In contrast, the spinster ladies spent most of their time reading or sewing, speaking only when spoken to and they retired to their cabin every evening after dinner. The doctor’s wife suffered badly from seasickness and was confined to her bunk for the first couple of weeks, and after that she either sat on deck wrapped in a couple of blankets or huddled in the corner of the saloon, leafing through old copies of Household Words magazine. The doctor himself was kept busy attending minor injuries to the crew and dispensing doses of seltzer to the soldiers. He started drinking soon after breakfast, for purely medicinal purposes, he said, and continued to imbibe throughout the day. At dinner he regaled the party with accounts of his medical experiences both in India and Africa, which invariably left the two school teachers pale and unable to face the rest of their food. It was no surprise to Kate that the good doctor’s wife took refuge in illness when faced with such a selfish, egotistical husband.

Kate was very glad that she had Annie as a companion, and they amused themselves by making up background stories for their fellow passengers. Annie might not have the power of sight, but her hearing was acute and she noticed things about people that Kate often missed.

Whiling away the long hours, Annie always began the game. According to her, Miss Nancy had suffered a broken heart when she was jilted by her former fiancé. Her sister, Miss Euphemia, had fallen in love with a married man and had fled to India rather than give way to the temptation of becoming his mistress. This last observation had made Kate curl up with laughter as she sat cross-legged on her bunk. The two ladies in question were so prim and proper that it was almost impossible to imagine them succumbing to any deep emotion, let alone the temptation to enter into illicit love affairs.

When it came to Dr Arbuthnot, Annie’s imagination ran riot. The doctor’s drink problem had been caused, so Annie said, by his wife’s flirtatious behaviour. Pale, sickly and devoid of any sense of humour, Amaryllis Arbuthnot had been a dancer at the Grecian Theatre with a string of stage-door admirers. One night, during a performance, she fell off the stage, dead drunk, according to Annie, at the feet of the good doctor, who was seated in the front row. He fell hopelessly in love with her and they were married even before her broken leg had healed, but Amaryllis was not prepared to give up her many lovers and the doctor took to drink. Their passage to India was supposed to be a second honeymoon, and an escape from a titled admirer. Annie could not go on. The ridiculousness of the story had them both crying with laughter.