Full Tide by Celine Conway

times it had been severely strained.
    Lisa found herself wondering about other passengers. There was a story behind each one of them. Queer to think that all over the world people were working out their fate , and for each its course was different. Intuitively, she knew that this woman would never regain true happiness unless she married again.
    “Don’t look so grave, my dear,” said Mrs. Basson. “You’ll have troubles—we all do—but it’s unwise to allow them much importance. You have to grab at happiness wherever you come across it—particularly when you fall in love. I suppose you haven’t been in love yet? ”
    Lisa shook her head. “I’m not sure that I want to be.”
    “You’re too sweet-looking to escape it. I hope you’ll find someone protective and ardent. It’s so easy to get hurt, and that kind of injury is difficult to live down.” At this juncture they were joined by a thickset little Dutch woman who proceeded with the aid of a steward to set up a hand loom upon which a roll of gaily-striped weave was growing.
    It was really odd and marvellous, thought Lisa as she watched the blunt, fast-moving fingers, how folk of different nations and creeds become close and friendly when confined to a ship. They unfolded their life stories and helped each other, well knowing that at the end of the trip they would all go their separate ways.
    Having done more than enough moralizing for one morning, Lisa went off to wash her hands and find a hat. Nancy had left a note in the cabin which read, “I’m not going to church, I’m going to Sunday School in the nursery.” Lisa worried for a minute; she herself was responsible for Nancy’s quiet self-possession, but it still gave her qualms.
    She approached the lounge alone, her knees surprisingly wobbly and a queer warmth in her veins. The place had been transformed. The chairs, most of them easies, stood in row ’ s down the centre, and the majority of them were occupied. On one side of the lounge were the stewards and stewardesses, lined up as if for inspection, and on the other the officers and crew made a neat array. The pianist, also in uniform, sat at the grand piano, and as Lisa slipped into her seat, which was somewhere near the middle of the congregation, he began to play a hymn.
    The atmosphere calmed Lisa, so that when Captain Kennard took his place behind the table draped with the Union Jack and the flag of South Africa, she knew a deep content and a sort of pride. The service he conducted was brief and simple.
    There came the final, familiar hymn and soon they were dispersing. Lisa reached one of the wide exits at the same time as Mark. She took off her hat and looked up at, him. “It was a lovely service,” she said.
    “Thanks. Perhaps you were in the mood, for it. Did you come alone?”
    “Nancy, for some reason, decided on Sunday School.”
    “I was the reason,” he said, the ghost of a smile playing about his chiselled mouth. “I came upon her reading, and we had a brief chat. I noticed she had had to be bandaged again.”
    Crimson petals flowered in her cheeks. She was vexed with herself, not knowing that there is nothing more attractive than a flush upon clear pale skin.
    “It was a large dressing hiding a very small graze. Most of the children have had tumbles.”
    “Some of the adults, too,” he, said enigmatically. He bowed. “I have work to do, so perhaps you’ll pardon me, Miss Maxwell.”
    Lisa found Nancy making guarded conversation with a girl a year or two older than herself, and deemed it wise to leave her there. She wandered on to where two seamen were inspecting the faucets which filled the swimming pool. The sun on her back as she leant on the safety rail and watched the first trickles of water over the white tiling was warm and teasing. She had examined the marked map on the wall near the purser’s office and discovered that t he ship was heading for the channel between Madeira and the Canaries. Early tomorrow,