"If we can't lick him we must join him. . .." Carl stood up, stretching. "I must go, I'm afraid. That's all?"
"Yes." The Professor, soothed in spirit, already regaining his normal hazy contentment, looked at Carl. "If you are satisfied, that is."
"How do you mean?"
"As regards Kathy."
"What about her?"
"I think sheis being a little lazy, Carl."
Carl frowned, considering the remark. He would have taken it from no one else; but the Professor was allowed infinite latitude in this area, as well as all the others. It was his contribution, the role of the small voice made audible.
"O.K.," he said, curtly. "I will deal."
3
As if making a distant curtsy, the Alcestis altered course at the first glimpse of the ruffled crinoline of Montserrat Island, far to the south, and set her bows towards Antigua, thirty miles to the east.
The weather still held, peerless, magically clear; when, coasting down Nevis, they passed through shallower water—ten fathoms, eight fathoms—they left behind them a broad boiling wake of pink and brown, a hundred million coral atoms stirred up by the pressure of their passing hull. Flying-fish gave them brief escort, whirring alongside in company until their wings dried and they dropped back into the placid water, dolphins, the clowns of the sea, tumbled across their bows like children clamouring for attention from a huge grownup. When the new course was set, the wheeling sea birds settled down again in a long stationary line on the edges of the boats; hitch-hiking from island to island, uncommunicative, surly, they seemed to have made up their minds to stay with this complaisant traveller for a few more miles. The Alcestis, closing yet another island in her long chain of landfalls, had much maritime attendance as she ploughed her lazy furrow eastwards.
In his day cabin under the bridge, Captain Harmer was talking to Mr. Cutler the Purser. It was a routine meeting; Cutler was the man who customarily brought him up-to-date; once in each twenty-four hours, they held this same colloquy. They were holding it now because the Captain, as so often at sea, was temporarily unemployed. He was awaiting the call from the bridge which would tell him that Antigua was within an hour's easy steaming, and that it was time for him to take over.
Within sight of land again, he was less than happy. For him, deep water was the only true element; nothing had made him more content than to be out of soundings, as they had been within the last few days, rolling nobly across the Puerto Rico Trench with thirty thousand feet under Alcestis's keel. It was the deepest part of the Atlantic, deeper than Mount Everest was high; to be afloat above this fathomless pit, this fantastic canyon in the ocean bed, was all the romance he needed. Let others fall in love with beckoning lights, with harbours, with the disciplined line of buoys marking the mainstreets of a hundred coastal approaches. For him, to see nothing on any horizon, to feel nothing for five miles beneath his ship, was a sailor's seventh heaven.
Now, as Brotherhood, his steward, poured drinks for Cutler and himself, he brought his mind to bear on the other mundane aspect of sea-going—the internal affairs of his ship. Between the two of them, the talk was always clipped and elliptical; they had sailed together for many years; there were no new shipboard problems, only variations on the same twin themes—complaints and scandals. But before they dealt with these, there was a small departure from the normal. It was not new, alas, but it was rare. It was death.
"How's the old man today?" the Captain asked. "Mr. Simms."
Cutler, accepting his drink from Brotherhood, shook his head. "Not too good, I'm afraid. Doc says he's pretty well fading away."
"I ought to put him ashore, really."
"He's tremendously against it—Simms is. Doc asked him, and he said he'd sue us for a million dollars if we even tried it."
The Captain grinned. "I bet he would, too. He's a tough old bird. . . . But I don't like it, all the same. You know how unsettling those things are. Do people know about it?"
"Yes."
Harmer would have been surprised if this were not so. In a ship, the sounding-board for the faintest breath of gossip, a rumour of illness or death travelled fastest of all. It was as if, listening to a multitude of heart-beats, people could detect a single one that lagged, a pulse that even fluttered. Fearing their own mortality, they feared most of all any forerunner of it.
"I'll think about it," said Harmer. "Any other troubles?"
Cutler sipped his pink gin. "The usual one about clothes. You know we always get it about now. Bikinis . . . Mrs. Kincaid thinks they ought to be banned."
"So do I, by God! If those people could only see what they look like. . . . Who's been wearing one now?"
"Bernice Beddington, of all people."
"What a horrible thought."
"She looks like a minaret with string round it. But we can't do much about that. They always buy awful clothes when we get down here. Floppy sun-hats—Bermuda shorts—shirts with funny pictures on them—sometimes I wonder if they ever look in the mirror before they come on deck. Even Mrs. Consolini went and bought herself a set of horsehair slave-bangles. But you must have seen them yourself."
"No," said the Captain. "I have not."
Cutler smiled. "Not pressing you this time?"
"No, thank God."
"Just as well you didn't put her at your table again."
"We could use a bit of life there," said the Captain, "but not that much. ... Of course," he went on, referring back to Bernice Beddington without need for explanation, "it's her parents' fault really."
Cutler pursed his lips caustically. "It's her parents' idea."
"I wish she would get married. ... What else?"
"Walham, as usual." Cutler expelled a long breath. "I swear to God, that man would complain if we gave him the whole ship for Christmas!"
"Anything special?" "No, just bloody nagging the whole time. Where's my tea—why can't we have kedgeree for breakfast—" Cutler put on a very creditable mimicry of Walham's nasal whine, "—why did we only stay ten hours at St. Thomas when the programme says 'Half a day'—why is the deck so slippery after it's been washed down in the morning? One day he's going to come up and say he's actually enjoying himself. Then we'll all drop dead."
Harmer was smiling. "You know there's one in every ship."
"This one's getting me down."
"Cheer up, Foxy."
"Oh, I can take it. It's just that it annoys a lot of other people as well. There'll be an anti-Walham brigade before we get to Rio. Like Little Nuisance. Only there's an anti-him brigade already."
"How is Master Greenfield?"
"Awful. We really ought to have an age limit, skipper."
"Upper and lower. Though I must admit, this one's a winner. Tiptree-Jones had to chuck him off the bridge yesterday."
"What was he doing?"
"Stamping on the quartermaster's foot."
Cutler nodded. "That's just about the size of it. Ah well . . . Then we have Sir Hubert Beckwith."
"What's his worry? Apart from—well, let's not be morbid."
"Bingo jokes. Apparently Wexford used the old one about 'The Kremlin—Number 10', and Beckwith thought it was an insult to the entire British Empire."
"He would. But better tell Wexford to leave that one out in future." The Captain looked sideways, towards the small pantry out in the passageway. "Brotherhood! Same again."
Brotherhood entered, collected the empty glasses, and began to refill them at the sideboard.
"Any scandals?" asked the Captain, after a pause.
"Nothing much. Mrs. van Dooren's been falling about a bit. But we've had them worse."