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fearfully.
    "First aid kit in my case." I fetched it, squeezed out the wounds and soaked up all the blood with cotton-woof, used iodine liberally, applied a plaster dressing and pulled on the socks. "You won't come to any harm from that."
    I lit and gave her a cigarette, ripped a spar off one of the wooden crates, used it as a lever to rip off a larger spar from another crate and finally used that to wrench off a three-foot long three by one from the biggest crate I could see: with three three-inch nails sticking out from the far end it made quite a weapon, more than a match for the fangs of any rat. As big as a cat, Marie Hopeman had said, but I took that with a pinch of salt-they might be as long as a cat but never as big-but for all that black ships' rats could be vicious, especially in numbers. I went into the cabin again, peered around cautiously for the enemy, found none, picked up the two pillows and blankets from the bunk, went out again, shook the blankets ostentatiously to demonstrate that there were no rats concealed in the folds, wrapped them tightly round her, put the pillows behind her back, dug out a spare jacket from one of my cases, made her put it on and stepped back to admire my handiwork.
    "Not bad at all," I admitted. "I have the touch. Mirror and comb, perhaps? They tell me it does wonders for a woman's morale."
    "No." She smiled shakily at me. "As long as I can't see it, I don't worry. You know, I don't really think you're tough at all."
    I smiled back at her, very enigmatic I thought, then used my tie to hang the torch from a batten, close by the deck-head. I pulled back some battens across the aisle from her and hoisted myself up on a platform of wooden boxes, the three by one ready to hand.
    "You can't sleep there," she protested. "It's too hard and- and you'll fall off." This was something new, Marie Hopeman showing any concern for me.
    "I've no intention of going to sleep," I said. "That's for you. Rat-catcher Bentall, that's me. Goodnight."
    We must have been well clear of the land by this time, for the schooner was beginning to roll, not much, but enough to be perceptible. The timbers creaked, the torch swung to and fro throwing huge black moving shadows and, all the time, now that our movements and voices had ceased, I could hear a constant sibilant rustle, either our rodent pals on safari or a cockroach battalion on the march. The combination of the creaking, the rustling and the black ominous shifting shadows was hardly calculated to induce a mood of soporific tranquillity, and I was hardly surprised when, after ten minutes, Marie Hopeman spoke.
    "Are-are you asleep? Are you all right?"
    "Sure I'm all right," I said comfortably. "Goodnight."
    Another five minutes then:
    "John!" It was the first time she'd ever called me that except when company had made it necessary to keep up the fiction of our marriage.
    "Hullo?"
    "Oh, damn it!" There was vexation in her voice, a small reluctant anger at herself, but there was nervousness, too, and the nervousness had the upper hand. "Come and sit beside me."
    "Right," I said agreeably. I jumped down to the deck, swung myself up on the other side and seated myself as comfortably as I could with my feet propped against the outboard battens. She made no move or stir to acknowledge my arrival, she didn't even look at me. But I looked at her, I looked and I thought of the change a couple of short hours could make. On the four-stage hop from London airport to Suva she'd hardly acknowledged my existence as a human being, except in airport terminals and conspicuous seats in a plane, where she'd smiled at me, taken my arm and sweet-talked me as any bride of ten weeks ought to have done. But the moment we had been alone or secure from observation her normal cool aloof remote personality had dropped between us like a portcullis with a broken hoist-rope. The previous afternoon, waking out of a short sleep on the Hawaii-Suva hop and drowsily forgetting that we weren't