Everything was ready. The bier — a hastily nailed-together platform of boards, seven feet by two — lay on the deck, and the red ensign, tied to two corners of the handles at the top of the bier but free at the other end, covered the canvas wathed mound beneath. Only the bo’sun and the carpenter were there. To look at Macdonald you would never have guessed that he hadn’t slept the previous night. He had volunteered to remain on guard outside the wireless office until dawn; it had also been his idea that, though the chances of any trouble in daylight were remote, two men should be tailed for holystoning the deck outside the wireless office after breakfast, for the entire day if necessary. Meantime the radio office was closed — and heavily padlocked — to allow Peters and Jenkins to attend the funeral of their colleague. There was no difficulty about this: as was common, there was a standard arrangement whereby a bell rang either on the bridge or in the chief wireless operator’s cabin whenever a call came through on the distress frequency or on the Campari’s call sign.

The slight vibration of the Campari’s engines died away as the engine slowed and the revs dropped until we had just enough speed to give us steerageway in that heavy swell. The captain came down the companionway, carrying a heavy brass-bound bible under his arm. The heavy steel door in the port hand fo'c'sle side was swung open and back till it secured with a clang in its retaining latch. A long wooden box was slid into position, one end level with the opening in the side of the ship. Then Macdonald and the carpenter, bareheaded, appeared, carrying bier and burden, and laid them on the box.

The service was very brief, very simple. Captain Bullen said a few words about Brownell, about as true as words usually are in those circumstances, led the tattered singing of “abide with me,” read the burial service, and nodded to the bo’sun. The Royal Navy did this sort of thing better, but we didn’t carry any bugles aboard the Campari. Macdonald lifted the inboard end of the bier; the canvas-swathed mound slid out slowly from beneath the red ensign and was gone with only the faintest of splashings to mark its departure. I glanced up at the promenade deck and saw the Duke of Hartwell there, standing stiffly at attention, right arm bent up to his peaked cap in rigid salute. Even allowing for the natural disadvantages lent him by his face, I had seldom seen a more ludicrous sight. No doubt to the unbiassed observer he was putting up a more fitting show than myself, but I find it hard to be at my reverent best when I know that all I’m committing to the deep is a length of canvas, large quantities of engine-room waste, and a hundred and fifty pounds of rusty chain to give the necessary negative buoyancy.

The door in the ship’s side clanged shut; Captain Bullen handed over the Bible to a cadet; the engine revs mounted, and the Campari was back in business again. And the first item on the agenda was breakfast.

In my three years aboard the Campari I had rarely seen more than half a dozen passengers in the dining saloon for breakfast. Most of them preferred to have it served in their suites or on the private verandahs outside their suites. Barring a few aperitifs followed by Antoine’s or Henrique’s superb cooking, there was nothing to beat a good funeral to bring out the sociable best in our passengers. There could only have been seven or eight missing altogether.

I had a full complement at my table, except, of course, for the invalid Mr. Cerdan. I should have been on watch, but the captain had decided that, as there was a very able quartermaster on the wheel and no land within seventy miles, young Dexter, who usually stood the watch with me, could stand it alone for the length of breakfast.

No sooner had I pulled in my chair than Miss Harrbride fixed her beady eyes on me.

“What on earth’s happened to you, young man?” she demanded.

“To tell you the truth, Miss Harrbride, I don’t really know myself.”

“You what?”

“It’s true.” I put on my best shamed face. “I was standing up on the boat deck last night and the next thing I knew I was lying in the scuppers with my head cut must have struck it against the davit when I fell.” I had my story all prepared. “Dr. Marston thinks it was a combination of sunstroke — I was loading cargo most of the day yesterday and I can assure you that the sun was very hot — and the fact that, owing to our troubles in Kingston and the delay caused by it, I haven’t had very much sleep in the past three days.” “I must say things do keep happening aboard the Campari,” Miguel Carreras said. His face was grave. “One man dead from a heart attack or whatever it was, another missing — they haven’t found our chief steward yet, have they?”

“I’m afraid not, sir.”

“And now you get yourself banged up. Let’s sincerely hope that’s the end of it.”

“Troubles always happen in threes, sir. I’m sure this is the end of it. We’ve never before…”

“Young man, let me have a look at you,” a peremptory voice demanded from the captain’s table. Mrs. Beresford, my favourite passenger. I twisted round in my seat to find that Mrs. Beresford, who normally sat with her back to me, had herself turned completely round in hers. Beyond her the Duke of Hartwell, unlike the previous night, was having no trouble at all in devoting his entire attention to Susan Beresford:

The usual counterattraction on his right, in the best traditions of the theatrical world, rarely rose before noon. Mrs. Beresford studied me in silence for the better part of ten seconds.

“You don’t look well at all, Mr. Carter,” she pronounced finally.

“Twisted your neck, didn’t you? You didn’t have to turn round in your chair to talk to me.”

“A little,” I admitted. “It’s a bit stiff.”

“And hurt your back into the bargain,” she added triumphantly. “I can tell from the peculiar way you sit.”

“It hardly hurts at all,” I said bravely. It didn’t, in fact, hurt me in the slightest, but I hadn’t yet got the hang of carrying a gun in my waistband and the butt kept sticking painfully into my lower ribs.

“Sunstroke, eh?” her face held genuine concern. “And lack of sleep. You should be in bed. Captain Bullen, I’m afraid you’re overworking this young man.”

“That’s what I keep telling the captain, ma’am,” I said, “but he doesn’t pay any attention to me.”

Captain Bullen smiled briefly and rose to his feet. His eyes, as they roved slowly over the room, held the expression of a man who wanted both attention and quiet: such was the personality of the man that he got it in three seconds flat.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he began. The Duke of Hartwell regarded the tablecloth with that smell-of-bad-fish expression he reserved for tenants wanting a cut in rent and merchant navy captains who forgot to preface public addresses with the words “Your Grace.”

“I am most distressed,” the captain went on, “as I am sure you are all distressed, by the events of the past twelve hours. That we should lose our chief wireless officer through death by natural causes is, God knows, bad enough, but that our chief steward should vanish the same evening-54 well, in thirty six years at sea I have never known anything like it. “What happened to chief steward Benson we cannot say with any certainty, but I can hazard a guess and at the same time issue a warning. There are literally hundreds of cases of men vanishing overboard at night, and I have little doubt but that Benson’s death is due to the same reason which probably accounts for 99 per cent of all the other cases. Even on the most experienced sailors the effect of leaning over the rail at night and watching the black water passing below has a weirdly hypnotic effect. I think it’s something akin to the vertigo that affects a great number of people, people who are convinced that if they go near, say, the parapet of a high building, some strange force will make them topple over, no matter what their conscious minds may say. Only, with leaning over the rails of a ship, there is no fear. Just a gradual mesmerism. A man just leans further and further over until his centre of gravity is suddenly displaced. And then he is gone.”