It took me only seconds to find what I wanted: two coils of nylon rope which I stuck into a canvas bag, and a short length of thicker Manilla. I closed the door, left the bag beside Susan, and staggered across the sliding, treacherous decks to the port side and tied the Manilla to one of the guardrail stanchions. I considered knotting the rope, then decided against it. Macdonald, whose idea this was, had been confident that no one, in this wild weather, would notice so small a thing as a knot round the base of a stanchion, and even if it were noticed, Carreras’ men would not be seamen enough to investigate and pull it in; but anyone peering over the side and seeing the knots might have become very curious indeed. I made the knot round that stanchion very secure indeed, for there was going to depend on it the life of someone who mattered very much to myself. Ten minutes later we were back outside the sick bay. I need not have worried about that sentry. Head bent low over his chest, he was still far away in another world and showed no signs of leaving it. I wondered how he would feel when he came to.

Would he suspect he had been drugged would he put any unusual symptoms down to a combination of exhaustion and seasickness? I decided I was worrying about nothing; one sure guess I could make, and that was that when the sentry awoke he would tell no one about his sleep. Miguel Carreras struck me as the kind of man who might have a very short way indeed with sentries who slept on duty. I took out the key I’d found on Tony Carreras and unlocked the door. Marston was at his desk; the bo’sun and Bullen were both sitting up in bed. This was the first time I’d seen Bullen conscious since he’d been shot. He was pale and haggard and obviously in considerable pain, but he didn’t look as if he were on his last legs. It took a lot to kill off a man like Bullen.

He gave me a long look that was pretty close to a glare. “Well, mister, where the hell have you been?” Normally, with those words, it would have come out like a rasp, but his lung wound had softened his rasp to a hoarse whisper. If I’d had the strength to grin, I’d have done just that, but I didn’t have the strength; there was hope for the old man yet.

“A minute, sir. Dr. Marston, Miss Beresford has a…”

“I can see, I can see. How in the world did you manage?” Close to us now, he broke off and peered at me with his shortsighted eyes. “I would say, John, that you’re in the more immediate need of attention.”

“Me? I’m all right.”

“Oh, you are, are you?” He took Susan by her good arm and led her into the dispensary. He said, over his shoulder, “Seen yourself in a mirror recently?”

I looked in a mirror. I could see his point. Balenciagas weren’t blood-proof. The whole of the left side of my head, face, and neck was covered in blood that had soaked through hood and mask, matted in thick, dark blood that even the rain hadn’t been able to remove: the rain, if anything, had made it look worse than it really was. It must all have come from Tony Carreras’ bloodstained shirt when I’d carried him up the ladder of number four hold. “It’ll wash off,” I said to Bullen and the bo’sun. “It’s not mine. That’s from Tony Carreras.”

“Carreras?” Bullen stared at me, then looked at Macdonald. In spite of the evidence in front of his eyes, you could see that he thought I’d gone off my rocker. “What do you mean?”

“I mean what I say. Tony Carreras.” I sat heavily on a chair and gazed down vacantly at my soaking clothes. Maybe Captain Bullen wasn’t so far wrong: I felt an insane desire to laugh. I knew it was a climbing hysteria that came from weakness, from over-exhaustion, from mounting fever, from expending too much emotion in too short a time, and I had to make a physical effort to fight it down. “I killed him tonight down in number four hold.”

“You’re mad,” Bullen said flatly. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”

“Don’t I?” I looked at him, then away again. “Ask Susan Beresford.”

“Mr. Carter’s telling the truth, sir,” Macdonald said quietly. “My knife, sir? Did you bring it back?”

I nodded, rose wearily, hobbled across to Macdonald’s bed, and handed him the knife. I’d had no chance to clean it. The bo’sun said nothing, just handed it to Bullen, who stared down at it for long, unspeaking moments. “I’m sorry, my boy,” he said at length. His voice was husky.

“Damnably sorry. But we’ve been worried to death.”

I grinned faintly. It was an effort even to do that. “So was I, sir, so was I.”

“All in your own good time,” Bullen said encouragingly. “I think Mr. Carter should tell us later, sir,” Macdonald suggested. “He’s got to clean himself up, get those wet clothes off and into bed. If anyone comes…”

“Right, bo’sun, right.” You could see that even so little talk was exhausting him. “Better hurry, my boy.”

“Yes.” I looked vaguely at the bag I’d brought with me. “I’ve got the ropes there, Archie.”

“Let me have them, sir.” He took the bag, pulled out the two coils of rope, pulled the pillow from his lower pillowcase, stuffed the ropes inside, and placed them under his top pillow. “Good a place as any, sir. If they really start searching, they’re bound to find it anyway. Now if you’d just be dropping this pillow and bag out the window…”

“I did that, stripped, washed, dried myself as best I could, and climbed into bed, just as Marston came into the bay.

“She’ll be all right, John. Simple fracture. All wrapped up and in her blankets and she’ll be asleep in a minute. Sedatives, you know.”

I nodded. “You did a good job to-night, doctor. Boy outside is still asleep and I hardly felt a thing in my leg.” it was only half a lie and there was no point in hurting his feelings unnecessarily. I glanced down at my leg. “The splints…”

“I’ll fix them right away.” He fixed them, not more than half killing me in the process, and while he was doing so I told them what had happened. Or part of what had happened. I told them the encounter with Tony Carreras was the result of an attempt I’d made to spike the gun on the afterdeck; with old Bullen talking away non-stop in his sleep, any mention of the twister would not have been clever at all.

At the end of it all, after a heavy silence, Bullen said hopelessly, “It’s finished. It’s all finished. All that work and suffering for nothing. All for nothing.”

It wasn’t finished; it wasn’t going to be finished ever. Not till either Miguel Carreras or myself was finished. If I were a betting man I’d have staked the last cent of my fortune on Carreras.

I didn’t say that to them. I told them instead of the simple plan I had in mind, an unlikely plan concerned with taking over the bridge at gun point. But it wasn’t half as hopeless and desperate as the plan I really had in mind. The one I’d tell Archie Macdonald about later. Again I couldn’t tell the old man, for again the chances were heavy that he would have betrayed it in his half-delirious muttering under sedation. I hadn’t even liked to mention Tony Carreras, but the blood had to be explained away.

When I finished, Bullen said in his hoarse whisper, “I’m still the captain of the ship. I will not permit it. Good god, mister, look at the weather, look at your condition. I will not allow you to throw your life away. I cannot permit it.”

“Thank you, sir. I know what you mean. But you have to permit it. You must. Because if you don’t…”

“What if someone comes into the sick bay when you’re not here?” he asked helplessly. He’d accepted the inevitable.

“This.” I produced a gun and tossed it to the bo’sun. “This was Tony Carreras’. There are still seven shots in the magazine.”

“Thank you, sir,” Macdonald said quietly. “I’ll be very careful with those shots.”

“But yourself, man?” Bullen demanded huskily. “How about yourself?”

“Give me back that knife, Archie,” I said.