, that maiden voyage. Liverpool to Montreal, sixteenth of July, nineteen-forty-eight. If you think back to those days, sir, just after the war—"

It was a long story, posing no problems either for the listener or the non-listener; it had a beginning, a middle, and a neat ending (something to do with immigrants to Canada sleeping four in a cabin, women on one deck, men on another); it lasted over ten minutes. When it was done, and Carl had laughed appropriately, Edgar returned to duty with a graceful air of transition. Motioning towards Carl's empty glass, he asked: "Something similar, sir?"

"Thank you," answered Carl. "Just one more. Then I must really go to bed. And have one yourself, if you care to." He turned on his stool, surveying the room negligently. "I wonder," he threw over his shoulder, "if we have any card-players on board."

"Sure to, sir," answered Edgar. He poured the drinks with the minimum of movement, swabbed down the section of the counter in front of Carl, pushed forward a fresh bowl of salted almonds and olives. "In fact, sometimes you'd think that cards is all people want to know about, even on a cruise. I've had people come aboard who played bridge for three months on end, rain or shine, and never even looked out of the window, from one end of the trip to the other. Balmy, I call it. At least—" he hedged promptly and expertly, "—it seems a funny way of passing the time, with all that expensive scenery going by. But there's no accounting for tastes. Is bridge your game, sir? There'll be a notice posted about it tomorrow. You sign your name on a list on the notice-board."

"Not bridge," answered Carl. "I'm not really good enough. I prefer poker, actually."

Edgar nodded, reacting to the sophisticated word. "Wonderful game, they say, sir. I don't play myself. But I'm sure you could find some people who'd be interested."

"It's really a question," said Carl, with great deliberation, "of finding the right people." He looked straight at Edgar, man to man, frankness to frankness. "I'm sure you know what I mean. I just want a nice easy game. No—" he waved his hand, emphasizing the important point, "—no professionals."

Edgar nodded again. "Know what you mean, sir."

"If you get a chance, you might mention it."

"I'll do that, sir."

"Good." Carl looked towards the swing doors, attracted by a movement. "Ah," he said, on a new and cheerful note. "Here's some of my family."

Diane made her way towards him between the tables. She was alone and (he noted with relief) entirely well-groomed and un-dishevelled. He said as she approached: "It's long past your bed-time, my dear girl," and motioned towards the stool beside him. When she had ordered a drink, and Edgar had supplied it, Carl went on: "Where have you been all evening? If an uncle may ask?"

Diane looked at him, cynically self-possessed. Then she glanced at Edgar who, with thirty years of training behind him, had already withdrawn out of earshot to the other end of the bar. Then she said, in a voice discreetly low:

"I've been working."

Carl, aware that they could not be overheard, took up the subject without hesitation. "Working?"

Diane shook her head. "Nothing to report." Her face was young and mature at the same time, infinitely knowing, corrupt in its competence. "But it was a near thing. It still is."

Now it was Carl's turn to glance sideways at Edgar, but Edgar was still busy. He drew on his cigar, watching the smoke curl upwards towards the ceiling. "What happened?" he asked. "I saw you leave the dance-floor. His name is Bancroft, by the way."

Diane nodded. "Yeah. But call me Jerry, won't you, please? He's in hardware." She smiled, mirthless and amused in the same squalid moment of recollection. "That was some of the hardest ware I've ever met."

"And?" prompted Carl.

She tossed her head carelessly. "Oh, we wrestled. I thought it was too early. He didn't. We've got a date later on, but I can always junk it."

"Later tonight?"

"Sure. Midnight, in my cabin. Knock three times, then once, then wait. How corny can you get?"

"What does he expect?"

Diane grimaced, inelegantly. "Are you kidding? He's hot. . . . Does he get it?"

Carl considered the question carefully. Of course it was really too soon for them to start "operating", in any serious sense; they ought to find out a great deal more about Bancroft—how tough he was, how vulnerable, how rich. But in one area, enough was known already; the omens were good; the bait was tempting. Bancroft was travelling with his wife; he was with another couple, the Gersons, who were friends from the same suburb. There were indications of social pressure there; an inexorable need to stay in line. . . . Presently Carl answered:

"Yes. He gets it. The way we planned."

"How much do I roll him for?"

"This time, whatever he's got in his wallet. We'll take a chance on that. He's just come on board. He might be loaded."

"O.K." Diane was astonishingly matter-of-fact; Carl hoped that her nerve would always be as good. "I'll suspend credit for the duration."

A sudden voice behind Carl said: "Zucco. Good evening."

Carl turned swiftly, to find a mournful man in a white dinner-jacket climbing on to the next stool. Warily he answered: "Good evening to you."

"Saw you folks enjoying yourselves," said Mr. Zucco. "Thought I'd join in and spoil it. How about a drink on that?"

"Well—" began Carl.

"Oh, come on—it's going to be a long voyage." He beckoned to Edgar, and then looked towards Diane. "Perhaps the little lady will join us."

"The little lady is going straight to bed, like a good girl," said Diane, and promptly climbed down off her stool. "Good night, folks."

"Hope I didn't break anything up, there," said Mr. Zucco uncertainly, when she had gone.

"The little lady," said Carl, with a certain austere emphasis, "happens to be my niece."

"Togetherness!" exclaimed Mr. Zucco, unabashed. "Wouldn't you know it!" He raised his glass, and suddenly everything was involved, from Lincoln to motherhood. "Togetherness! If there's any toast in America I'd rather drink to than that, I've never heard it!"

"Togetherness," answered Carl, with modest irony, his thoughts already ranging far afield.

Mr. Zucco shook his head, regaining his status as a mourner. "If you could only get it on film. . . . Tell me, has the little lady ever taken a test?"

After midnight, a deep peace reigned on board the Alcestis; the bars were shut, the elevators stilled, the lights switched out in the public rooms. Though the noise of the fans continued, and the pulse of the engines, and the Master-at-Arms' rounds, yet the ship seemed deserted; silently making her passage southwards, she was a ship without people, self-propelled, supernaturally navigated. The occasional figures—in the corridors, on the stairways—were like ghosts inhabiting a vessel which wandered the seas of her own accord.

Yet some few were still wakeful. Up on the bridge under the enormous stars, the Second Officer, who had the middle watch, stared ceaselessly ahead; occasionally he glanced at the dimmed compass, or made a note in the deck-log, or raised his binoculars to examine a light on the horizon. Behind him, the apprentice who shared the watch stood sentinel over the radar-scan, searching it for the warning of distant ships, calling out the bearings of others near by. In the green phosphorescence of the screen, his face was studious, and intent, and very young. Between the two officers, the stolid quartermaster at the wheel let the spokes slide off his fingers, and gripped them to check the yaw as the ship swung off, submitting to the sea, and stared unwinkingly at the compass card, his only horizon, his only charge. High above their heads, the mast-head look-out in the crow's nest completed the pattern of vigilance.

Four decks below, at the end of a shadowy deserted corridor, a single figure also kept his vigil. Surrounded by forty-four pairs of shoes, male and female, the B-deck shoe-steward worked methodically, at a pace long ordained by custom and his own dejection, to spin the task out till four bells sounded—cocoa time. He was an old man; he had waited on captains and rich folk in his day, and then on tourist passengers; later, the failing years had seen him tend the deck-chairs, and then the lifts, and then the ashtrays; now he was cleaning shoes, in the twilight of all his worlds. The shaded light overhead fell on a bald pate, on sparse grey hairs, on a blue-veined tremulous hand which, polishing and polishing, often paused for a long space, as if the hand itself were dreaming. Without pride or hope he sat enthroned in his grudging corner of limbo, an old man attending, like some ancient acolyte, the last humble ritual of the night.

Tearful, terrified, beseeching, Mr. Bancroft—a ridiculous figure without his trousers—whimpered his prayers for release.

"My wife will kill me!" His voice was hoarse, thick with fright.

"You must be fooling—you asked me to come in! You know you did!"

Stay where you are!" commanded Diane threateningly. Twice as naked as he, she was still in full control. "You forced your way in here, you bastard, and you're going to pay for it."

"Just give me back my pants," he begged. "Then we'll talk."

"You try to take them, and I'll scream! . . . You want my uncle to hear?—you want him to come in and find you here, bare-arsed? He'll beat the hell out of you—and then he'll ring the bell and call the Captain."

"Keep your voice down, for Christ's sake! What is it you want?"

Diane, superbly unconcerned in her nakedness, felt for the wallet she knew was there. "This," she said finally. "All of it."

"It's two thousand dollars," wailed Bancroft, his pudgy face desperate, and started forward. Diane opened her mouth. "All right, all right!" he called out, petrified, trembling. "Take it—take the whole lot. Just let me out of here! Jesus God, what a lousy shakedown!"

She peeled off the notes, and tossed the empty wallet, and then the trousers, at his feet. He drew them over his plump thighs with frantic speed, tripping over, nearly falling. His face was still glistening with fear.

In the heavy-breathing silence: "Don't you want your money's worth?" she asked crudely.

"Why, you ——! I'll see you in hell before I touch you again!"

She shrugged; it was an arresting movement. "Well, don't complain I short-changed you. If I say I'll deliver, I deliver."

He paused then, and looked at her. Ten minutes before, his flabby body had been at the peak of desire; it still pricked him powerfully, even now, even after this vile treachery. "You'll scream again," he said uncertainly.

"Try and make me." She threw the money into a drawer, locked it, and then turned again. Her naked form, poised before him, began a practised undulation, like a fish swimming in warm sluggish water. "Just try and make me," she said, in sudden raw invitation, "for two thousand bucks."