He was silent for a few moments, probably carrying out a rapid mental survey of the physical condition of cast and crew, then he said: I must admit that I'm a bit worried about our people. I wonder if you'd mind having a look over them, just a quick check', Health's a damn sight more important than any profit-hahl profit, in those days!-that we might make from the wretched film. As a doctor I'm sure You wholeheartedly agree."

"Of course," I said. "Right away." Otto had to have something that had made him the household name that he had become in the past twenty years and one had to admire this massive and wholly inadmirable hypocrisy that was clearly part of it. He had me all ways. I had said that seasickness alone did not kill so that if I were to state categorically that some member or members of his cast or crew were in no condition to withstand any further punishment from the seas he would insist on proof of the existence of some disease which, in conjunction with seasickness, might be potentially lethal, a proof that, in the first place, would have been very difficult for me to adduce in light of the limited examination facilities available to me aboard ship and, in the second place, would have been impossible anyhow for every single member of cast and crew had been subjected to a rigorous insurance medical before leaving Britain: if I gave a clean bill of health to all, then Otto would press on with all speed for Bear Island, regardless of the sufferings of "our people" about whom he professed to be so worried, thereby effecting a considerable saving in time and money: and, in the remote event of any of them inconsiderately dying upon our hands, why, then, as the man who had given the green light, I was the one in the dock.