V.

Liberty had been expired an hour when they arrived. The two SP's bounded past the rows of latrines and across the gangplank. Clyde and Johnny, with Pappy in the middle, lagged.

"Now none of that was worth it," Johnny said bitterly. Two figures, fat and slim, stood by the latrine wall.

"Come on," Clyde urged Pappy. "Few more steps."

Nasty Chobb came running by, wearing an English sailor hat with H.M.S. Ceylon printed on the hand. The shadow-figures detached themselves from the latrine wall and approached. Pappy tripped.

"Robert," she said. Not a question.

"Hello Pappy," said the other.

"Who zat," said Clyde.

Johnny stopped dead and Clyde's momentum carried Pappy round to face her directly. "I'll be dipped in messhall coffee," said Johnny.

"Poor Robert." But she said it gently, and was smiling, and had either Johnny or Clyde been less drunk, they would have bawled like children.

Pappy waggled his arms. "Go ahead," he told them, "I can stand. I'll be along." From over on the quarterdeck Nasty Chobb was heard arguing with the OOD. "What you mean go away," yelled Nasty.

"Your hat says H.M.S. Ceylon, Chobb."

"So."

"So what can I say? You're on the wrong ship."

"Profane," said Pappy. "You came back. I thought you would."

"I didn't," Profane said. "But she did." He went off to wait. Leaned against a latrine wall out of earshot, looking at the Scaffold.

"Hello Paola," said Pappy. "Sahha." It means both.

"You -"

"You -" at the same time. He motioned her to talk.

"Tomorrow," she said, "you'll he hung over and probably will think this didn't happen. That the Metro's booze sends visions as well as a big head. But I'm real, and here, and if they restrict you -"

"I can put in a chit."

"Or send you off to Egypt or anywhere else, it should make no difference. Because I will be back in Norfolk before you, and be there on the pier. Like any other wife. But wait till then to kiss or even touch you."

"If I can get off?"

"I'll be gone. Let it be this way, Robert." How tired her face looked, in the white scatter from the brow lights. "It will be better, and more the way it should have been. You sailed a week after I left you. So a week is all we've lost. All that's gone on since then is only a sea-story. I will sit home in Norfolk, faithful, and spin. Spin a yarn for your coming-home present."

"I love you," was all he could find to say. He'd been saying it every night to a steel bulkhead and the earthwide sea on the other side.

White hands flickered up, behind her face. "Here. In case you think tomorrow it was a dream." Her hair fell loose. She handed him an ivory comb. Five crucified Limeys - five Kilroys - stared briefly at Valletta's sky till he pocketed it. "Don't lose it in a poker game. I've had it a long time."

He nodded. "We ought to be back early December."

"You'll get your good-night kiss then." She smiled, withdrew, turned, was gone.

Pappy ambled on past the latrine without looking back. The American flag, skewered by spotlights, fluttered limp, high over them all. Pappy began his walk to the quarterdeck, across the long brow, hoping he'd be soberer when he reached the other end.

II

Of their dash across the Continent in a stolen Renault; Profane's one-night sojourn in a jail near Genoa, when the police mistook him for an American gangster; the drunk they all threw which began in Liguria and lasted well past Naples; the dropped transmission at the outskirts of that city and the week they spent waiting its repair in a ruined villa on Ischia, inhabited by friends of Stencil - a monk long defrocked named Fenice who spent his time breeding giant scorpions in marble cages once used by the Roman blood to punish their young boy and girl concubines, and the poet Cinoglossa who had the misfortune to be both homosexual and epileptic - wandering listlessly in an unseasonable heat among vistas of marble fractured by earthquake, pines blasted by lightning, sea wrinkled by a dying mistral; of their arrival in Sicily and the difficulty with local bandits on a mountain road (from which Stencil extricated them by telling foul Sicilian jokes and giving them whisky); of the day-long trip from Syracuse to Valletta on the Laferla steamer Star of Malta, during which Stencil lost $100 and a pair of cufflinks at stud poker to a mild-faced clergyman who called himself Robin Petitpoint; and of Paola's steadfast silence through it all, there was little for any of them to remember. Malta alone drew them, a clenched fist around a yo-yo string.

They came in to Valletta, cold, yawning, in the rain. They rode to Maijstral's room neither anticipating nor remembering – outwardly, at least, apathetic and low-keyed as the rain. Maijstral greeted them calmly. Paola would stay with him. Stencil and Profane had planned to doss at the Phoenicia Hotel, but at 2/8 per day the agile Robin Petitpoint had had his effect. They settled for a lodging-house near the Harbour. "What now," said Profane, tossing his ditty bag in a corner.

Stencil thought a long time.