next deck. Men were coming out of the officers’ messroom. ‘What is it?’ they asked. ‘What happened?’

‘Krasicki went berserk,’ Goddard said. ‘Shot Egerton.’

The sterilizer was secured to the desk with catches. He released them, unplugged it, and grabbed up the first-aid kit. When he hurried back into Edgerton’s cabin, Lind was bent over the bunk. He straightened, holding a bloodstained towel, and gestured wearily.

‘Put ‘em down anywhere,’ he said. ‘A couple of aspirin would have done just as well.’

Goddard looked past him, and nodded. Egerton was already unconscious and obviously dying of massive hemorrhage. Lind had spread the jacket open and cut the shirt away, exposing his chest. Blood was everywhere, in the thick mat of gray hair, running down his ribs, and staining the jacket and bedspread beside him. The pillow under the side of his mouth was soaked with it. The eye was closed, and his breathing ragged and labored. There was no froth in the blood on his chest Goddard noted; he would have thought there would be, since one or both the shots must have gone through the lungs. He was about to mention this to Lind when Captain Steen appeared in the doorway. Sparks, he said, was trying to locate a ship in the area with a doctor. Lind shook his head.

‘It’s no use,’ he said. He felt Egerton’s pulse, gave a despairing shrug, and gently lowered the wrist. ‘Just a matter of minutes.’

‘Seems dark for arterial blood,’ Goddard remarked, wondering at the same time what difference it made. When you lost enough of it, you died, no matter what shade it was.

‘Probably the pulmonary,’ Lind replied. ‘It carries venous blood.’

Egerton’s breathing changed to a gasping rattle that went on for over a minute and then stopped abruptly. Lind reached for the wrist again, probing for the pulse that had apparently ceased. He put it down and gently raised the eyelid with a thumb to look at the pupil. He sighed and closed the eye.

‘That’s all,’ he said.

Captain Steen lowered his head. He appeared to be praying. Then he straightened and said, ‘I’ll tell the steward to bring a sheet.’

Lind turned on the basin tap to wash the blood from his hands. Goddard turned to go out. He felt something under his shoe and looked down. It appeared to be a tiny awl. He pushed it over against the bulkhead with his foot and went out into the passageway, and as he neared the entrance to the dining room he heard the sudden, mad sound of Krasicki’s voice again. He looked in, and at the same moment Lind ran past him, still drying his hands on a towel.

Captain Steen was in the room, along with Barset and two other men, one of whom Goddard recognized as the AB who’d given him the shin. The other was a squat, ugly man in his thirties with almost grotesquely massive shoulders and arms. He had an old knife scar in the corner of his mouth and the coldest blue eyes Goddard had ever seen. Krasicki’s hands were bound in front of him and his feet were tied together, but he was sitting up and trying to slide backward away from the men in front of him, still shouting in that unknown language. The squat man and the AB reached down and caught his arms to pick him up. He shrank away from them, and screamed.

‘Easy, Boats,’ Lind said. ‘Let me try to talk to him.’ The two men let go and stepped back. Lind knelt and spoke quietly to Krasicki. ‘We’re not going to hurt you. Everything’s all right.’

This had no effect at all; the mad eyes were completely without comprehension. Lind spoke in German. Insulated within his madness, Krasicki paid no attention, merely continuing to rave in the language none of them understood.

Lind spoke to Barset. ‘Take a couple of your men and canvass the whole crew; see if anybody speaks Polish. It might help some if we knew what he’s saying.’

‘We already have,’ Barset replied. ‘No dice.’

‘Well, we’ve got to quiet him down,’ Lind said. He went out and came back with the first-aid kit. He filled a hypodermic syringe and motioned for the bos’n and AB to hold Krasicki. When the latter saw the syringe, as old and frail as he was it took three men to pin him down sufficiently for Lind to inject the sedative. Goddard felt sick.

In a few minutes Krasicki began to subside. He slumped. ‘Get a stretcher,’ Lind said to