It was very quiet on deck that night, with Louis and Ole Fred both below in their bunks; a few Arabs had come aboard and sat in a corner of the deck eating their evening meal, which they could not take under the same roof as unbelievers; afterwards, as the sun sank into the purple distance of the desert leaving a sky like a palette splashed by a child’s indiscriminating hand, they began an eerie, monotonous chant that went on for hours.  Later the stewards rigged up a canvas screen behind which the women and children could sleep, for the heat of the desert was making the lower cabins unbearable; mattresses were dragged here and there, children put to sleep upon them; people walked about, stepping carefully over sleeping forms as the Oriana crept along at five miles an hour with a great searchlight forrard sending a huge fan of light on to the lapping waters of the Canal, and out into the brown sand of the desert.  The schoolmaster became instructive about the rapid silting up of the Canal with erosion and sand storms:  he discussed the genius and patience of de Lesseps, and argued lengthily on the respective merits of patience and genius.  Finally, Marcella told him she had a headache.  He suggested that he could cure it.

“I have some tabloids—­very sedative, very.  I make a point of never being without them.  You, I take it, have the same type of brain and nerve force as I—­always active, always alert.  What we both need is a depressant—­pot. brom.  Or, as I prefer to call it, K.B.R.”

“Oh no—­it’s very kind of you.  But I’d like best to go to bed.”

“May I carry your mattress up for you?”

“I’m not sleeping on deck.  I couldn’t sleep among so many people,” she said, and, after a hurried good night went below.

As she paused at her cabin door she heard a little noise and guessed that Jimmy was within.  Opening it quickly, without switching on the light, she cried, “Here comes a big bear to eat you all up,” as Jimmy often did to her.  She grasped someone, and cried out in fear.  It was someone grown up, kneeling on the floor.

She switched on the light and saw Louis looking up at her, blinking in the sudden glare.

“Oh, it’s you.  What do you want?” she said, breathlessly, though she knew quite well.  In his hand he held her little bank bag of orange canvas in which the doctor had put ten pounds for her to spend on the trip.

“I w-want m—­my—­my m—­money,” he began, trembling and afraid to meet her eyes.

“To buy more whisky and make yourself more horrible than ever?” she cried, standing with her back to the door.  “Well, I’ll not give it to you, and if you knock me down and fight me I’ll not give it you even.  I’m a better fighter than you.”

“I w-want it—­to—­to—­pay him back,” he cried and began to sob, violently dropping the money on the floor.  “He—­he said—­you’d been in his cabin and—­and—­and in m—­mine!  He s—­said dev—­devilish things.  And I punched his ugly head for him!  All for you!  Be—­be—­because you’re—­you’re—­Oh God, give me the money and let me pay him and then cut him dead.”