“We’re traveling at twenty-six knots,” he said. “In a few minutes a person would be miles behind us. I’ll tell the captain.”

We stood at the railing, staring helplessly into blackness and sure enough we felt the ship’s engines cut and then we were turning. A searchlight was brought out onto a deck below us and eerie light played onto the water. A lifeboat was lowered but I think we all knew it was pretty hopeless. How would you ever find someone again in the vastness of this ocean, when we had been traveling away from them at a mile every couple of minutes? I felt sick and found that I was shivering. One of the men noticed this.

“You’re cold, young lady. Let’s get you inside. There’s nothing more we can do up here. We leave it to the ship’s crew now. Come along. We’ll get a brandy.”

The costume ball had ended and the ballroom was deserted. No sign of my mother and her party. The men escorted me through the ballroom to the Palm Court, sat me down and put a snifter of brandy in front of me. “Drink that up. You’ll feel better,” one of them said. Actually all I wanted was to go to bed and curl up in a little ball, but I suspected that someone would want to ask me questions at some point, and sure enough before I could finish my brandy a ship’s officer came up to us and said that the captain would like to speak to me. I followed the officer down long passageways, until he tapped on a door at the end of the hall, then ushered me through and I saw that I was on the bridge.

“The young lady, sir,” he said.

The captain had been standing at the helm, while other crew members were at the windows, looking out.

“Take over for me, Higgins,” the captain said. “One last circle then we have to call it quits.”

“Very good, sir.”

The captain turned to me then I saw recognition in his eyes in spite of my cat costume. “Ah, Lady Georgiana. It’s you. I was just told a young woman, dressed as a cat. Please do take a seat. This must have been most distressing for you.”

I nodded. I was still shivering as I sat on the chair a crew member had brought over to me.

“So you saw someone fall from the ship and into the sea? Are you sure of this?”

“The problem is that I don’t know exactly what I saw. It all happened so quickly. I just caught the movement out of the corner of my eye.”

“Did anyone else see it?”

“No. I was all alone on the deck at the time.”