The Nylon Pirates

PART FIVE "Listen to the heart-beat of savage, untamed, mysterious Africa"

"You've all seen what the choice is," said Carl. "There's a trip by air up to Johannesburg, and then on to the Game Reserve. Or there's a bus-tour along what they call the Garden Route, between here and Durban, with various stop-overs. The ship itself stays here about four days, before moving on to Durban. That's where we all get together again." He looked round them, trying to curb the nervous irritation which had lately been plaguing him. "Personally, I'm going to stay with the ship, and I think you might as well do the same. There'll be plenty of people left on board."

It was after lunch, on the first day of their stay in Cape Town; the delay in arrival had meant some last-minute changes in the routine, and only now had the choice of arrangements been made clear. They were all with him in the day cabin, except for the Professor, who had retired to bed with a headache; Diane and Louis sat silent on the big sofa, while Kathy had her usual station at these meetings, standing close by the open porthole as if she belonged to two worlds, and could not make up her mind between them. There would be no shore excursions until the morrow, when Tiptree-Jones set out with the Johannesburg contingent, and the Purser headed the cavalcade by road to Durban.

Diane was the first to speak, and she prefaced it with a yawn and a stretch.

"It suits me O.K. to stay on board," she said, in an off-hand voice. "I don't want to go chasing after any wild animals. I'm tired!"

"How about a little work?" said Louis snappishly.

"I'll work when I'm good and ready."

Kathy turned from the porthole momentarily. "Do you happen to know who's staying on board?" she asked Carl.

He shook his head. "No. Everyone's been thrown out—they're still making up their minds."

Diane asked: "Who do you want to stay on board?"

"No one special," answered Kathy. Her voice positively forbade any further discussion.

"What's the Prof going to do?" asked Louis.

"He'll stay too," answered Carl. "I want to work a few things out with him, maybe mail some of the stuff home." He looked at Louis. "That leaves you."

Louis also yawned, not so convincingly as Diane; where she had looked tired, he seemed almost theatrically indifferent. Finally he said:

"I was thinking of taking in the Johannesburg trip."

There was silence after he had spoken; his words had been normal, his choice hardly worthy of note; it was only his manner which drew attention to both of them, so that those who heard him were left wondering what it was all about. Carl spoke for all of them when he asked:

"What do you want to go all the way up there for?"

"Just for the hell of it," answered Louis off-handedly. "It's all part of the cruise, isn't it?"

"I'm not so sure of that," answered Carl. He hardly knew why he was arguing, except that Louis's manner had put him on his guard. "We're not here to enjoy ourselves."

"Hell, chief!" said Louis. "I've been cooped up in the ship since God knows when. I want to get away."

There was another silence. Once again, the phrase "I want to get away" was entirely normal, like the line of thought behind it; it was the way Louis said it, as if he had rehearsed it earlier, and was now coming in on cue, which nudged the attention. This time it was Diane who challenged him.

"We all want to get away," she said aggrievedly. "But it means you'll be gone for nearly a week, just loafing around. How about that?"

"I won't be loafing."

"What, then?"

"Gee, I don't know!" said Louis, with somewhat overdone irritation. "There'll be a big party going up. Maybe sixty people. I'll find someone to work on."

"Mrs. van Dooren?" inquired Carl.

"Could be."

"And could be not," said Diane. "I heard she was taking the other trip."

"So what's the difference? I'm nearly two thousand bucks ahead, there. I've just about run through her."

Diane said: "It's the other way round, by the look of you."

Louis did not answer. He was indeed looking wan and pale; a nervous twitch at the side of the mouth spoke of tension and tiredness. At the beginning, he had given them all a ribald account of Mrs. van Dooren's tastes and demands, but latterly he had not been at all communicative, on this or any other point. Yet Carl, looking at him, decided that he would let the thing go. Louis had earned a rest, if it was a rest he was really looking for. There could be no possible harm in giving him a run ashore.

"O.K.," he said briefly. "Let's leave it like that. We all stay on board, except Louis who does the Johannesburg trip. I may do a bit of shopping here, but that's about all." He glanced across at Kathy, still stationary by the porthole. "I suppose we should really buy some souvenirs, while we're in this part of the world." There was almost a coaxing quality in his voice; she had been very remote lately, he could not get near her at all. He supposed it to be due to her embarrassment that, even now, she had not contributed a single cent towards their earnings. . . . "Would you like that, Kathy?"

"If you would," she answered, without feeling.

Diane sniffed. "Try me," she suggested caustically. "I'd like some nice souvenir bars of gold."

"They've got diamonds here too," said Carl jokingly, to ease the moment. "Up at Kimberley. They just dig them up out of the ground." He recalled a guide-book phrase. "They say it's the biggest man-made hole in the world."

"Now take it easy, Carl!" said Diane, in pretended alarm. "You'll get Romeo all worked up again."

Snugly berthed in the inner harbour, sheltered by the enormous mountain at its back, the Alcestis fell silent. More than two-thirds of her passengers had taken one or other of the shore trips; and this was the time when the Captain, aware that most of his crew needed a break, granted leave-periods of two and three days at a time, to anyone who could be spared. Cape Town was not the ideal place for this; not for nothing had it been nicknamed, for over three hundred years, the Tavern of the Seas; almost always, someone landed in trouble, and had to be rescued, or bailed out, or, in extreme cases, left behind to languish in jail. Apart from the formidable domestic brandy, it was not that opportunities for sin were anything out of the ordinary. It was just that the local rules were perceptibly stricter. All he could do was to see that knowledge of this filtered down to the lower deck. The most important could be summed up in a succinct phrase: "Coloured girls are illegal."

"But is that really true?" asked Beresford, the apprentice, when he was told of the ban. He had not touched at a South African port before. "You mean, you can actually go to prison for sleeping with one?"

Blantyre, his informant, nodded. "Immorality Act, they call it. If they catch you, you both go to jail."

"But what are they afraid of?"

"They're afraid you might get to like it too much," said Fleming.

"Well, I wouldn't," declared Beresford stoutly. He came from a strict North of England home. "I think the whole idea's absolutely horrible. Good heavens, who wants to go to bed with one of those black birds?"

Fleming, a more worldly character, grinned cynically. "You'd be surprised. . . ." His face assumed the smooth, slightly crafty air which meant that he was initiating a leg-pull. "South Africa's a great country for birds," he said. "I mean, real birds. Vultures, flamingoes, great crested eagles. . . . There's one that I knowyou'd like. You see it everywhere."

"What's that?"

"The Rosy-Breasted Pushover."

"I never heard—" began Beresford, and then stopped, discomforted by the laughter. He was even blushing. "I knew you were fooling," he said lamely.

"This isn't fooling," said Fleming. "It's real."

"Then there's that other one," said Blantyre, joining in, "the one that watches television the whole time. The Hairy-Chested Nutscratcher."

There was not much for them to do except talk, on this or any other topic; the Alcestis, relieved of the necessity of being ready to sail for five or six days, was allowed to relax and run down. Pressure fell off the boilers; the bridge-house was locked and deserted; the radio operators took a holiday, for the first time in nearly two months. At meal times, the stewards looked out over a waste of unoccupied tables; at night, the empty cabins gave the long passageways a lonely, even desolate air. The only people who had not taken off for Johannesburg or the Garden Route were the lazy, who never went ashore anywhere; the bridge-players, who never even looked out of the portholes; and those with ulcers and dietetic problems, who preferred to be miserable in familiar surroundings. When every meal, three times a day, was limited to the softer parts, boiled, of certain bland fish, there was not much point in going ashore to eat it.

Of them all, the Captain had the most leisure. He knew no one in Cape Town and, being a predominantly solitary character, he did not want to know anyone. He spent his time reading—the books were mostly heavy historical novels borrowed from the Doctor's library—and in thinking about what he now called, in his private mind, the Gang.

He was aware that all of them, except Louis Scapelli, had remained on board; there was nothing surprising in this, except that it was a further hint, a small pointer towards their solidarity. All he could do, of course, was to wait; but he waited in confidence. If something important or critical were to happen, this was a good moment for it; when the ship was in harbour, people could be disciplined, people could even be sent home. ... In the meantime, he reviewed the evidence.

He had a little more to go on, since he had last talked to Foxy Cutler. Diane Loring had sent another casualty to the doctor, a secretive man called Hathaway who was resolute in his insistence that his complaint was a form of sweat-rash. Talking to Hartmann, one of the poker-players, and cross-checking with Burrell, another, the Captain had confirmed that Carl Wenstrom's poker winnings were indeed enormous, by any standards—something like twenty thousand dollars. No one was complaining about that, but it certainly had a professional touch to it. And there was ample evidence that for the past week, Scapelli and Mrs. van Dooren, that unlikely pair, had been breaking a number of records. It seemed possible that some of them were financial.

The Captain had gone so far as to interview Barkway, on this and some related topics. Barkway, still sulky and unhelpful, made it clear from the outset that he was not going to talk; but his manner made it equally clear that he could have talked plenty if he had chosen to.

"I do my job, sir," he had said at one point, with the air of a man appalled at the injustice of it all. "There's no call for me to go spying on the passengers."

"I'm not asking you to go spying," said the Captain hardly, "so you can cut out the injured innocence. I'm asking you if you've noticed anything out of the ordinary."

"No, sir."

"You haven't heard any talk?"

"No, sir."

"What about the Greenfield boy?"

"Sir?" said Barkway, elaborately mystified.

The Captain sighed. He was getting nowhere; it was just bad luck that, out of all the stewards, Barkway, the key one, was labouring under a sense of injustice and would never co-operate in the slightest degree. At a venture, seeking another avenue of approach, Harmer said, in a different tone:

"It's about time you forgot that pay I docked you, back in New York."

Barkway's wooden face became positively teak-like. "I don't understand you, sir."

At that, the Captain let him go, with a bad-tempered, rather unfair command to take that silly expression off his face. It had been a waste of time, as he had feared; he was no further along, in any direction. But presently, that very evening, he was given something else to work on.

It was the Second Purser, Wexford, in charge when Foxy Cutler was ashore, who brought him the story. As sometimes happened when the Alcestis was berthed alongside in a foreign port, there had been a minor outbreak of pilfering; it was difficult to keep track of the various messengers, dockside workers, porters, and delivery men who had to have access to the ship at all times, and the result was the disappearance of easily-pocketed articles such as cameras, flasks, and loose change. Short of a complicated search system on all the gangways, twenty-four hours a day, there was nothing to be done about it. But now, apparently, there was a chance that the latest rash of thefts was not an outside job at all.

"It's a funny story, sir," said Wexford, "and I'm not sure if I've got the rights of it." He was a young and simple character, not yet branded by a purser's ingrained cynicism; he still had some way to go before he automatically thought the worst of everybody. "But you know we've been having various things missing from the cabins on B-deck. A lot of them are empty. Well, this evening, Mrs. Youngdahl—she's in B44—went down to her cabin at dinnertime, about ten minutes after the gong had gone. She wanted a scarf, or something. But when she got there, she found someone inside her cabin, and she swears that he was opening one of the drawers in her dressing-table."

"Who was it?" asked Harmer.

"The old man—the one they call the Professor."

The Captain came instantly to the alert. This might be an important part of the puzzle. He was certainly not going to neglect any aspect of it.

"What happened?"

"Nothing much, sir. He apologized immediately, and said he must have gone to the wrong cabin by mistake." Wexford smiled hesitantly. "You know, heis a bit vague, even at the best of times. His cabin is actually B64, down the next alleyway. Apparently if was all quite friendly, and they joked about it, and then went in to dinner. But afterwards—this was about an hour ago—he came up to her, and said he was awfully sorry, he must have picked something up by mistake, and he gave it back to her."

"What was it?"

"A gold wrist-watch."

The Captain felt a prickling sensation at the tips of his fingers; it had always happened, as long as he could remember, when there was a need for caution or a hint of danger. But all he said was:

"What did Mrs. Youngdahl do?"

"Well, of course, she was very surprised, and probably a bit flustered. She thanked him—rather coldly, I imagine—and he went off again. By that time I gather he was more than a little tight. Then she thought about it for a bit, and then she came and told me."

"Does she think he was stealing it?"

"Frankly, yes."

"Has she ever lost anything before?"

"No, sir. But there was that wallet that disappeared from B42, next door. She mentioned that."

"Has she told anyone else?"

"I don't think so, sir. I asked her not to, and she promised she wouldn't."

The Captain, silently commending this piece of discretion, sat back in his chair, and gave himself to thought. It all fitted in, but it was not going to be easy to pin any of it down. The old man, even when he was not drunk, was a well-known eccentric; it was perfectly possible that he had wandered into the wrong cabin, and conceivable that he had picked up the watch in mistake for his own. But at that point, coincidence began to wear a strained expression. Women's wrist-watches were nothing like men's wrist-watches, and the difference was immediately apparent, even to a drunk man. When a wrist-watch was picked up, it didn't go into a pocket, it went on to a wrist—there to be discovered, instantly, to be the wrong shape or size or feel. It was as impossible to make a mistake in this respect, as it was with someone else's hat.

He made his decision. "See Mrs. Youngdahl again," he ordered. "Explain that I have been told about this, and that I'm making the most rigorous inquiries. Ask her, again, not to say anything about it to anyone else, for the moment. Make that as a personal favour to me."

"Yes, sir," said Wexford.

"And ask the Professor to come and see me, now."

The Professor was really magnificent; his performance could not be faulted, whether he was guilty or innocent, whether he was covering up a crime or retrieving a social embarrassment. He was drunk, of course—so much the Captain recognized; but he was drunk in the way that true habitues were drunk, solemnly and owlishly proud of the fact that the rest of the world had not quite caught up with him. He was as good a man drunk, he seemed to declare, as a hundred lesser men sober. ... As regards the incident, he made no effort to argue the facts, or to minimize them. It had simply been a deplorable mistake.

"I'll forget my own name next!" he exclaimed, with infectious, positively bouncing good humour. "I cannot imagine what came over me. I must indeed be getting old! ... I thought things looked a little odd in the cabin—you know, clothes and things—and then poor Mrs. Youngdahl came in and found me there. She must have had the most terrible shock. I do hope she is not too disturbed."

"Sheis disturbed," said the Captain. He looked at the old man, seated in a corner of the cabin, and his eyes were unwinkingly direct. "So, in a way, am I. There's the matter of the wrist-watch."

"God bless my soul, yes!" agreed the Professor heartily. "That is an extraordinary affair, isn't it? I was picking up a few of my things—at least, I thought they were my things—small change and so on, and I must have dropped it into my pocket." He sighed. "Habits, habits. . . . We are creatures of them, I'm afraid. If I had only stopped to think, instead of allowing my attention to wander—"

"Professor," said the Captain suddenly.

The Professor's rheumy eyes came round to him. "Yes, sir?" he answered politely.

"What sort of watch have you?"

The Professor shook his head, as if he could scarcely credit what he was about to say. "Now that, if I may so express it, is the most ridiculous part of a ridiculous affair. Believe it or not, I don't even possess a wrist-watch! Affected sort of things—I never could abide them!" With a wavering hand he dug into the pocket of his braided evening waistcoat, and drew out a ponderous pocket-watch on the end of a heavy gold chain. "This, sir, is my watch, and it was my father's before me. Designed and made by the Swiss firm of Wechsler, in 1885. It doesn't lose five seconds in an entire year! I can assure you, they don't make watches like this nowadays."

"Quite so," said the Captain, with incisive irony. "There could be no similarity." He waited, but as the Professor, brushing tobacco ash from his lapel, did not appear to have heard him, he added: "You see the difficulty, don't you?"

"Difficulty, sir?" The manner was fractionally stiffer. "I don't quite take your point."

"You were in the wrong cabin—a natural mistake." The Captain put into his voice a disciplinary emphasis. "You picked up certain things from the dressing-table—a natural mistake. Then you picked up a wrist-watch—a natural mistake. Then what did you do?"

The Professor's air of bonhomie evaporated sharply. "Upon my soul," he said, with dignity, "I don't understand."

"Upon my soul," said the Captain, "nor do I. You could not conceivably have mistaken that watch for your own. It must have been less than half the size. You could not have put it on your wrist, because you don't wear a wrist-watch. You slipped it into your pocket. Why?"

After a moment's heavy silence: "I take the very strongest objection," said the Professor, struggling to rise to his feet, "to the expression 'slipped it into my pocket'. It savours of—" he waved his hand, "—you are perfectly well aware what it savours of. I made a mistake, and I am sorry. I put the watch in my pocket, among my loose change, and I am sorry. But I utterly repudiate the suggestion, the charge that—"

"Professor," interrupted the Captain curtly. "I am not making any charges. All I want is your explanation of how you came to mistake a wrist-watch for anything else, and why you put it into your pocket."

There was another silence, much longer. The Professor was looking down at his patent-leather shoes, which were old, cracked, yet highly polished; if he were playing for time, it was done with a wonderfully natural air. Finally his head came up, and he looked at the Captain with simple humility.

"Captain," he said, "I have a confession to make. It is intended for your ears alone, and I would be grateful if you would honour that confidence. The truth is, I—er—have been under the weather lately. As a consequence, I was somewhat in liquor this evening— there, I won't try to dissemble any further! I must have thought I was in my own cabin, dressing for dinner, and I naturally took everything off the dressing-table and put it in my pocket. Without thinking." The eyes went down again; it could have been shame just as well as shiftiness; the Captain could not make up his mind. "I beg you to understand," said the Professor, "that I am deeply sorry for this lapse of behaviour, and it certainly will not occur again."

It was thin, thought the Captain, in the silence that followed; thin as a liar's web, thin as a poor man's soup; but it might be true. ... He was aware that he could not take the thing much further, at this stage; short of a direct charge of theft, which would be difficult to substantiate, all he could do was to exhibit a wary, qualified acceptance. He realized also that if this had been a single story, told by a single man, he might have passed it without question; it was only because he had the "gang" idea ever-present in his mind that he was suspicious.

But he was again brought very sharply face to face with this, and the ground was altered, when the Professor, preparing to leave, said out of the blue:

"I would be extremely grateful also if you would not mention this—ah—matter to Mr. Wenstrom."

This was, in the circumstances, such an extraordinary request that later, when the Professor had gone, it was the thing the Captain remembered most vividly, of the whole interview. Reduced to its essentials, in the light of what he knew and suspected, it could only mean that what the Professor regretted above all was to have been involved in failure.

Sitting alone in his cabin, debating what to do next, the Captain's suspicions returned in full flood. His hunch had been right. The Professor had been stealing; he was part of a gang; and they were all involved, all five of them. What they would do next was a matter of guesswork; but whatever it was, he had to be ready for it.

2

Kathy was not at all sure how she came to be leaning over the rail of the boat-deck, side by side with Tillotson, towards midnight forty-eight hours later. It was simply that he was that sort of man; when he wanted to, he made things happen, he fashioned events to his own will. He was like Carl. ... In his case, it had seemed a most natural sort of progress; they had met while ashore, had a drink at the Mount Nelson Hotel, made a vague date for later on, and kept it. Clearly he had planned it that way; but the planning had not shown at any point, the manoeuvres had not been perceptible. The two of them were there, according to schedule—his schedule. That was all.

It was a wonderful night. Their berth in the inner harbour gave them a view, across pitch-black water, of the glowing aura of the city; and beyond it, straggling up the hillside, the yellow pin-points which were street lamps, and lonely houses, and then the vast inky looming of Table Mountain. Their side of the ship, away from the quay, was completely silent; voices came to them, but they were far away, like echoes off the mortal stage; only the night, and the pale quarter-moon, and the hot smell of Africa, were real.

Real also was the man beside her; she could feel his presence, the force of his personality, the coiled spring of will and determination which set him apart from many other men. He drew evenly on his cigar; its recurrent red glow was like a signal flare, marking the nearness of an unusual hazard. He was silent, he was thinking— but what was he thinking? This was an extraordinary, even fantastic situation for a man of his quality. Was he thinking of that? Or had he passed that self-regarding stage?—was he merely wondering how to begin?

She straightened up, and turned away from the water, and then leant back against the rail again, pencil-slim, the line of her body candidly displayed. It was an advance she had to make; this much was due from her. It came as no surprise when he moved suddenly, and took her in his arms, and kissed her fiercely.

He smelt of cigars, and expensive after-shave lotion, and his body, pressed against hers, was as she had imagined—small and tough and thrusting. It meant nothing to her—she had expected that also; he could not communicate sensuality, because there was not an atom of sensuality in him—not for her. But he communicated other things, in disconcerting abundance. Strength, determination, and a burning hunger were among them.

She said: "Oh!" on a neutral note of acceptance, as she always did, and waited.

He had turned back to the rail and was staring down at the water again, as if he had completed one part of a pattern and was taking his time over the next section. Presently he said, quite calmly:

"I knew you would feel like that. . . . But you should have sounded more surprised."

"I wasn't surprised," said Kathy.

"Oh, I know that. . . . But isn't it part of the act?"

If there had been the slightest edge to his voice, the words would have been deeply offensive. But there was none; he might have been making casual conversation; he might have been saying: "Isn't it warm tonight?" Nonplussed, she waited for more; and more came, in a controlled confessional flow like nothing she had ever experienced before.

"I'm not a fool," he said quietly. "You must have realized that, by now." The cigar glowed brightly as he drew on it. "I know what you're doing, I know what your stepfather is doing, I know all about the others, too. I know you've been available, ever since you came on board." He paused; a slow drift of smoke crossed between them, like a gauzy curtain falling and lifting again. "Available isn't exactly the right word, is it? It sounds cheap, and in spite of this racket you're running—" on the word "racket" his voice was briefly contemptuous, "—you are not cheap. I really meant ready, ready for selected customers. Each of you may have fooled a lot of people, but you haven't fooled me. I'm not that sort of material."

It was important to answer this just right. "But now you want to be fooled?"

She saw him nodding, his grey head clear against the darkness on the other side of the rail. "I guess that's about it."

"Why?"

"I have to have it," he answered immediately. "I felt that, when I touched you,before I touched you. You must have felt it in me. I know it's wrong, I know it's silly, I know it's expensive, and maybe dangerous. But there it is. I've had a—what's the common term?—an itch for you, ever since I first saw you. I have to have you. If it's free, wonderful. If it's not free, it's wonderful just the same."

"But why?" she asked again. She was astonished. "You're not like that at all."

"You know nothing."

She shrugged. "O.K."

"Nothing about this. ... I am fifty-eight," he went on, in the same tone of detached narrative, "and you are young and very beautiful. Do you know what it's like to be fifty-eight? No—how could you? Let me tell you that it can be hell, in lots of ways. But it can be the worst hell as regards women. When at last it catches up with you. I've been happily married for years, for thirty years. I have three grandchildren. I haven't thought about other women, except casually, for five years at least. Then I saw you."

He paused. Kathy could not speak; she did not want to. In a way, this was how she had thought it might go, and in another way it was fantastic. He had been a long time coming to the point, but only because there were huge obstacles, of habit, will, and propriety, barring his path. She had guessed some of them, but the essence of the man she had not guessed.

"When I saw you," he went on, in his unchanging, level voice, "I knew straight away I wasn't dead, after all. Sexually dead. Then I got to wondering about how many more women I'd sleep with, before I died, and the answer was none.None—if I didn't do something about it. None—and I just couldn't stand the idea. I used to do a lot of it; why should it be over, for ever? Suddenly, I wanted to go to bed with many more women, before it's too late. But you first."

Before she could really consider what she was saying, she produced a standard reaction. "That's not very flattering."

"Don't be childish," he said, curtly. "You are not childish. . . . You've triggered something—how and why, it doesn't matter. You've started a train of thought that tells me that I cannot be fifty-nine, and then sixty and sixty-five and seventy, and never make love to another girl." His voice changed, taking on a more urgent note; he was speaking from his deep need, but he knew about it—he did not mind, he was not ashamed. With a flash of insight, she understood why he had the capacity to command men, why he had gained his pinnacle of success. It was because he knew himself, completely, from the pinnacle down to the most odious of his desires. "I have to have you," he said again, "because I can't bear the thought that I'll never sleep with someone like you again. Does that make sense?"

"It makes sense to you," she said carefully.

"Ah. . . ." He got the point immediately. He was very quick, astonishingly sensitive. "So it won't be free?"

"No."

He said: "All right. . . . I'm a rich man. . . . But I guess you know that already."

"I'll need to think about it, anyway."

He said, again: "All right."

She stood up straight; the small of her back was sore where she had pressed it against the rail. Around them the night was warm and still; far away, at the edge of the dock, there was the clang of a bell—an ambulance, a police car—to recall them to the world. As they stepped apart, and the link between them dissolved, she was struck by an enormous self-disgust. This was so utterly sordid. ... He was such a good man, basically; in spite of what he had said, the wild lust for youth and softness would vanish; the moment it was slaked, he would be a grandfather again. ... All he wanted was the transient use of her body, and she was going to sell it to him, though she wanted nothing of his—it would have been the same if he had been made of wood, of rubber hose. . . . Twisting the suicidal knife, because she loathed what she was preparing to do, she said:

"How much?"

His cigar-butt described a wide arc, up and away, and fell thirty feet below into the invisible water.

"You can have anything you want," he said.

They began to walk away from the rail, towards the lighted sun-room. There was someone inside, a woman, sitting in the same chair as Kathy had used, when she watched Tim Mansell being young and brave. . . . Tillotson pushed open the door, and stood aside to let Kathy pass through. The woman within rose, as if a signal had been given, and took a step towards them. It was his wife.

It might have been an electric moment, but it was not; the principals involved were too well-disciplined, and perhaps too adroit. Tillotson closed the door behind him, and advanced into the light.

"Hallo, dear," he said, without hesitation. "I was wondering where you were."

Mrs. Tillotson, though she had risen with alacrity, was also entirely calm; her plain and pleasant face showed no important emotion; only a certain watchfulness as she glanced from one to the other told Kathy that there were reservations and tensions beneath the surface. How much she had seen, or had guessed, was problematical; the two of them had been standing within a corner made by the third and fourth lifeboats; the deck was virtually unlighted; they might well have been out of sight. But they had, indubitably, been together, in circumstances which aided the imagination, particularly the imagination of a wife.

"I was reading," said Mrs. Tillotson, on a quietly social note. "Then I thought I'd like some fresh air. But it seemed a bit chilly outside. . . . You'll catch cold!" She looked at Kathy's exiguous off-the-shoulder dress. "Both of you."

"Oh, it's warm enough," said Kathy. Try as she would, she could not look quite directly at Mrs. Tillotson; her eyes were focused a little to the side, in a neutral area which promised safety. "We were enjoying the view."

"One way of getting warm," said Tillotson, "and that's a drink. How about it?"

"Can we get one?" asked Mrs. Tillotson. She glanced at her watch. "It's after twelve, you know."

"I'll fix it____Whisky and soda?"

"Just a small one, then."

"Kathy?"

"I'd love one," said Kathy. She knew what was going to happen now, but there was no way of avoiding it. Perhaps she did not deserve to avoid it.

"I'll bring it up," said Tillotson, and turned, and was gone.

It was all right for him. ... As she smiled and sat down, she wondered why he had left so promptly; a drink was a welcome idea, but a drink did not need fetching, on board the Alcestis—-there were bells for drinks, all the way round the clock. It was not due to cowardice, because he was not that sort of man. Perhaps it was something more directly connected with his wife and his background—a belated social sense, even, which told him that he had spent quite enough time with a young unmarried woman, and must absent himself for a space. . . . Whatever it was, it left herself in an awkward position. If the thing became emotional, or competitive, or unpleasant, she would scarcely know how to deal with it. In her present mood of confusion, she did not even know whether she wanted to win or to lose.

She need not have bothered. Mrs. Tillotson was far too kind a woman, too genuine a person, to vulgarize or to out-face. She had some points to make—so much was quickly clear; but she was going to make them in her own fashion, and her own fashion was subdued, oblique, and above all civilized. Nothing she said overstepped the limits of social exchange; it was the footnotes, known to both of them, which supplied the key to their communication.

"Bill is so energetic," said Mrs. Tillotson, looking after her husband as the swing door closed behind him. "I can hardly keep up with him, these days. This cruise has really made him feel young again."

Kathy, busy with her cigarette, remarked that it seemed to have had the same effect on a lot of their fellow-passengers. The sea air— could that be it?

"And the people themselves, I think." Mrs. Tillotson seemed to be considering the point judiciously; her eyes were turned towards the boat-deck. "You know how one makes new friends. . . . And then, I suppose, as soon as one gets home, everything goes back to normal again."

"That's rather a sad idea," said Kathy. She was content to supply the linking, not the material; her eyes, following Mrs. Tillotson's, had noted that from this vantage point the boat-deck was dark and shadowy; if they had been seen at all, it could only have been as two people emerging out of the twilight between the two boats, after a lengthy absence. Perhaps, in the circumstances, that was enough.

Mrs. Tillotson shook her head. "Oh, I don't think so. It's like waking up suddenly, in the middle of the night, and then falling asleep again. It's almost a shock; the sleep is so much more natural." She laughed softly, as if this were a domestic joke they could easily share. "Don't let me give the impression that Bill is asleep all the time! Far from it. But after all, he is nearly sixty."

"He doesn't seem that," said Kathy.

Mrs. Tillotson's head came round, inquiringly. "Not to you? I'm surprised—considering that you're so very much younger. Bill and I must seem like antiques. Set in our ways. . . ." She rummaged in a brocade bag at the side of her chair, and produced her knitting; it accented what she had just said, more delicately than any further words could have done. "Socks for the grandchildren," she murmured, "Bill just adores them. . . . Perhaps he gives people a different impression—on a holiday trip like this, I mean—but he's very much a family man. He won't be really happy till he gets back home. Nor will I. Ridiculous, isn't it?—to come all this way, and see all these new things, and then settle back again as if nothing had happened."

Kathy kept her silence.

"Of course, it's different for you," Mrs. Tillotson went on. "Being young, I mean. . . . When you meet someone new, it might change your whole life. A young man, I mean. . . . You might even meet the man you're going to marry. . . ." She sighed, as if the thought made her happy and contented, for Kathy's sake. "Of course, there's no one really suitable on the boat, is there? Except those nice officers."

Kathy said, lightly, that for all sorts of reasons she couldn't imagine marrying a sailor.

"Perhaps not," agreed Mrs. Tillotson. "I only meant, of all the men on board, they're the only ones really available."

Kathy wondered how much more she would want to say; the targets had all been hit, the information passed on. . . . She could never have argued with Mrs. Tillotson, or tried to put another point of view^- there could be no battle, when most of her own thoughts and feelings were so confused and, where they were clear, so self-disparaging. She wanted to shut her eyes, and fall asleep, and have the whole of the last hour vanish without trace. This warmhearted, quietly determined woman at her side would certainly help her to do that. Perhaps Tillotson himself would, when he came to think it over, when he saw the knitting and re-entered the even flow of their shared life. Perhaps he would not really want to wake up from that sleep, even for a brief dazzlement.

Mrs. Tillotson seemed to think so.

"Yes, we've certainly enjoyed this cruise," she said, as if Kathy had asked a question and she were answering it. "Do you know, I had a terrible time getting him to take it. He likes to work, and he likes to sit at home, and that's really all. It sounds dull, doesn't it? —dull but safe. ... I don't think anything will ever really change that, but if it did, he'd probably regret it very much. Almost immediately." There was a step on the stairs behind her, and she turned. "And here he is, bless him, looking after me as usual. My dear—" her hand rested briefly on Kathy's arm, "—don't tell him I said so, but I just hope that when the time comes, you get as good a husband as mine."

Tillotson approached, balancing a loaded tray. "Sorry to be so long, dear," he said. "They tried to tell me the bar-supplies were locked up. Imagine!" Handing them their drinks, he looked from one to the other; his eyes dwelt on Kathy with a curiously varied expression, half confederate, half withdrawn. "Well, have you settled the affairs of the world?"

"Some of the affairs," said Mrs. Tillotson. She raised her glass, almost gaily. "I guess the rest will keep."

Tense yet listless, shaken by doubts, fatally aware of misgiving, Kathy knew she would not sleep. She sat on in the darkened sun-room after the Tillotsons left her—they went off arm-in-arm, without a backward glance—and watched the moon go down and the lights of Cape Town grow pale and spectral, and was conscious of nothing but a wretched isolation. She had to do a job for Carl, and she had started on it at last, well enough; and then she had suddenly hated it, felt shame instead of satisfaction—she doubted, now, if she could make love with Tillotson, unless it was pitch-dark and they were both drunk. ... It left her nowhere, nowhere in anyone's world. She was no good to Carl, and less than no good to herself.

Her thoughts went round, in a dreary endless circle; it was after two o'clock when she rose, stiffly, and began to make her way three decks below to her cabin. Turning a corner of the stairway, at the A-deck level, she saw a shadow move and heard footsteps, light and brisk, coming up towards her. She stopped, uncertainly, hoping it was no one she knew, hoping above all it was not Tillotson returning to clinch the deal; she was dead tired, and absolutely spiritless. The shadow broadened and lengthened, and then the owner was standing three steps below her, as startled as she. It was Tim Mansell.

She looked at him, without saying anything. He was out of uniform, wearing a sports jacket and grey flannels; in unfamiliar colours, he still seemed broad and young and tough, and infinitely confident. She went down the three steps, and stood before him; a head shorter than he, her slim body drooping, her face pale.

His expression, which had been cheerful, as if he were en route to a party or a special rendezvous, grew grave as he stared at her.

"You look sad," he said unexpectedly.

"I am sad."

He did not ask why. He said: "You should really be in bed, shouldn't you?"

She smiled wanly. "So should you."

"But I've just got up!" Cheerfulness broke through again, as if he had suddenly remembered where he was going, and how much he was looking forward to it. "This is my day off, so I thought I'd start early. I've got a whole twenty-four hours, and I've only wasted two of them in sleep."

"Where are you going?"

"For a drive, a long drive. I've hired a car—it's down on the quay. I'm going up to the Karroo."

She repeated the unfamiliar word. "Karroo?"

"It's a kind of desert, but it's beautiful." Suddenly and, she guessed, bravely, he took a step forward. "Why not come with me?"

She smiled at that—it was so like him, shy and impetuous and quite unconnected with graver matters. "Now how could I do that?"

"Easily!" And he looked as if it would indeed be easy, the easiest thing in the world, presenting no problems at all to people like themselves. "It's only three hundred miles or so. Six hours, probably less—the South African roads are wonderful. I was going to spend the day there, picnicking, and be back by midnight tonight. In fact, I have to be back. Sailing tomorrow—remember?" He was young and not-so-young at the same time, full of careless ways of spending his energy, but equipped to trim them down to a disciplinary size. He would be back in time, and sleep like a puppy after it. . . . He said again, on a note which held something of compassion for her: "Come with me."

Suddenly it was the only thing to do.

"All right," she said, on the impulse. "I'll go and change. Ten minutes?"

He nodded; his face now had an extraordinary lightness and happiness in it. "Ten minutes.... Bring a coat; it's cold now. And a bathing-suit."

"You bring the pretzels, I'll bring the beer."

"Beer?" he repeated, puzzled.

"It's a song," she said.

Presently it was.

3

"Keep warm, curl up, and go to sleep," he commanded, as soon as they were settled in the car; and she was glad to obey so reasonable an order. She had a fleeting impression of long gloomy lines of dock sheds, the squeak of opening gates at the Customs checkpoint, and a large blond policeman peering in at her as if she were some luscious form of contraband; then they were moving up the broad main thoroughfare which she knew as Adderley Street, and thereafter she dozed off and fell into grateful sleep. He was obviously a careful driver; she trusted him.

It was his hand which awakened her, touching her shoulder gently, without intrusion, until she opened her eyes. She looked round her, puzzled, and then remembered where she was and how she had got there. She became aware that it was light outside—a paleness in the gloom which had already overcome the beam of their headlights. Then he slowed down the car, and stopped it at the side of the road, by a low wall.

"This is the first good view," he said.

Opening the door, and stretching her stiff limbs, she asked:

"How long have I been asleep?"

He smiled. "Two whole hours. It's just getting light. This is the top of the first pass—Du Toit's Kloof. I wouldn't have woken you up, but it's worth waking for."

She had only to look briefly about her before exclaiming: "Oh yes!" And then, without thinking, charmed by new-minted magic: "Always wake me."

They were indeed at the top of a pass; over the rough stone wall beside the car, the slope fell away in a sheer drop of hundreds of feet, crossed and recrossed by the winding road they had climbed which now snaked its way down to the misty Cape Flats. The dawn was already creeping across the enormous spread of the valley beneath them, but the plains were still shrouded by the night mist; nearer to their vantage point, delicate drifts of spider's web matched the luminous white carpet below. They were still within sight of the coast; away to seaward, a lighthouse was feebly blinking at the dawn; there were lone yellow farms, noble mountains, birds wheeling and calling, rock-rabbits peeping timidly at the new day. The two of them seemed to stand at the very top of the world, flanked by purple hills, gazing down on a broad private kingdom. They were ahead of the day, ahead of everyone. . . . And as if showing them how to keep ahead, behind them the road cut through a slim passageway between two outcrops of rock, and disappeared downwards into the next valley.

Enchanted by everything within view, from the pink-frilled clouds in the eastern sky to the sombre buttress of Paarl Rock, two thousand feet below, Kathy sighed her pleasure.

"But it's wonderful! Why do we live in towns?"

"I don't," answered Tim, with a touch of pride.

"All right, sailor. . . ." She gestured through the magnificent arc which lay below their platform. "Is it all going to be as good as this?"

"Every bit. Right up till midnight." He suddenly added: "Cinderella."

She looked at him, and inclined her head. There were things between them already, new things, things apart from the ship and the crowds they lived in. She did not care; if it were going to be that sort of day—the first for many years—then she did not want to change it. She said: "Right now, Cinderella is cold," and he took her arm and led her back to the car. The tone was being set, thus early, thus happily; it might falter into discord when midnight struck, but that mattered not at all at 6 a.m.

He drove on, down a winding road which followed a deep-cut river bed, while she warmed to the day, and watched him driving, and listened to him talking, and enjoyed it all. Away from the ship, away from other people, he was a different person; he had her in his charge now, for the first time, and he seemed to have grown up suddenly, as if only a man could deserve this honour. He talked of everything—about his job, his hopes, the people on board, the way a ship was run at sea, the way a sailor was treated ashore; and she listened, and grew interested, and presently found herself joining in. She had not talked like this for years; it was innocent and intriguing at the same time, a tremendous contrast with every aspect of the past. Of course, he was her contemporary. Perhaps she had been searching for a contemporary, even longing for one.

The plunging mountain road gave way to a broad plain, and long vistas of fruit trees, and a straggling town called Worcester. Kathy proclaimed that she was hungry, and indeed she was; they stopped at a small hotel where, although it was barely half past seven, everyone was already astir, and the rocking-chairs on the stoep had a dozen slow-talking customers. Apparently South Africans rose early, to greet their beautiful dry sunshine. In the hotel lobby, furnished in musty yellow-wood, smelling already of coffee and something savoury which presently turned out to be the breakfast steaks, she said:

"This is going to be fun. Order me a big breakfast. Have you any money?"

"I have twelve pounds," he said, with satisfaction.

"Heavens! Lend me a penny."

They both burst out laughing, the sort of laughter from which everything good can stem, a guarantee that nothing could go wrong. Later, in the dining-room, they continued this mood of shared nonsense, so that even the old waiter, and the grumpy "regulars" who stamped in, wordless, and bulldozed their way through mealie-porridge, and steaks crowned with fried eggs, topped off with mugs of beer, grew brighter as they listened to the laughter and eavesdropped on the foolish jokes. At one point, Kathy, catching sight of herself in the blotched, fly-specked mirror, said: "We've no right to be so cheerful, after two hours' sleep." But she was wrong, and she knew it. Today, for some reason which they would learn as they went along, they had a cast-iron option on happiness.

"Now we've really got to drive, instead of dawdling," announced Tim, when they were outside again in the morning sunshine, and surveying the main street of Worcester with disbelieving eyes, as if they had newly landed on the moon. "It's at least another hundred miles before we come to the best part of the Karroo, the part I want you to see."

"What does Karroo mean, exactly?" she asked, as she got into the car.

"It's a Hottentot word—no water, waterless," he answered— and those were the last words he spoke for many miles. The road was excellent, and he drove fast and with great concentration, up the rising pass of the Hex River Valley, past sleepy, sun-baked towns with outlandish Afrikaans names—De Dooms, Touws Rivier, Matjesfontein—and then across a huge level plain where the road stretched like a straight black ribbon ahead, and the landscape on either side was a lonely wilderness. They covered a hundred miles in under two hours, and slipped downhill through Laingsburg, and out into the deserted tableland again. There, driving past a big outcrop of rock, its top weathered to the baldness of a thousand years, he let their speed fall away, and relaxed, and said:

"This is the beginning of it."

It was arid, austere, featureless, and very beautiful. They could see, in any direction, for fifty or sixty miles—miles of brown-baked earth and stony wastes which, close to, were discovered to be living after all, carpeted with millions of tiny flowers, green-brown cactus, pink and yellow protea, succulents seeming to grow out of the bare rock, thorny stunted bush which thrived miraculously on nothing. Tim commented: "They say this is the oldest part of Africa—perhaps the oldest part of the world," and though she did not really see how one part of Africa could be older than another, she accepted the fact. It had to be. . . . The desert which was no desert stretched as far as the eye could reach; here and there, close to the road or on the far horizon, were conical ridges and hill-tops, their outlines layered by a million years of the relentless erosion of wind and sun and rain, starkly sculptured against the pale sky.

The light was wonderful—clear as blue water, transparently bright; and though it was very hot, the heat was dry, and the shimmering air like thin wine. They seemed to be transfixed in brilliant isolation, the only people left in a world which had been dead since history began.

"But it's wonderful!" she said, for the second time that day. "Do stop, Tim—I want to get the feel of it."

The feel of it was very strange. With the engine switched off there was utter silence all around them; when they got out of the car and walked to the roadside, they found there a dried-up watercourse, bleached by the endless sun, and beside it the horned skull of an animal, cruelly whitened, the eye-sockets staring blindly at the sky. There was nothing else in sight—no house, no human being, no living creature. Away on the far horizon, there was a clump of trees, and a windmill turning, its blades catching the sun. That was all.

"It's absolutely incredible," said Kathy. She was staring about her as if in a dream. "Doesn't anybody live here?"

"Well, farmers."

"Here?"

"Oh yes. They raise some of the best sheep in the world—the Karroo mutton tastes absolutely perfect—I don't know how they turn out so well, but they do. They must eat rocks. ... Of course, the farms are enormous, thousands of acres. In the old days, when they were giving the land away free, you were allowed to mark out as a boundary the distance you could ride between sunrise and sunset. That could be fifty miles—perhaps more. So you could get yourself a farm fifty miles square."

She was still looking about her, entranced by the burning sun, the vast stretches of brown earth, and the raw-boned hill near by, shaped like a crouching lion. At its base, across miles of shimmering heat, she caught a movement, a patch of colour which had shifted imperceptibly. She pointed excitedly. "There's something there!"

He had brought his glasses from the car; now he searched, and presently found the quarry.

"It's a buck, a springbok," he reported. "Beautiful. . . . Take a look."

It was indeed beautiful—a sleek brown shape, dappled with orange and white, its horns curving proudly back; alone and heraldic, it seemed to rule the desert landscape. But even as she looked, the buck moved again, melting away behind a rock as if not choosing to be thus surveyed. They were alone once more.

Presently she said: "Have you noticed how the whole earth seems to be moving, after so long on the ship? You can actually feel it roll."

"It always does that."

"O.K., professional! But it's new to me."

He grinned. "I can't help being a sailor."

"I suppose now you're going to tell me you've wrung more sea water out of your socks than I've ever sailed on."

"Now where on earth," he asked, startled, "did you hear a thing like that?"

"I heard one of the deck sailors say it."

He shook his head, mock-serious. "You really mustn't listen to what the deck sailors say. Particularly when they don't know you're there."

"Oh, I'm tough."

He looked at her, gravely, searching her face for clues, for answers. "No, you're not."

"Not today, anyway." Now she in turn was looking at him; their eyes were held fast, exchanging signals, forming alliances. She thought: He wants to kiss me. Perhaps he would try to, perhaps she would let him. Nothing would have been more natural, alone in the sunshine. But it was not quite the moment for kissing. Not yet.

She turned away, staring at something, anything, and said: "What now? How much farther?"

"Fifty miles or so." His voice was constrained, but he was bringing it under control. "Then we'll picnic, and bathe, if we're lucky."

"Bathe?"

"There's a dam, off the road. Or there was, last year. It shouldn't be dried up now."

"Let's go, then."

It was only when he had already started the engine, and put the car in gear, that he said: "I love you."

They drove in silence for five miles or more. She did not know what to say; one thing was following another, but though she could guess the outlines of the pattern, she could not really see it clearly. It was a day for love, and a place for it also. But somehow it was too early. She wanted more things to happen, more things to be said and felt, before his arms were round her. If that was where they were going to be.

It was Tim who broke the silence. "Don't tell me," he said—and there was blessed laughter in his voice—"that you didn't hear."

"Oh, I heard, all right." She put her hand on top of his, and it rested there comfortably. "Girls always hear that."

"What do girls answer?"

She affected to treat the question seriously. "Some girls say: 'Who— little me?' Some girls say: 'Cut it out.' Some girls say: 'Uh huh!' Some girls say: 'So do I.' "

"I like the last girl best."

She shook her head. "Much too forward. In and out of juvenile court, all the time."

After a silence, he spoke in a different voice; the appeal in it was very strong. "Kathy?"

"Yes?"

"What does this girl say?"

She took her hand away from his, but gently, not making it a matter of denial. "I don't know at all. . . . Let's not talk about it now. I want that bathe, and that picnic."

"I want them too. I want everything."

"I know."

She liked, very much, the way he could straightway break the tension, to suit her mood exactly, and answer: "We will now do things in the proper order."

He was making, he said, for a turn-off marked "Mooikraal", though the "beautiful village" was now no more than a deserted ring of ancient mud huts. Presently they reached their cross-roads, and branched off on to a bumpy track leading uphill towards a clump of trees. A couple of miles away, they could see a pink-and-white farmhouse, with four windmills turning lazily in the faint breeze; the clump of trees, when they reached it, marked the edge of a small dam. The brown earth surrounding it was cracked and dry, and as the car stopped a drift of their yellow dust moved past them and away, losing itself in the parched ground. But miraculously there was water in the dam, quite a lot of water; it shimmered in the heat, and sparkled where it caught the sun; it might have been trapped there for their delight.

"It's our lucky day," said Tim, and edged the car into the shade. When they were at rest, he turned towards her, but he made no other movement; he really was doing things in the right order. "Bathe now? It looks just what we want."

She nodded. "Try and keep me out of that water."

"Change in the car," he said. "I'll try the trees."

Within minutes she was wading into the dam. The water was warm, almost hot, and muddy where her feet stirred it; but the soft feel of it was a blessing. When Tim joined her, she was already swimming round and round in lazy circles.

"Slow," she called out.

"I like to give a lady a fair start."

He had a beautiful body, as she had already observed on more formal occasions at the ship's pool; lithe, muscular, the hips narrow, the chest deep and firm. He had developed also a handsome tan, as she had herself; when presently they waded out again, and sat on the edge of the dam to dry out, there could be no denying his strong physical appeal. It was clear that he felt the same about her, and she was glad of it; he must have seen, many times on board, the brief green swim-suit she wore, and the contours of her body candidly displayed by it, but now he admired them frankly, and let her see him doing so. She felt that this was entirely right; if they were young animals in the sun, let them give this pleasure to each other, without furtiveness, without peeping. . . . She lay back, crossing her slim legs, and when he had enjoyed this, and the lift of her breasts under the clinging material, he said, as she had hoped he would:

"You're the most beautiful girl I've ever seen."

She smiled back at him, without guile. "When you look at me like that, I feel it."

"Do you mind?"

"No."

"We're doing all right today, aren't we?"

"Extremely well."

"I was afraid we wouldn't."

"Why not?" But she knew exactly what he meant. "You mean, the ship and everything might still be here?"

"Yes. But it's not, is it?"

"Nothing's here."

Tim smiled, in pure joy, and leant across and touched her shoulder. His hand was strong, but the grip was as tender as a girl's. He said: "Are you hungry yet?"

"Absolutely ravenous. What is there?"

"Iron rations," he answered. "But well up to Alcestis standards. I know the Chief Steward."

He pulled her to her feet, without making a production of it, and they walked back to the shade of the trees, hand in hand. On the way, she asked:

"How old are you, Tim?"

"Just the right age."

She thought: This is hardly fair. . . .

But just as he was manhandling two very large wicker baskets, and a carrier-bag which clinked agreeably, from the back seat of the car, there came a most odd interruption, one they could have done without. It was other people.

They were walking in procession along the edge of the dam towards them; an old man with a white beard, an old Negro, and an old dog, all moving very gently at a pace suited to age and authority. Close to, the old man was a tremendous sight. He was very tall, even with his stoop; he wore a wide-brimmed sun-hat, and under it his lined face was like a hawk's, proud and watchful. He had wrinkled yellow trousers, and a bush shirt of faded khaki, and dusty veldschoen, and he carried a long staff as bent and gnarled as himself.

He stopped when he came opposite to them, and surveyed them unwinkingly. His eyes were blue, with a far-away fierceness. The old Negro also stopped, a pace behind him, and scratched the grey-white wool of his head. The dog, a ridge-back hound with enormous sinewy shoulders, growled once, and lay down stiffly in the middle of the pathway.

It was time for someone to speak. "Good morning!" Tim called out, with more confidence than he felt. "I hope we're not trespassing."

The old man said nothing; he continued to stare at them, as did the gaunt black man and the dog. Standing outlined against the sky, he had an infinitely patriarchal air; when his eyes shifted from Tim to Kathy, and took in—though without impertinence—her slim body and tiny swim-suit, it would not have surprised her if, then and there, he had called down a Mosaic curse on such a fleshly display.

Tim said, in a low tone: "Probably he only speaks Afrikaans," and then, raising his voice again, he called out: "Gooie more, meneer."

Surprisingly, charmingly, the huge old man swept off his hat, with a tremendous courtesy, bowed to Kathy, and returned the greeting:"Gooie more." His voice was a deep rumbling bass, and his mane of white hair gleamed like a halo before he put his hat on again.

"That's all I know, damn it," said Tim, aside to Kathy. He came forward, smiling as broadly as he could, and gestured round the clump of trees; as his arm moved, the dog growled, and half rose on its haunches. Tim tried to convey with his gesture and in his expression a triple idea—that they knew they were on the old man's land, that they thought it was very beautiful, and that they would like to stay there, if they could have his permission. The synthesis would have taxed the most highly competent actor; but it was possible that he did succeed in communicating some of it, for after a long moment, during which the old man let his steady gaze wander from the car to the picnic baskets, from Tim to Kathy, and from the baking sunshine to the cool shade of the trees, he took off his hat again, bowed, and prepared to move on. The old Negro, whose face was shrunken to a tiny birdlike mask, raised a skinny arm in salute, said something that sounded like "Ow!", and followed him; and the dog, heaving itself up stiffly, drew back a lolling tongue and padded after them.

"Whew!" said Tim, in relief, as soon as the cavalcade was out of earshot. "That's better! I thought they'd come down to throw us out."

"You mean, this is his land? He didn't look as if he had a cent to his name!"

"He probably owns every mile you can see from here."

"But what a terrific old man!" Kathy looked after their late visitor as he made his way slowly up the hillside towards the distant farmhouse. "He must have been at least eighty. Didn't he bow beautifully?"

"They have wonderful manners, the old Afrikaners," agreed Tim. "Wonderful hospitality, too. Some of the younger South Africans are terrible thugs—we've had some on board, they talk like I imagine Hitler used to—but the old folks, the old Boers, are real charmers."

"Talking of hospitality," prompted Kathy.

"Coming, madam," said Tim, with a fair-to-middling caricature of the Chief Steward, and started to break out the picnic baskets. But he took his time about it; returning solitude seemed once more to have eased them of all cares; they were sure of their day, they could enjoy it lazily, happily, at a pace incomprehensible to the outside world.

The Alcestis kitchens had done them well; there was a chicken, half a ham, Russian salad, plovers' eggs, fruit, cheese, some coffee in a hot Thermos and some Vichyssoise in a cold one. "So this is where the profits go," commented Kathy, as she surveyed the feast spread out on one of the dining-room's spotless table-cloths. "No wonder your fares are so high."

Tim was about to reply when his eye was caught by a far-away movement, up the slope near the farmhouse. But it was not the old man and his small procession; they had already disappeared; it seemed to be a younger man, more agile, running towards them with long loping strides.

"We might as well be in Piccadilly Circus," Tim grumbled. But he was intrigued none the less.

As the runner drew nearer he could be seen to be a boy, clad in ragged shorts and a torn brown jersey. He was carrying something with great care—a box or a basket, held out in front of him like a votive offering. When he reached the edge of the dam he broke stride, and walked the last few yards. He was pale-skinned—a Cape Coloured, probably—with curious reddish hair and a brilliant grin. As soon as he reached them he bobbed and bowed, jumping from one foot to the other, and then set down his burden on the ground. Then he laughed, very merrily, and turned and ran away, with never a backward glance.

"This must be one of those days," said Tim dubiously, and pulled the box towards him. It was cardboard; it had once held soap-flakes. But packed inside there were now two fruits, like melons, only glowing golden and orange, and a dripping bottle without a label on it.

"What are they?"

"Paw-paws," answered Tim. "They have a funny taste—a cross between a melon and a soapy kind of marrow, only much nicer than that sounds. And this—" he drew the cork from the bottle, which was cold to his hand, and sniffed at the contents. Then he poured some out, and sipped it. It was white wine, cool and tart, like thin cider.

"Well," he said, astonished, "this really is our day. Instead of being thrown out, we're given wine to drink and paw-paws for dessert."

"What lovely presents," said Kathy. "And what a sweet thought. Aren't people nice to us? He must have liked us after all."

"It's probably his own wine, too," said Tim. He poured out two tumblers of it, and they drank inquiringly. "Tastes rather like Rhine wine, only thinner."

Kathy sipped hers. "It's just about the nicest thing that ever happened, anyway," she said, happily. "Do you think it's strong?"

"Oh, I hope so."

It was like Christmas, with the presents, and New Year's Day, with the promise of the future close at hand; and all in the middle of a South African desert within sight of a dam, which in the noonday sun shone like a burnished mirror. The sun filtered down through the leaves overhead, dappling their bodies with just-moving shadows; they ate and drank, and talked lazily, and looked at each other, and felt happy on the edge of love. Kathy found herself sinking slowly back into a slothful, sensual peace; there could be only one thing to happen now, one way of taking their delight after the wine and the meal; she was ready for it, she did not quarrel with it, she wanted it. But she knew more of the man already; she knew that he would not, even now, make love to her except by direct invitation. Of course he wanted her, under the trees, in the shade; his eyes were saying it, there was even a message from his body, across the few feet between them. But he would not take her, he would only be received and welcomed. . . . She put down her empty glass, and said:

"Oh dear! What a huge lunch. I'm going to sleep, I think. Perhaps we should both do that."

"Yes."

She looked behind her at the trees. "If we went farther in, we'd have more shade."

"Yes." There was a tremor in his voice; he had his invitation now; the enormous joy was beginning to possess him.

"Let's move before we get too lazy."

He stood up. "Do we need a rug?"

She looked up at him. He was smiling gravely, but his lower lip was trembling a little. She smiled back, with an equal joy, and said: "Obviously."

Walking before him into the deeper shadows, her knees already a little weak, she suddenly wondered, like a young girl on the very threshold, how sailors made love.

Sailors made love, she found, with shattering eloquence; a blend of sensuality, competence, and tender adoration which brought its own tempestuous end. Now that they were agreed, she was in his hands, and presently she was overjoyed to be so. He asked, before they lay down, "Am I the first?" and when she shook her head (with an absurd sense of disappointment) and answered: "No— the second," he nodded to himself, and then to her, as if this were the answer he had expected, a natural part of the day's progress. After that, he said: "You know I love you," and after that they were lost. But through it all she was conscious of direction, of control; even when he was on the edge of delight, he took care that she was there too. She had not been wrong; it was what she had guessed when she watched him securing the lifeboat, during the storm near Cape Town. Sailors were men, not boys, and this sailor was a true man among them.

After their love-making he thanked her, with glowing eyes which might have held tears a moment before, and they dozed off and slept deeply, while the sun drew round to the westward, and the shadows of their arbour began to slant away from them. When they awoke they swam again, rejoicing in freshness, shedding their languor; and then they made love once more, their bodies still cool and only half-dry—but this time it was a kind of happy frolic, light-hearted, laughing—they made each other smile, even as they made each other wild—they knew enough to be confident now, they could drop the guard and take loving chances. And then, too soon, the sun began to go down, and it grew cool, and they would have to go— indeed, they would have to drive like the wind if they were to be back in time.

So he drove like the wind, but his arm was often about her, and she would lean across and kiss him when he asked her to. Her thoughts were chaotic, and yet secure; none of this made sense, part of it was unworthy, part almost wicked, but she could not wish to change any of it. When he said: "I adore you—I wish I could stop the car," she felt swamped by a tender longing, as real as his body had been.

On that return journey, they drove for nearly an hour towards a fantastic Karroo sunset, streaked with orange and red and green and purple; she had never seen anything like it before. "It's the dust in the air," he said: "it filters the light or something." She believed him; she would have believed him if he had said that it was controlled by the F.B.I. There was a moment when she had a fierce urge to tell him everything—all about Carl, all about the gang; it might free her, partially, from the deadly sense she had had lately, of being trapped in evil, so that she would end her days as the kind of woman one saw in old gangster movies, dyed, dilapidated, crying into her beer as the leader slapped her down or deserted her for younger, fresher meat. . . . But the moment passed; confession did not seem necessary; when they were in this mood of sensual release, when they had made love so well and so wonderfully, she could not be trapped by anything except an extreme of gratitude.

They had had their day; it had been heaven; he had taken her by the hand, and she had re-entered with him a young world of innocence and ardour, a world she had lost, a world she had never known. That was today, and it had been set apart. Things were still to be done in the right order. If there were tears in their future, they could not dry them now.

Going down the long hill into Cape Town, he suddenly said:

"I'll be able to sit for my mate's ticket, in about three years' time."

It seemed to her, at that moment, the happiest, the most comforting prospect in the whole world.

4

Carl Wenstrom was coming out of the smoking-room when she and Tim stepped over the top of the gangway on to the "square" of A-deck, blinking at the lights overhead. One look told her that he was absolutely furious, with her and perhaps with a lot more besides. He stared at her, and then from her to Tim, and asked very curtly: "Where have you been all day, Kathy? Do you realize it's nearly midnight?"

"Don't we know it!" She laughed, careless of his mood, and turned to Tim. "You left that sprint a little late, Ben Hur."

"I told you we'd make it." Tim stretched, luxuriantly stiff; then he intercepted a speculative glance from the gangway quartermaster, and straightened up. "It's a good road, isn't it?" he ended, on a much more formal note.

"Where have you been?" Carl asked again.

"We went for a drive. A picnic." She waved her hand vaguely; she was overwhelmingly tired, and it was the most wonderful tiredness she had ever felt. A day which had started with Tillotson had somehow escaped its shoddy origins, and ended in Paradise. " 'Way up there."

"You should have told me," said Carl. "You should have left a message."

Tim broke in. "I'm afraid—" he began.

Carl, insultingly, took Kathy's arm and drew her to one side, without looking at Tim. He knows, she thought: he knows already, or he guesses, and I do not care, either way. . . . Over his shoulder, Carl said: "Good night, Mansell," and almost propelled her down the corridor towards their room, leaving Tim, red-faced, to swallow his hurt as best he could.

When the door was shut behind them: "That was terribly rude, Carl," said Kathy. "He's been so sweet to me, and we've had an absolutely wonderful—"

"Shut up!" said Carl, suddenly snarling. He was angry, fantastically so, she realized; his face was pale, and the veins at his temples fluttered uncontrollably. "We'll take up what you've been doing later on. I hope you'll be proud of it, when we do. . . . Right now, you'd better realize that I've had enough for one day. I've had one hell of a session with the Captain. He seems to know everything! About Diane. About the poker game. About the Professor making an idiot of himself all over the ship. And that's not all." He stared down at her, his eyes smouldering. He knows, she thought again; but at the moment it was, for Carl, only a little thing, compared with something else he knew. She could not guess what that something else might be, until he said, with extreme loathing in his voice:

"I think Louis has taken off."

Carl had good reason to be angry; it had been a most ominous day, one which had seemed to threaten their whole undertaking. They were under suspicion—so much had been made clear, in an interview with the Captain which had left him nervous and irritated at the same time; and the suspicion involved the future as well as the past. If, as the Captain obviously suspected, they had been "operating", it was, from the disciplinary point of view, so much water over the dam; as of that moment, it was in the past, there had been no specific complaints, it was just a black mark in a ledger which did not greatly matter. But if they now tried to continue on the same lines, they would do so under an official microscope which would make profitable operation very difficult indeed.

He could not but admire, even in his annoyance, the swiftness and competence with which the Captain had drawn the lines of battle to his own exact taste. It had been mid-morning when the Captain, summoning Carl to his cabin, had greeted him immediately with the words:

"Mr. Wenstrom, I've been hearing some funny things about you and your family."

Carl had not displayed any reaction, either of guilt or fear; he was not that sort of man. "Well now," he had answered, with the easy condescension of the big man towards the small, "I don't think we need to—"

The Captain, noting and disliking the manner, had not hesitated to kill it stone dead. He had held up his hand, with undeniable authority. "Just a minute!" he said, sharply. "At this stage, I'll do the talking."

"He was damn' right, he did the talking!" Carl now recalled to Kathy. He was walking up and down the day cabin, in unusual, indeed unprecedented agitation: it was mostly a build-up of anger, Kathy judged, but on top of it was an uneasy sense of vulnerability, as if he had been brought face to face with the astonishing idea that he might have met his match. "He hasn't much to go on, and he was guessing quite a lot, but he certainly did a good job of presenting the evidence."

"What sort of evidence?" asked Kathy. She was still half-way between two worlds, and she was very tired; it was an effort to take this seriously, to feel herself involved in things which, for the space of a whole day, had retreated out of sight. Did she have to come back to this ridiculous circus? . . . She knew that she was being fundamentally disloyal to Carl; but many things were now in flux, things which for six years she had treated as part of an immutable universe. Love was changing—had already changed—to independent appraisal and activity: she was tied to Carl by a hundred strands, of gratitude, appreciation, and memory, but physical love was no longer part of this weaving, and she could not now pretend, even to herself, that it still figured as an entry in their joint account.

"What sort of evidence?" she repeated, as he did not answer. "What does he know?"

"He knows too much." Carl had been marshalling his thoughts; the sum was not a pretty one, and his voice showed it. "To begin with, he's found out that Diane has been sleeping around. You know how? A lot of her chums had to go to the doctor. . . ." Meeting Kathy's shocked expression, his own face hardened cruelly. "Wonderful, isn't it? He doesn't know she's been making money out of it, but he suspects it, and he hinted as much. Hinted!" He jerked his head back with intense irritation. "What he actually said was: 'The age of the men involved indicates that love didn't have much to do with it.' That's a kind of damned English way of putting it!"

Kathy, interested in spite of herself, said: "There's still nothing illegal in that. If one or two men choose to give her presents—"

"The word 'illegal' was not used. The word used was 'unbecoming'." He mimicked Captain Harmer's pronunciation with savage precision. "The word 'unbecoming' was also used about the Professor. I knew he'd been getting conspicuously drunk during the past few weeks, but I didn't know that he'd been wandering into other people's cabins. Did you?" And as Kathy shook her head: "The damned old fool—Mrs. Youngdahl came down one night and found him in her room, drunk as an owl! The story got to the Captain, of course, and he had him on the carpet. And I'm the last one to hear about it!"

"What did he do about the Professor?"

"Gave him a blast—threatened to cut the tap off if he didn't behave himself in future." Carl frowned grimly. "I've dealt with the Professor myself. But the harm's done. Between him and Diane—"

"But it's still not so terrible, is it?" interrupted Kathy. "What can the Captain do about it?"

"He can watch us. Everybody can watch us. Don't you see—" Carl's voice suddenly cracked out, "—we've attracted attention! In future, whatever we do, however innocent, we'll probably have half a dozen people trailing us. The Captain even said something about the poker games!"

"But there's nothing wrong there."

"There's been a hell of a lot of money coming my way, and it all ties in with the rest. . . . Then we had a long bit about Louis, and his 'unusual choice of companions'—" the angry mimicry came into play once more. "In the Captain's mind, it all fitted into a pattern. And the pattern's something like the truth. He made that clear." Carl passed a weary hand over his face, and crossed to the side-table for a drink. From there he spoke, his back to the room: "I could have done with your help today, Kathy. Where were you?"

"I went for a drive. I told you."

"All day? With that little sailor boy?"

"Yes."

"How was it?"

Carl's tone carried considerable innuendo, but she passed it by. "We had a lot of fun."

"I wouldn't doubt it. But I don't suppose you picked up much loose change, did you?"

After a moment, Kathy said: "Carl, I'm terribly tired. Let's not have this. . . . You haven't told me the important part yet. About Louis leaving, or something. What was that?"

Carl turned round to face her. "You prefer to change the subject? Very well. . . . Louis called me up this afternoon. He was high— high as a kite. He was also in some place called Bloemfontein, instead of being in Johannesburg or the Game Reserve, where he's meant to be. And he wasn't there by himself, either. He's picked off a real beauty this time."

"Who?"

"Bernice Beddington."

"Oh no!" Kathy reacted in astonishment, and then, in spite of her tiredness, burst out laughing. "Bernice? He must be out of his head."

"He's out of his head, all right," answered Carl roughly, "but for a different reason. Of course she's ugly and stupid, but that's not the point. She's young, and her father and mother are here on board. If he's started something with her, he's going to land us all in a load of trouble."

"Has he started something?"

"Yes. He says so, anyway." Carl heard again, in his inner ear, the crackling hum of the long-distance wires, and Louis's voice, cocky and blurred at the same time, saying with foolish affectation: "We drove down here to get away from it all!" And a little later, after Carl had begun to sort out the picture: "Sure I've laid her! And she's not going to come unlaid, no matter how much people squark!"

"He was drunk as a goat, the God-damned little bastard!" Carl so rarely swore that it was a shock to hear the words. "Or he wouldn't have called me up in the first place. I don't know whether he will come back, or when. I told him to break it up, to go right back to Johannesburg, and then meet the ship at Durban, like we planned. Or there'd be hell to pay. But I don't know whether it took. He sounded—he sounded 'way out!"

"But what can he do, that he hasn't done before?"

"He can tie us all up in knots, maybe get involved with the police. That's what he can do! Oh, I know the girl's over-age, but there's such a thing as abduction, undue influence, all that kind of trouble. And it'll start the Captain up again, in high gear. The only good thing is, no one knows anything about this yet. Louis told them up there he was going to take a drive, instead of following the normal schedule. We've got to cover this up somehow, if I have to go up and fetch him back myself! We just can't afford—"

There was a loud knock at the door, which sprang open immediately. It was a woman—Mrs. Beddington—in such an obvious state of excitement that Carl's heart sank at the sight. She was a small woman, of most ordinary appearance, but at this moment she radiated personality on a very large scale. She had a piece of paper in her hand, and, as she advanced into the cabin, she waved it with furious energy.

"What's this mean?" she cried, explosively. "Just tell me that! What's it mean?"

The piece of paper became a telegram, and, guessing with some confidence what it meant, Carl searched for a non-committal answer. He was still searching when Steward Barkway appeared in the open doorway, and said, with unmistakable relish:

"Captain's compliments, sir, and would you please see him immediately."

5

It would never have happened, Louis realized, if they had not been sitting side by side in the plane going up to Johannesburg. The last thing that Louis wanted to tangle with was another woman, however pliable; as a fugitive from Mrs. van Dooren, he was a fugitive from the entire sex, and he was really taking in the Johannesburg tour to give himself an essential breathing-space. But chance put him beside Bernice Beddington, that forlorn young female who was safe wherever she went, for the space of three and a half hours; and the rest—as he himself phrased it, in a night-club flight of fancy, three days later—the rest was history.

Their plane took off early in the morning; at such a demanding hour, he had been quite happy to plunk himself down beside Bernice Beddington, who was making the trip alone (her father had a troublesome sinus infection), say "Hallo, there!" on the customary note of insincerity, buckle on his seat-belt, and doze off to sleep. This was one who wouldn't cause him any grief. ... He slept through the breakfast service, and for an hour afterwards; when he woke up, they were flying over flat, featureless country as dull as the girl who sat beside him, staring at a fashion magazine as if it were a Sanskrit papyrus. More out of habit than anything else, he turned slightly towards her, and said:

"Boy, I sure needed that sleep!"

She started as if he had stuck a pin into her. So few people in her entire world ever volunteered a conversational opening that she had no machinery to deal with it. Blushing vividly, she said the first thing that came into her head:

"Did you know you were snoring?"

He grinned and stretched. "Was I? I was deep down. . . . Hope it didn't worry you."

She found this even more embarrassing. "Oh, I didn't mind a bit. . . . You must be terribly tired, I know. . . ." She ventured a timid side-glance, as if to be sure that he were real. "You go to so many parties, don't you?"

"Doesn't everyone?"

Searching for an answer, she again produced the one that arrived first. "But 1 hate them!" she exclaimed.

Louis turned and looked at her more closely. She really was remarkably unattractive. Everything about her was wrong: the great moon face, broad flat nose, awkward figure, and enormous feet added up, not just to the girl least likely to succeed, but the girl least likely to be judged a girl at all. Of course (he had noted the point already) she must spend a fortune on her clothes, even though they looked as if they were hanging out to dry after a rough night in the barn; and the bag from which she now took a cigarette-case was crocodile, and the case itself was platinum, with her initials ("B.B.", for God's sake!) in emeralds. ... He felt rested after his sleep, and he had left Mrs. van Dooren safely committed to a different tour, and it was good to be running his own life for a change. Vaguely he found himself thinking: What the hell? Why not?

"You mustn't feel that way about it," he said, as convincingly as he could, and began to talk—as if they were both plagued by the same kind of problem—of the various methods of picking people up at parties.

Louis could be very amusing when he wanted to; and he wanted to now, for no very clear reason except that the girl must have plenty of spending money and was thus rendered desirable (Confucius say: Parents loaded, girl stacked), that she would never do anything to or for him except run errands, and that this was the way he wanted it now. (She had actually given him a cigarette, and lighted it for him. That was a good switch. . . .) Presently he ordered drinks for them both; it was only ten o'clock, but South African Airways always opened up the bar, any time of the day or night, anywhere in excess of two thousand feet, and their hospitality was tempting. One hour and four martinis later, Bernice Beddington began to come to life.

No one had ever talked to her for so long at one time; the fact that the talker was Louis Scapelli, whom everyone said was so wicked, whom Daddy himself had been overheard to call a woman-chasing wop, was just about the most exciting thing that had ever happened. Indeed, the only thing. . . . Flowering in this fantastic radiance, she had given him her views on teen-age crime, the true and terrible story of her coming-out dance, and her entire life-history to date, by the time their plane began its slow descent towards the mine dumps of the Johannesburg Reef.

Tiptree-Jones, the man in charge of the party, walked down the middle gangway, and paused by their seat. Having had Bernice Beddington, dumb as an ox, at his table for more than two months, he was astonished to see that she was now carrying on an animated conversation, glass in hand, cigarette puffing away merrily. . . . The fact that she was talking to Louis Scapelli caused him a minor pang of uneasiness, but he found it preferable to rise above it. If there was anything wrong, he didn't want to know.

"Are you enjoying yourselves?" he asked heartily.

Bernice Beddington, instead of letting her mouth drop open with embarrassment, actually answered: "Of course!"

"We might have a party or something, when we get to Johannesburg," said Louis, as Tiptree-Jones passed on. "I hear it's quite a town."

"Could we be—you know—by ourselves?" Bernice ventured.

"I don't see why not." Louis turned to smile at her. "Sure you don't want to take Tiptree-Jones along?"

She giggled. "But he's so dull. . . ." Then she put her hand to her mouth. "Oh, I shouldn't say that, should I?"

"Say anything you like," said Louis handsomely.

"I want to go horse-racing, too. And to a native dance. And down a gold mine." It was the martinis speaking, but the ideas were none the worse for that. Nor was the next one. "Daddy always gives me lots of money to spend," Bernice confided. "This time, I'm not going to save any of it!"

Louis thought again, much less vaguely: Why not?

They had three days in Johannesburg, and they spent all of them together, by-passing the regular tours and excursions; while Tiptree-Jones, worried yet relieved, decided that this was much the best way of solving the Bernice Beddington problem. Scapelli might be the most terrible type, but no one else had come anywhere near solving it, so far. ... To begin with, the two of them had hired a car, in most auspicious circumstances.

"Wouldn't it be nicer to have our own car?" asked Bernice, on the first afternoon, when they had taken a very long and expensive taxi drive out to the local country club. "I can drive, if you can't."

"I can drive," said Louis, not too enthusiastically.

Intensely vulnerable still, reacting to the smallest hint of anything that might threaten her capture, Bernice went on pleadingly: "I know it's extravagant. But taxis are extravagant, aren't they? And it's silly not to spend all this money."

"All what money?" asked Louis.

Bernice opened her handbag, and, in one of those enormously awkward gestures which had long been her mother's despair, positively shovelled a wad of bills and travellers' cheques towards him. "All this," she answered. "Let's spend it! It's just wasted, otherwise."

Louis held the money very easily, very openly in his hand. At a rough guess, aided by a discreet touch of the thumb, it was not less than five thousand dollars.

"Gee, honey," he said—it seemed an appropriate moment for an endearment—"do you really carry all this around with you?"

"Not normally." She was, as usual, meeting criticism with humble argument. "But on a trip like this—it just seems to mount up. I haven't had anything to spend it on, so far." She looked at him, almost begging for her chance to give him something, to do something for him. "Please fix up a car, Louis. Then we can go anywhere we want."

"All right." He held out the money. "Here, you'd better have this back."

"No," she said. "I've got lots more in my room, anyway. Daddy likes me to be independent. . . . You be the banker, and pay for things."

"But I can't just spend your money."

"We can take it in turns, then," she suggested, timid once more. "We'll spend some of mine first, and then some of yours. Wouldn't that be all right?"

"I guess so," he agreed, with reluctance. "But don't forget now— fair shares!"

"I won't forget anything about this," she said fervently.

In her delight and excitement, she became, if anything, more ugly than ever; now, at any time of the day, wisps of matted hair lay dankly on her forehead, and her pudgy face shone with a moist rapture which no powder could cope with. She had never had a man-friend before; she had no idea what to do; she had nothing to charm him with—and yet, incredibly, he was there! Life became, for her, a series of ecstatic "firsts", blazing a private pathway of joy. There were times, often, when she would cheerfully and humbly have died for him.

There was the first occasion when he said, meeting her at breakfast-time: "Hi, beautiful!"

There was the time when he held her hand, walking back from a night-club, and he said: "You have very sensitive fingers—did you know that?"

There was a time, in the bar of the Carlton Hotel, when she felt that other people from the Alcestis were staring at the two of them, and probably laughing, and she ventured to say something about it, and he answered: "Forget it, baby—they're just jealous of us.,"

There was a time when he kissed her (only her spectacles rather got in the way), and another time when he stood at the door of her hotel bedroom and said, most movingly: "I mustn't, honey—I respect you too much."

There was the time when he said: "You know, you and I have got to do something about this."

What he did about it was to suggest: "We don't want to go to any old Game Reserve, do we?"; they then cashed the remainder of her travellers' cheques, and drove down to a small hotel in Bloem-fontein, where he disposed of her virginity with as much enthusiasm as he could muster. It was under the influence of the alcohol necessary to confront that broad moon-like face, those myopic, cow-like eyes, and that spreadeagled acreage of body, that he had telephoned to Carl. (Years later, he was to recall: "Boy, I sure had to get into the sauce, that night!") But from then on, drifting on golden tides, they organized her entire future life in half a dozen sentences.

"I don't want to go back to the ship," Bernice declared. She was already fathoms deep in astonished rapture. "You know how I hate it!"

"Then we'll stay here in Africa. Easy!"

"And—and get married, like you said?"

"Jesus, honey!" answered Louis, "you don't think I'd let you get awaynow?"

"I know what," said Bernice happily. "We'll send them a telegram."

"Sir, I can't imagine where they've gone," reported Tiptree-Jones on the long-distance telephone from Johannesburg. Beneath the smooth manner there was some agitation; he felt that he was going to be blamed, whatever happened. "The position here is that we move on to the Game Reserve, early tomorrow morning, and neither Scapelli nor the girl have been seen by anyone, for at least twenty-four hours. They didn't sleep at the hotel last night, either."

"It's your job to keep an eye on them," growled the Captain. But he was not yet worried; passengers did strange things, but he could not imagine anyone doing a strange thing to Bernice Beddington. "I suppose, if the truth was known, you were damned glad to have her taken off your hands."

"Well," said Tiptree-Jones, detecting benevolence in an unexpected quarter, "therewas that, sir."

Captain Harmer glanced down at his watch. It was nine o'clock in the evening; he himself had to take the Alcestis out, at first light, for Durban. "There's not much you can do except wait," he decided finally. "Ring me up again at midnight. If they haven't shown up by then, we might have to tell the police. Of course, it's probably nothing at all. I don't trust Scapelli in any area known to God, but I think I would trust him with Bernice. I dare say their car broke down somewhere."

"I'll ring again at twelve, sir," said Tiptree-Jones. He sounded relieved—on one point, at least. "And, sir—"

"What is it?"

"Do you think you could switch this call to the doctor? I'd like to speak to him."

"The doctor?" said Harmer, irritated. "What do you want the doctor for?"

From a long way away, rather faint, Tiptree-Jones answered: "Well, it's a personal matter, sir."

The Captain allowed himself a single short laugh, for the frailties of human nature which could be thus betrayed in odd areas; then he switched the call, and hung up. He was still not worried; it was just a question as to whether, at this stage, the girl's parents should be told. If it were anyone but Scapelli. . . . After the second call at midnight, with no further news, he was still debating the next step when Mr. Beddington himself stormed into the cabin, and almost shouted:

"I want an explanation of this, Captain!"

"I beg your pardon," said Harmer coldly.

'"We've been having dinner ashore—only just got back." Small, like his wife, Mr. Beddington supplemented his stature with a towering indignation. "There was this telegram waiting for us. My wife has it!"

"Telegram?"

"Our little girl's gone off with that wop!"

6

"It's disgraceful!" said Mrs. Beddington, for the twentieth time; but already she was calmer, and there was less conviction in her voice. Carl, faced with the most crucial moment of the voyage, and aware all the time of the Captain's deep resentment, was doing a masterly job of spreading a thick layer of soft soap over the entire area. To restore any kind of normality to the situation, he had to make two points: firstly, that Louis was actually a highly desirable character, and, secondly, that Bernice Beddington had brought off something like a coup, something for which her parents had been praying for years.

The first requirement was in the realm of the impossible, and the second was difficult to press home without seeming offensive. But in his singular display of skill, with the Captain prepared to jump in, any time he faltered, Carl had never shown better form on any track in the world.

To begin with, anger and alarm had predominated; the Beddingtons, ready to blame anyone remotely concerned with the outrage, were all for action—action in any direction. They sat side by side on the Captain's long sofa, a small tough team armoured by a just cause, and belaboured anything they could reach.

"You must have him tracked down, and arrested!" declared Mrs. Beddington. Her main target was Carl, sitting opposite her on a hard upright chair. "It's your responsibility! He's your nephew, isn't he? You're liable for whatever he does wrong! It's the law!"

"Technically, that is not so," answered Carl, with judicious calm.

"I was his legal guardian when he was under-age, but that of course is no longer true. He is now an adult, with an adult's freedom of action."

"Freedom!" exclaimed Mrs. Beddington. "Don't you dare talk to me about freedom! If he's your nephew, you should control him! Everyone knows he's got a terrible reputation, everyone knows he's been chasing after every woman in the ship! Most of them old enough to be his mother, too!"

"But obviously," said Carl, "he has now decided to settle down."

"Of course he's decided to settle down," it was Mr. Beddington's turn to explode, "with a girl who owns half a million dollars of my company's stock in her own right!" He swung round to the Captain, sitting watchfully at his desk. "What I want to know is, how a thing like this can happen. A young single girl goes away on a trip like this, surely there's someone in charge? A chaperon, or something? Is this your idea of proper supervision? Let me tell you, if this was a business deal, you could be sued for gross incompetence!"

The Captain kept his temper; it had been a very long time since anyone had spoken to him in these terms, but he realized the genuine distress behind the outburst. His own anger was reserved for Carl, and for this whole shoddy gang who could make a farm-yard out of a decent ship. . . .

"Naturally we exercise supervision," he said, as firmly as he felt necessary. "But you must realize that we are not dealing with children. Most passengers resent any kind of control; they feel quite capable of organizing their own lives. And after all, your daughter is of age, and presumably you must trust her, or you wouldn't have allowed her to make this Johannesburg trip alone. I would have thought she was the very last person to get into any sort of trouble."

"What do you mean, the very last person?" inquired Mrs. Bedding-ton, with an edge to her voice.

"I mean," said Harmer, "she's a most sensible girl, well able to take care of herself."

"And now she's been seduced!" said Mr. Beddington bitterly. "And by one of your own passengers—the biggest bastard in the ship!" He looked round at Carl. "I agree with my wife—I think you've got a hell of a lot to answer for, as well."

Carl assumed a highly shocked expression. "Did you use the word 'seduced'?" he inquired, as if he had overheard some rude version of a hymn. "I must say I am very surprised. Your daughter's telegram said nothing of any such—ah—development. All she said was—" he glanced down, and read from the fatal piece of paper, "—'Staying here till I can marry Louis Scapelli very happy don't worry best love Bernice'." In the silence that followed, Carl went on: "That seems to me, if I may say so, a telegram that any mother and father would be glad and proud to receive."

"Glad and proud?" said Mr. Beddington, stopped in his tracks. "What the hell do you mean, glad and proud? She's run away, and she's going to get married—maybe. The man involved is a woman-chasing bastard, probably without a cent to his name. What is there to be glad and proud about?"

"Young love," answered Carl, on a most sober note. "The most precious thing in the world."

"Where does young love come in, for God's sake?"

Carl tapped the telegram with his forefinger. "In every word of this message. She is happy, she is excited, she is going to get married, and she sends her love to you, her parents. She wants to share her love, she wants you to be as happy as I am sure Louis is making her, at this moment."

"But he's not meant to make her happy at one o'clock in the morning!" said Mrs. Beddington, obviously appalled by the idea. "It's disgusting! How do we know what he's doing to her? What will people say?"

"They will say," intoned Carl, with sudden dramatic piety, "that love makes its own rules. ... Of course she and Louis have been foolish," he continued, on a more man-of-the-world note, "but what does that prove?—simply that they are deeply in love and want to marry as soon as they can." He felt the Captain's frosty eye upon him, and he rallied himself for a decisive effort. "Of course it is a surprise, of course they have been naughty—in keeping it a secret— but when were lovers not secretive? It is part of their joy, part of the excitement. .. ." He addressed himself especially to Mrs. Beddington. "It is a great shock to you, I know—but there could be worse shocks, couldn't there?—and worse disappointments.At last—" he lent a very delicate emphasis to the words, "—your little girl has found the happiness she deserves. She is going to be married! There may be grandchildren! Surely you must be glad about that?"

"Well," said Mrs. Beddington, and paused to look at her husband, while Carl watched both their faces. He was aware, as if he were dictating it himself, of the train of thought which he had been able to start. Their little girl—married at last. . . . Their little girl—so huge in reality, so long unmarketable. . . . And grandchildren already over the horizon. . . . "All the same," said Mrs. Beddington, after a long silence, "itis disgraceful."

It was then that Mr. Beddington asked: "What sort of a young man is Scapelli? What's his background?"

"It's an old Boston family," said Carl readily. (The Beddingtons were from the far west of Arizona.) "His father—who married my favourite sister—incidentally in the same kind of runaway match— his father made a great deal of money in real estate, and lost his life in extraordinary circumstances in a typhoon in the West Indies." Steady now, thought Carl to himself, aware of a baleful glance from the Captain; keep it vague, keep it general. . . . "Louis, I believe, has shown great promise in the business world. I would say he had an exceptional future."

"But what does he do?" inquired Mr. Beddington.

"He has been looking for an opening, and taking his own time about it."

"He has money, then?"

Carl shook his head. "Not a great deal," he answered. "I happen to know there was some unfortunate litigation—as only too often happens, with these very old families. But of course," Carl went on, largely, "he has a few thousands, and naturally I will do the best I can for him myself, on this—" he caught Mrs. Beddington's eye, and smiled suddenly and disarmingly, "—you know, I must call it, this happy occasion. I have long wanted to see him settled. Bernice is a dear girl," he continued, stretching a point, "and Louis has undoubted qualities which will bring him to the top in his chosen sphere." He stood up suddenly, taking subtle control of all their problems, all their worries. "Why don't we," he said, with the most insidious charm he had ever displayed, "begin to be happy about this whole thing?"

When, much later, the Beddingtons had gone—reluctantly prepared to be brave about what had happened, ready, with misgivings, to be resigned to it—Captain Harmer surveyed Carl across the width of his desk. It was well past one o'clock, and he would be lucky to get three hours' sleep that night; but there was no limit to his dislike of the man opposite him, and this gave him the energy for what he had to do next. Obviously, they were nearing the end of the line, and he intended to dispose of this whole thing in unmistakable terms.

"Well done!" he said sarcastically, as soon as they were alone; and then, on a much harder note: "This is the second time we've met today, Mr. Wenstrom. As far as I am concerned, there will only be one more of these meetings."

Carl, who had been enjoying the quiet satisfaction of having disposed of the Beddingtons with rare skill, was brought up short by the remark. Of course, the Captain was of tougher calibre, as compared with the bemused parents, and he could not be expected to come out in favour of sentimental surrender quite so readily; but it did not seem to Carl that he had left any loose ends which the Captain could jump on. Hell, they were getting married, it was practically legal. ... He was about to express his surprise when the Captain continued:

"What I mean by that, is that I'm not putting up with any more of these incidents, from any member of your family. If we have any further examples of young love, as practised by Mr. Scapelli or Miss Loring, I shall be taking immediate action. And this is the only warning you will get."

"I'm not sure I understand you," said Carl, coldly. "I certainly used the term 'young love' in connexion with Louis and Bernice, and I see no reason to object to it. It's obvious to me that—"

The Captain held up his hand, in sudden brusque denial. "Mr. Wenstrom—cut it out! You are not dealing with the Beddingtons now, you are answering to me. . . . We both know enough about the respective characters of Scapelli and Miss Beddington—and their respective appearances, if I can make the point—to be quite certain that this is the culmination of a racket, on his part. He has been auctioning his favours for the past two months. I am absolutely sure that he has now picked out the most impressionable girl on board, made certain that she has money, and trapped her into marrying him. Whether you yourself planned this—" "I knew nothing about it."

"Well, you know now." The Captain stood up, and after a moment Carl felt obliged to follow suit. "Let me make myself quite clear. I know that Scapelli has got away with murder, and I can't do anything about it. But I can take care of the future." He stared at Carl with very direct, very level eyes; he seemed suddenly a much bigger man, undeniably powerful, ready for action against anyone or anything. "If I hear of one single more instance of anything that I consider irregular—and I shall be the sole judge of that—I will put the whole lot of you ashore at the first port we touch."

Carl met his glance with an equal firmness. He had been taken seriously aback, but he was not going to show it. After a moment he answered, with careless calm: "I doubt if you can do that."

The Captain raised his eyebrows; then he laughed, very shortly, just enough to demonstrate that Carl had blundered into an area of which he knew nothing. "I understand that you're a betting man, Mr. Wenstrom," he remarked ironically. "Would you care to have a bet on that? With me? Let me assure you that I can have you, and your family, and all your luggage, carried down the gangway and out on to the dock, within the next five minutes, and you would have no conceivable redress, either now or later. My company would back me up, one hundred per cent, in any court in any country in the world. . . . And now, good night!"

He sat down at his desk, and Carl, indubitably dismissed, turned to go. As he reached the door he heard the Captain's voice behind him, relaxed, almost mocking:

"And while I remember it, Mr. Wenstrom—they don't have typhoons in the West Indies. They have hurricanes."

7

Carl awoke suddenly at 5 a.m., when the familiar trembling deep within the Alcestis, the polite shudder which fifteen thousand horse-power was bound to give when moving into action, made itself felt throughout the ship. He awoke in irritation, which presently turned to rage; this was the damned Captain again, interfering with everything, showing off his strength. ... It was a rage which, in a greater or lesser degree, was never to leave him.

Presently he got up, and looked out of his porthole. They were taking a lovely farewell of Cape Town; Table Mountain especially, square-cut like an immense grey monolith, tipped with gold at its peaks, had a matchless splendour which seemed to grow more noble as it receded. Carl stayed where he was at the open porthole for a long time, while the Alcestis steamed southwards at mounting speed, and rounded the Cape of Good Hope, and dipped her bows for the first time into the warm Indian Ocean. Then he dressed, and set out on the prowl.

Even in his anger, he had sense enough to realize that he was looking for victims, as the Captain had made him a victim, a few hours earlier. He felt that he had never been angrier, with any man or any situation: a few weeks ago the whole thing had been under control, they had been swimming along to victory, they would land at New York with a wonderful tan and a hundred thousand dollars; now, if the Captain could be believed—and he was a man to be believed, in this area—they would be lucky if they landed at New York at all.

It was not that the Captain was a match for him—Carl would never admit that. But it was true that Harmer could manipulate the rules to suit himself, and no one else; at sea, in command of his ship, he had the same power and the same limitless discretion as ship's captains had held for five hundred years; history might blame or exonerate them, but in the meantime, "Go!" meant go and "Stop!" meant stop.

It was something which Carl Wenstrom had never met before. It stood in his way. It must be someone else's fault.

Kathy was asleep—or at least, her cabin door was locked, and she did not answer when he knocked. He would deal with Kathy— strange Kathy, unpredictable Kathy, perhaps retreating Kathy—later on, in his own good time. . . . The next door he knocked on was Diane's, and Diane was in.

Indeed, she was in bed, enjoying a light breakfast of fresh sliced peaches, devilled kidneys, and fingers of anchovy toast, when Carl made his entrance. He waited while her stewardess added a touch of cream to her coffee, patted the pillows behind her head, and withdrew, before he asked:

"Sure you're doing all right?"

Diane, who had her own instinct for moments of drama and violence, looked at him warily and said:

"What's the matter, Carl?"

"You know damn' well what's the matter!" He was finding it easy—fatally so—to switch on anger as soon as an appropriate target showed itself. "While you're lying around like the Queen of Sheba, I'm doing all the work and carrying all the weight! Did you know that Louis has taken off into the woods somewhere? Did you know that the Professor practically gets his name printed in the ship's newspaper, among our more prominent drunks? Did you know that the Captain is going to put us all ashore at the next stop, unless we behave ourselves?"

"Gee, Carl," said Diane, alarmed. "I didn't know any of that."

"Well, you know now!" (Now who had said that before? The same damned man. . . .) "A lot of it is your fault, you stupid little bitch!" The words came easier as his early morning anger found its chance targets, the things he was prowling for; the words were not even the words he would normally have used, they were more like Diane herself losing her temper, like Louis doing some cheap show-off act. .. . "In fact, a hell of a lot of it is your fault. You started the Captain making all these inquiries, adding it all up. Good Christ, if I'd known you were going to send half the ship to the doctor's office, do you think I would have brought you along? I could get more mileage out of a plastic doll!"

"Now, see here, Carl!" Diane sat up with a jerk, spilling a good deal of expensive food in the process. She had never heard Carl talk like this before, and it emboldened her to answer back, in the same crude idiom. "If you're talking about mileage, you haven't done so badly out of me! What have you had from Kathy, I'd like to know? Precisely nothing! You want to work off a hangover, go and do it on her. I was doing all right until one of those cheap bastards—oh, for God's sake!" she finished suddenly. "Give it a rest, will you?"

"Leave Kathy out of this!" Carl said, menacingly.

"Why not?" she shrugged. "Everyone else does. Except maybe that sailor."

"What do you mean by that?"

"Write your own novel," said Diane, with a sneer. "What do you think they were doing all day in the woods?—twiddling their thumbs?"

"What the hell does a cheap tramp like you know about it?"

If he was thus harsh and crude with Diane—and there was more of it, much more, before he had finished—he was positively murderous with the Professor. He found him, as usual, lying down in his cabin, half-stripped to his meagre skin against the Indian Ocean heat; even as he went into action, he despised himself for hammering away at this poor old ruin of a man. But it did not stop him. Today, nothing was going to stop him.

"Get up!" he commanded immediately as he stepped into the cabin. "What the hell do you think you're doing, lying around half naked! If you've got nothing better to do, put on some of those early Victorian rags and take a walk around the deck. You might just sweat out some of the alcohol!"

"What—what's this?" said the Professor, struggling to sit up. This was the second time in as many days that Carl had stormed in and abused him; his nerves were already ragged, and his exhausted body shaking at the very first contact. "I've just woken up!" Sitting up, clutching his ridiculous flannel pyjamas across his chest, he said waveringly: "Carl, I meant to ask you. ... I did exactly as you said, I had nothing to drink yesterday. . . . But a man of my age needs the occasional stimulus—"

"The occasional skin-full, you mean," answered Carl derisively. He leant back against the door, a strong tough man scornful of all the old and the trembling. "I have news for you, Professor. Those days are over. Let me tell you, you're not going to have another ounce of Scotch till we get to New York. And damned little then, by God!"

"But Carl, I need it," wailed the Professor. And indeed, he did need it, at that very moment; the hand that brushed across his flaky lips was visibly shaking. "A man of my age. . . . It's not my fault if I went into the wrong cabin. It could happen to anyone! And I honestly thought that the watch was mine. I thought—"

"Watch?" asked Carl sharply. He glared down at the Professor. "What watch? What are you drivelling about?"

"The watch I picked up," said the Professor, suddenly in fear. "It was very like mine, and—"

" You bloody old fool!" Carl's voice, low-pitched, had an extreme menace in it. "What's this about a watch? Did you take a watch? Did they catch you stealing?"

"But I thought you knew." The Professor was almost hiding his face in his hands. "You said yesterday—the Captain told you—"

"The Captain told me you were found wandering about in the wrong cabin," said Carl. With a huge effort, he stopped himself walking forward to chop the old man into the ground. "He said nothing at all about a watch.Did you take a watch? Was it you who started this whole thing?"

"But I was taking it for you, Carl." Caught in abject guilt, he might have been a dog offering a retrieved stick. "Not for myself! They were saying I never earned any money. . . . So I . . . But it was for you! I swear it! Oh God, Carl—" he whispered, as Carl came forward with his fist raised, "it was for you."

"I hit him," said Carl to Kathy, half an hour later. "I hit him hard. I had to. Christ, do you realize this is all his fault? He was caught trying to steal a watch! That must have been when it all started."

Kathy, drinking her morning coffee, shook her head. The picture was ugly enough, but it seemed faked also, based on lies or half-truths, invented for the purpose of making brutality seem to be justice. "I doubt that, Carl. There are lots of other things. And you won't cure any of them by hitting the Professor, will you? Is he all right?"

"I don't care if he's dead and buried," answered Carl, and at that moment of continued fury it was the plain truth. Sulky and vicious, he looked down at her as she sat in her armchair, cool and elegant in slacks and a pink-checked shirt. She was always beautiful in the mornings. Beautiful and suspect. "So what have you been doing, Kathy?"

She looked up, surprised at the extraordinary borrowed falsity of his tone. "My dear Carl, what do you mean, so what have I been doing? You sound like Louis practising the dialogue for Guys and Dolls."

He stared back at her in cold fury, and said: "That doesn't really answer my question, does it?"

She had been in the mood for gentleness, for friendship; but something about his tone—unpleasant, basically hateful—provoked her to the same response, the same careless cruelty.

"You would really like to know?" She dropped another lump of sugar into her coffee cup, and stirred it deliberately. "I have to decide between two proposals, Carl. You must really help me to make up my mind. . . . One is for marriage—or it could be, very easily. The other is to go to bed with someone. Just once. For five thousand dollars. Or ten. Or any number. . . ." Now she was looking at him, and for the first time for many years she felt that whatever he said, in whatever tone of voice, he could not affect her decision, by the breadth of one hair; her next words were thus merely formal. "If you were in my place," she said, levelly, even sarcastically, "would you lie down for love, or for ten thousand dollars? Or would you not lie down at all, for any man on earth?"

"I can't," she said to Tillotson, later that day. It was twilight, twilight off the coast of Africa; the Alcestis was ploughing steadily through the fantastic phosphorescence of an Indian Ocean night, with the Southern Cross beginning to beckon them over the last horizon in the world; it was an excellent moment for decisions, however crazy, however harmful. "I thought I could—I wasn't just fooling—but now I can't."

"What is now!" asked Tillotson, picking out the weasel word. As always, he was calm and competent; all he had done was to walk near her as she sat in a chair by the deserted pool, smile, and say: "Referring to our recent communication . . ." At some other time, in some other life, she had thought, he would have been quite a man. . . . But these present times were out of joint, by many a crooked mile; and Tillotson seemed, most subtly, to realize this when he said: "What's happened in the last forty-eight hours, to change it? Did I leave it too long? Surely we were agreed."

"Oh yes."

"Then?"

"A man," said Kathy.

"Ah, that's different." As usual, he was smoking a cigar, and the ash flicked over the side of the ship in a broad curving arc. "That's a development I can understand. I thought maybe it was something I could deal with."

She smiled; this was the most civilized person she had talked with today. "What can you deal with?"

"Most things involving organization. Things that come up. . . ." He looked sideways at her. "Something could have scared you, for instance. I've heard a few rumours flying around. . . . You can be quite sure that you and I wouldn't be getting our names on any Captain's list of undesirables."

She could not guess how much he knew; it seemed best to assume that naturally he knew everything. "It's not that," she answered, shaking her head. "I've nothing to be afraid of, so far as I know."

"Except that you belong to this rather unusual family."

"Are we unusual?"

She could hear a smile in his voice as he answered: "I think it's a very fair word to use." And then, more soberly: "Ah well, these are speculations—you said it was a man, anyway. That must mean a young man."

"Yes."

"I am jealous." But he said it, once more, very calmly; he might have been saying: I am Tillotson. He was in a curious mood, a mood which coupled exploration with acceptance; perhaps that was part of his strength, that he could gauge quickly and, if need be, abdicate gracefully. "When did this happen?"

"It didn't really happen." She did not want to talk about it at all, but she felt that she owed him more than a few sentences of banal rejection. "It's more of an idea, really."

After a long silence, he said: "The idea being that you should reform."

Astonished, both at him and at herself, she answered: "Yes. That's it exactly."

"Now we know." He leant across and laid his hand on her arm; its only message was one of encouragement. "I am in the best position to tell you," he said ruefully, "that such a reformation is perfectly possible. . . . Did my wife make you feel ashamed?"

"A little."

"She is a very clever woman."

"Darling, I can't," she told Tim Mansell, about midnight that same night. They were in his cabin, a slim box of a room with a single berth, a curtained wash-basin, and a desk covered with papers; it looked out, bleakly, on to the derricks and hatch-covers of the foredeck.

"But I only wanted to kiss you," said Tim. It was almost true; though he continued to hold her slim body encircled, his own was not yet urgent. "This is the only chance we've had. Why don't you want to?"

"It's no good in the ship. It doesn't feel right. It feels kind of mean, and sneaky."

"It feels wonderful to me."

But she was not at all in that sort of mood; she was ready to be irritated. On board, in his fresh-pressed white uniform, he was so damned young again. ... "I must go," she said briefly, turning away.

"What's the matter, Kathy?"

"Nothing."

"But it was so wonderful last time. Wasn't it?"

"Of course it was." She felt she had to destroy this; she did not want it, after all—not yet, anyway, or not on these terms. It was as bad as the idea of Tillotson, the idea of Carl. "That was what we made the trip for, wasn't it?"

"Kathy!"

She had not wanted to shock him, and the sight of his face hurt her. But something was making her continue, a compulsion to put him back in his place.

"Oh Tim, don't be such a baby! That's what people do on picnics. Didn't you know that? They eat, and then they make love. Don't tell me you didn't have that in your mind from the very beginning!"

"But it was different," he answered helplessly. "Of course I hoped that we might. . . . But you didn't have to—I wasn't going to make you—"

"It's not a question of making anyone do anything. I was in the mood, that's all. And so were you." Kathy did not know why she was doing this to him, except that too many things had been closing in on her today; she wanted to clear a space round her, she wanted to push Tim away, just as she had pushed Tillotson, and breathe some free air. "Of course we made love. What do you think we were there for?"

"Kathy, why are you spoiling it all?"

"Spoiling it all. . . ." It annoyed her more than ever that he had found the precise word. She was spoiling it; making herself forget or disparage his tenderness, his ardour, his flat stomach; the sunlight through the leaves dappling their naked bodies; the world that moved. "I think you've got the wrong idea, young man," she went on, in a voice which disgusted her even as she used it. "That wasn't deathless love, you know, it was a good run-of-the-mill open-air lay." The phrase was Diane's, and she searched for another one in the same explicit terms, without success. She should have listened to Diane with more attention. . . . "What had you got in mind, anyway?—" she tried another tack, "—that we should settle down in some slum in Liverpool until you passed some kid's examination for—"

Tim suddenly reached over and gave her a very precise, very firm, not too harsh slap on the side of her face. The slight sting was just enough to astonish her, to stop her in mid-sentence. She blinked, and when she could listen again, it was Tim who was doing the talking.

"That's the first of many," he told her cheerfully, "if you talk to me like that." Swiftly he had grown up again, to a person, to a man; it was the yearning of love which had diminished him, and now he was not going to be diminished any longer. "Now just you listen to me, and stop being so hopelessly disorganized. ... Of course I want to make love to you—" he pointed, "—in that very bunk, which is just big enough for what I have in mind. We loved it last time, and we'll love it again. I'm not ashamed of that. Nor are you." He took her by the shoulders; he was as strong, at least, as Carl. . . . "I don't know why you're talking like this, Kathy, and I don't want to know—I've forgotten it already. You can't scare me. . . . But just you remember a couple of things. One—" he shook her, "I don't mind what you've done in the past. It hasn't changed you or spoiled you—we found that out by the dam. You have a future, and I am in it. Two—" another shake, "—I am not going to stop being a sailor, just because you don't like it. You're going to make the change. It's not so terrible, anyway. And three—" but here his voice altered subtly, not towards weakness but towards cherishing, "—will you please be careful? You and the others, I mean. I don't want to lose you at Durban. I want to talk to you, and kiss you, and maybe go to bed with you, all the way back to New York. But if you want to save going to bed with me until we're married, that's perfectly all right with me."

She looked up at him. Out of all the surprises, she chose the biggest one of all.

"You knew, then."

"Yes."

"Who else knows?"

"We all do, pretty well." He smiled, and then he kissed her without any possibility of a denial. "I told you that the past doesn't matter. . . . And now," he ended, "the time being twelve-thirty, I'm taking you half-way back to your cabin, and I hope you sleep as well as I do. I'd like to be doing it with you, Kathy, but confidentially, the bunk is hell."

8

Though it was mid-morning, and the upper decks of the Alcestis were crowded with people taking long-distance photographs of the hundred-mile range of blue mountains far away on the port beam, Carl was still in bed, staring fixedly at the ceiling, when Kathy came to see him. She stood at the doorway, surprised, and then, moving forward, said: "I'm sorry, Carl. I thought you would be up."

He was smoking. He watched a spiral of smoke drift upwards towards the fans before he answered:

"You don't have to apologize for coming into my room. At least, you used not to apologize, two months ago."

Warned by his tone, which indicated a difficult mood, she said lightly: "Well, itis your room. . . . We're just coming up to Port Elizabeth. It really is lovely. You ought to get up and take a look at it."

After the same sort of loaded pause, he asked: "What's Port Elizabeth, for God's sake?"

"Just a place, I suppose." She had taken a cigarette from the box on the side-table, and was lighting it. When she had finished she said: "It's half-way to Durban."

He raised himself on his elbow, and looked across at her. He was frowning. She had been wrong about his mood, she decided instantly; it was not a difficult mood, it was a hideous one. But she was still not prepared for the extreme sarcasm with which he said:

"Thank you for coming to tell me that we are now half-way to Durban."

For some reason, Kathy felt brave this morning. Perhaps it was a chance feeling, perhaps it was the first of many brave mornings. But whatever its origin, she felt that it was good enough to take care of Carl, or of anyone else who wanted to impress his personality oe the wretched female race. She looked back at him with equal directness, and answered:

"I came to tell you some other things, too. . . . The Tillotson deal is off. I didn't go through with it."

He raised his eyebrows. "Why not?"

"There's no special reason.... I didn't want to, I suppose. Anyway, I've told him it's no good."

After a moment, Carl said: "You are lucky to be able to pick and choose."

But she was not going to take that; not on this morning, perhaps not on any morning. "Carl, do tell the truth," she said, rather sharply. "Did you actually want me to sleep with him? For five thousand dollars, or whatever he would have paid?"

"I would always want you to make five thousand dollars," said Carl, without expression.

"Carl!"

"Yes?"

"Don't talk like that! Answer what I asked!"

His eyes were positively murderous as he said: "You will not give me orders! Thatwas my answer."

It was a mood she could not deal with: all she could do was to remain unaffected by it. She shrugged her shoulders. "All right. . . . If you don't want to be honest . . . Tim Mansell says that all the officers know about us."

Carl, in a brief change of humour, laughed sardonically. He had imagined that the Captain would probably put out some sort of general alarm; but it amused him that the news should come from this innocent source.

"That should take care of your other problem."

Warily she asked: "What does that mean?"

"You are suddenly very obtuse," he snapped. His manner changed again, becoming charged with the spite she had been aware of earlier. "I would presume that your young sailor friend thought of you as a combination of Venus, Madame Curie, and one of the more dependable Vestal virgins. If he 'knows about you', as you put it, what does that do to this ideal dream of love?" Carl expelled some smoke towards the ceiling. "I can visualize a slight but perceptible cloud coming between him and the sacred vision."

Kathy said, almost without thinking: "Perhaps there's less to know about me than about the others."

"You have obviously taken good care of that."

She came back to hard reality. "Oh Carl, you're impossible when you're in this mood!"

"Jesus God!" he burst out suddenly. "What sort of a mood do you expect?" He turned again and looked at her, with venomous concentration. "All right—you haven't slept with Tillotson, and you haven't slept with that stupid child in the white uniform! What do you expect me to do? Burst into tears? Call for champagne? Here we have one of the smoothest operations of its kind ever planned —it was working like a dream—and then suddenly it falls to bits, and instead of cleaning up we'll be lucky if we break even—in fact we'll be lucky if we keep out of jail. . . . What do you expect me to do?" he repeated. In the warm air, his tense body was sweating. "You come here and tell me, we're half-way to Durban! Do you think I don't know it?"

Even as he spoke, she knew that she must help him. There had been many changes during the past two months; some people had grown, others had diminished, others yet had changed their area of vision, so that they could hardly remember the past and had a new hope of the future. She herself could claim to be in this category, and, try as she would, she could not be ashamed of it. But when she was with Carl, the strands of the past were bound to pull her back. She was with him now. It was when he said the word "Durban", on that note of foreboding, as if it were in truth the end of the road for him, that she felt most guilty and most responsible.

On an impulse, she crossed the cabin, and sat down on the side of his bed. There, putting her hand lightly on his arm, she said:

"Carl, why don't we leave the ship, anyway? Why don't we get off at Durban?"

He answered her instantly. "That is without exception the most stupid remark I have heard in the last twenty-four hours. And I've heard plenty. . . . You might as well ask why we don't all become priests and nuns." But it became clear that he must, at least, have considered the point she had raised, when he added: "For one simple reason—that wasn't the way we planned it, when we started out."

"I know that, Carl." She pressed his arm. "But what does that matter? We've had a wonderful trip, we've made a little money. Why don't you write it off as a free holiday?"

"Because I'm a professional."

Kathy smiled. It was a remark she had heard on countless occasions, to justify anything from poker-marathons to the necessity of flirting with old ladies on the Italian Riviera. "You used to say that at San Sebastian," she recalled, "when I tried to persuade you that the Chief of Police wasn't fooling about that tourist visa. ... I still don't believe it."

But he was not to be charmed, either by memory or by manner. "I didn't think you would believe it, in your present mood. The fact remains that we are committed to a certain programme, and I have invested a great deal of money in it. I am not going to change all my plans, and take a loss on the deal, just because a few uniformed nonentities get in my way. That isn't how I operate. You know that by now."

"But even you and I can't operate for ever."

Though she had made the remark naturally, it came from a deep inner compulsion; it did not surprise her when Carl seized upon it as if she had suddenly produced, between them, some naked emblem of the truth.

"Now that," he said, slowly, rather theatrically, "is a very interesting observation. Explain it."

"I only meant that sooner or later—"

"Explain it!"

"All right." It was a fine and sunny morning; why should she be afraid? "I've had six years of this kind of life, Carl, and you've had—well, lots more. But how long is it going on for? How will I finish up? How will you? We've had some wonderful times together—" her pressure on his arm was strong and sincere, "—but they must come to an end, some day. This could be the end."

He went straight to the heart of her dilemma when he asked: "What do you want to do instead?"

"I don't know at all. But I know what I don't want to do—and that's to finish up as a sort of gangster's moll, like in the late-night movies, getting older and older and crabbier and crabbier. I want a different sort of life, a different sort of future. In fact, I must have it."

He turned away, and stared at the ceiling, and said, with complete finality: "You will be nothing without me."

A few months earlier, she would have agreed; now she could argue the point, with passionate conviction.

"Carl, I am nothing with you! Don't you see that?"

"But you have been."

"Less and less. Every year less, everyday less. You made me into something, and then—and then—" she felt ready for the tears of frustration, but she thrust them back, "—somehow I was out of date, or you were out of date, and it didn't make sense any more. . . . Carl, please let's leave the ship at Durban, and do something else!"

There was a silence; the Alcestis rocked slightly, disturbing the benevolent sunbeams; a harmonious gong sounded from down the corridor—the first call for lunch. Carl waited until the tinkling echoes had faded, and then he said:

"This is the only thing I can do."

"That can't be true."

"I've made it true!" His voice was strong, even proud; he was not excusing anything, he had nothing to mourn. "Good God, do you think all this happened by accident? I like being a crook! It's the only thing to be!" He suddenly snatched his arm away, and brought it down with a sharp smack on the coverlets. "I'm going to tell you something, Kathy, and after that we won't have any more discussion about the moral aspects of being a criminal in a criminal world. In fact, we won't have any more discussion about anything. . . . When I was your age—and that's a long time ago, as we both know—my younger brother was shot in New York. You didn't even know that I had a younger brother, did you? I do not blame you—he does not figure in my normal conversation —he has been a paralysed idiot, lying flat on his back in hospital, for more than thirty years. . . . You know who shot him? A cop— an honest cop, one of New York's finest. You know why? My brother was lent a car by a friend, and it was a stolen car, and he didn't stop quickly enough when a zealous policeman held up his hand at a road-block. A warning shot, the zealous man said—he doubtless got a reprimand for it—only the warning shot missed the wind-shield or the tyre or whatever it was meant to warn, and just scraped a little nerve at the back of my brother's head." Horrified, Kathy watched as Carl's hand moved up to touch the back of his own head, fingering a spot which he must have fingered a thousand times in the past, which she herself must often have caressed.

"He was sixteen and a half," said Carl, "and he never spoke again, he never moved again, except by the law of gravity. He just became an expensive lump of meat—in the interests of reducing the numbers of cars driven away without the owner's consent in the city of New York in 1930. ... I used to go and see him in hospital—with the priest, with the policeman, by myself—and then pretty soon I didn't go any more. What can you say to a lump of meat that has to have a nurse to shut its mouth when the mouth falls open? Do you say you're sorry, like the policeman? Do you cry, like the priest? . . . I used to cry, when I saw my brother—he once played the Spirit of Self-indulgence, in our school play at Christmas—but by God I didn't cry for long! I went home, and I swore a very simple oath. I swore that if they could make an idiot out of my brother, I would make an idiot out of them."

He lay back, staring hard into the loathed past; she could not have interrupted him, even if she had had the words to do it with.

"I have made a very large-scale success out of that oath," said Carl. Where before there had been hatred in his voice, now there crept back a sullen and unmistakable threat. "I will continue to do so until I die, and so will anyone connected with me. We have had some setbacks on the present trip, but there aren't going to be any more. . . ." There was now an absolutely hypnotic quality in his voice; she had no choice in the world except to listen to it. "Louis has left us," he went on, silkily. "Diane is out of action. The Professor has proved useless. But this is as far as this particular roll of honour goes. There aren't going to be any more deserters, there aren't going to be any more flops or failures." He turned towards her, and grasped her hand with terrifying intensity. "I hope I have succeeded in convincing you, Kathy, because that is positively my last word on the subject. ... I am staying, and you are staying. . . . Now, if you will please press the bell," he broke off, obscenely polite, "1 think we have earned our lunch-time martinis, don't you?"

9

Diane was bored, for the best of all reasons. She sat on a bar stool in the Tapestry Room, late after dinner, and, between occasional small-talk with Edgar the head-barman, mused on the dullness of life. The ship was passing East London, so Edgar had informed her; for all the gaiety involved, it might have been East Lynne. There were other obvious drawbacks to this part of the world. The Indian Ocean climate was intolerable, even at sea; wafts of steamy air circled and recircled through the ventilation system; at meal-times, the butter melted at the table, and ran to yellow ooze; people lay about in attitudes of sweating boredom, too lazy even to look at the sharks which followed the ship in large-scale, faithful attendance. There was nothing to do, especially for Diane. . . . All that was open to her was to sit at bars, and, while waiting for her clearance-papers, to day-dream on the traditional preoccupations for a small but dirty mind.

No sex, no fun, she thought, sipping her brandy and staring at her reflexion in the mirror behind Edgar. When she'd started out on this trip, she had thought it would be just another chore; but it had turned out to be a lot better than that. . . . Must be the boat rocking, or something. . . . But now she'd been off it for a whole fortnight; even do-it-yourself didn't work any more. . . . When she was a kid, it had driven her nearly mad. Sometimes, in school, she had to hold up her hand, and go out and do it in the toilet, she couldn't even wait for recess. . . . But later on, it had been much more fun. Like this trip. Even the old, old guys had come across. Must be the boat again. Take old man Walham, for instance. He was so mad to get his money's worth, he really took some trouble. . . . And Tiptree-Jones—like the girl said, he's a pill, but a big pill. And young Barry Greenfield, he started out real wild, two seconds' fireworks and goodbye, a real flash-in-the-pants—but in the end he improved, too. He had to. . . . And Zucco—like all the Jews, it was practically religious, you could almost feel him praying—though what the hell he was praying for—maybe the second coming—

"Would you like another one, Miss Loring?" asked Edgar.

Now there was a question, she thought, as Edgar tipped the bottle of Courvoisier and added another half-inch of brandy to her glass. ... Of course she'd like another one, she'd like another one right now. And she could be having it, if the doctor hadn't been such a square. "Please continue to refrain from sexual intercourse," he had said, as though it didn't matter if it was for ever. He was good-looking, too, he must be a fairy. . . . She felt perfectly all right, perfectly normal. Maybe the time had come. . . . Carl had been so tough lately, so damned rude, he ought to be pleased if she came across with a few hundred bucks. Why not? she thought, looking along the length of the bar. She felt perfectly all right, it didn't even tickle. . . . Carl was always bitching about her not doing enough work—and ha! ha! to that, with Kathy doing sweet nothing at all— it would be fun to come up with a surprise, to show him that he'd got at least one good trier in the team.

The prospects at the bar were not encouraging, but that didn't matter. In the past, some of the funny ones had turned out to be the best bets. . . . After a few moments, she called out to the only man within reasonable range:

"Mr. Kincaid, I know it's not like a lady, but can I buy you a drink?"

When they were gone, Edgar took a bar-chit, and wrote on it: "No. 4 and Mr. Kincaid. Edgar." Then he snapped his fingers, to one of his junior aides who was collecting ash-trays in the near-empty bar, and called: "Fred!"

"Yes, Mr. Edgar."

"Take this up to the Captain, right away." He passed the piece of paper across, and then looked at Fred with the coldest possible glance. In the Tapestry Bar, there was never any doubt about who was boss. "You'll very likely read it on the way," said Edgar, sternly. "But if you talk about it, God help you! I'll see that you're back to kitchen-boy tomorrow!"

"Yes, sir!" said Fred earnestly, and hurried on his way.

"Mr. Kincaid," said the Captain, after listening in silence for two minutes, "I've been expecting you. Please sit down."

"How come?" asked Kincaid suspiciously. "You know this thing has been going on? If that's so, all I can say is—"

"We have suspected it," said Captain Harmer, "and we have therefore been watching it. The Loring girl was one of the people we thought were involved. It was reported to me that she took you to her cabin. The rest was easy."

"Now hold on a minute," said Kincaid. "I'm not sure I like the sound of that 'She took you to her cabin' stuff." He touched his crest of white hair almost primly; if there could have been a cross between an Old Testament prophet and the woman taken in adultery, this was it. "She says to me, let's finish our drinks down there in comfort, and I say, O.K., and then suddenly she threatens to scream rape and murder unless I give her five hundred dollars. But that's not the same thing as—"

"Mr. Kincaid."

"Yes, Captain?"

"You are not giving evidence on oath. You are telling me something, in confidence, which might possibly lead to formal charges against a third party. You will have ample time to consider the final form of your evidence."

After a moment Kincaid grinned, and said: "I get it, Captain."

"You went to her cabin."

"Just that. One thing led to another, and I thought it was all fixed. Gee whiz, I mean—we're not children, for God's sake—everyone says she's on the menu—"

"Quite so," said the Captain.

"Then suddenly she ups and says, that'll be five hundred bucks."

"Was that before, or after?"

Kincaid, astute as a fox, trained and battered in a thousand political brawls, looked at the Captain for a long time before he said: "It was after."

Harmer nodded. "What next?"

Kincaid expelled his breath, as if a difficult corner had been passed. "Well, I said to her, what the hell, I don't mind twenty or even fifty dollars, I know the score, a working girl has to work, but five hundred, what happened, did we do it in caviar or something?—and then she says, it's five hundred or I'll call my uncle. Then I got the message." He nodded, as if congratulating himself: perhaps he was. "Yes, sir! But it wasn't the message she thought. Suddenly it all connects—Jesus, the Professor!"

"The Professor?" inquired the Captain.

"That's it—the old guy with the Old English line. Long time ago, when he was really corned, he said some damn' fool thing to me about internal corruption, like there's a gang here on board taking us for everything we've got. I've been thinking of that for a long time—I used to belong to an organization that paid me a lot of money never to forget things—and suddenly I came up with the answer. This is it! This is the gang at work! The old Professor wasn't fooling after all. They're working the bruised-thigh routine! So I said: 'Go ahead and scream.' "

The Captain waited, happy and alert at the same time. He would never have thought that such a deplorable recital could sound like music to him, but it was so. "The bruised-thigh routine," he prompted.

"We used to have names for all these plays. Remind me to tell you about the Mann Act squeeze, some time. . . . Now don't get me wrong. I'm not a hero, there's my wife on board, I have my own problems. But I knew for sure this girl wouldn't be doing any screaming. I've met plenty of this before—" he gestured, "what the hell, I've been in politics a long time—and they never, but never, scream. Well, almost never. In the end they say: 'You must know the mayor, or something,' and then they fold. This girl folded. . . . Oh, I gave her twenty," he went on, as if reassuringly. "Don't think I robbed the girl. And then—I got to thinking about the Professor— and I've heard a few rumours, you can bet there are rumours flying around, it's like a really good convention—and so I came to you."

The Captain sat back, deeply satisfied. Whatever the theme, this wax music.

"You did right, Mr. Kincaid," he said cordially. "You did right and I respect you for it." He coughed. "Of course, this whole situation is entirely disreputable, and I do not for a moment condone—"

Mr. Kincaid was watching him closely. For the very first time m his adult life, the Captain felt his voice tail away under the impact of someone else's gaze. In the silence, they stared at each other for at least fifteen seconds before they both smiled broadly, and then the smile became laughter, and the Captain rose. "What will you drink, Mr. Kincaid?"

"Scotch and water, Captain."

"I think I will join you."

Toasting his host, a minute later, Kincaid said, out of the blue: "I can see now why you're captain, Captain."

"Well, thank you!" answered Harmer, surprised. "Your good health!"

"The same.. . . You said you've had your eye on this outfit?"

"That is so."

"Maybe this is the evidence you want?"

"It's a most valuable link," agreed Harmer. "I think we can take it that the girl and her family will be leaving the ship at Durban. In the circumstances, I'm sure you would not wish to press charges."

"Well now," said Kincaid, enjoying the moment, "of course I've been held up to ridicule and private embarrassment—"

"But in the interests of discretion—"

"I won't be pressing charges," said Kincaid.

"I think you are wise," said the Captain. "In return, I feel qualified to offer you some advice." He paused. "Some medical advice, in fact. I recommend a precautionary visit to the doctor."

It was delightful, within this entirely squalid framework, to watch Kincaid's face fall, from cheerfulness to a kind of mournful disillusion, and then to professional gloom.

"Now, Captain, that's a different matter," he said aggrievedly. "To begin with, it's a misdemeanour, where I come from. Legally, that girl could be—"

"It is probable that I am wrong," said the Captain, ignoring all this nonsense. "But the sooner you take certain elementary precautions, the better. You will find that the doctor is waiting for you."

"Gee, Captain!" said Kincaid after a moment, admiringly. "You've certainly got things under control in this ship."

"Thank you, Mr. Kincaid. I believe that I have."

"I won't ask you to sit down," said the Captain, "because you won't be here long enough." He looked up at Carl with almost cheerful unconcern. For once, he did not mind being a small man. This was a good night for small men. "Mr. Wenstrom, I told you yesterday that we would only have one more of these meetings. This is it."

"I don't understand you," said Carl, completely taken aback. "What's happened? What are you talking about?"

"You and your party are to leave the ship at Durban."

Carl, who had heard nothing until summoned from his poker game a few moments earlier, felt a sudden appalled sense of disaster. Something crucial had happened; he would hear what it was in a moment; but he did not need any details to recognize the executioner's note in the Captain's voice. This was it.... But, astonishment or not, he was in the mood to fight back; soon, anger would come to aid him, as had happened almost continuously since their last meeting; there was no merit in polite submission, when neither politeness nor submission could improve their chances during the next twenty-four hours. . . . Staring back, he said, as coldly as he could:

"You certainly owe me an explanation for that last remark."

"I will give you an explanation," said the Captain, equally coldly. "I don't owe you anything. . . . You will find, if you don't know it already, that your niece, Miss Loring, is confined to her cabin, until we reach Durban. There is a watchman posted at her door. She is not to come out, and no one is to go in, except the two designated stewards who will bring her meals."

"But this is an outrage !" said Carl, and he meant it. "It's tantamount to imprisonment without trial. What can she possibly have done—"

The Captain, who was now in great form, interrupted him. "Allow me to tell you. ... I have the clearest possible evidence that your niece has been guilty of attempted extortion. In simpler terms, Mr. Wenstrom, she tried to blackmail a man who had made love to her, and he called her bluff. I told you—I promised you—that if there was one more incident like this, you would all leave my ship. This is the one more incident. Therefore you will all leave. The complainant has agreed not to press charges—"

"Who is the complainant?"

"That is no direct concern of yours. But in fact, it is Mr. Kincaid."

"For God's sake!" said Carl. "That cheap political hack!"

"I know very little of Mr. Kincaid's background," replied the Captain, "but I accept his word in this matter. He has offered this evidence at some personal embarrassment." He could not resist elaborating. "I think you must agree that he has played a decisive role in your defeat."

Carl, furious, seized on the word. "Defeat? What defeat? If you think we're going to walk quietly off the ship, you'd better guess again! We've paid our passage-money back to New York—your company signed a definite contract—"

"Mr. Wenstrom," said the Captain, "we have a department that takes care of contracts. Suitable arrangements will be made to fly you home from Durban, probably at the company's expense. There will no doubt be a refund of the unfulfilled portion of your ticket, from Durban to New York. But that again is a matter for the accountants." Harmer knew that he must be sounding highhanded, even crudely arrogant; it gave him a great deal of pleasure to achieve this impression. "And now, if you have no further questions—"

Carl finally lost his temper. "What in hell do you mean, no further questions?" he asked furiously. "You seem to think you're dealing with a lot of stupid sailors who are paid to jump when you crack the whip. You'll find out that you're making the biggest mistake of your life! If you even attempt to put us off the ship at Durban, you'll be faced with the toughest law-suit you ever heard of. Not only will it cost you your job, but your company will have to pay damages for breach of contract, for the inconvenience caused to me and my family, for slanderous attacks on our reputation—"

"Plus entertainment tax," said Captain Harmer, with rare schoolboy spite. Then he grew serious again; with luck it would be for the last time. "Mr. Wenstrom," he said, "I didn't intend this to be a long interview. It is only you who is making it so." Now he was very much the master of his ship, and Carl knew it, and could do nothing about it. "You still seem to have some sort of delusion about the extent of my authority. Whatever law-book you consult, you will find that my authority is absolute. At sea, I can do anything—anything in the interests of the safety of my ship, anything to preserve decency and good order. If I do wrong, legally, I answer for it, like any other ordinary citizen. But in the meantime, I can take whatever steps I choose. The steps I choose now are to put you and the three other members of your party ashore at Durban, and to forbid you to board the ship again before she sails."

"Damned stupid rigmarole!" Carl snapped. He was nearly beside himself with anger; he had discovered something he could not even fight, much less conquer. "We'll just see how it stands up in a court of law."

"It has stood up for many hundreds of years," answered Harmer. "You can try to knock it down, if you wish. Of course, you will have all the petty thieves and shysters in the world on your side. There is an American Consul at Durban who will be glad to listen to you. At least, he will listen to you. He is paid to. . . ." The Captain rose to his feet at last. It had gone on long enough; he had indeed indulged himself by playing out the scene to this agreeable length. "You've tried to make a pig-sty out of a fine ship," he said grimly. "It takes time to catch up with that sort of thing, but believe me, we do catch up with it. . . ." He glanced down at his watch. "It's twenty hours' steaming time to Durban," he continued, "and therefore I have only twenty more hours of your company. That, Mr. Wenstrom, is one of the happiest thoughts of the whole cruise."

10

It was midnight. Diane he could not reach. Kathy he could not find. There remained only the Professor. But the Professor, perhaps, was his real target.

Carl had expected to find the old man asleep; it would have been a pleasure to shake him awake, to shake him until his stupid skull rattled. . . . But he was awake already; indeed, he seemed to be working, sitting crouched over his desk by a shaded light, going through some papers. But he was not working for Carl, it seemed. He was working for himself. He was reading his manuscript of the history of piracy.

Carl, who had entered softly, in frightening contrast to his mood, stood by the door watching him .God-damned syphilitic old idiot, he thought. ... As the Professor worked, or read, or whatever it was he was doing, he fingered gently the great bruised weal on the side of his face which was the legacy of Carl's last visit. Carl, on that occasion, had not meant to hit him so hard; now, fresh from a defeat to which he knew the Professor must have contributed, he wished he had taken his whole head off. . . . The Professor snuffled as he read, and touched his discoloured cheek, and presently refreshed himself from a glass, discreetly drawn from behind a pile of library paper-backs on the desk. He sniffed, and sipped, and suddenly exclaimed: "Brilliant!" and pushed the glass, of amber-coloured liquid, back into its hiding-place. Disgusting old soak, thought Carl; he's back on the bottle again. . . . Carl came forward a step or two, until he was inside the cabin and the circle of light, and said, on a false note of friendship:

"Good evening, Professor. Getting ahead with the good work?"

The old man jumped, and then stood up, trembling and shaking as if he were at the height of a fever. Jesus, thought Carl, he's far gone. . . . Carl came farther forwards, and very deliberately, very cruelly, reached behind the pile of books and drew out the glass of whisky. He raised it, and sniffed. Then he said: "You actually like tomato-juice?"

The Professor trembled again; his hand went up to the hideous bruise on his cheek, as if it were the only thing he was sure about. He looked at Carl fearfully, at a loss for words. There had been so many punishment sessions recently; at this late and horrible stage, Carl coming into his cabin could only mean Carl angry, Carl violent and shouting, Carl swinging his fist at him as if he were cutting wood, pounding meat, killing lice. ... He said, in terror and anguish:

"Forgive me, Carl. . . . It's the first today—the first for two days. ... I swear it. . . . But when you get to my age. ... A little whisky, I happened to find it in my flask, I must have forgotten it was there. . . ." He laughed, on a frightful note of nervous despair; he might have been some old, old comedian, coaxing the last laugh from leaden bellies, from stony Northern faces, before he retired to teach comedy routines to the young. ... "I hope you'll understand a slight lapse. . . ."

"Oh, I understand you all right, Professor." There was still no hint in Carl's voice of the volcano of fury within; only the genial manner, as false as porcelain teeth, would have given warning to a younger man, a man more alive to danger. "I understand you better than anyone in the world, I would say. . . . What exactly are you working on now?"

The Professor, doubtful, glanced down at his manuscript. "You really want to know, Carl?"

"Certainly I want to know."

"Well—" the Professor drew courage, foolishly, from the calm, perfidious air, "—I wasn't so much working, as reading through something I wrote last week. ... I try to add a little each day, as you know. . . . But perhaps you don't know, Carl—" again the laugh, the invitation to murder, "—that on the next section of our voyage we will come to a part of Africa which used to be called the Slave Coast, the Bight of Benin. West Africa, that is—they call it something different now, and I hope to heaven they are more fortunate than in the past—but in those days, in those days . . ." He had sat down again at his desk; his hand reached shakily for the whisky glass, and then, remembering, he withdrew it, and touched his raw cheek again. "The Slave Coast," he muttered. "Infamous. . . . Brutal. ... It was a kind of piracy, Carl," he said, looking up, a scholar ready to justify his area of research, "otherwise it would have no place in my book. There was one terrible story—one of many terrible stories—which I believe is new. It will reach the world for the first time in this volume." With thin-veined hands he stroked his manuscript, dog-eared, tattered, as if it were some ancient altar cloth, an offering for the Lord. "At the time of the suppression of the slave trade in 1807, on the very coast towards which we will soon be sailing, it became imperative for one of the slave ships to conceal the fact that she was carrying slaves. She was about to be searched on the high seas—there was a British man-of-war within a few miles, coming up to board her—" his old eyes glittered, one could not tell which side he was on, "—and the captain of the slave ship, a most wicked man, had two hundred of these poor wretches, in iron fetters, battened down below. You know what he did, Carl?—you know what he did?" The Professor's voice rose to a scholarly extreme of indignation. "He brought them all out on deck, and he shackled them on to the anchor-chain, one man to every five links, and then he lowered the chain down into the water—slowly, slowly—and then he let it go. Two hundred wretched human beings, Carl—two hundred black souls, dropped fathoms deep into—-"

"Professor," said Carl.

There was so much idle menace in his voice, such loaded disinterest, that even the Professor, enthralled with his terrible story, was brought up short. He turned in his chair, shakily, reluctantly, and cupped his livid cheek as if it would help him to hear. "Yes, Carl?"

"Do you remember my giving you a message for Diane?"

"A message, Carl? Now let me see. . . ." The Professor, in an absurd caricature of efficiency, actually looked at his desk calendar, completely bare of any writing, before he said: "I don't seem to recall the exact particulars, Carl. . . . Was it about the costume ball?"

"No, it wasn't about the costume ball. That was more than a month ago." Try as he would, under the extreme pressure of his anger, Carl could not prevent some of the tension creeping into his voice. "This was the night before last. I asked you to tell her something. Remember?"

The Professor was aware of danger now. The hand touching his ruined cheek became protective, actively frightened. "Not exactly, Carl. ... I have so very many things on my mind, these days. . . . If you could just say—"

"So you didn't give her the message?"

"Well, Carl—it's quite possible—"

"I told you," said Carl, with crystal-clear enunciation, "to tell Diane to do nothing—nothing—unless she cleared it with me first. I told you to tell her the heat was on, and she was to drop everything and keep absolutely quiet. I gave you that message, right here in this room." He came forward a step or two, as if the air round him had suddenly grown too hot. "Did you, in fact, tell her?"

"Well, God bless my soul!" exclaimed the Professor. The wavering laugh bespoke the edge of terror. "It must have slipped my mind completely. But I'll tell you what, Carl. Would you like me to go along now—"

"You imbecile!" The burst of fury, when it came, was like a thunder-clap. "You stupid, rotten, drunken, son of a whore!" His hand came up, and the Professor, shielding the bruised side of his face, was knocked nearly senseless by a back-handed blow on his other cheek. "Do you know what you've done?" asked Carl. He was nearly screaming. "You've ruined this whole deal! You didn't give my message to Diane, and she didn't lay off, and now she's been locked up, and we've all got to leave the ship at Durban! And when I come down here, you're sucking down the Scotch and writing a book!"

He raised his hand again, and the Professor, half-conscious, cowered away. But it was no good, simple violence was not enough. Carl's eyes turned to the manuscript, the ridiculous bundle of old pages lying on the desk. He seized it; it was bound in stiff cardboard covers, and these he stripped away with swift motions, with tearing hands. He was left with the bare pages themselves; the top ones were yellowing, the whole dog-eared collection was ripe for the trash-can.

A few feet away from him was the open porthole—an invitation to any furious man. He moved swiftly till he stood by the gaping space. Then he tore off the top few sheets, and threw them out into the darkness.

The Professor, waking from a blow which might have killed him, suddenly realized what was happening. He started forward, as if he would have attacked this much bigger man. Then he stopped, a few feet away.

"Don't, Carl!" he begged. "Stop! Please stop!"

Carl was working methodically. More pages went whirling away into the black opening, from which the sea noises, the steady hiss of their passage, now sounded loud and engulfing. Already half the manuscript—it must be the oldest part, thought Carl savagely, joyfully—had disappeared into limbo.

The Professor could only think of one thing, one hope; to achieve this, he even fell on his knees.

"Carl! Please. . . . It's twenty-five years' work. . . . It's all I have. ... If I don't publish it, I will never be free. . . . Carl!" He was beginning to sob now, as he saw the precious pages disappearing into the darkness, and more pages, newer pages, the toil of only three and four years ago, being laid bare for the slaughter. "Carl! I haven't even got a copy!"

Carl stopped, for the pure pleasure of doing so. The hissing sea outside the porthole seemed to retreat. He held in his hand the last few pages—perhaps twenty of them, almost fresh, almost new; possibly the work of the last two years, laced with much alcohol, much rheumatism, much despair, age, pain, and hope. He looked at the old man, grovelling at his feet. Then he kicked the old man, in the breast-bone, under his heart, so that he fell sideways, murmuring a word which sounded like "peace" or "please". Then he tore the last pages across and across, and tossed them through the open porthole, as if he were offering the cheapest possible sacrifice to the most alien of all gods.

The torn pages fluttered in a shaft of light, they even rose for a moment on a current of warm, errant air, before disappearing astern, for ever and ever.

11

It was one o'clock, and the ship was quietly settled for the night, when Kathy knocked at the door of Carl's cabin, and went in.

She had known that he would not be asleep; the clue was the Professor, a shocked and wandering ghost, whose iron-fisted jailer must still be alert and awake. When she came in, fresh from happier topics, she asked immediately:

"Carl, what's happened to the Professor? Did you do something to him?"

Carl was sitting on his bed, half-undressed, irresolute, afraid. The spasm of hatred and brutality which had taken possession of him, half an hour earlier, was now entirely spent; having punished the old man with such wicked cruelty, he was now left to face a shrinking world in which the only target was himself. Emptied of fury, he had nothing to put in its place. Nothing, he thought, looking up at Kathy, except love. That must be the answer.

But he could not ask for it out of the blue. He had to go through the accepted forms of intercourse, the territory which lay between recent anger and promised desire. He said, abruptly, looking down at the floor again:

"What about the Professor?"

"He was wandering down the passage. Carl, he was in the most terrible state—I doubt if he even saw me! He was holding his side, and his mouth was bleeding. When he passed me he said: 'A slave ship. A slave ship.' What's happened to him? Did you hurt him again?"

"He let me down."

"Oh, Carl!"

"Oh, Carl!" he mimicked. "What does that mean?"

"When things go wrong, you shouldn't take it out on a poor old man like the Professor. It's like hitting a child. . . . What did he do, anyway?"

"He let me down," repeated Carl. Then he looked at Kathy, more closely, searching for the welcome signs of tenderness, the hated evidence of other men, other embraces. She was unruffled, beautiful, flawlessly groomed; if she had been making love, it had scarcely moved her at all; if the light in her face were happiness, it could still be shared with himself. "Have you let me down, Kathy?"

"Of course not."

"What have you been doing, so late?"

"Talking."

"I missed you."

With rare spite, she said: "If I had come back with five thousand dollars, would that have made up for it?"

"Oh Kathy, don't be like that!"

"But when I asked you before, you wouldn't even say if you wanted me to earn the five thousand. You pretended that only the money would exist, not what I had done to get it. You wouldn't involve yourself, only me."

He rose to his feet, and crossed the few feet of space between them. Then he put his hands on her shoulders, and said: "I can tell you now—I would have hated it. Kathy—help me!"

She stiffened, involuntarily. In this context, "Help me" could only mean "Make love with me"; there was absolutely no doubt of that, and the swaying pressure of his body presently confirmed it. The idea appalled her. Everything was wrong. She did not want to. He had been cruel; perhaps a few moments ago he had been hitting the old man. It was hot. She had spent the last two hours talking to Tim—silly, cheerful nonsense which meant more than it said. Between herself and Carl, she could now feel nothing but the chasm of the twenty-eight years that divided them. It had been so for many fatal weeks. She did not want to. Not now, and not again.

She put her hands up to his chest; the powerful muscles pushed back against her palms. The message was there, and it came near to revolting her. "Carl—it's so late. I really must go to bed."

"With me, my darling."

Panic-stricken, for a whole world of reasons, she said: "You don't really want me. . . . It's so hot, it wouldn't be any good. . . . And you have all these things worrying you. . . . Let's just go to sleep."

"With you," he said. His arms were round her waist now; he was pulling her towards the bed. "I must have you, Kathy. It's been so long. Please!"

She did not want to. She hated the idea, and feared it; her whole body was coiled tight against it, her very womb was dry; she was afraid that it would make her ill, that she would vomit on the pillow. But for pity of the past, she found that she could not refuse.

As she lay down, she said, to herself and to him: Forgive me.

Even as he took her in his arms, he should have been warned. She felt utterly different; her actual skin seemed armoured, un-sensual, inimical to love. It was terribly hot. In the close cabin, visited only by moist mechanical air, the pulse of the engines faded to nothing, the ship's motion seemed to disappear. He had no allies, no help, no thudding oar-beat or gipsy music. Just himself.

He lay face downwards, his face buried deep in the pillow, refusing to meet the world's eye, or hers. His whole body ridiculously and fatally slack, was bathed in sweat. He could have shouted aloud his rebellious rage, his conviction that this could not be true, that all they need do was to wait. But shouting was reserved for potent men.

He muttered: "I'm so ashamed, Kathy."

She had never heard the words from him before. They were terrible, and wonderful; they were like sign-posts, like blessings. Presently she would found a whole future on them.

"It doesn't matter, Carl." She had said this when he was writhing, in furious and futile effort; she could say it now, when he had given in. "It's only because it's so hot. . .. And you've got so much on your mind. ... It doesn't matter."

"I must be getting old."

"No, you're not."

Lying there in the darkness, unbroached, faithful still, she could have sung for joy. It was her release—she could work none of it out yet, there must be many hills still to climb, limitless penances to be made—but it was her release, the only one he could have given her. She was free!

She had not seen how that could happen, and she had been in terror of her endless captivity, even as he had lain on her body, desperately willing himself to be a man. But it had happened, at that very moment, when nothing else had happened. She was free!

Turning aside, withdrawing for ever from the past, she said:

"It's so hot. ... I think I'll go back to my room."