And the deep blue sea

somewhere else.’

‘If I ever get back there,’ Goddard said, ‘I’m going to start a new status symbol. Owning your own underwear.’

The chief reported that everything below was under control and they could get under way. Sparks told them about the rendezvous with the Phoenix, so Mr. Svedberg said they would steam north for two hours before resuming course. Nobody had any desire to encounter the craft.

Twenty minutes later, the Leander vibrated hesitantly, as though testing herself, and began to move slowly ahead. Goddard mounted to the promenade deck. Karen Brooke was just emerging from her cabin. Her hair was still wet, but she had put on a dress and some makeup.

‘Hey,’ he said, ‘what happened to the better half of my combat team?’

‘She’s just become a devout civilian. And you can quote me.’

‘I can do better than that.’ He grinned. ‘I’m going to join you.’

They went into Madeleine Lennox’ cabin, where, several years ago, it seemed, they had decided they should try to save her life. She still lay quietly, apparently in the same position, covered with her sheet. Goddard felt her pulse, looked at Karen, and nodded.

‘She’s okay.’

‘And just think,’ Karen said, ‘sometime late this afternoon, she’ll wake up and ask what happened.’

* * *

Captain Steen awoke late that night, but was ill and in pain from whatever Lind had given him, so it was three days before he was up. Until then, Harald Svedberg and the second mate stood watch-and-watch. Goddard found an ink pad in the captain’s desk and he and Mr. Svedberg did what he thought was a fairly creditable job of taking Mayr’s fingerprints before he was buried. The third mate had also started the job of questioning the remaining members of the plot.

‘None of them know very much, or say they don’t,’ he told Goddard the second day after they were under way again. ‘I think, actually, they’re telling the truth; Lind kept it all under his hat. Sparks doesn’t even have any idea what the Phoenix was, where she was from, or where they were going to take Mayr. Lind just gave him some fake call letters and a list of illegal frequencies they changed every day, and everything was coded. It was all handled in radiotelegraph, of course. We don’t have a radiotelephone. He said the other man was a good operator, and that’s all he knows.’

The rendezvous was supposed to be at night, Mr. Svedberg went on, with the Phoenix showing no lights. There would be another engine room breakdown rigged by Spivak, and Mayr and Krasicki would be slipped off the after well-deck on a rubber raft, to be picked up by the Phoenix after the ship had gone on. They all swore nobody was supposed to be killed. That could be true enough, the third mate thought, but there was no doubt Lind and Mayr were prepared for it if it became necessary to judge from the number of guns they carried.

And where did you lay the blame for the fact that it had gone wrong, Goddard wondered, with the result that now six men were dead, one of them, Koenig, entirely innocent? On his casual remark about the direction of the scene? On Madeleine Lennox’ careless meddling? No, the most probable answer was that Lind was unstable, as Karen insisted; he was paranoid, or on the borderline, and any trivial remark might have triggered the whole ghastly mess.

The Leander plowed on, shorthanded, scarred, and smelling of smoke, but she would make Manila only a little over a day late. Captain Steen took over a watch, and Antonio Gutierrez was moved up to be the dining room steward. Sparks got the emergency transmitter in operation on the second day, located a ship that would relay for him, and they rejoined the rest of the world. Pleas for news poured in from the wire services by the hour, and Goddard could imagine the furors in the world press.

The third evening after dinner Goddard mixed a tall gin and tonic and went out on the forward end of the promenade deck with Karen Brooke to watch the sunset. They were leaning on the rail struck silent by the vast orchestration of color when Captain Steen came by and remarked for what must have been the twentieth time that it had been an awful thing.

Then he regarded the drink with pious disapproval, and said, ‘It seems to me, Mr. Goddard, you ought to be down on your knees thanking the Lord you’re alive, instead of drinking that stuff.’

‘I expect you’re right, Captain,’ Goddard agreed. Then, because the impulse was irresistible, he added, ‘I imagine when we get to Manila, there’ll be quite an investigation.’ Steen shuddered.

‘I mean,’ Goddard went on innocently, ‘what with a conspiracy, a fire, a mutiny, and a fake SOS. Probably be quite a bit of paperwork.’

Steen departed. Karen smiled at Goddard and shook her head. ‘You shouldn’t do that to the poor man.’

‘Let him find his own sunset.’

They fell silent for a moment, and then she said, ‘You claim I saved your life, and now you’ve saved mine. Is it a standoff?’

‘Not a chance,’ Goddard replied. ‘I won going away; I saved the best one. Ask any of the crew.’

‘Well, they’re sailors. There is a certain amount of prejudice.’

He looked around at her. ‘What about that old Chinese belief of responsibility? Do we cancel each other, or is it doubled?’

‘That’s an interesting point. What do you think?’

‘I don’t know,’ Goddard said. ‘But when we get to Manila, we could run over to Hong Kong and look into it.’

‘I have to go to work.’ She hesitated. ‘But I suppose I could get another week’s leave.’

‘Then it’s a deal,’ he said. ‘And don’t feel you’ll be ashamed of me; I’m sure the crew will give me another pair of pants.’

She laughed. ‘Well, I’ll think about it.’

‘Forget that line,’ he said. ‘It’s just that I’m out of practice and it’s hard for me to say anything I mean. And what I meant was simply that I wish you would.’

‘I know,’ she said. ‘I’m beginning to break the code. Now, tell me about your daughter.’

For the first time in five months he could. It was twenty minutes later when Madeleine Lennox came around the corner of the deckhouse looking for him. She stopped, arrested by something in the attitude of the two figures leaning on the rail, and shrugged. You won a few, you lost a few. She turned, and went aft in search of Barset.