I thought of the strict discipline at Kaiserwald and the Deaconesses who had scarcely gone outside the hospital; and I trembled to think of how we should manage at Scutari.

My first sight of the Vectis was not very inspiring. She was an old ship, very battered, and even to a person who knew so little of such things it was obvious that she was scarcely in mint condition.

We boarded her at Marseilles for the trip to the Bosphorus and as soon as we settled in I knew that my fears were well grounded. Cockroaches scuttled across the decks . quick, silent, horrible. I don’t know why they filled me with such revulsion; they were harmless, I supposed. I think it must have been because they were the outward sign of uncleanliness. It was impossible to walk without treading on them.

There was little comfort on board that ship. Even in calm seas its creaks and shudders alarmed me. We were eight in a cabin, and Dorothy Jarvis-Lee, who was adept in such matters, had marshalled eight of us to share.

“We want none of them near us,” she declared.

“I hope we are not going to spend very long on this dreadful ship.”

We had not been a day at sea when we ran into a violent gale, and our poor unseaworthy vessel was tossed about unmercifully by the cruel waves. Almost everyone was smitten with appalling seasickness and only wanted to stay in their bunks. I was relieved when we reached Malta, but quite a number of the nurses were too ill to go ashore Miss Nightingale herself was laid low; and the ship had sustained some damage in the storm.

Henrietta and I went sightseeing with some of the nurses, in the charge of a soldier who was stationed at Malta headquarters. He herded us all together like sheep and it was not much fun. I was glad to return to the ship and to resume our journey, for I felt that the sooner we arrived at our destination and could leave the rickety Vectis the better.

Then we were on our way. The weather had not improved. The wind was howling round us and it was impossible to stand up.

I could not endure the fetid cabin with so many of my fellow travellers including Henrietta very sick, so I staggered out on to the open deck. The wind was fierce and the ship groaned and creaked so continuously that I felt that at any moment it was going to be torn apart, and I wondered what chances I should have in that turbulent water.

I almost crawled my way to a bench and sat down. I clung to the sides of it for I felt that at any moment I should be picked up and flung against the rail. So violent was the storm, so frail the vessel, that I began to believe that we should all be drowned. How strange that I should have come to such a point only to have reached the end.

I realized then how much I wanted to live. When Julian had died I had at times thought rather longingly of going with him. But now that death seemed very close, I knew how much I wanted to survive. The thought surprised me. Desperately I wanted to live, to do something with my life to save life, to nurse the sick to health. It did not seem a world-shattering ambition. To be a nurse! It was not like being a great scientist or a doctor.

My thoughts switched to Dr. Damien Adair. What was his purpose? I thought I knew. Honour for himself. Kudos. To strut upon the stage with the great, to be Dr. Adair who had made amazing discoveries, who had lived a wildly adventurous life, who used people for his experiments and had not cared what became of them. If they died, it was all in a cause the cause of the aggrandisement of the scientific discoveries of the great Dr. Adair.

He had experimented with Aubrey. A terrible sadness came upon me when I thought of Aubrey. I think it was guilt. I kept remembering those first weeks of our honeymoon when everything had been perfect. And it could have been but for his addiction, which had ruined our marriage.

And it was due to that man. I knew Aubrey was weak and should not have allowed himself to be led. But men like Damien Adair preyed on the weakness of others. They cared nothing for the ruins they left behind.

All that mattered to Damien Adair was the acquisition of knowledge which he would use for his own glory. He had ruined my husband; then he had experimented on my son. He had destroyed them both.

Oh, how much I wanted to live! I wanted to come face to face with him.

I wanted to stop him using other people as he had used my husband and my son.

I clung to the bench on which I sat.

“I am going to find him,” I said, ‘and I am going to nurse the sick. I am going to heal them . and I am going to find him. “

I was then aware of a frail figure stumbling along the deck. It was Ethel, the girl I had noticed before pale, thin, half nourished She was often with the blowsy and bellicose Eliza and incongruous companions they were.

I was sure the forceful Eliza was aware of the divisions between Them and Us which were already building up, and she resented them deeply.

But this was frail Ethel.

I watched her staggering along. At times I thought she would be thrown over. She was so light. She clung to the rail and leaned over; she stood very still for a while, the wind tearing at her hair and shrieking around her like a thousand banshees . looking down into the swirling waters. She moved . lilting herself. I knew instantly what she intended to do.

I dashed from my bench. The wind impeded me and the rolling of the ship made progress difficult, but I struggled towards her with all my strength.

“No!” I shrieked, but my voice was caught on the wind and she must have thought it part of the storm.

I reached her just as she was going over. I seized her and pulled her to safety.

She turned and looked at me. I saw the despair in her little face. I cried: “No .. no. You must not. That’s not the way.”

She continued to stare at me and I took her arm. I dragged her to the bench. She sat beside me, my arm in hers holding her tightly.

“I saw … in time,” I said.

She nodded.

“I wanted to. It was best, really.”

“No. You just feel like that now. You’ll feel differently later. I know.”

“He’s gone,” she said blankly as though talking to herself.

“I won’t never hold him again. He was so pretty. He was all I had, and now he’s gone.”

“Perhaps he’ll come back.”

“He’s dead,” she cried.

“Dead … dead … my little baby’s dead.”

I felt an immediate kinship with this girl.

I heard myself say: “I know … I know.”

“You can’t. Nobody can. My little baby was all I had. He was everything. There was nothing else. If I hadn’t have gone out . I had to, though. I had to get money somehow. He was my little baby and when I came back he was gone. I wanted to get things for him . good broth and milk and it was all for him. And I came in he was lying there . cold . stone cold . and his little face like wax.”

I kept saying: “I know. I understand. Nobody could understand better than I.”

The depth of my emotion seemed to convey itself to her. She turned to me and saw the anguish in my face. Oddly enough, it did not surprise her; and I realized that in that moment, a bond had been forged between us.

“Do you want to talk?” I asked.

“If you don’t, it doesn’t matter. Just sit with me.”

She was silent for a while, then she said: “I knew it was wrong. There wasn’t enough … not in sewing.”

Sewing! So she was in the same profession as Lily had been. I supposed there were many of them in attics stitching away for dear life.

Stitch, stitch, stitch In poverty, hunger and dirt, Sewing at once with a double thread A shroud as well as a shirt.

“I had to earn some money … for him.”

“Yes,” I said, “I understand.”

“I didn’t want him, but when he came … oh, he was all the world to me, my little Billy was. And then to come in like that and find him I should never have left him.”

“You had to. You did your best.”

She nodded.

“You shouldn’t have stopped me.”

“Yes, I should. You’ll see that one day. You’ll be glad.”

“You couldn’t know.”

“I could. I lost a child … a little boy.”

“You!”

“My husband is dead, too. I don’t tell people about it. I prefer to be thought… unmarried. It’s a secret.”

“I won’t tell.”

“Thank you. But you see why I understand. My little boy was everything to me.”

“He wouldn’t have gone hungry.”

“No. But I have lost him, all the same. I’m telling you this so that you know I understand.”

And then I was living it all again. I felt my cheeks wet, and not with spray.

She looked at me in wonderment and I saw that she was weeping too.

I don’t know how long we sat there, buffeted by the wind, not speaking. I was thinking of Julian and she of her child. We were as one two sad, bereaved women, silently sharing grief while the storm raged round us.

Someone had come on deck. It was Eliza. She made her staggering way towards us.

“Gawd a’mighty,” she cried.

“What are you doing here, Ethel?”

She sat down on one side of Ethel and stared at us. She must have thought we were an incongruous sight sitting there representatives of the opposing camps, silently weeping.

Ethel said: “I was going to end it, Liza.”

“You never was.”

“She … she stopped me.”

Eliza regarded me with hostility.

“She told me about herself. She was good … and she stopped me.”

“You should never have come up here on your own.”

“I had to, Liza. I couldn’t stand it no more.”

Eliza shook her head and I noticed how tenderly she spoke.