‘Guess better guppon deck get li’l’ fresh air,’ he panted.

They struggled, step by swaying step, up the forward stairs, and in the beginnings of distress Hazel began to neglect being homesick. Astern they saw a grey bank — she did not know whether it was fog or land, but she decided on land, so that she could agonize over leaving it.

‘Take a last look. Snow and ice. Next land we see — golly, think! — it’ll be foreign land! — a strange country! — and I reckon it’ll be all green,’ he said with false buoyancy.

‘By the way, Fred, where are you going?’

‘How do you mean? I showed you the ticket — all these different countries — whole slew of ’em!’

‘But what port, what country, do we touch first of all? Where are we GOING?’

‘Golly, I was so busy getting away, I forgot to ask!’

It was to Hull, in Yorkshire, that they were going, said the purser.

‘Oh yes, that’s what I thought,’ said Fred.

Never, not even in William Tyler Longwhale, had they been so lured to each other as in the three days, out of a ten-day crossing, when they idled in the stateroom, never getting out of dressing-gowns, always in the not too disagreeable state between seasickness and a bounding health that would have compelled them to go up and be athletic and social. In the Cornplow home, meals had been brought up to bedrooms on trays only in case of definite illnesses, and with increasing sense of power and travelled sophistication they enjoyed ringing for the steward and for tea and toast and orange juice all day long.

‘I just can’t face the thought of leaving our nice little room and meeting a lot of strangers,’ Hazel sighed. ‘I’m sorry, Fred, but I can see now I’m not going to be any good as a traveller. I’m too shy of new people and new ways. But you’ll be grand at it, you old mixer, and I’ll just stick along . . . till you get tired of it and want to trot back home.’

So all day, contentedly, for hours at a time forgetting that they had shamefully deserted their helpless brood, they talked of themselves; recalled, with snorts or giggles, old, far-off, unhappy things and battles long ago, such as the quarrel, comic now but devastating then, when he had been discovered, during a stately ball, shooting craps with a bunch of chauffeurs in the basement, with his dress coat hung on a coal shovel, and on his proud shirt front a skull and bones drawn in lipstick.

Never had Hazel found out what female serpent had drawn it . . . Neither had Fred.

They first emerged from their cave for dinner in the saloon. Hazel wailed, ‘I’m going to be embarrassed to death — all those people staring at me.’ So she was embarrassed by nobody’s staring at all. The company didn’t even cackle at her having failed to show up. They had been sufficiently seasick themselves.