‘Good night, Hannah. Sweet dreams.’

‘Good night, Collis.’

‘I love you, Hannah.’

‘Please, Collis, don’t start again. You cannot love me, because I am not free to be loved.’

Collis pulled a face to himself in the darkness of the corridor. ‘Who ever is?’ he asked her. ‘Freedom is only what you seize for yourself, after all. And look at us now. We’re right in the middle of the Caribbean, in the middle of the night, with nobody to suspect or even care that we’re together. What could be freer than that?’

‘Collis, God knows that we’re together.’

At that moment, a door further along the corridor cannoned open, and in the gloom Collis could make out a short barrel of a woman in a nightgown like a pink marquee, and a bristling forest of curl papers.

‘God knows,’ she barked, ‘and everybody else in these cabins knows! And if you don’t move your lecherous hide out of here this instant, I’ll make sure the captain knows, too, and has you locked up in irons!’

‘Madam,’ said Collis hastily, ‘I was on the verge of leaving.’

‘Well, then, move!’ demanded the woman. ‘And make sure I don’t catch you down here again, or I’ll sit on your head, for impertinence!’

Collis called, ‘Good night, Hannah!’ and then quickly opened the door to the promenade deck and stepped back out into the breezy night. Scratching his head, he walked forward to the rail again and stood for a while by the flag. To starboard, along the dusky horizon, he could see the marking lamps of a night fishing fleet, and to port, the first barely distinguishable lightening of the sky before dawn. He wished he hadn’t left his cigars in his cabin; he could have done with a smoke right now.

He looked behind him for a while, at the curtained portholes of the women’s cabins. Hannah’s must be the third one along. He debated with himself for a moment whether he ought to go tap at it, and ask her again to let him in, but he decided that enough was probably enough. It was going to be sufficiently difficult facing her on the promenade deck in the morning as it was.

He was still leaning against the rail in his nightshirt, thinking about this, when he felt a tug at his sleeve. He turned to see the half-breed girl standing there, a cheroot sloping out of the side of her mouth, her long black hair tangled and blown by the wind. Around her shoulders she wore a heavy red-and-blue Pueblo blanket, but beneath the blanket her blouse was so low over her heavy pendant breasts that Collis could make out the duskier, stippled skin of her areolas. She wore a wide, dark-blue skirt, but her feet were bare, and she had silver rings on every finger, including her thumbs, and on her toes. In the wind, Collis could smell an oily, exotic perfume, mingled with sweat.