The observation met with a kind of awed silence, broken by Mr. McAngus.

“Has everybody seen?” he asked, turning his back on Mr. Cuddy. “There’s going to be a film tonight. They’ve just put up a notice. On the boat-deck, it’s going to be.”

There was a stir of languid interest. Father Jourdain muttered to Alleyn, “That disposes of our canasta party.”

“How lovely!” Mrs. Dillington-Blick said. “Where do we sit?”

“I think,” Mr. McAngus fluted, at once tripping up to her, “that we all sit on deck-chairs on the top of the hatch. Such a good idea! You must lie on your chaise longue, you know. You’ll look quite wonderful,” he added with his timid little laugh. “Like Cleopatra in her barge with all her slaves round her. Pagan, almost.”

“My dear!”

“What’s the film?” Dale asked.

“Othello. With that large American actor.”

“Oh, God!”

“Mr. Merryman will be pleased,” said Brigid, “It’s his favourite. If he approves, of course.”

“Well, I don’t think he ought to come,” Mrs. Cuddy at once objected. “He should consider other people.”

“It’ll be in the open air,” Miss Abbott countered, “and there’s no need, I imagine, for you to sit next to Mr. Merryman.”

Mrs. Cuddy smiled meaningly at her husband.

Brigid said, “But how exciting! Orson Welles and everything! I couldn’t be better pleased.”

“We’d rather have a nice musical,” said Mrs. Cuddy. “But then we’re not arty, are we, dear?”

Mr. Cuddy said nothing. He was looking at Mrs. Dillington-Blick.

The film version of Othello began to wind up its remarkable course. Mr. Merryman could be heard softly invoking the retribution of the gods upon the head of Mr. Orson Welles.

In the front row Captain Bannerman sighed windily, Mrs. Dillington-Blick’s jaw quivered, and Dale periodically muttered, “Oh, no!” Alleyn, who was flabbergasted by the film, was able to give it only a fraction of his attention.

Behind the captain’s party sat the rest of the passengers, while a number of ship’s officers were grouped together at one side. Dennis and his fellow stewards watched from the back.

The sea was perfectly calm, stars glittered with explosive brilliance. The cinema screen, an incongruous accident, with a sterile life of its own, glowed and gestured in the surrounding darkness.

Brigid caught her breath and Tim reached for her hand. They were moved by a single impulse and by one thought — that it was superbly right for them to listen together to this music.

“Promethean heat,” Father Jourdain murmured appreciatively.

The final movement emerged not entirely obscured by the treatment that had been accorded it. A huge face loomed out of the screen.

A white cloth closed like a shroud about Desdemona’s face and tightened horridly.

The screen was no longer there. At their moment of climax Othello and Desdemona were gone and their audience was in darkness. The pulse of the ship’s engines emerged and the chief engineer’s voice saying that a fuse had blown somewhere. Matches were struck. There was a group of men round the projector. Alleyn produced his torch, slipped out of his seat, which was at the end of the row, and walked slowly along the hatch.

None of the passengers had stirred but there was a certain amount of movement among the stewards, some of whom, including Dennis, had already left.

“The circuit’s gone,” a voice near the projector said and another added, “That’s the story. Hold everything.” One of the figures disentangled itself and hurried away.

“ ‘Put out the light,’ ” a junior officer quoted derisively, “ ‘and then put out the light.’ ” There was a little gust of laughter. Mrs. Cuddy, in the middle of the third row, tittered. “He stifles her, doesn’t he, dear? Same thing again! We don’t seem to be able to get away from it, do we?”

Miss Abbott said furiously, “Oh, for pity’s sake!”

Alleyn had reached the edge of the hatch. He stood there, watching the backs of the passengers’ chairs, now clearly discernible. Immediately in front of him were Tim and Brigid, their hands enlaced, leaning a little towards each other. Brigid was saying, “I don’t want to pull it to pieces yet. After all there are the words.”

A figure rose up from the chair in the middle of the row. It was Mr. Merryman.

“I’m off,” he announced.

“Are you all right, Mr. Merryman?” Brigid asked.

“I am nauseated,” Mr. Merryman rejoined, “but not for the reason you suppose. I can stomach no more of this slaughterous — this impertinent travesty — Pray excuse me.”

He edged past them and past Father Jourdain, moved round the end of the row and thus approached Alleyn.

“Had enough?” Alleyn asked.

“A bellyful, thank you.”

He sat on the edge of the hatch, his back ostentatiously presented to the invisible screen. He was breathing hard. His hand which had brushed against Alleyn’s was hot and dry.

“I’m afraid you’ve still got a touch of your bug, whatever it is,” Alleyn said. “Why don’t you turn in?”

But Mr. Merryman was implacable. “I do not believe,” he said, “in subjecting myself to the tyranny of indisposition. I do not, like our Scottish acquaintance, surrender to hypochondriacal speculations. On the contrary, I fight back. Besides,” he added, “in this Stygian gloom, where is the escape? There is none. J’y suis, et j’y reste.”

And so in fact he remained. The fuse was repaired, the film drew to its close. An anonymous choir roared its anguish and, without benefit of authorship, ended the play. The lights went up and the passengers moved to the lounge for supper. Mr. Merryman alone remained outside, seated in a deck-chair by the open doors and refusing sustenance.

Alleyn, and indeed all of them, were to remember that little gathering very vividly. Mrs. Dillington-Blick had recovered her usual form and was brilliant. Dressed in black lace, though not that of her Spanish dress, and wreathed in the effulgence of an expensive scent that had by now acquired the authority of a signature tune, she held her customary court. She discussed the film — it had, she said, really upset her. “My dear! That ominous man! Terrifying! But all the same — there’s something. One could quite see why she married him.”

“I thought it disgusting,” Mrs. Cuddy said. “A black man. She deserved all she got.”

Mrs. Dillington-Blick laughed. She and Aubyn Dale, Alleyn noticed, kept catching each other’s eye and quickly looking away again. Neither Mr. Cuddy nor Mr. McAngus could remove his gaze from her. The captain hung over her; even Miss Abbott watched her with a kind of brooding appreciation while Mrs. Cuddy resentfully stared and stared. Only Brigid and Tim, bent on their common voyage of discovery, were unmindful of Mrs. Dillington-Blick.

Presently she yawned, and she even managed to yawn quite fetchingly.

“I’m for my little bed,” she announced.

“Not even a stroll round the deck?” asked the captain.

“I don’t think so, really.”

“Or a cigarette on the verandah?” Dale suggested loudly.