And The Deep Blue Sea by Charles Williams 1971(7)

now we’re prepared for the next bulletin that he’s dead.
Or are we? He thought uneasily of Madeleine Lennox.
No, she was all right. She was up; he’d heard her
taking a shower.
Karen excused herself and left. He finished his
poached egg and lit a cigarette while he drank another
cup of coffee. When he went outside and walked aft, the
bos’n and two sailors were knocking out the wedges
that secured the tarpaulins on number three’s hatch
cover. Smoke was filtering up here and there around
the edges of it. Another man was unrolling a fire hose.
He wondered if they had gas masks aboard; the smoke
was going to be pretty bad down there.
He reached for a cigarette, but discovered the pack
was empty. He tossed it over the side and went back to
his cabin for another. As he was tearing the cellophane
from it he was arrested by the faint sound issuing from
the open door of his bathroom. He frowned, and
stepped inside to be sure. The shower was still running
in the one next door. After nearly forty-five minutes? He
hurried out into the passageway.

And The Deep Blue Sea by Charles Williams 1971(6)

make you long for the Norwegian fiords, Captain.’
He nodded and managed a wan smile. ‘Yes. And it’s
been nearly two years since I was home.’
Lind said to her, ‘But it just takes one winter gale in
the North Atlantic to make this look good again.’
'I agree with you,’ Madeleine Lennox said. She began
an account of being on a freighter that had been hove
to for three days in the Bay of Biscay and how
eventually she’d been physically exhausted just from
And The Deep Blue Sea — 109
the endless holding onto something and trying to keep
from being thrown from her bunk.
Captain Steen interrupted her in a voice not much
more than a whisper. ‘If you’ll excuse me.’ Goddard
looked around. Steen’s face had gone white and was
stamped with anguish as he pushed himself to his feet.
He started to collapse, but caught himself with a hand
braced on the table.

And The Deep Blue Sea by Charles Williams 1971(5)

‘It’s perfectly safe,’ he reassured her. The darkness
was impenetrable after the flash. ‘Sparks grounds his
antenna, and it acts as a lightning rod.’
‘Thank you, Dr. Faraday,’ she said. A groping hand
brushed his arm, and then she was against his chest.
‘Who the hell needs science?’
He took her in his arms; if she needed comforting,
why be a churl about it? She felt very slender and soft
inside the nylon robe, and her arms came up around his
neck. In the next jagged flash of lightning he could see
her uptilted face with the eyes closed, waiting to be
kissed. He kissed her. Her mouth opened under his,

And The Deep Blue Sea by Charles Williams 1971(4)

Karen frowned thoughtfully. ‘No, they came aboard at
different times; Mr. Krasicki just before we sailed, I
think. Then he must have become ill almost
immediately; we thought for the first day or so he was
just seasick, until Mr. Lind said he had a fever. They did
see each other once before today, though.’ She told
them about the episode when Goddard was being
rescued. ‘It was the same thing,’ she added. ‘I mean,
the impression that Mr. Krasicki thought he recognized
Mr. Egerton, but Mr. Egerton had never seen him at
all.’