There wasn’t even a trace of wake anywhere. He was almost directly astern of the ship, but it hadn’t gone by him. The only answer was that it was lying dead in the water. It had stopped for something, and had swung around as it lost steerageway. Unless, he thought, his mind was already playing him tricks and there wasn’t any ship there at all.

II

MADELEINE DARRINGTON LENNOX WAS LYING naked on her bunk in the sweltering darkness of Cabin C when she heard the engine stop and wondered what was wrong with the stupid ship now. She didn’t care particularly except to the extent the stoppage might affect the rendezvous whose anticipation had made it almost impossible for her to lie still since she had switched out the light a half hour ago and begun her nightly wait for Barset to slip down the passageway and into the cabin. It had been her experience that when anything happened to break the routine of a ship, even on the midnight-to-four watch, there were apt to be people abroad in the passageways either seeking information or trying to right the matter, whatever it was, and Barset was too shrewd to run the risk of being seen by one of the deck officers or perhaps the captain himself. Laying the passengers was no part of the steward’s duties, no matter how great his virtuosity in this field, and as he put it with his gift for unprintable vulgarity, Holy Joe would defecate a ring around himself. So he might not come. And if he didn’t, in the state she was in now she’d need three of the capsules to get to sleep.

There was no air-conditioning, and the cabin would have been stifling in any event here in the tropics, but it was made worse by the fact she had closed the porthole, as she always did in anticipation of these delights, because it opened onto a deck outside, with no privacy at all if anybody happened to be out there. The door was closed all the way, too, instead of being on the hook, because he could open it and slip in a fraction of a second faster that way rather than having to fumble with the hook. The electric fan mounted on the bulkhead beyond the foot of her bunk was an oscillating type, sweeping an intermittent flow of air across her perspiring body, but there was nothing cooling about it; it was merely in motion. She didn’t mind the heat a great deal, however; it merely excited her, as did the vibration of a ship. Face it, she thought, what doesn’t?

There was complete silence except for the faint whirring of the fan and now and then a muted clanging sound from somewhere deep in the bowels of the ship. Suppose he didn’t come? How the hell was she going to get through the night like this, sleeping pills or no sleeping pills? Sometimes she could bring herself to orgasm by thinking about it, but she couldn’t always depend on it, and going that far without the final release always left her half crazy. She started twisting on the bunk again, but at that moment the door opened quickly and he was framed in it for an instant against the lighted passageway. It closed, and the darkness was complete again.

He said nothing. She flicked on the lighter and reached for a cigarette with a show of nonchalance she was aware didn’t fool him any more than it did her. With no more than an amused and condescending glance in her direction, he unbelted and slipped out of the seersucker robe which was the only thing he had on aside from the slippers. The flame cut off, but she could still see him in her mind’s eye, a bony middle-aged man with a sharp face and thinning blond hair combed diagonally back over a bald spot. She’d told him once that he reminded her of a ferret, to which he’d merely laughed and said it took one to know one; ferrets and mink were of the same family.

He walked over and stood naked beside the bunk, only a pale blur in the darkness. She put out a hand, touching his hip, and slid it diagonally downward. God, who would ever believe it? She took another shaky puff of the cigarette, fighting herself, and asked, with beautifully simulated indifference, “Why are we stopped?”

“That shaft bearing again,” Barset replied. “So the chief says.”

“Whatever a shaft bearing is,” she said idly. With another movement of the hand, she murmured, “You’re so accommodating, darling.”

“Have you decided yet?” he asked. “Whether it’s me or not?”

“I’m not annoying you, am I, Steward?” She couldn’t resist the “Steward,” even though it was risky. Once he’d merely turned and gone back to his own cabin, leaving her in torment, knowing she would apologize the next day for whatever snotty remark she’d made, that she’d crawl if she had to. But how much of that lordly condescension could you take? “I assure you I’m filled with all the awe to which you’re accustomed, but this is the only way I can express it. Being by nature shy and inarticulate—”

“Turn it off,” he said.

We come to bury Caesar, not to praise him, she thought, but didn’t say it. The chances were he’d not only never heard the joke, but hadn’t even heard of Shakespeare.