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tips of his ears before sliding on his naval cap.
    “Sir’s scared to get into the lifeboat! Is that it? I could blindfold sir! Like a horse!”
    But Pepper had had plenty of time to think up an answer to every temptation. The saints had made it abundantly clear what they thought of his ducking and diving; they had even posted him a note under his blotter. “If I get into that boat, it won’t reach land. I told you. I’m a Jonah. The angels are after me.”
    Duchesse’s color deepened with his dismay. The Bay of Biscay had shrouded L’Ombrage in spray, and large waves were breaking over the starboard bow, making herwallow. Running to the speaking tube, he bawled into it, “Keep her head into the wind, you ?#@*&s!” Then he hurried outside to help free the winch of the lifeboat.
    The engineer was the last into the boat, received into the upstretched hands of the men below, like a shrimp into an anemone. Though he had stopped the engine before leaving, the ship was still noisy with banging doors, falling crates, crashing spray, creaking joints. It was uncomfortably wet and treacherous on deck, too, now that the ship was listing and side-on to the swell. Even so, Captain Pepper decided not to stay in his cabin, but to crawl and stagger for’ard to the hold, where he sat down on its rim.
    He understood now why the hatch had been opened—so that the water could enter top as well as bottom, and take the ship swiftly to the seabed. It would not do for the crew of some passing boat to see her in difficulties, board her, and discover the sea cocks open. Oh, it was not that Pepper had failed to grasp the whole idea of coffin ships and insurance scams—he had always been quick on the uptake. It was Duchesse who did not understand. L’Ombrage , on her shabby, risky, dishonest final voyage, had strayed accidentallyinto the path of something much more dangerous: a boyhunt. Angels and saints were even now harpooning the ocean with forked lightning, shaking the tarpaulin waves, loosing windy howls, and snorting up the spray for scent of a missing boy, a boy overdue . Aunt Mireille had always said that unpunctuality is the height of bad manners, and Pepper had purposely tried to be late for his death. He really must not keep Saint Constance waiting any longer.
    “We commit our bodies to the sea, in the sure and certain hope,” he remarked to Roche, whose body was submerged now under a fathom of water and beckoning to Pepper with both bare arms. “Don’t we?” The listing ship groaned. Down below, empty clothes hangers in Duchesse’s locker all fell down at the same moment, with a noise like a skeleton gone mad.
    “Bless me, Father, for I think I might have sinned,” said Pepper, but there were no fathers—the good kind or the bad—aboard the dying Ombrage . The hatch cover shifted and the cable bearing its weight slipped on its drum with a terrible screaming noise. The dead Roche beckoned….
    “Sun’s over the yardarm, Captain,” said a voicebehind Pepper. “Everything to hand, sir. Everything aboveboard. I think a drink might be in order.”
    Duchesse helped Pepper to his feet and returned him to the captain’s cabin, where he pointed out six dusty glasses of rum. Because of the ship’s list, each of them stood aslope now, the rum inside just starting to lap out onto the floor. Duchesse abhorred waste. When Pepper said he did not drink, Duchesse said, “There’s always a first time, chéri . And the last time’s as good a time as any for the first time.” One .
    When Pepper said he was shivering not from fright but from cold, Duchesse said, “The rum will warm you up.” Two .
    When Pepper admitted he was shivering from fright, Duchesse said, “Rum’s not called ‘Dutch courage’ for nothing.” Three .
    “That’s gin, isn’t it?” said Pepper, whose family library had taught him an odd assortment of facts.
    “Here’s to a broad general knowledge,” said Duchesse. “A wonderful thing.” And they