‘Like what you see?’ Nan asked.

‘Oh yes!’

‘Good. Put your box down under the table there and we can get started. Now, Mr Freeman tells me you have a good eye for colour and design. See that one there?’ She pointed to an almost-completed hat. ‘It wants something, just to finish it off. What would you suggest?’

May stared round the room. The question was so unexpected that for a moment she could not think of a response. Then she said, ‘Is it a hat for a young lady, or someone older?’

‘A young woman, quite a girl actually.’

‘And what colour is her dress?’

‘Aha!’ Nan reached across and held up a swag of fabric and ribbon. ‘You’re asking the right questions. Now, what?’

May looked around again and alighted on the box of artificial flowers. ‘These,’ she said. ‘Violets would be perfect with those colours.’

‘Well done!’ said Nan. ‘Mr Freeman was right. I can see we are going to get along very well. Now, pull up that stool and we’ll start from the beginning.’

Eight

Gus clung to the rail on the leeward side of the deckhouse with numbed hands and stared about him. In the two months since the Shenandoah had left Madeira, he thought he had encountered King Neptune in most of his moods, from storm to flat calm; but he had never imagined that the sea could be whipped up to such a fury as it was today. His shipmates had told him that they were now in what was called the ‘roaring forties’, a stretch of the ocean close to the Antarctic that was constantly swept by violent winds, and he understood how the name arose.

The sound of the wind drowned all others; but it seemed from what they said that even here such a storm as this was unusual. The sails were close reefed and in the wheelhouse behind him the steersman was clinging to the wheel as it bucked and twisted like a wild animal. Huge waves rushed towards them, towering above the tops of the masts, and the Shenandoah clawed her way up them and then pitched dizzily down the far side. Sometimes, increasingly often it seemed to Gus, she failed to reach the peak and a torrent of seawater swept over the deck, and almost before it had drained away through the scuppers the next wave was upon them.

As he watched, another such wave broke over the bows, but this one was bigger than any of the previous ones and in seconds the whole of the main deck was flooded, so that the men working there were up to their waists in water. The ship wallowed, weighed down by the extra weight of water, which was now sloshing from side to side as she rolled. Men scrambled to find handholds or to haul themselves up onto any part of the superstructure that rose clear of the flood. Gus twisted round at the sound of a shout from the wheelhouse and saw Lieutenant Whittle, the ship’s executive officer, lowering himself into the maelstrom.