‘You don’t have to be lonesome,’ said Collis, guardedly.

‘Who would want me? A girl like me? And even if anyone did want me, I’m not so sure that I would want him.’

‘What’s your name?’ Collis asked.

The girl half turned towards him. She tugged up her blouse a little, but there was a hint of a smile on her face when she did it. Behind her, the sea was a dull turquoise colour, laden with mist, and the darkness was draining away as rapidly as it had come. It must have been four in the morning by now, and it wouldn’t be long before the crew and the earliest of the early-rising passengers would be up on deck.

‘My uncle and aunt always called me Maria,’ said the girl. ‘But I heard that my father, before he went away, used to say I was Mamuska, after his grandmother in Poland. A place named Lwow.’

Collis held out his hand. ‘Well — how do you do. I’m Collis Edmonds, out of New York.’

Maria-Mamuska declined to take his hand. ‘We don’t need to do that. You’re in your nightshirt. I feel that I know you already.’

‘You could get to know me better.’

‘It’s getting light,’ Maria-Mamuska said. ‘Maybe you ought to go dress. You don’t want your lady friend to get the wrong ideas about us.’

Collis gave her a lopsided smile. ‘Lady friend? I’m not sure if she’s my lady friend at all. She’s a lady, certainly. But that’s half the trouble.’

Maria-Mamuska reached out and held Collis’s hand. ‘She won’t let you play with her?’

Collis gave a grunt of amusement. ‘If you want to put it like that, no.’

‘Maybe you don’t try hard enough.’

‘How hard is hard?’

‘Do you want to show me?’

Collis picked a shred of tobacco off the tip of his tongue. ‘Is that a proposition?’ he said.

Maria-Mamuska looked at him boldly. ‘What do you think?’

‘Well …’ said Collis. ‘I think it’s dawn. And maybe dawn is too late for business that ought to be done at night-time.’

‘Who cares what time it is?’ said Maria-Mamuska.

Collis felt tempted. It was a long time now, almost three weeks, since he had been with a woman, paid or unpaid, and his encounters with Delphine and Hannah had only served to inflame him, rather than satisfy him. It was only four o’clock, after all, and the Latvian slept so drunkenly that not even the second coming of St Hilda would ever wake him before seven.

Maria-Mamuska stepped closer and held Collis’s arm. ‘You are a fine man,’ she said. ‘Good-looking, and rich. I never talked to a man like you before.’

‘Rich?’ said Collis. ‘I’m hardly rich. Why do you think I’m going to San Francisco?’

‘You tease me.’ Maria-Mamuska grinned. ‘Look at all the fine clothes you wear. Look at your fine hats.’