Mr Rune woke me early and he looked bright enough. ‘I have been thinking, Rizla,’ he said, ‘and thinking all of the night. We have but three cards left to be dealt and time is running out. If von Bacon’s Hell Hound was aboard this ship, I am wondering what else might be down in the cargo hold. I feel that after we have fortified ourselves with a suitably heroic breakfast we might acquire the ship’s manifest and take a little look around downstairs.’

‘Splendid,’ I said, ‘because I was dreaming-’

‘Rizla, I know what you dreamed.’

We breakfasted in the forward salon. It was all white Lloyd Loom chairs and tables, potted palms and posh folk. And I grew grumpy at the sight of these.

‘Look at them,’ I whispered to Hugo Rune, ‘pointing at me and muttering behind their manicured hands. They know I was marked for death. The horrid rotten bunch.’

‘I think it more likely,’ said Himself, ‘that they are commenting on the fact that you are wearing your lifebelt. It quite ruins the cut of your jacket.’

‘This stays on,’ I said. ‘Even when I am using the toilet. And that is a challenge, believe you me.’

‘I am prepared to believe you, Rizla. Now what shall we take for our brekkie?’

I had made the suggestion to Mr Rune that we should employ the services of Fangio’s monkey as a food taster, just in case there were those aboard who might now seek to poison us. More werewolves perhaps, for they are known to exist in packs. Or SS officers mourning the loss of their Hell Hound. But Hugo Rune sniffed at each course as it came and pronounced that each passed muster.

And he was clearly confident in his talents (if belatedly demonstrated) as food sniffer, because he wolfed down his breakfast and goose-stepped many cups of tea.

‘A stroll now, Rizla,’ he said, when we were done, ‘and let us see what we shall see.’

We wandered topside and mooched about the decks. Ignoring the sporting opportunities of deck javelins, tossing the grimble, sidestepping and that evergreen favourite ‘pluck one out on a bended knee’. Although I never really saw the point of that game. Too many balls involved.

We gazed at the sea, which was flat as turquoise glass with no visible join to the sky. Mr Rune smoked a post-breakfast cheroot and I had another go at a Wild Woodbine but still was not making a lot of progress on the smoking front.

‘I think,’ said Hugo Rune, ‘that we should now evade the eyes of our watchers and slip away to the cargo hold.’

‘Our watchers?’ I whispered. ‘Now this is new.’

‘Two gentlemen, wearing trenchcoats and snap-brimmed fedoras, have been following us since we left the forward salon. Clearly our cards are now marked, as they say, and we must be on our guard.’

I glanced back over my shoulder and noticed two fellows in trenchcoats. As my eyes caught theirs they turned away, confirming Mr Rune’s thoughts.

‘Assassins, do you think?’ I whispered.

‘They have the look of Americans, Rizla. And there’s no telling with them.’

Hugo Rune now performed a number of classic manoeuvres to avoid surveillance without giving the impression of doing so. He employed the ‘double-footed swan-dive’, the ‘partly-taken-aback’ and the ‘there-goes-ninepence-again’ stratagems to splendid effect and soon we were at the cargo hold unfollowed.

The heavy padlocks now barring our entry were dealt with by Mr Rune and he and I slipped into the hold to see what we might see.

‘There are many steamer trunks,’ I said. ‘Did you manage to acquire the cargo manifest?’

‘Sadly, no, Rizla, it is locked in the captain’s safe. The new captain would happily have allowed me to peruse it, but apparently he has mislaid the combination.’

‘Oh dear,’ I said, but quietly. But thought many more ‘oh dears’.

‘So employ your intuition, Rizla, and let us see what we can find.’

And so we searched. And there really did seem to be some most extraordinary things stored in that hold. A London taxicab, for instance, under a tarpaulin. And a number of coffins that I really did not want to open. But then, after much nosing about into other people’s private possessions, I discovered what must surely be the mother lode.

‘Mr Rune,’ I called out. ‘Mr Rune, you will never believe what I have just found here.’

And Mr Rune was soon at my side and Mr Rune asked, ‘What?’

‘See for yourself,’ I said and I pointed. And Himself saw for himself. ‘Oh, Rizla,’ he said. ‘Oh, well done indeed.’

And he read the label aloud.

HANDLE WITH EXTREME CARE

MARK ONE TESLA

IONIC FIELD GENERATOR

‘It is the field generator that was stolen from your conservatory,’ I said. ‘But what is it doing here?’

‘Heading for America,’ said Hugo Rune. ‘Everything falls neatly into place.’

‘It does?’ I said. ‘Then please explain it to me.’

And I am sure that he would have done just that.

Had it not been for the interruption.

Which came as if a bolt from the blue.

As our ship struck something-

HARD

We headed to the topmost deck, for that would be the last to go underwater. By the time we reached it chaos reigned, with rich folk screaming and beating each other and fighting over the lifeboats.

‘Would I be right in assuming,’ I shouted to Hugo Rune, ‘that this ship owns to a deficit in the lifeboat department, as did its sister ship the Titanic?’

‘I rather suspect this to be the case,’ yelled the Magus. And then he laid a hand upon a well-dressed seaman in a rather superior lifejacket, who was seeking to sneak on board the nearest lifeboat. Hugo Rune hauled this fellow from his feet and spoke to his dangling person.

‘Speak to me, please,’ said the guru’s guru. ‘And with precise phraseology, lest an ambiguity or inconsistency result in severe skull damage upon your part.’ And he waggled his stout stick meaningfully. ‘What exactly has happened?’

The dangling fellow squirmed about, but spoke as best he could. ‘The ship has wandered slightly off course,’ he cried, ‘and has entered the Sargasso Sea.’

‘Slightly off course!’ roared Mr Rune. ‘One thousand miles or more. And what was the nature of the obstacle we struck?’

‘An ancient galleon, sir.’

Mr Rune let the fellow fall into the crowd. ‘Come, Rizla,’ he called unto me. ‘It is to the bridge with us, to see how affairs might be righted.’

And so I got to go onto the bridge of the RMS Olympic. Which was a very exciting place to be. There was the big ship’s steering wheel. And it was a really big one, nearly as high as a man. And there were those things with the levers on that the captain orders to be pulled for FULL STEAM AHEAD and suchlike. And big red buttons to press for foghorns and emergency sirens and so on. And a chart table and a framed picture of Queen Victoria.

And there was also my father. Dressed as the captain.

With a rather guilty look upon his face.

‘Captain Pooley?’ asked Hugo Rune, pushing onto the bridge.

‘It is private up here,’ said Captain Pooley. ‘Please go back the way you came.’ And then Captain Pooley caught sight of me and said, ‘This is a surprise.’

‘Do you know each other?’ asked Hugo Rune.

And I looked hard at the Magus.

Surely he knew that this was my father. All that business with the tarot card and the SUN being father to the Earth and everything. And so on. And so forth. And suchlike.

‘This is my-’ And I looked up at my father. ‘My casual acquaintance, ’ I continued. ‘I met him in Brentford a while back.’

‘I had no idea you were of wealthy stock,’ said my father. ‘Are you enjoying the voyage?’

‘Well,’ I said. And I did sort of noddings over my shoulder to where all that chaos reigned below and where rich folk were now leaping into the murky waters.