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seemed to have no doubts. “That’s enough Terry,” he hissed, tak – ing her roughly by the elbow so that she stumbled. “I won’t have you disrupting my ship again. You should never have come back.”
    She laughed with a dry, empty sound. “Is that a threat captain?” she asked sweetly, “You’re assaulting me if I’m not mistaken.” She jerked her arm free.
    He looked momentarily disconcerted. “Let’s just say I’ll be watching you.”
    â€œHe’ll be watching me. How sweet.” She laughed again, this time a gentle chortling sound that matched the perfect contours of her beautiful face. I wished she’d been this charming with me when we first met. Then I’d be on dry land thousands of kilometres away from here.
    Jason said nothing and she patted him on the arm.
    â€œTake care of those pretty little eyes of yours. You wouldn’t want to strain them now would you?”
    Jason’s jaw was so clenched that a muscle twitched in his cheek. He looked furious, but there was also some – thing else there — wariness? Apprehension? I couldn’t be sure and it didn’t last long.
    I cleared my throat, rather too loudly, and Terry turned toward me with a ready-made smile plastered on her face, as if nothing had just transpired at all. “Wel – come to the bridge, Cordi. Have you met Jason?”
    He was tall, very tall, but it was his thinness that stood out. There was not an ounce of fat on him and his face was long and narrow and carved by age, or weather, or both, making him look old. “You must be Cordi O’Callaghan. The one who solved the murder up in Dumoine, Quebec? Very nice work.” He held out his hand. “I’m Captain Jason Poole. And you already know Terry. Welcome to the Susanna Moodie .”
    I gripped his hand and then he turned to Martha and introduced himself.
    Terry looked at all of us. “I’d better get back to my stateroom so that I can finish preparing my lectures for the masses.”
    Jason said nothing at all and I just nodded my head as she strolled off the bridge. I inclined my head at Martha. “Martha told me you wanted to see me.” I really hoped he’d be fast because I could feel the woozy feeling coming back as I watched the bow of the ship, or what I could see of it through the fog, knife its way through the water.
    He smiled at me. “Your friend and several others have already told me what you did to get the passengers safely aboard. I wanted to personally thank you and apol – ogize for the crewman’s ignorance in forcing you to crane the boat on your first voyage. It won’t happen again, I assure you. But I need to get to the bottom of all this.”
    This was embarrassing. I mumbled a few stupid words before finally finding a couple of smart ones. “How is the driver?”
    â€œHe has a concussion. The doctor says he’ll be okay.
    But I did want to ask you your version of what happened.”
    He listened carefully while I went through it all.
    When I had finished he scratched his head. “Was Terry seasick or did she just panic the way she said?”
    â€œI don’t know. As far as I could tell she looked pretty desperate.”
    Jason seemed to have finished with me, judging by the interest ebbing from his eyes, but I wasn’t finished with him.
    â€œYou seem to have met Terry Spencer before?” I asked, hoping for — I don’t know what.
    â€œYeah,” he hesitated and clenched his jaw. “Along with our naturalist talks we have writing courses on this ship quite often — usually creative writing, different groups, anyone can join. Terry Spencer has been before. Just between you and me she’s a bit of a handful. Bright, but so demanding and arrogant that no one wants to touch her.
    At least, not in that way.” He flung this last aside in almost accidentally and then threw his