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the horizon on every side with his binoculars. At last he lowered them and looked down at the boat’s company.
    ‘Not a sail in sight,’ Basil remarked before the Finn had a chance to speak. ‘That’s the correct expression—isn’t it?’
    ‘You’ve said it,’ Luvia snapped, ‘but I don’t see it’s anything to go making wisecracks about.’
    Colonel Carden did not like Basil. In fact he and his daughter were at one in regarding the young man as a disgrace to his class, but the old man would not stand by and see one of his own countrymen snubbed without reason.
    ‘You don’t understand our English character, sir,’ he shot at Luvia. ‘It’s our habit to make jokes when we find ourselves up against it—and a very good habit too.’
    ‘Right-oh, Colonel, joke away if you want to—and welcome.’ The tall young Finn shrugged his broad shoulders and began to check up the boat’s company. Some had oilskins, others not, but all of them looked blue with cold, miserable and dejected.
    He was the only officer in it, but he had Jansen, the ship’s carpenter, and four other Swedes—Bremer, an elderly reliable man; red-headed Steffens; young Largertöf, and Hansie, the lounge steward; also a half-caste seaman named Gietto Nudäa. The passengers were Colonel Carden and his daughter, Basil Sutherland, Vicente Vedras, Captain Jean De Brissac, and Synolda Ortello. They also carried four stokers from the engineroom. That made a total of fifteen men and twowomen, but two of the men were as good as useless—old Colonel Carden with his gammy leg and the wounded De Brissac.
    As he glanced down on the comatose French Army Captain, Luvia frowned. He felt it a particularly evil stroke of luck that the falling oar should have knocked out the man who was so obviously best fitted to be his right hand during the hours or days of terrible uncertainty and appalling strain which lay ahead.
    The breeze was dropping rapidly and the boat rocked idly on the long, gentle swell, drifting mainly with the current. Best try and warm them up a bit, Luvia thought, and raising his voice he shouted to the crew in Swedish.
    As the men roused and got out the oars he tapped Colonel Carden on the shoulder. ‘Did you understand what I said, Colonel?’
    ‘No—er—I—er don’t speak any foreign languages.’
    ‘That’s just too bad, because we Finns like to pull one now and again when we’re in a spot, as well as you English. I’ve just told the boys they’d best put their backs into it or we won’t make the coast of South America by lunch time.’
    Basil managed a sickly grin. ‘You mean by Christmas. With eleven months to go we might manage that.’
    The Colonel grunted but turned to his daughter who had been woken by Luvia’s shouted orders. ‘Well, Unity, how’re you feeling?’ he asked with forced cheerfulness.
    She gazed round, her grey eyes dull with great purple shadows beneath them. ‘Not too bad,’ she replied a trifle hoarsely, and she began to tidy herself as best she could.
    Synolda had woken at the same moment. She was staring at her face in a little mirror she had taken from her bag.
    ‘Oh, God!’ she exclaimed miserably, and rubbing the brine from her face with a rag of handkerchief she set to work to repair the ravages of the storm by heavy application of powder, rouge and lipstick.
    Basil’s teeth began to chatter. He remembered now having given the suit of oilskins that he had been wearing when they left the pumps to Synolda just before he passed out. His clothes were soaked through from the spray that had driven gustily over them all night. He was chilled to the marrow of his bones and had a thirst on him which he felt could hardly have been quenched by the contents of the Great Tun of Heidelberg,
    ‘Go get on to one of the oars,’ said Luvia. ‘That’ll put some warmth into you.’
    ‘All right,’ Basil lurched to his feet. ‘For God’s sake give me a drink first though. Got any brandy in the locker