hand, instead of standing at the helm is amorously amusing himself with Ulla.

Next morning, the yacht having lost its mooring runs aground off shore of an island. Tony escapes his cabin for the island in the confusion-in their search for Tony, Aldo and Ulla go in one direction, Mudy and Paula in another, among the cliffs of the island. Mudy and Paula have a fleeting encounter with a fisherman, from whom they make a purchase, the two others discover Tony together with a young peasant girl; a different Tony, a Tony who speaks and smiles.

Aldo suggests a plan to bring the girl on board to see if she will succeed with Tony where Ulla failed. On board the young peasant girl assists to get the yacht back in deeper water, they then ply her with drink in preparation of getting her ready for Tony. The relationship between the two young people is only a friendly one, however, which at times has poetic overtones.

When the fisherman arrives on the yacht with an enormous fish, Aldo and the three women realize, from different pieces of information each of them has, that the island is deserted apart from its two inhabitants, husband and wife. All they have to do, therefore, is to entertain the fisherman and prevent him from discovering that his wife is on board. Paula volunteers to see to this, with the amused complaisance of her husband, offering herself to the man; intoxicating him, first with sex; then with whiskey and finally, with Aldo's collaboration, with dreams of wealth. Everything would have been perfect had not the young peasant woman suddenly appeared on deck. At first her husband does not recognize her for Paula and Ulla have dressed her, and made her up almost like themselves. But immediately afterwards, realizing who it is, he insults her and would take her away with him if Mudy did not ruthlessly reveal to the young woman that her husband has made love to Paula; and to this there is the cruel and realistic testimony of a tape recorder.

The young woman becomes enraged and flings herself at her husband. At Mudy's order, however, the two are separated, and while Aldo, Paula and Ulla begin soothing the husband to calm him down, Mudy takes the young wife away with her. It is easy for Mudy to convince, almost hypnotize the young peasant woman; her theories on relations between human beings; her decided difficutt words; her persuasive voice; almost intoxicate the girl, worse than alcohol. In her mental intoxication Mudy plants the young woman in her son Tony's cabin, then rushes up to the television set-waiting for the miraculous event in which not even she herself believes. The presence of the fisherman, drunk and now a little more than an animal with only glimmerings of reason, prevents Mudy and Aldo from watching Tony's cabin.

Suddenly they see that the young woman is naked, in the bed, in an attitude of abandonment. Has she had an orgasm, or is she asleep? Both perhaps? In any case her absolute immobility and the ambiguous attitude of Tony, worry Mudy. Aldo goes to the cabin and discovers the horrible blue marks that Tony's hands have left as they strangled her. He carries the body to another cabin. What is to be done? Mudy is too upset to think and decide - Aldo too weak and frightened.

The only one who can think clearly is Paula, she will see to everything, but Mudy must give her husband and her the oil concession. Mudy, her personality and authority shattered, agrees.

Paula returns on deck, hesitates, but then ambition prevails, she aims the gun and kills the fisherman, the island is deserted, the two of them will be put in their boat with a box of dynamite to be blown up with the appearance of an accident while fishing with illegal means. The boat explodes, everything seems over, the deck is washed, an attempt at blackmail by Ulla is defeated by Paula's skillful dialectics; in the shadow of Paula, the new queen; Ulla and Aldo lie down to dreams of future riches. Mudy is at the helm, sorrowful and discouraged, her son goes to her- she tries to caress him, and for the first time he allows her to do so.

The caress becomes more insistent, more emotional. Tony responds, putting his arm around his mother's waist. The caress becomes an embrace, the embrace a kiss that slowly approaches the the forbidden limits of incestuous relations between a corrupt mother and a warped son. As the embrace becomes warmer and more excited, suddenly, remembering perhaps, the pleasure he had felt in strangling the young peasant girl; Tony squeezes Mudy's neck, harder and harder, leaving her like a broken doll. The woman's lifeless body slides to the cabin deck. Tony sits in her place and with trembling hands at the helm races the yacht towards a hell which the three young people on deck, happy and filled with hope of riches, are far from suspecting.