Maiden Voyage

THIRTY

At one o'clock, after an hour-and-a-half of futile wallowing in the wild seas, Ralph Peel ordered the Arcadia to resume her course. The wind had now risen to gale force, and the ship was rolling more than twenty degrees from one side to the other. Only the bravest and the sickest of the passengers remained outside, while the wind screamed in the wires, and thousands of gallons of green water thundered onto the foredeck. The noise was devastating, like a hundred Alpine avalanches all at once, accompanied by the shrieking and keening of a cathedral full of professional mourners.

Despite the storm, however, luncheon was being laid out as usual. In the first class dining-lounge, there was supposed to be a special lunch in honour of the Arcadia's designers and engineers, although most of the honoured guests were still huddled in their cabins, their faces buried in their pillows, praying that their designs and their engineering would stand up to a Force Ten gale. The first-class stewards hurried up and down the sloping carpets of the dining-lounge with the surefbotedness of goats, expertly fitting the edges of the tables with mahogany "fiddles'—those raised flaps which were supposed to prevent a passenger's meal from sliding into his lap in rough weather.

Catriona had gone back to her stateroom to change for luncheon. The great grey waves she could see through her porthole were now twenty or thirty feet high, which was well on the way to what the commodore of the Cunard Line had described as "a precipitous sea'. Waves that were eight to twelve feet high were only "rough'. Alice made her lie down for a while, with a cold flannel on her forehead, while Trimmer brought her a glass of iced champagne.

"I never thought a huge ship like this would roll about so much," she said. She was beginning to feel distinctly queasy.

"A few hextra tons don't make no difference to han hocean," said Trimmer.

"No," said Catriona. "Apparently they don't."

By one o'clock, however, she felt well enough to put on a royal-blue Poiret day dress with a floppy white embroidered collar, and accompany Edgar into luncheon. Edgar was noticeably quiet, and the unusual pallor of his cheeks made his dark chin seem even darker, as if he hadn't shaved this morning.

To assemble in that glittering dining lounge, and to sit at tables for lunch while the entire room leaned twenty-five degrees one way and then twenty-five degrees the other, was for most of the Arcadia's first-class passengers an experience they would remember all their lives. It was quite useless trying to keep one's cutlery to oneself. Every time the ship rolled, all the knives and forks and spoons would shower noisily down to one end of the table, and then shower back again when she rolled the other way. Wineglasses were held in special compartments to prevent them from tipping over; but all the same they could only be a third rilled. All the chairs and tables, of course, were securely anchored to the floor.

Mark Beeney appeared a few minutes before the soup was served, with Marcia Conroy on his arm. He caught Catriona's eye for a moment before he sat down, and gave her a quick, questioning smile. She tried to smile back, but her mouth wouldn't respond in time. When she turned away, she saw Edgar looking at her with undisguised thoughtfulness.

"Are you feeling sick?" she asked him.

"Perhaps," he replied, rather cryptically.

Next to her, Douglas Fairbanks said, "It's all in the mind. You should just pretend that you're sitting down to lunch at your favourite restaurant. Forget that the table's tilting from side to side. Tilt with it." Mary Pickford retorted, "You always say that every thing's in the mind. Well, maybe it is. But the trouble with all this rolling about is that it's in the stomach as well."

A bread roll, half-broken, tumbled down the table between them, bounced off the fiddle, and dropped onto the floor. Catriona looked up the table to see where it had come from, and saw Baroness Zawisza with her butter knife raised, her empty hand still cupped in the shape of her escaped bap.

"Well played, Baroness," remarked Douglas Fairbanks, winking at Catriona.

In accordance with that unshakeable perversity which characterises almost every meal that is served at sea, the first course which was brought out at this storm-tilted luncheon was fresh asparagus soup. It would have been quite easy for the head chef to change the menu to pickled herrings, or smoked trout, or pressed chicken with brandy sauce, all of which would have been far more manageable in a precipitous sea. But that would have meant compromising the standards of a first-class restaurant for the sake of the weather; and Monsieur Vincent would never allow anything short of complete capsize to interfere with the quality and the variety of the food he offered. This, despite the fact that the kitchen floors were already awash with soup.

Pairs of stewards manhandled huge white china tureens from table to table as if they were clowns in a German circus. One of the stewards would attempt to ladle while the other did his best to keep the tureen level. Every now and then, the Arcadia would give an extra curtsey, and the soup stewards would all have to totter off sideways, helplessly following the weighty inertia of two gallons of fresh asparagus soup in a desperate attempt to prevent a catastrophic spillage.

At first, everybody was alarmed. But when their soup bowls had been quarter-filled with soup, and they had each managed to rescue a spoon from the sliding shoals of cutlery, their concern subsided and the absurdity of their predicament began to tickle them. Soup went everywhere. It poured off the ends of the tables; it splashed down the fronts of ladies' day dresses; it emptied itself out of one bowl into the bowl next to it. Mark Beeney even managed to pour a spoonful of soup over his left shoulder, which left both Marcia and Catriona helpless with laughter. Only Edgar wasn't amused. When he had tried for the fifth time to pursue the small pale green semicircle of soup in his plate and missed it, he slammed down his spoon and sat with his arms folded and his face like a pre-Columbian ritual mask. Catriona said, "Don't worry, Mr Deacon. I'll tell them not to serve you any gravy with the next course."

In accordance with that unshakeable perversity which characterises almost every meal that is served at sea, the first course which was brought out at this storm-tilted luncheon was fresh asparagus soup. It would have been quite easy for the head chef to change the menu to pickled herrings, or smoked trout, or pressed chicken with brandy sauce, all of which would have been far more manageable in a precipitous sea. But that would have meant compromising the standards of a first-class restaurant for the sake of the weather; and Monsieur Vincent would never allow anything short of complete capsize to interfere with the quality and the variety of the food he offered. This, despite the fact that the kitchen floors were already awash with soup.

Pairs of stewards manhandled huge white china tureens from table to table as if they were clowns in a German circus. One of the stewards would attempt to ladle while the other did his best to keep the tureen level. Every now and then, the Arcadia would give an extra curtsey, and the soup stewards would all have to totter off sideways, helplessly following the weighty inertia of two gallons of fresh asparagus soup in a desperate attempt to prevent a catastrophic spillage.

At first, everybody was alarmed. But when their soup bowls had been quarter-filled with soup, and they had each managed to rescue a spoon from the sliding shoals of cutlery, their concern subsided and the absurdity of their predicament began to tickle them. Soup went everywhere. It poured off the ends of the tables; it splashed down the fronts of ladies' day dresses; it emptied itself out of one bowl into the bowl next to it. Mark Beeney even managed to pour a spoonful of soup over his left shoulder, which left both Marcia and Catriona helpless with laughter. Only Edgar wasn't amused. When he had tried for the fifth time to pursue the small pale green semicircle of soup in his plate and missed it, he slammed down his spoon and sat with his arms folded and his face like a pre-Columbian ritual mask. Catriona said, "Don't worry, Mr Deacon. I'll tell them not to serve you any gravy with the next course."

After the soup, Marcia excused herself, and with the help of a steward, she tottered off to the ladies' room. Catriona stayed where she was, finishing her bread roll and trying not to look either at Mark or at George Welterman, who was sitting right down at the far end of the table with Dame Clara Butt. But Mark stared at her all the time, his arms folded on top of the fiddle, one of his shoulders slightly higher than the other where he had stuffed a linen napkin under his jacket to prevent the soup soaking through to his silk shirt.

"Catriona," he said, so quietly that at first she wasn't quite sure had actually spoken to her. She looked up, not at Mark but at George Welterman, who was also watching her. George must have possessed extra-sensitive ears, because he nodded, as if to say, it's okay, answer him.

She turned to Mark and managed a smile. "I'm not angry with you," she said.

Mary Pickford said, "Angry? Who's angry with whom? Catriona, are you angry with Mark? Is that it? Why, I just adore a quarrel. Douglas, do listen, they're quarrelling."

"I'm trying to drink this fucking soup," Douglas Fairbanks complained.

Mark said, "Can we meet later? Talk, maybe?"

Catriona shrugged. She knew that she had Mark exactly where she wanted him, and that the more offhand she was, the more enthusiastically he would chase her. But, actually, she didn't feel like being offhand with him. The anger she had felt last night, when she had thought that he was only wooing her for the sake of buying up the Arcadia, had largely subsided. He was a businessman, after all. And he was amazingly handsome. The kind of man who was more handsome in the flesh than he was in her imagination.

"What about Marcia?" asked Catriona. "Won't she be angry?"

"Oh, Douglas, do listen to this, this is marvellous," enthused Mary Pickford.

"For Christ's sake, it's none of your business," protested Douglas Fairbanks. "You don't have any right to listen."

"It's so romantic," Mary Pickford told him. "What other excuse do I need?"

"I don't know," Douglas Fairbanks told her. "Did you make an offer for the motion picture rights yet?"

"Marcia understands," Mark lied. "She knows the way I feel about you."

"She says she understands," said Catriona. "But does she?"

"Do you want to ask her?"

"No. I wouldn't be so cruel."

"Then believe me. And join me for dinner at eight o'clock this evening."

Catriona glanced at Edgar. On Edgar's face there was a positive No. She looked further, towards George Welterman. On George Welterman's face there was an odd, stony watchfulness.

"You must go to dinner with Marcia," she told Mark, in an imperative whisper. Mark could hardly hear her because the stewards were briskly clearing away the soup plates. "But you could meet me for supper at ten o'clock, after the theatre show. You know where my stateroom is."

"Boy, is that romantic," said Mary Pickford.

Douglas Fairbanks winced. "I wish you wouldn't say "boy". Do you know what it sounds like, when you say "boy"? It's nearly as bad as saying "gee"."

"Why shouldn't I say "gee", if I want to? I make more money than you do."

"You want to bet?"

Marcia returned from the ladies' room looking paler but steadier. She sat down next to Mark with a wan smile. Mark kissed her cheek and there wasn't a lady on the table who didn't think, Judas. Except for Catriona, of course, who knew that she desired him more than she had ever desired Nigel. Nigel had been a lover and a chum. Mark was too good-looking and too tempestuous to be anything but a lover and a competitor, and lovers who were competitors were the best kind. It was the men she had to fight for who always aroused her the most.

The stewards served out the next course: blinis with sour cream and fresh Malossol caviar. The blinis were supposed to be served with Polish vodka, in diminutive Wielkopolski glasses, but the steward who was bringing all the glasses into the dining lounge on a large kidney-shaped tray was fatally deceived by the Arcadia's hesitation on the peak of each roll, and attempted to cross an open stretch of floor just as the ship began to roll back again. A hundred glasses smashed, to the delighted and slightly hysterical applause of the cabin-class diners.

It was just as the essence of black mushrooms au Chablis was being served that the first of the crises occurred. The Fifth Officer, Derek Holdsworth, balanced his way into the first-class dining lounge with his white cap wedged under his arm, and whispered with obvious urgently into Dick Charles' ear. Dick Charles whispered back at him, and then abruptly sprang to his feet. A more experienced officer, of course, would have smoothly excused himself and left without causing a commotion. But Dick Charles was both inexperienced and overexcited, especially after this morning's games of Corkies with Lady Diana FitzPerry. He flapped his hands for silence, and then he announced, "My lords, ladies, and gentlemen. An emer—an emergency has arisen. It apuh—it apuh—it appears that a young g-girl has become trapped in the rigging. She may be in d-danger of duh—she may be in danger of duh—she may be in danger of drowning. So I must leave you at once, and d-do what I can to rescue her."

Crumpling up his napkin and throwing it on to the table, Dick Charles followed Derek Holdsworth to the staircase.

It took a few seconds for Dick Charles' announcement to register in the further comers of the dining lounge. But then, with one noisy accord, as if they had just received the news of the declaration of another war, or the sudden death of Mae Murray, the first-class company rose from their seats, and followed him up the staircase to the boat-deck.

"What on earth's up?" demanded Edgar.

Mark Beeney, coming across and taking Catriona's arm, said quietly, "It sounds like you've got trouble."

For a moment, Catriona was jostled away from Mark by excited passengers; all pearls and fringes and beaded headbands; but then suddenly Philip Carter-Helm appeared, and politely but very firmly held back two overexcited French ladies so that Catriona could make her way through.

"Thank you," she said.

Philip smiled that disturbing smile of his. He was handsome, all right, but for some reason she couldn't find him attractive. Perhaps it was because he seemed to be so smug. He always gave her the impression that he knew something which she didn't.

"I wouldn't go up on deck, if I were you," said Philip. "It's jolly wild out there."

Mark came up behind Catnona and took her arm again. "Philip," he acknowledged him.

"I was advising Miss Keys not go up on deck," said Philip.

Mark grinned. "I think you'll find that Miss Keys has a mind of her own. She's not always right; but she's always determined."

Catriona said, quite kindly, "I do think that I can look after myself, thank you, Mr Carter-Helm."

Charles Schwab, the American steel billionaire, stood aside to let Catriona pass him on the sloping stairs. "I have to tell you, Miss Keys, this is just about the most exciting maiden voyage I was ever on. Just marvellous. Is this a stunt, too, this drowning child? You really know how to keep your passengers entertained."

Although the first-class passengers were now crowding the grand staircase, and chattering in anticipation, the dining-room stewards politely but adamantly refused to permit them out on deck. It was too wild out there, and the last thing Sir Peregrine wanted was to lose some expensive socialite over the side. White Star officials still shuddered when they thought of Colonel Astor and Mr. Benjamin Guggenheim going down in the Titanic, and that had been more than twelve years ago now. Collectively, the passengers on board the Arcadia were worth more than 450 million dollars, and Keys were very anxious to keep them all on board.

Catriona found Edgar by the double doors that led out on to the boat deck. He was struggling into a yellow oilskin, and black galoshes. "What's going on out there?" she demanded, over the hubbub of excited passengers.

"A little girl went out to see the storm," Edgar shouted back. "Derek Holdsworth says she was almost swept overboard, but she got herself caught up in one of the electric cranes. That's all I know. Apparently they can't reach her."

"I'm coming out too," Catriona insisted.

"You can't! The sea's running all over the decks!"

"I am coming!" Catriona shouted. "It's my ship and I'm coming!"

Mark Beeney put his arm around Catriona and said to Edgar, "It's okay. I'll come out too and take care of her."

Edgar snapped up the buttons of his oilskin, his face bland and unexpressive. Then he said, "All right. Steward, help them into their waterproofs, will you?" With that, he nodded to Derek Holdsworth to open the door for him, and the stepped out with his head bent into the howling wind.

"Ladies and gentlemen, please!" called out Percy Fearson, from the side of the foyer. "The weather's too rough for any of you to go out on deck! Please carry on with your luncheon! There isn't anything you can do, except finish your meal! We'll keep you informed of everything that happens!"

Douglas Fairbanks elbowed his way forward. "Miss Keys," he said. "I understand that a young girl is caught up in the rigging somehow. Well, I insist that I come out to help. Swinging around in the rigging is my forte, after all."

Catriona didn't really look her best at that moment. The steward had given her an ankle-length yellow oilskin with sleeves that reached her knees, and a pair of rubber galoshes that were so huge she could a take a step in them. Mark, with a large yellow sou'wester pulled over his eyes, looked as if he were posing for an advertisement for Compass brand sardines.

Catriona looked towards Percy Fearson and said, "Do you think it's all right if Mr. Fairbanks comes?"

"I should reckon it's all right," said Percy Fearson. "Seeing as how he clambered

around in The Thief of Baghdad."

"You saw that picture?" asked Douglas Fairbanks with a flashing grin. "Did you like it?"

Marcia had now realised that Mark was going out on deck with Catriona. She tried to stagger towards them through the crowded foyer, but George Welterman held her arm. "You heard what they said," he told her. "We should just go back and finish our luncheon."

"But Mark's going outside."

"He's an experienced sailor. Me won't get into any trouble."

"Not with the sea, maybe."

"You mean you're concerned about Mark and that Keys girl?" asked George. "Well, perhaps you have cause to be. But it's her ship he wants, not her affections."

Marcia gave him a quick, uncomprehending glance. "Her ship?" she asked. Then she turned away and began to clamber back down the staircase, gripping the handrail to help her balance. Most of the rest of the passengers began to follow her and resume their meal.

Derek Holdsworth opened the doors for Mark and Catriona, and helped them out on to the boat deck. The wind and the spray hit Catriona in the face like a bucketful of crushed ice. She staggered and slipped, and Mark had to catch her arm and guide her across to the handrail.

"Can you manage?" yelled Derek Holdsworth. "I'll be along in a minute with Mr. Fairbanks. The girl's on the starboard crane on the promenade deck.

"All right," Mark shouted back.

It had been one thing to look out of her cabin porthole and watch the heaving waves from the luxurious security of her silken bed; but even the nauseating rolling of the dining saloon had not prepared Catriona for the sheer thunderous drama of what was outside. The huge liner was driving her bows into walls of water that were twenty or thirty feet high, and pitching up columns of spray that seemed to hang above the foredecks for minutes at a time before they collapsed onto the boards with a rattle like gunfire. The wind was almost overwhelming, and Catriona had to gasp for breath as she and Mark clutched and staggered their way back along to the second-class promenade, and to the rail which overlooked promenade deck A.

Edgar was already there, with Second Officer Ralph Peel and Fourth Officer Dick Charles. On the promenade deck below, six or seven of the crew were paying out a reel of line in preparation for an attempt to lasso the overhanging jib of the starboard electric crane.

"What's going on?" shouted Mark. "Where's the girl? I don't see her."

Edgar gripped his shoulder and pointed towards the very apex of the crane's jib. Catriona peered through the slanting spray, and at last caught sight of her. A pale-faced bedraggled figure in pink, clinging to the slippery metal.

"How the hell did she get up there?" asked Mark.

"Search me," said Ralph Peel. "But she was lucky she was spotted at all."

"Can't one of your men climb up the crane and carry her down?"

"In this sea? Not without a line. That's what we're doing now. Trying to throw a line over the jib so that someone can go up there slide the girl down on the rope."

"What's her name?" asked Catriona. "Are her parents on board? How could anyone let her go out in a storm like this?"

RaIph Peel wiped spray from his face with the back of his hand. The wind and the sea were so noisy that they could scarcely hear each other shouting. And all the time the Arcadia was plunging and rolling and bucking her way through the ocean with the ferocity of an untamed mare.

"Her name's Lucille Foster. She's the daughter of Winthrop Foster the Third and Gala Jones. Those two who smashed themselves up in that motor accident in Paris. She's on her way back to America with a guardian, Mrs. Hall; but Mrs. Hall is down in her stateroom flat out from seasickness. So she's not much help."

At last Douglas Fairbanks appeared, wrapped up in shiny black oilskin, with a sou'wester that was two sizes too small for him. "I can't compliment your costume department," he told Catriona. "Now where's this girl?"

"Up there, right at the end of that crane jib," said Ralph Peel. "We're trying to throw a line over the jib and make it fast, so that someone can climb up there and lower her down."

"How did she get way up there in the first place?* Douglas Fairbanks wanted to know.

"That's the same question I asked," said Mark.

"And why, in a storm like this?" added Douglas Fairbanks.

"Have you tried talking to her?" said Catriona.

"We tried, miss," said Ralph Peel. "She didn't answer, though; and I don't even think she can hear us."

"Have you thought of lowering the crane's own hook, instead of trying to throw a line around it?" Douglas Fairbanks wanted to know.

"That was the first thing we thought of, sir. But that's a nasty hook on there, very heavy and we didn't want that swinging around the deck in a Force Tenner. Quite apart from which, it looks like the young girl's got her hand right up in the pulleys. If we tried to operate the crane, we'd probably end up injuring her. Tearing her arm off, or worse."

"I just don't understand how she managed to get up there," Douglas Fairbanks repeated.

"She could have shinned, sir," said Ralph Peel. "It's not impossible, especially for a youngster."

On their tenth or eleventh attempt, the crewmen at last managed to throw their line so that it snaked up over the crane's jib, and swung down to the deck below. One of them immediately snatched at the other end, and made it fast. It was prevented from sliding down the sloping arm of the crane by the protruding pully mechanism, but that was all that held it. It would take a brave man to climb up there in a sixty-mph wind.

"Volunteers?" screamed Ralph Peel, into the gale. Almost immediately, one of the crewmen, a ginger-haired youngster called Stokes, seized hold of the wet rope and began pulling himself up it, monkey-fashion.

"That's it, lad! Keep at it!" shouted Ralph Peel, although it was doubtful if Stokes could hear him. The rope spun around and around, and several times Stokes was forced to cling tight and stay where be was, as the tilting of the Arcadia's deck left him hanging over the side, seventy feet above the threshing ocean. To lose his grip and plunge into a sea like that would mean immediate drowning, or crushing against the side of the ship.

Catriona borrowed Derek Holdsworth's spray-speckled binoculars, and peered at Lucille Foster through the driving wind. The girl appeared to be calm, almost thoughtful, as she clung to the end of the jib. She wasn't even looking down at her would-be rescuers. Instead, with her hair stuck in Pre-Raphaelite waves to her forehead, she was staring at some dark point in the distance. The moment, perhaps, when her father's Hispano-Suiza had collided with the base of that statue. Her mother's last second of life: "Winthrop, what are you doing?"

Stokes was halfway up the rope now, but the wind was gusting worse than ever, and there was no doubt that the seas were growing more calamitous every minute. Although Catriona didn't know it, luncheon in the first-class dining saloon had already been abandoned, and an heroic attempt by the second-class stewards to bring hot beef tea and chicken pies to the second-class passengers had been temporarily called off after a boiling urn had rolled the whole length of the corridor. Down in the lower levels of the ship, among the third-class passengers, there was something of a storm party going on, as seventy or eighty of the hardier beer-drinkers among them clung clung around the bar and did their best to empty it of brown ale. Harry Pakenow was among them, although he was staying on lemonade. Half an hour after lunch, he had been monstrously sick over the side of shelter deck C, sicker than he could ever remember in his whole life. In the third-class recreation room, the upright piano broke loose from the screws that were holding it to the deck and rumbled across the room like a miniature express train, smashing its way clean through the starboard wall, and ending up in the gentlemen's washroom with a resonant Wagnerian bang. In the second-class pantry, the door of a crockery cupboard swung open unnoticed, and on the ship's next roll, two hundred china cups and saucers came gushing off the top two shelves and shattered on the floor.

"What the hell's Sir Peregrine up to," Ralph Peel muttered to himself. "Waves like this, he ought to be taking them aslant."

Now Stokes was waving from his perch halfway up the rope that couldn't cling on any longer, and that he was going to have to come down. He slid jerkily back to the deck, burning his hands as he went; but it had been a courageous try, and his shipmates clapped on the the back as he dropped onto the slippery boards. He gave Ralph Peel the thumbs-up.

The pitching of the Arcadia's bows was so severe that seawater was crashing onto the foredeck and sluicing along her promenades like a seething tidal bore. Most of the passengers, seasick and battered, had returned to their cabins, although Maurice Peace was still running a poker game in the smoking lounge, and Mr. Wilkes and Mr. Kretchmer were sitting side by side in basketwork chairs in the Orchid Lounge, munching their way through sandwiches and fruitcake, which was all their steward had been able to bring them. Neither had yet been seasick, and this was probably because their stomachs were so full that they were incapable of even the slightest regurgitative spasm. In the Grand Lounge, the ship's pianist sat with his tails hanging tidily over his piano stool while he played a saucy little selection from Charles Gulliver's revue The Whirl of the World, currently showing at the London Palladium with Lorna and Toots Pounds.

As the rolling and pitching grew worse, Mademoiselle Narron burst out of her stateroom in a state of histrionic fright and made her way whimpering and warbling up to the officer's quarters. The electric lifts were not operating, so she climbed the stairs in her fright-white negligee with all the wide-eyed drama of Lady Macbeth. Outside, on the boat deck, she was instantly drenched by nearly half a hundredweight of cold seawater, but she struggled on to Rudyard Philips' cabin and knocked loudly at the door.

Rudyard, who had been sitting fretfully on his bunk, jumped up and opened the door at once. "Louise!" he said. "My dear Louise, you shouldn't be here! Look at you, you're soaked!"

Mademoiselle Narron collapsed heavily and wetly into Rudyard's arms, obliging him to take three quick steps backwards to keep his balance. He kicked the cabin door shut with his foot, and then he manhandled Mademoiselle Narron as gently as he could manage on to his bunk. When he leaned over to loosen her negligee, however, she seized his face between her hands and pressed him forcefully against her huge slippery bosoms.

"Rudyard! I'm so frightened! We're going to sink!"

Rudyard took hold of her wrists, and firmly released her grip. "Louise, listen to me, we are nor going to sink. That's nonsense! No ocean liner has been sunk by heavy seas in the whole of this century, nor will it be. We can ship thousands of gallons of water before we're at any risk. The Carmania heeled over fifty degrees once, so that her lifeboats were broken to pieces, but she stayed afloat. And so will the Arcadia."

"But I'm so frightened I didn't know what else to do, but come to you."

"You shouldn't be here at all. I'm in enough trouble as it is."

"You're in trouble? What for?"

Rudyard went to his washstand, took out two tumblers, and poured each of them a brandy. "That's all I've got, I'm afraid," he told her, "but it may help to settle your stomach. The truth is, my dear, I'm under arrest. Confined to my quarters until further notice."

"Confined to your quarters? What have you done? How can they arrest you?"

"The captain has the power to arrest anyone he chooses. In this particular case, he chose to arrest me. He says that I'm responsible for an accident we had when we left Irish territorial waters. We ran down a small boat, and killed someone."

"This ship? The Arcadia?

Rudyard nodded. "You wouldn't have noticed. The boat was too small. But I was on the bridge at the time, and so I'm being held responsible."

"That is terrible. You are a good sailor, n'est-ce-pas?"

Rudyard looked down at his drink. "I suppose so. I always used to think so. I'm not much good at anything else."

"How can you say that?" Louise demanded, sitting up on the bed.

Her red hair stuck to her cheeks and her shoulders like fronds of Japanese seaweed. Her pink nipples showed through the thin wet cotton of her negligee, and her cheeks were flushed both with brandy and determination. "How can you say that you are no good at anything else?"

"I'm not much of a Romeo, am I?" Rudyard asked her, without raising his eyes. He couldn't bring himself to use the word "lover". "And I didn't do much of a job when it came to keeping my wife."

"You were at sea. It wasn't your fault your wife left you. What else can you do?"

"Oh, come on now," said Rudyard, bracing himself against the washstand as the Arcadia heeled off to starboard. It was like dropping in a lift, except that your stomach never quite caught up with the rest of you. In a moment or two you would be rising up again, passing your stomach on its way down, and just as your stomach came scrabbling up to meet you, down you would drop yet again. In the next cabin, through the thin partition wall, Rudyard had heard Derek being catastrophically ill, and he didn't feel particularly chipper himself.

Mademoiselle Narron said, "It was my fault, what happened to us him we made love. I expected too much."

"That doesn't make me feel very much better. In any case, don't let's talk about it, if you don't mind."

"But I have been thinking about it so much! You need someone who is going to bring you out. At the moment, everything you do is so tight, so restricted. You never express yourself. Perhaps you are afraid to. Perhaps you think that people will ridicule you if you burst out and do everything that you have always wanted. Look at me, though. All the time I am making such a fool of myself! Pretending to kill myself! Falling all over you like some lady from an opera! But even if people laugh at me, who cares? At least I do what I want. At least I live my life with fullness and with passion. But you? In your mind, you are so reserved! That is why our lovemaking was such a disaster!"

"Oh," said Rudyard, sourly. "I didn't know you thought it was a disaster. Sorry I thought I could satisfy you. Very unprovoked of me, I'm sure."

Louise lurched across the cabin and took his hand. She had lost one of her slippers on the boat deck, and so she limped as well as lurched. But there was an expression of such friendliness and sympathy on her face that she looked almost beatific. Behind her raggedy red hair, a discreet halo should have shone.

"I have been so uncaring to you," she said. "Here I am, accusing you of not giving yourself to me, and I never even thought about giving myself to you. If you do not think it terrible of me, I will show you how to make love in the way that I like to make love. I will show you how to make me cry with pleasure. Please, don't be offended. I am not criticising your virility, only your upbringing, and the way your stuffy English schools have led you to think. What happens in love does not happen inside here," she said, pressing her fingers to his forehead, "it happens outside of you, everywhere," and here she swept her arms in a wide dramatic circle, knocking Rudyard's shaving-mug on to the floor.

Rudyard turned his face away, and took out a cigarette. He tapped it on his thumbnail. "I don't know," he replied, with the cigarette waggling between his lips. "I don't know whether I've got the inclination any more. I've got too much on my mind. Being arrested, well, it's not exactly a joke."

"What better to occupy your mind than making love?" enthused Louise, and reached out for him with both hands. "Through making love, you can forget about everything, and anything."

It instant, however, the Arcadia bucked and tilted so violently that both of them were thrown sideways to the floor. And even though Louise screamed loud and long at the top of her operatic voice, Rudyard heard a deep rending noise, followed by a thunderous crash, and then the steady gushing of hundreds of gallons of seawater as they seethed from the foredeck to the poop deck and cascaded back out into the ocean.

"What's happening?" shrieked Louise. "We're sinking! I know it!"

"It's all right!" Rudyard insisted, snatching for the rail at the side of his bunk to steady himself. "We're just steaming head-on into a series of deep troughs, that's all."

But the Arcadia rose again, and rolled, and then dropped into the next trough like a demolished building. Again there was a tearing of metal and a discordant twanging of snapped wires, and that thirsty sucking seething sound of the sea. God, thought Rudyard, as he clutched Mademoiselle Narron close to him, both of them kneeling on his cabin floor like waifs, if we don't turn aslant to this storm, we are going to founder. Why the hell doesn't Sir Peregrine turn her aslant?

The Arcadia was now rearing and dropping in a thunderous seesaw motion, and when she plunged her bows into the next trough, her screws actually rose clear of the water for a moment. Her front superstructure was badly damaged, and she had lost nearly eighty of railing on the port side. But still she forged straight ahead on course, taking the waves directly on her bows. Down in third-class, where the ventilation was less effective, and the cabins were more crowded, vomit was running down the gangways in a brown and acrid tide, so that even those who hadn't felt nauseous before began to throw up. All through the nine-storey ship there were shouts of despair and sickness, and the clatter of falling crockery and spoons.

In the Grand Lounge, the pianist turned wearily to selections from Ivor Novello's new revue Puppets! But by now, only one elderly industrialist was listening to him, an old man of eighty-seven with a face like a dry chamois leather. He had crossed the Atlantic so many times before that he had lost count, and was never ill.

Out by the after rail of the boat deck, Douglas Fairbanks was preparing to climb out on to the jib of the electric crane to rescue Lucille Foster. A line had been fastened around his waist, and Ralph Peel had screamed at him above the wind and the spray that he should come back down at once if he got into difficulties. "Your fan-club will crucify us if we lose you over the side! So will your studio! And your insurance company!"

Mark had tried to persuade Catriona to go back inside, but she had refused, so he made her stand in the shelter of the second-class entrance and hold on tight to the handrail. "Now stay there!" he shouted at her. "Because if you go overboard, I'm going to have to go after you, and I'm wet enough already!"

She looked under his yellow waterproof hat at his spray-splashed face. His expression was very straight, very college-boy, and very sincere, and she believed him. If she was swept off the ship, he would dive after her, even though it would probably mean a quick and violent drowning for both of them. Greater love hath no man, she thought. But she didn't particularly want to put it to the test.

Mark turned away and half-skidded, half-staggered across to the rail of the promenade. Douglas Fairbanks was now standing on the rail itself, ready to swing over to the crane on a line which had been fixed for him by the crewmen on the deck below. "Who's got a camera?" he shouted, balancing himself by twisting one foot between the railings. "Quick—a camera! You don't think I'm going to let this go unrecorded!"

Someone, considerately, had brought a Kodak camera and a flash attachment. Douglas Fairbanks struck an heroic pose on the rail, one hand on the line and the other hand raised like Robin Hood, or the Thief of Baghdad, or Zorro; and the flash gun popped loudly in the howling wind. Then he launched himself from the rail, slid right down the rope to the promenade deck below, rolled over in a heap of yellow oilskins, and screamed out, "Shit! I've wrenched my goddamned ankle!"

The flash camera popped again, and he yelled out, "Not now, you

stupid bastard! You print that picture and I'll kill you!"

Catriona, defying Mark's instructions, came over to the rail. Mark turned to her and raised one eyebrow. "Pretty hopeless, huh? And the sea's getting worse. How do we get her down now?"

"She climbed up there by herself, perhaps she can climb down by herself," suggested Catriona.

"That's ridiculous," said Mark. "If she was able to climb down, she would have."

"Perhaps she wouldn't. Perhaps she wants to stay up there."

"You are talking through the back of your head, if you'll pardon the expression. Why should she want to stay up there? Why should she want to go up there in the first place?"

"I don't know. But her father and mother were only just killed in a car accident, weren't they? When you're shocked and you're grieving, your mind can work in some funny ways."

Mark gave her a look which meant, well, you should know; although he wasn't so insensitive that he said it out loud.

"Maybe you're right," he told her. "In which case, what can we do?"

"I don't know. Perhaps her guardian could help. Mrs. Hall, wasn't it?"

Just then, however, Monty Willowby appeared on deck in a soaking wet pea jacket and a waterproof hat that looked as if it had been designed to prevent the wearer from being deluged by incontinent elephants. "Mr. Peel, sir!" he shouted. "I've just heard what's happening up here!"

"Well, there's nothing you can do!" yelled Ralph Peel. "You might just as well go belowdecks!"

Monty leaned close to the Second Officer's ear and shouted, "There's a fellow down in the steerage, sir! It seems that he's made a friend of the girl! I wonder if it might be a good idea to bring him up here, see if he can talk her into coming down!"

Ralph Peel squinted up through the spray at the small pink-dressed figure clinging to the jib of the crane. A wet rose petal stuck to a naked branch. "We can't get up there after her," he agreed. "Perhaps it's worth a try."

The Arcadia slammed headlong into the next towering wave, and spray from the bows hurtled as far back as the first-class staircase, amidships. Ralph Peel slipped, and then gripped the rail. "You go and find this fellow from downstairs," he ordered Monty. "I think I need to talk to Sir Peregrine!"

Then, as Monty waddled down the second-class staircase, Ralph bellowed at Mark, "You keep an eye on things, Mr Beeney! I'll be back directly! We'll never get that girl down if we keep on hitting these troughs head-on."

Mark gave him a mock-salute, and held Catriona tighter around the waist. Even through their wet and squeaking oilskins, she could feel the firmness of his muscular hip, and the strength of his arm. It didn't seem to matter to her now if he wanted to buy up Keys Shipping or not. She wasn't a child, after all, was she, who was going to be taken in by a smile and a kiss and an extravagant necklace? She wasn't some romantic shopgirl who was going to be impressed by orchids, and champagne. Although... and she thought this with a sudden shudder of wistfulness, wouldn't it sometimes be quite nice if she were?