While going for a furtive stroll on the deck, Rumpole muses, applying poetic license to Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," using two different sections to suit his situation. The original sections are, "Like one, that on a lonesome road Doth walk in fear and dread, And having once turned round walks on, And turns no more his head; Because he knows, a frightful fiend Doth close behind him tread" "Swiftly, swiftly flew the ship, Yet she sailed softly too: Sweetly, sweetly blew the breeze-- On me alone it blew."
In his lecture, Howard Swainton refers to a murder case involving a steward on an ocean liner who was tried for killing a passenger and pushing her out of a porthole. He is talking about the case of James Camb, convicted in 1948 of murdering Gay Gibson on board the SS Durban Castle.