Without taking his eyes from John, Jules spoke again. `Christina ! Just behind you there is a bell push. Please ring for the steward. He is quite a gorilla; so we'll let him take charge of our uninvited guest. Then we can resume our conversation.'
`No,' replied Christina composedly. `I am enjoying this. You can fight it out between you.'
Shaken out of his complacency, Jules shot her a surprised glance. It gave John just the opportunity for which he had been hoping. The second that Jules' eyes left his, he thrust the chair aside and sailed in.
John was much the slighter of the two, and at both school and university he had tended to despise athletics; but during his military service he had been made to take up boxing and had not done at all badly for his weight. Now, these bouts under the exacting eyes of tough Army instructors stood him in good stead. Jules put up his fists, and awkwardly fended off the first blows, but he was driven against the after partition of the saloon. John slammed a left to his chin and his head banged against the wooden panelling. As it jerked forward he opened his mouth to yell for help, but John drove a right into his stomach. With a gasp he half doubled up, thrusting his head out and clutching at his belly. He was now so obviously helpless that for a second John was reluctant to strike again; but he knew that to forgo this chance of finishing him off would be crazy. Stepping back a pace, he landed a blow that had all his force behind it under Jules' left ear. The
Frenchman pitched over sideways, struck his head hard on the leg of a chair as he went down, and rolled over, out cold, face upward on the carpet.
`Well done! Oh, well done!' The words came from Christina more as breathless gasps than exclamations.
Sucking the broken skin of his knuckles, John turned towards her. She had stubbed out her cigarette and was standing up now, her huge brown eyes round with excitement. Pushing her way out from behind the table, she ran to him, flung her arms about his neck and, opening her mouth wide, glued it on his.
It was the sort of kiss calculated to rock any man's senses, and John was no exception. She had nothing on over her thin day frock and through it he could again feel the warmth of her body; yet it seemed an entirely different body from that which he had held in his arms during the afternoon. That had been soft and hesitantly yielding with occasional tremors due to girlish diffidence. This strained against him with a fierce virility, and every few seconds was shaken by a spasmodic trembling caused by uncontrollable passion.
Momentarily overcome as he was, his brain instantly protested that this was no time or place for love making. Then instinct rowed in and told him that love played no part in this monstrous embrace, or even natural passion. It was night and Christina was not her true self. She was the victim of a primitive emotion which had been aroused in her by witnessing a scene of violence. She was the female who had just seen two males fighting over which one of them should possess her. With shock, and almost a feeling of nausea, it suddenly came to him that had he been the senseless body on the floor and Jules the victor, it was Jules whom she would now be seeking to devour with her luscious, breathless kisses.
Lifting his arms from about her, he grasped her wrists, broke her grip round his neck, thrust her away from him, and cried
`Christina ! Pull yourself together ! We've got to get out of here; and at once.'
She seemed to sober, and murmured, `All right,' but gave him a slightly sullen look as she turned to pick up from the back of a chair a heavy Shetland tweed coat, and added, `Now you have settled matters with Jules, what's the hurry?'
`I'll give you all the reasons later,' he said, endeavouring to humour her rather than bully her, as he helped her into the coat.
`Anyhow, there is time for you to get this off me.' As she spoke she turned. He noticed with vague surprise that she was wearing gloves, and drawing off the left one she thrust her hand out towards him.
`D'you mean my ring?' he asked in a puzzled voice. `But why?'
`Of course, stupid!' she exclaimed, turning away her head. `It has been hurting me all the evening. It's like a hot band round my finger, and I can't look at it. Every time I do it dazzles me.'
He stared at the signet ring and wondered if he could possibly be imagining things. To him it was not dazzling, but its gold seemed to be shining with a brighter, purer light than it had ever done during the years he had worn it himself. His father, to whom it had originally belonged, had not been a pious man, but upright and fearless, and the thought flashed into John's mind that perhaps the precious metal had mysteriously absorbed some of his father's qualities; so was now having on Christina, in a minor degree, a similar effect to that of the crucifix his mother had thrown to her the previous night. Seeing that the knuckle above the ring was red, angry and swollen, he said
`You have been trying to get it off yourself, and failed; so I don't suppose I can.'
`That was Jules,' she replied with an impatient shrug. `I asked him to try, and offered to kiss him if he could; but he couldn't; so I wouldn't. But you put it on; so you must get it off.'
Suddenly it occurred to him that the ring might, perhaps, be acting to some extent as a charm against evil and, as long as she wore it, would reduce the strength of her nocturnal inclinations to play into the hands of her own enemies; so he shook his head.
`No. I'll take it off to morrow morning for you if you like; but there is no time now. We've lost a couple of minutes as it is. And Jules isn't the only person I've had to lay out in order to get hold of you. Ten minutes ago I slogged an officer. Any moment. ..'
`Did you?' she broke in, her eyes glowing again. `Oh, John, I think you're wonderful ! Let's get away then. I'll go anywhere you wish.'
`Right; come on!' He grabbed her by the arm and hurried her to the door. `It's not Jules I'm worried about, but the other chap. The Captain may send someone to look for him. The moment they find him the hunt will be up. Alarm bells, lights all over the ship, and God knows what else. If that starts before we can get ashore our number will be up.'
The passage was empty. No one was battering on the door of the galley; evidently the steward and the chef had not heard the struggle in the saloon, or yet discovered that they were locked in. Still holding Christina by the arm, John drew her up the companionway after him. As his head emerged above deck level he glimpsed through the stern rail a man standing on the quay, some thirty feet away, by a bollard round which was looped the yacht's stern hawser. It looked as if he was awaiting orders to cast off, but the deck of the yacht was still in darkness.
Feeling certain that if they ran the length of the deck they would be bound to attract the watchman's attention and that, with his suspicions aroused, he would dash down the ladder from the bridge in an attempt to stop them before they reached the gangway, John whispered
`Steady, now. We must walk off just as if we had dined aboard and I was no going to see you home. With luck the watchman may take me for Jules, as he and I are about the same height. If we could be laughing over something, that would be all to the good. My mind is a blank about funny stories at the moment, but perhaps you can think of one.'
`Yes,' replied Christina promptly, as they set off along the deck. `Do you know the one about the five brides describing to one another what had happened on the first night of their honeymoon? The first said, “My husband was just like Roosevelt, he ...” '
The rest of her sentence was drowned by the siren of a car. Next moment its headlights rolled back the darkness from the quay. As it ran past them it was slowing down and its driver brought it smoothly to a halt opposite the gangway.
`Hell!' exclaimed John, pulling Christina up. `That will be the Marquis ! Quick ! We must hide!'
But it was too late. He had scarcely got the words out when there was a movement on the bridge, a whistle shrilled, and all the lights were switched on. Momentarily dazzled by the glare, they were caught in it, standing between two of the skylights right in the middle of the deck.
The passengers were getting out of the car; two tall men and one short one. A bearded officer, who looked as if he might be the Captain, was leaning over the after bridge rail looking down at them. Another man stood beside him. Two more sailors ran out from the bridge house and took up positions on either side of the gangway.
Suddenly it dawned on John that of all these people not one was looking in the direction of Christina and himself. If they could get below again and find some place in which to conceal themselves Jules would believe that they had succeeded in getting ashore before his father's arrival. With luck they might remain as stowaways, undiscovered, until the yacht reached its port of destination, then slip ashore there. Swiftly he turned Christina
