The Wreck of the Mary Deare

PART THREE THE MINKIES

'Sea Witch! Ahoy! Ahoy, Sea Witch!'

Gulls wheeled, screaming, and my voice came back to me, a lonely shout in the drizzling rain. The yacht lay motionless in the crater of the cove, the reflection of her black topsides shattered every now and then as cat's-paws of wind riffled the mirror-surface of the water. The waves of a swell broke in the entrance and, all round, the hills loomed ghostly and grey in the mist, all colour lost, their grass slopes dropping to the dirty white of the chalk cliffs. There wasn't a soul about.

'Ahoy! Sea Witch!' A figure moved on the deck, a splash of yellow oilskins; the clatter of oars and then the dinghy was coming to meet me. It grounded with a crunch on the wet shingle and I climbed in and Mike rowed me out. I was relieved to find that I didn't have to tell him about the Enquiry; he had followed it all in the newspapers. But once we were on board with the dinghy made fast and my gear stowed, he began to ask questions — what had happened to Patch, why hadn't he turned up at the Court this morning? 'You know they've issued a warrant for his arrest?'

'A warrant? How do you know?' I asked. I don't know why, but it shocked me. It seemed so pointless.

'It was on the six o'clock news.'

'Did it say what the charge was?'

'No. But they've got police checks on all the roads leading out of Southampton and they're keeping watch on the ports.'

We discussed it during the meal. There were only the two of us. Ian had gone home to visit his people. Mike was to phone him as soon as we were ready to start operations again, but he hadn't done so yet because the latest forecast was wind moderate north-westerly, backing westerly later and becoming fresh, with the outlook unsettled. The thing that puzzled Mike most about the whole business was why Patch hadn't told the Court about Dellimare's offer. Not having been present at the Enquiry, but only reading the reports, it was natural, I suppose, that he should still retain a vivid impression of Patch's visit, and over coffee he suddenly reminded me of the package I had been given at Paimpol. 'I suppose it couldn't contain some vital piece of evidence?' he said.

Until that moment I had forgotten all about it. 'If it had,' I said, 'he would have asked me to produce it.'

'Have you still got it?'

I nodded and got up and went into the after cabin. It was still there in my brief-case and I took it through into the saloon. Mike had cleared a space on the table and I reached for a knife and cut the string, feeling as I had done during the war on the occasions when I had had to deal with the effects of some poor devil who'd been killed.

'Looks like a book of some sort,' Mike said. 'It couldn't be the log, could it?'

'No,' I answered. 'The log was in Court.'

Inside the brown paper wrapping was an envelope. The name /. C. B. Dellimare was typed on it and below, in blue pencil, was scrawled the one word Collect. The envelope had been ripped open, the tear crossing the stamped impress of a City bank. I had a vague hope then that perhaps Mike was right — that it was some sort of an account book belonging to Dellimare or the Company, something that would reveal a financial motive. And then I slid the contents on to the table and stared incredulously.

Lying amongst the supper things was a thick wad of five pound notes.

Mike was gazing at the pile, open-mouthed with astonishment. He'd never seen so much cash in his life; neither of us had. I split it between us. 'Count it!' I said.

For several seconds there wasn't a sound in the saloon except the crackle of those Bank of England notes. And when we had totalled it all up, it came to exactly £5,000, and Mike looked up at me. 'No wonder he didn't want to bring it out through the Customs himself,' he said. And then, after a pause, he added, 'Do you think he accepted Dellimare's offer after all?'

But I shook my head. 'If he'd accepted, why put out the fire, why beach her on the Minkies?' I was remembering the state of that cabin when I'd gone in to help him get out the rubber dinghy. 'No, he must have taken it afterwards — after the man was dead.'

'But why?'

'God knows!' I shrugged my shoulders. There were so many things I didn't understand. I gathered the notes together and put them back in the envelope. 'If this were his payment for wrecking the ship,' I said, 'he'd have been down here to collect it the instant he landed in England.'

'Yes, that's true.' Mike took the envelope from me, frowning and turning it over in his hand. 'Odd that he should have failed to collect it. It's almost as though he'd forgotten all about it.'

I nodded slowly. And then I went up on deck and lit the riding light. It wasn't really necessary; we were the only boat in the anchorage, and nobody was likely to come in on such a reeking night. But it gave me something to do. I lit a cigarette. It was quite dark now and we lay in a little pool of light, hemmed in by the iridescent curtain of the drizzle. The wind seemed to have died away. The water was very black and still. No ripples slapped against the topsides. The only sound was the faint murmur of wavelets on the beach. I stood there, smoking in the feeble glow of the riding light and wondering what the hell I was going to do with all that money. If I took it to the authorities, I should have to account for my possession of it. Or should I send it anonymously to form the basis of a fund for the dependants of those who had lost their lives? I certainly couldn't send it to his mother, and I was damned if I was going to return it to the Dellimare Company.

I stayed there, thinking about it, until my cigarette was a sodden butt. I threw it in the water then and went below. Mike was checking over one of the aqualungs. 'Care for a drink?' I asked him.

He nodded. 'Good idea.'

I got out the bottle and the glasses.

I didn't say anything. I didn't want to talk about it. I just sat there with my drink and a cigarette, going over the whole thing in my mind. We sat for a long time in silence.

I don't know who heard it first, but we were suddenly staring at each other, listening. It came from the bows, a sort of splashing sound. 'What is it?' Mike had got to his feet. The splashing ceased and then footsteps sounded on the deck above our heads. They came slowly aft, whilst we stood waiting, frozen into immobility. They reached the hatch. The cover was slid quietly back and bare feet appeared, followed by dripping trouser legs and then the body of a man all sodden with water; he was standing suddenly at the foot of the ladder, blinking in the light, his face pale as death, his black hair plastered to his skull and water streaming from his clothes on to the grating.

'Good God!' I breathed. I was too astonished to say anything else. He was shivering a bit and his teeth were chattering, and I stood there, staring at him as though he were a ghost. 'If somebody would lend me a towel…' Patch began to strip off his wet clothes.

'So Higgins was right,' I said.

'Higgins?'

'He said you'd make for Sea Witch.' And then I added, 'What have you come here for? I thought you were dead.' God! I almost wished he were as I realised the impossible position he'd put me in. 'What the devil made you come here?'

He ignored my outburst. It was as though he hadn't heard or had shut his mind to it. Mike had found him a towel and he began to dry himself, standing naked, his hard, sinewy body still brown with the heat of Aden. He was shivering and he asked for a cigarette. I gave him one and he lit it and started to dry his hair. 'If you think we're going to slip you over to France, you're wrong,' I said. 'I won't do it.'

He looked at me then, frowning a little. 'France?' The muscles of his jaw tightened. 'It's the Minkies I want to get to,' he said. 'You promised to take me there. You offered me your boat.' A sudden urgency was in his voice.

I stared at him. Surely to God he didn't still want to go out to the Minkies? 'That was last night,' I said.

'Last night — tonight… what difference does it make?' The pitch of his voice had risen. He had stopped towelling himself and suddenly there was doubt in his face. It was as though he had come here in the certainty that when he had arrived everything would be all right, and suddenly he knew it wasn't.

'You probably don't know it,' I said, trying to soften the blow, 'but there's a warrant out for your arrest,'

He showed no surprise. It was as though he had expected it. 'I was walking for a long time last night,' he said, 'trying to make up my mind. In the end I knew I'd never reach the Mary Deare if I went into that Court this morning. So I came here. I walked from Swanage and I've been up on the hills half the day, waiting for it to get dark.'

'Have you seen a paper?' I asked him.

'No. Why?'

'The Mary Deare has been located and a French salvage company is endeavouring to refloat her. A full examination is to be made of the wreck, and if you think there's any point—'

'A full examination.' He seemed shocked. 'When?' And then he added, 'It was announced in Court, was it?'

'Yes.'

'Who told them where the ship was. Did Gundersen?'

'Gundersen? No. It was the Harbour Master at St Helier reporting to the Receiver of Wreck. I imagine a Jersey Island fisherman sighted the wreck. He must have seen the salvage people working on her.'

That's all right.' He seemed relieved. 'But we'll have to hurry.' He picked up the towel. 'Have you got a drink?'

I reached into the locker and got him the rum bottle and a glass. His hands shook as he poured it out. 'I'll need some clothes, too.' He knocked the drink back at one gulp and stood gasping for breath. 'Now that they know there's going to be an official examination of the boat, we'll have to move fast.'

Mike had produced some clothes out of a locker. He put them on the table and Patch picked up a vest. 'How soon can you leave?' he asked.

I stared at him. 'Don't you understand?' I said. 'There's a warrant out for your arrest. I can't possibly take you.'

He was halfway into the vest and he stopped, his eyes fixed on me. For the first time, I think, he realised that we weren't going to take him. 'But I was relying on you.' His tone was suddenly desperate. And then he added angrily, 'It was only yesterday you offered to take me. It was the one chance and—'

'But you didn't accept it,' I said. 'You told me it was too late.'

'So it was.'

'If it was too late then,' I said, 'it's certainly too late now.'

'How could I accept your offer? They were going to arrest me. I was quite certain of that, and if I'd gone back into that Court this morning—'

'But you didn't.'

'No.'

'Why not? Can't you see you've put yourself in an impossible situation.' I leaned forward, determined to get at the truth. 'You've got the police hunting for you now — everybody against you. What in God's name made you decide to run for it?'

He pulled the vest down over his head and came to the edge of the table, leaning down over it. 'Something I learned last night — something that made me realise I had to get out to the Mary Deare as soon as possible.' There was silence for a moment, whilst we looked at him, waiting. And then he said, 'That salvage company — it's under contract to the Dellimare Company.'

'How do you know?' It seemed the wildest piece of guesswork. 'How can you possibly know when it's only just been announced that a salvage company is working on the wreck?'

'I'll tell you.' He began to get into the rest of Mike's clothes. 'Last night, when I got back to my rooms — I went up and got my coat. I was going for a walk — to think things over. And outside — I found Janet — Miss Taggart — waiting for me there in the street. She'd come…' He gave a quick shrug. 'Well, it doesn't matter, but it made a difference. I knew she believed in me then, and after that I searched the pubs all through the dock area. I was certain I'd find Burrows in one of them. He couldn't keep away from the booze so long as he had money. And he had money all right. I found him down in the old part of the town, and he told me the whole thing — drunk and truculent and full of confidence. He hated my guts. That's why he told me about the salvage company. He was gloating, knowing I'd never prove anything after they'd sunk her. And all because I'd told him he was incompetent and that I'd see to it he never had charge of an engine-room again.'

He paused and took a quick drink. The wind was rising, and in the silence the sound of it whining through the rigging was suddenly loud. Then he pulled on Mike's sweater and came and sat down opposite me. He was still shivering. 'Higgins must have worked out the course of our drift for Gundersen. Anyway, they were convinced she was on the Minkies and they chartered a boat and went over there. And when they'd found her, Gundersen signed up this French outfit to salvage her.'

'But what difference does that make to you?' Mike asked. 'It's perfectly natural for the Dellimare Company to want to salvage her.'

Patch turned on him, his lips drawn back in;a smile. 'They're not going to salvage her,' he said. 'They're going to have the French pull her off and then they're going to sink her in deep water.'

I saw Mike looking at him as though he were crazy and I said, 'Do you seriously imagine they could get away with that?''

'Why not?' he demanded.

'But no salvage company—'

'It's nothing to do with the salvage company. But the contract is for refloating and towing the hulk to Southampton, and Higgins and Burrows will be on board the tow. Gundersen will insist on that. And with those two on board, it's simple. Burrows has only got to open the sea cocks and the Mary Deare will quietly founder at the end of her tow line. They'll wait till they're past the Casquets, I imagine, and sink her in the Hurd Deep. She'll go down in sixty fathoms or more, and everybody will think it a stroke of bad luck and put it down to the state of the hull after being pounded for a couple of months on the Minkies.' He turned and stared at me. 'Now perhaps you understand. I've got to get out to her, Sands. It's my only hope. I must have proof.'

'Of what?' Mike demanded.

He looked from one to the other of us, a quick, uncertain movement of the eyes. 'I must know for certain that there was an explosion in those for'ard holds.'

'I should have thought that was a matter for the authorities,' Mike said.

'The authorities? No. No, I must be certain.'

'But surely,' I said, 'if you went to the authorities and told them the truth… if you told them about Dellimare's offer—'

'I can't do that.' He was staring at me and all the vitality in his eyes seemed to have burned itself out.

'Why not?' I asked.

'Why not?' His eyes dropped and he fiddled with his glass. 'You were with me on that ship,' he whispered. 'Surely to God you must have guessed by now.' And then he added quickly. 'Don't ask me any more questions. Just take me out there. Afterwards…' He hesitated. 'When I know for certain—' He didn't finish, but looked directly at me and said, 'Well? Will you take me?'

'I'm sorry,' I said. 'But you must realise it's impossible now.'

'But—' He reached out his hand and gripped hold of my arm. 'For Christ's sake! Don't you understand? They'll refloat her and then they'll sink her out in deep water. And after that I'll never know…' He had a beaten look and I was sorry for him. And then a spark of anger showed in his eyes. 'I thought you'd more guts, Sands,' he said, and his voice quivered. 'I thought you'd take a chance — you and Duncan. God damn it! You said you'd take me.' He was coming up again, the muscles of his arm tightening, his body no longer sagging… unbelievably there was strength in his voice again as he said, 'You're not scared, are you, just because there's a warrant out for my arrest?'

'No,' I said. 'It isn't only that.'

'What is it then?'

I reached across the table for the envelope. 'This for one thing,' I said and I threw it down on the table in front of him so that the fivers spilled out of it and lay there, white and 'crisp, black-inked like funeral cards. 'You let me bring that back for you, not knowing what it was.' I watched him staring down at them uncomfortably and I went on, 'Now suppose you tell us the truth — why you took that money, why you didn't tell the Court about Dellimare's offer.' I hesitated, still staring at him, but he wouldn't meet my gaze. 'You took that money from his cabin after he was dead, didn't you?'

'Yes.' His voice sounded weary, exhausted.

'Why?'

'Why?' He lifted his eyes then, staring straight at me, and they were suddenly the eyes of the man I had first met on the Mary Deare. 'Because it was there, I suppose. I didn't reckon it belonged to him any more… Oh, I don't know.' He was frowning, as though trying to concentrate on something that didn't interest him. He seemed to be lost in some private hell of his own creation. 'I suppose I was a fool to take it. It was dangerous. I realised that afterwards. But at the time… well, I was broke, and when you know you've got to fight a company to prove you did your best to bring a ship home that they didn't want brought home…' He let it go at that, his mind still on something else.

'Is that why you didn't tell the Court about Dellimare's offer?' I asked.

'No.' He got suddenly to his feet. 'No, it wasn't that.' He stood for a moment looking out through the open hatch and then he came back to the table. 'Don't you understand yet?' His eyes were fixed on my face. 'I killed him.'

'Dellimare?' I stared at him in shocked silence.

'He didn't go overboard,' he said. And then, after a pause, he added, 'His body is still there on the Mary Deare.'

I was so staggered I could think of nothing to say. And then suddenly he began to pour out the whole story.

It had happened on the night of the gale, just after the fire in the radio shack had been reported to him. He had gone out on to the wing of the bridge, to see whether the fire could be tackled from there, and he'd seen Dellimare making his way aft along the upper deck. 'I'd warned him I'd kill him if I found him trying to monkey with the ship. There was no reason for him to be going aft.' He had rushed down from the bridge then and had reached the after end of the deck just in time to see Dellimare disappearing through the inspection hatch of Number Four hold. 'I should have slammed the lid shut on him and left it at that.' But instead he'd followed Dellimare down into the hold and had found him crouched by the for'ard bulkhead, his arm thrust down into the gap between the top case of the cargo and the hull plates. 'I can remember his face,' he breathed. 'Startled and white as hell in the light of my torch. I believe he knew I was going to kill him.'

Patch's voice trembled now as he relived the scene that had been pent-up inside him too long. Dellimare had straightened himself with a cry, holding some sort of cylinder in his hand, and Patch had moved in with a cold dynamic fury and had smashed his fist into the man's face, driving his head back on to the steel of the hull, crashing it against an angle iron. 'I wanted to crush him, smash him, obliterate him. I wanted to kill him.' He was breathing heavily, standing at the end of the table, staring at us with the light shining down on his head deepening the shadows of his face. 'There were things happening to the ship that night — the for'ard holds flooding, the fire in the radio shack, and then that little rat going down into the hold… and all the time a gale blowing hurricane force. My God! What would you have done? I was the captain. The ship was in hellish danger. And he wanted her wrecked. I'd warned him…' He stopped abruptly and wiped his forehead.

Then he went on, more quietly, describing what had happened after Dellimare had crumpled up, lying in a heap on one of the aero engine cases with blood glistening red in his pale thin hair. He hadn't realised he'd killed him — not then. But the anger had drained out of him and somehow he had managed to get him up the vertical ladder to the deck. He had nearly been knocked down by a sea that had come surging inboard, but he had made the ladder to the upper deck. That way he wouldn't meet any of the crew. But when he had almost reached the bridge housing the lights shining out of the after portholes showed him Dellimare's head and he knew then that the man was dead. 'His neck was broken.' He said it flatly, without emotion.

'But surely you could have said he'd had an accident — fallen down the hold or something?' I suggested. I was remembering the coal dust and the sound of shifting coal in the bunker, knowing what was coming.

He reached for the packet and lit a cigarette. Then he sat down opposite me again. 'I panicked, I suppose,' he said. 'Poor devil, he wasn't a pretty sight — all the back of his head smashed in.' He was seeing the blood and the lolling head again, and the sweat glistened on his forehead. 'I decided to dump him over the side.'

But he had set the body down to examine it and when he bent to pick it up, he'd seen Higgins coming out through the starboard doorway from the bridge-housing. He hadn't dared carry the body to the rail then. But just beside him the hatch of the port bunkering chute stood open for some strange reason and, without thinking, he pitched the body down the chute and slammed the lid on it. 'It wasn't until hours later that I realised what I'd done.' He took a pull at his cigarette, dragging at it, his hands trembling. 'Instead of getting shot of the man, I'd hung his body round my neck like a millstone.' His voice had fallen to a whisper and for a moment he sat in silence. Then he added, 'When you came on board, I'd slung a rope ladder down into that bunker and was in there, trying to get at the body. But by then the rolling of the ship had buried him under tons of coal.'

There was a long silence after that and I could hear the wind in the rigging, a high, singing note. The anchor chain was grating on the shingle as the boat yawed. And then, speaking to himself, his head lowered: 'I killed him, and I thought it was justice. I thought he deserved to die. I was convinced I was saving the lives of thirty-odd men, my own included.'

And then he looked at me suddenly. 'Well, I've told you the truth now.'

I nodded. I knew this was the truth. I knew now why he had to get back there, why he couldn't reveal Dellimare's offer to the Court. 'You should have gone to the police,' I said, 'as soon as you reached England.'

'The police?' He was staring at me, white-faced. 'How could I?'

'But if you'd told them about the offer Dellimare made you…'

'Do you think they'd have believed me? It was only my word. I'd no proof. How could I possibly justify…' His gaze switched to the envelope lying on the table. 'You see this money?' He reached out and grabbed up a handful of the fivers. 'He offered it to me, the whole lot. He had it there in his cabin and he spilled the whole five thousand out in front of me — out of that envelope that's lying there; and I picked it up and threw it in his face and told him I'd see him in hell before I did his dirty work for him. That's when I warned him that I'd kill him if he tried to lose me the ship.' He paused, breathing heavily. 'And then that gale and the for'ard holds suddenly making water and the fire in the radio shack… when I found him down in that hold—' He was still staring at me and his features were haggard and drawn, the way I'd first seen them. 'I was so sure I was justified — at the time,' he whispered.

'But it was an accident,' Mike said. 'Damn it, you didn't mean to kill him.'

He shook his head slowly, pushing his hand up through his hair. 'No, that's not true,' he said. 'I did mean to kill him. I was mad at the thought of what he'd tried to make me do — what he was doing to the ship. The first command I'd had in ten years…' He was looking down at his glass again. 'I thought when I put her on the Minkies, that I could get back to her, get rid of his body and prove that he was trying to sink her—' He was staring at me again. 'Can't you understand, Sands… I had to know I was justified.'

'But it was still an accident,' I said gently. 'You could have gone to the authorities…' I hesitated, and then added, 'There was a time when you were prepared to — when you altered course for Southampton after rounding Ushant.'

'I still had the ship then,' he muttered, and I realised then what his ship meant to a man like Patch. So long as he'd had the Mary Deare's deck under his feet and he was in command he'd still had confidence in himself, in the Tightness of his actions.

He reached out his hand for the bottle. 'Mind if I have another drink?' His tone was resigned.

I watched him pour it, understanding now how desperate was his need to justify himself. I remembered how he'd reacted to the sight of the crew huddled like sheep around Higgins in the office at Paimpol. His first command in ten years and the whole thing repeating itself. It was an appalling twist of fate. 'When did you feed last?' I asked him.

'I don't know. It doesn't matter.' He swallowed some of the drink, his hand still trembling, his body slack.

'I'll get you some food.' I got up and went through into the galley. The stew was still hot in the pressure-cooker and I put some on a plate and set it in front of him. And then I asked Mike to come up on deck.

The freshening wind had thinned the mist, so that the hills were dim, humped-up shapes, their shadows thrown round the cove and falling away to the narrow gap of the entrance. I stood there for a moment, wondering how I was going to persuade him. But Mike had guessed what was in my mind. 'You want Sea Witch, is that it, John?'

I nodded. 'For four days,' I said. 'Five at the most. That's all.'

He was looking at me, his face pale in the faint glow of the riding light. 'Surely it would be better to put the whole thing in the hands of the authorities?' I didn't say anything. I didn't know how to make him understand the way I felt. And after a while, he said, 'You believe him then — about the Dellimare Company planning to sink the ship in deep water?'

'I don't know,' I murmured. I wasn't sure. 'But if you accept that the cargo has been switched, that the whole thing was planned…' I hesitated, remembering how scared Higgins had been. If Higgins had started that fire and knocked Patch out and panicked the crew… 'Yes,' I said. 'I think I do believe him.'

Mike was silent for some time then. He had turned away from me and was staring out towards the entrance. At length he said, 'You're sure about this, John? It's a hell of a risk you're taking for the fellow.'

'I'm quite sure,' I said.

He nodded. 'Okay. Then the sooner we get under way the better.'

'You don't have to come,' I said.

He looked at me with that slow, rather serious smile of his. 'Sea Witch and I go together,' he said. 'You don't get the one without the other.' He glanced up at the masthead. The burgee hadn't been taken down and it showed the wind westerly. 'We'll be able to sail it.' He was thinking we'd make better time under sail, for our engine was geared for power, not speed.

Down below I found Patch leaning back, the glass in his hand, smoking a cigarette. He hadn't touched the food. His eyes were half closed and his head lolled. He didn't look up as we entered.

'We're getting under way,' I told him.

He didn't move.

'Leave him,' Mike said. 'We can manage. I'll go and start the engine.' He was already pulling on a sweater.

But Patch had heard. His head came slowly round. 'Where are you making for — Southampton?' His voice had no life in it.

'No,' I said. 'We're taking you out to the Minkies.'

He stared at me. 'The Minkies.' He repeated it slowly, his fuddled mmd not taking it in. 'You're going out to the Mary Deare?' And then he was on his feet, the glass crashing to the floor, his body jarring the table. 'You mean it?' He lurched across to me, catching hold of me with both his hands. 'You're not saying that just to keep me quiet. You mean it, don't you?'

'Yes,' I said. 'I mean it.' It was like trying to convince a child.

'My God!' he said. 'My God, I thought I was finished.' He was suddenly laughing, shaking me, gripping Mike's hand. 'I think I'd have gone mad,' he said. 'The uncertainty. Ten years and you get a ship and you're in command again, and then… You don't know what it's like when you suddenly lose confidence in yourself.' He pushed his hands up through his hair, his eyes alight and eager. I'd never seen him like that before. He turned and scrabbled up a whole pile of fivers that were lying on the table. 'Here. You take them.' He thrust them into my hand. 'I don't want them. They're yours now.' He wasn't drunk, just a little crazed — the reaction of nerves strung too taut.

I pushed the notes away. 'We'll talk about that later,' I said. 'Can you navigate into the Minkies without a chart?'

His mind seemed to snap suddenly into place. He hesitated — a seaman considering a nautical problem.. 'You mean from Les Sauvages to the Mary Deare?'

'Yes.'

He nodded slowly. He was frowning, his mind groping for the bearings. 'Yes. Yes, I'm sure I can remember. It's only a question of the tide. You've got a nautical almanac?'

I nodded and it was settled. I had charts for the Channel. All I lacked was the large-scale chart of the Minkies. 'We'll hoist sail in here, before we get the hook up,' I said. I reached for my monkey jacket and slipped it on, and then we went up on deck and got the covers off the main and mizzen. I sent Mike to get the engine going whilst Patch and I put the battens in and hoisted the mainsail, tacking it down so that the luff was set up taut. The starter whined and the engine caught, throbbing at the deck under my feet. Sea Witch was suddenly alive. We hoisted the dinghy on board then and the ship bustled with activity as we got her ready for sea.

It was whilst I was up for'ard, hanking the big yankee jib on to the forestay, that I heard it — the beat of an engine coming in from the sea. I stood there for a moment, listening, and then I extinguished the riding light and ran aft, shouting to Mike to get the hook up. It might be just another yacht coming in, but it wasn't the night for yachtsmen to be risking their boats, feeling their way into a place like Lulworth, and I had no desire to be caught in here with Patch on board. We were outside the law and I wanted to get clear of the cove without being seen. I switched off the lights below and sent Patch for'ard to help Mike, and then I was at the wheel and the chain was coming in with a run as I manoeuvred Sea Witch up to her anchor on the engine.

The sound of the boat coming in was quite clear now, the beat of its engine throbbing back from the cliffs. The white of her masthead light appeared in the gap, bobbing to the swell. The green eye of a starboard light showed, and then the red as she turned in.

'Up and down,' Mike called.

'Leave it there,' I called to him. 'Hoist the yankee.'

The big jib floated up, a blur of white in the darkness. I hauled in the sheet and Sea Witch began to glide through the water as I swung her bows towards the gap. The in-coming boat was right in the entrance now. 'What do you think it is — the police?' Mike asked as he came back aft to help trim the sheets.

'I don't know,' I said. 'Get the mizzen hoisted.' For an instant I saw Patch's face, a white glimmer in the darkness as he stared seaward, and then he went aft to help Mike. I was keeping the engine throttled right back so that they wouldn't hear it above the noise of their own engine, hoping I could slip out without their seeing us in the darkness.

There wasn't a great deal of wind in the cove, but we were moving, steadily gathering way. The other boat came in slowly. She had a spotlight and she flashed it on the rocks by the entrance, holding a middle course between them. And then she was inside and we were bearing straight down on her. Under sail I had no chance of giving her a wide berth. I just had to hold my course and hope that she'd turn away.

But she held straight on and we passed her so close that I could see the whole shape of her, a big sea-going motor boat with flared bow and a long sloping deckhouse. I even caught a glimpse of the man in the wheelhouse, a dim figure peering at us out of the night.

And then their spotlight stabbed the darkness, momentarily blinding me, picking out the triangle of our mainsail in glaring white, and a voice hailed us.

I think he was asking the name of our ship, but the words were lost in the roar of the engine as I opened the throttle wide, and we went steaming out through the gap. The sails flapped wildly as we came under the lee of the cliffs and the boat heaved to the swell. Then we were through and the sails filled. Sea Witch heeled, the water creaming back from her bows and sliding white past the cockpit as she surged forward under the thrust of power and sail.

'She's turning,' Mike shouted down to me.

I glanced over my shoulder. The motor boat's masthead steaming light and the red and green of her navigation lights were showing in the black outline of the land behind us. She was coming out through the gap.

Mike tumbled into the cockpit, hardening in the main sheet for me as I headed south on a broad reach. With the ship blacked-out — not even a binnacle light — I sailed by the wind, my head turned every now and then over my shoulder to watch the motor boat. Her masthead light began to dance as she met the swell in the entrance, and then it was swinging steadily, rhythmically as she pitched to the sea, and the red and green of her navigation lights remained fixed on us like two eyes. Her spotlight stabbed the darkness, showing glimpses of black, lumpy water as it probed the night.

'If we'd got away half an hour earlier…' Patch was staring aft.

'And if we'd been five minutes later,' Mike snapped, 'you'd be under arrest.' His voice sounded on edge and I knew he didn't like it any more than I did. 'I'll go and get the anchor on board.' He disappeared for'ard and I sent Patch to help him.

It was cold in the cockpit now that we were under way. But I don't think I noticed it. I was wondering about the boat behind us. It had gained on us slightly and the spotlight, reaching out to us across the tumbled waters, lit our sails with a ghostly radiance. It didn't probe any longer, but was held on us, so that I knew they'd picked us out. The drizzle had slackened again and our white sails made us conspicuous.

Up for'ard Mike was coiling down the halyards, whilst Patch lashed the anchor. They came aft together. 'John. Hadn't we better heave-to?'

'They haven't ordered you to.' Patch's voice was hard and urgent. 'You don't have to do anything till they signal instructions.' He was back at sea again and a man doesn't easily give up in his own element. He came down into the cockpit. His face had tightened so that there was strength in it again. 'Well, are you going on or not?' It wasn't exactly a challenge, certainly not a threat, and yet the way he said it made me wonder what he'd do if I refused.

Mike jerked round, his body bunched, his quick temper flaring. 'If we want to heave-to, we will.'

The spotlight was switched off. Sudden blackness descended on us. 'I was asking Sands.' Patch's voice trembled out of the darkness.

'John and I own this boat jointly,' Mike flung out. 'We've worked and planned and slaved our guts out to have our own outfit, and we're not going to risk it all to get you out of the mess you're in.' He stepped down into the cockpit, balancing himself to the pitch of the boat. 'You've got to heave-to,' he said to me. 'That boat is gradually coming up on us and when the police find we've got Patch on board, it's going to be damned hard to prove that we weren't slipping him out of the country, especially with all that cash sculling around below.' He leaned forward, gripping hold of my shoulder. 'Do you hear me, John?' He was shouting at me above the noise of the engine. 'You've got to heave-to before that police boat comes up on us.'

'It may not be the police,' I said. I had been thinking about it all the time they'd been up for'ard. The police would have sent a patrol car. They wouldn't have come by boat.'

'If it's not the police, then who the hell is it?'

I glanced over my shoulder, wondering whether perhaps imagination hadn't got the better of reason. But there was the boat, still following us. The white steaming light was swaying wildly, showing the slender stick of her mast and the outline of the deckhouse. 'She certainly rolls,' I murmured.

'What's that?'

I turned to him then. 'Did you get a good look at her, Mike, as we came out?'

'Yes. Why?'

'What sort of boat was she — could you see?'

'An old Parkhurst, I should say.' Mike's training as a marine engineer had given him a quite remarkable knowledge of power craft.

'You're certain of that?'

'I think so. Yes, I'm sure she was.'

I asked him to go down below then and look up Griselda in Lloyd's Register. 'And if she's in the book and her description fits, then I'd like an estimate of her speed.'

He hesitated, glancing quickly from me to Patch, and then he disappeared for'ard towards the main hatch. 'And if it is Griselda? Patch asked.

Then she was chartered this morning,' I said. 'By somebody who was in that Court.'

The spotlight was on us again and he was staring at me. 'Are you sure?'

I nodded and I could see him working it out for himself. Sea Witch heeled to a gust of wind and I felt the drag of the prop. Spray splashed my face. And then Mike was back. 'How did you know it was Griselda he asked me.

'I was right, was I?'

'Yes — it's either Griselda or a sister ship. Fifty-foot over all. Built by Parkhurst in 1931.'

'And her top speed?'

'Hard to say. She's got two six-cylinder Parkhurst engines. But they're the original engines and it depends how they've been maintained. Flat out, I'd say she might do a little over eight knots.'

Sea Witch was heeling farther now and the Wave-tops were lopping over on to the foredeck. 'In calm water.'

'Yes, in calm water.'

The wind was rising and already the seas were beginning to break. I was thinking that in a little over two hours the tide would turn. It would be west-going then and the freshening wind would kick up a short, steep sea. It would reduce Griselda's speed by at least a knot. 'I'm standing on,' I told Mike. 'We'll try and shake them off during the night.' And then I explained about the yacht broker I had met with Hal and how Higgins had warned me. 'Higgins even guessed you'd come down to Lulworth,' I said to Patch.

'Higgins!' He turned and stared aft. The spotlight was on his face and there was something in the way his eyes shone — it might have been anger or fear or exultation; I couldn't tell. And then the spotlight was switched off and he was just a black shape standing there beside me.

'Well, if it's only the Dellimare Company—' Mike's voice sounded relieved. 'They can't do anything, can they?'

Patch swung round on him. 'You don't seem to realise…' His voice came hard and abrupt out of the darkness, the sentence bitten off short. But I had caught his mood and I looked back over my shoulder. Was it my imagination or was the motor boat nearer now? I found myself looking all round, searching for the lights of another ship. But there was nothing — only the blackness of the night and the white of the breaking wave-tops rushing at us out of the darkness.

'Well, we go on. Is that right?' I wasn't sure what I ought to do.

'You've no alternative,' Patch said.

'Haven't we?' Mike stepped down into the cockpit. 'We could run for Poole. That boat's following us and… Well, I think we should turn the whole thing over to the authorities.' His voice sounded nervous.

A wave broke against the weather bow, showering spray aft, and we heeled to a gust so that our lee decks were awash. The sea was shallower here. There were overfalls and Sea Witch pitched violently with a short, uncomfortable motion, the screw juddering under the stern and the bows slamming into the waves so that water was sluicing across the foredeck. 'For God's sake cut that engine!' Patch shouted at me. 'Can't you feel the drag of the prop?'

Mike swung round on him. 'You don't run this boat.'

'It's stopping our speed,' Patch said.

He was right. I had been conscious of it for some time. 'Switch it off, will you, Mike?' I asked.

He hesitated and then dived into the charthouse. The noise of the engine died, leaving a stillness in which the sound of the sea seemed unnaturally loud. Under sail alone, the boat merged with the elements for which she had been designed, fitting herself to the pattern of wind and wave. The movement was easier. Waves ceased to break over the foredeck.

But though Patch had been right, Mike came back out of the charthouse in a mood of blazing anger.

'You seem bloody certain we're going to try and race that boat for you,' he said. And then, turning to me, he added, Take my advice, John. Turn down-wind and head for Poole.'

'Down-wind,' Patch said, 'the motor boat will be faster than you.'

'Well, head up-wind then and make for Weymouth.'

'It's a dead beat,' I said.

And Patch added, 'Either way she'll overhaul you.'

'What's that matter?' Mike demanded. They can't do anything. They've got the law on their side. That's all. They can't do anything.'

'God Almighty!' Patch said. 'Don't you understand yet?' He leaned forward, his face thrust close to mine. 'You tell him, Sands. You've met Gundersen. You know the set-up now.' He stared at me, and then he swung round to face Mike again. 'Listen!' he said. 'Here was a plan to clean up over a quarter of a million pounds. The cargo was switched and sold to the Chinks. That part of it went all right. But all the rest went wrong. The captain refused to play his part. They tried to sink her in a gale and they failed. Higgins was left to do the job on his own and he botched it.' His voice was pitched high in the urgency of his effort to communicate what he believed. 'Can't you see it from their point of view… twelve men drowned, an old man dead, possibly murdered, and the ship herself lying out there on the Minkies. They daren't let me reach the Mary Deare. And they daren't let you reach her either. They daren't even let you get into port now — not until they've disposed of the Mary Deare.'

Mike stared at him. 'But that's fantastic,' he breathed.

'Why fantastic? They must know I'm on board. And you wouldn't have sailed if you hadn't believed my story. Imagine what they face if the truth conies out.'

Mike turned to me. 'Do you believe this, John?' His face was very pale. He sounded bewildered.

'I think we'd better try and shake them off,' I said. Patch had his own reasons for driving us on. But I knew I didn't want that boat to catch up with us in the dark.

'But good God! This is the English Channel. They can't do anything to us here.' He stared at Patch and myself, waiting for us to answer him. 'Well, what the hell can they do?' And then he looked out at the blackness that surrounded us, realising gradually that it made no difference that we were in the Channel. There were just the three of us alone in a black waste of tumbled water that spilled to white on the crests, and without another word he got the log line out of the locker and went aft to stream it astern.

'We go on then,' Patch said. The sudden relief from tension made his voice sound tired. It reminded me that he had had no sleep the night before and no food, that for days he'd been under a great strain.

Mike came back into the cockpit. 'I think we're holding them now,' he said. I glanced back at Griselda.

Her navigation lights were masked every now and then by the marching wave-tops. 'When the tide turns,' I said, 'we'll beat up to windward and see if that will shake them off.' I got up stiffly from behind the wheel. 'Will you take the first watch, Mike?' It would have to be two hours on and four off, with one man alone at the wheel and the other two on call. We were desperately short-handed for a hard sail like this. I gave him the wheel and went through into the charthouse to enter up the log.

Patch followed me in. 'Have you thought about who will be on board that motor boat?' he asked me. I shook my head, wondering what was coming, and he added, 'It won't be Gundersen, you know.'

'Who will it be then?'

'Higgins.'

'What's it matter which of them it is?' I asked. 'What are you trying to tell me?'

'Just this,' he said earnestly. 'Gundersen is a man who would only take calculated risks. But if Higgins is in control of that boat…' He stared at me, watching to see whether I had understood his point.

'You mean he's desperate?'

'Yes.' Patch looked at me for a moment. 'There's no need to tell young Duncan. If Higgins doesn't stop us before we get to that salvage tug, he's done for. When he's arrested, the others will panic. Burrows, for one, will turn Queen's evidence. You understand?' He turned away then. 'I'll go and get some food inside me.' But in the doorway he hesitated. 'I'm sorry,' he said. 'I didn't mean to land you in a thing like this.'

I finished entering up the log and turned in, fully clothed, on the charthouse bunk. But I didn't sleep much. The movement was uncomfortable, and every time I looked out through the open doorway I could see Griselda's lights bobbing in the darkness astern of us, and then I would listen to the sound of the wind in the rigging, alert for the slightest indication that it was slackening. Twice Mike had to call me out to help him winch in the sheets, and at two o'clock I took over the helm.

The tide had turned and the seas were steep and breaking. We altered course to south-west, sheeting in the sails till they were almost flat as we came on to the wind. It was cold then with the wind on our faces and the spray slatting against our oilskins as Sea Witch beat to windward, bucking the seas and busting the wave-tops open, water cascading from her bows.

Behind us, Griselda's navigation lights followed our change of course and the white of her masthead light danced crazily in the night as she wallowed and pitched and rolled in our wake. But a power boat doesn't fit herself to the pattern of the water the way a boat under sail does and gradually the red and green lights dipped more frequently below the level of the waves, until at last all we could see was her steaming light dancing like a will-o'-the-wisp on the wave-tops.

Mike's voice reached out to me through the noise of wind and sea: 'We've got them now.' He was excited. 'If we go about…' The rest of it was lost to me, whipped away by the wind, drowned in the crash of a wave bursting against the bows. But I knew what was in his mind. If we went on to the other tack, sailing north-west, instead of south-west, there was a good chance that they wouldn't notice our change of course, even though the night had become brilliant with stars. And once clear of them we could turn downwind, get to the east of them and make for the Alderney Race.

There is no doubt in my mind now that Mike was right and, had I done as he suggested, the disaster for which we were headed might have been avoided. But the changed motion induced by our heading into the wind had brought Patch on deck. I could see him sitting on the main hatch, staring aft for glimpses of Griselda, and I wondered what his reaction would be if we went over on to the port tack, heading back towards the English coast. Also, we were over-canvassed, and when you go about there are backstays to set up as well as the sheets to handle; one slip and we could lose our mast!

'I don't like it,' I told Mike. We were short-handed and it was night. Also, of course, in those conditions, when you are tired and cold and wet, there is a great temptation to sit tight and do nothing. I thought we were drawing ahead of them.

Apparently Mike had the same thought, for, instead of pressing his point, he shrugged his shoulders and went into the charthouse to turn in. It seems extraordinary to me now that I didn't appreciate the significance of the fact that Griselda's light was no longer showing astern of us, but way out on the port quarter. Had I done so, I should have known that we were not gaining on her, merely diverging from her. She was steering a more southerly course, maintaining her speed by avoiding the head-on battering of the seas. And I for my part — as so often happens at night — thought our own speed was greater than it was.

By the end of my watch it was clouding over and the wind was slackening. I called Patch and when he came up, we eased the sheets and altered course to sou'-sou'-west. We were no longer butting into the seas then, but following the lines of the waves with a wild, swooping movement. The wind was free and Sea Witch was going like a train.

I heated some soup then and we drank it in the cockpit, watching the dawn break. It came with a cold, bleak light and Patch stood, staring aft. But there was nothing to be seen but a waste of grey, tumbled water. 'It's all right,' I said. 'We've left them way behind.'

He nodded, not saying anything. His face looked grey. 'At this rate we'll raise the Casquets inside of two hours,' I said, and I left him then and went below to get some sleep.

An hour later Mike woke me, shouting to me to come up on deck, his voice urgent. 'Look over there, John,' he said as I emerged from the hatch. He was pointing away to port and, at first, I could see nothing. My sleep-dimmed eyes absorbed the cold daylight and the drabness of sea and sky, and then on the lift of a wave I thought I saw something, a stick maybe or a spar-buoy raised aloft out there where the march of the waves met the horizon. I screwed up my eyes, focusing them, and the next time I balanced to the upward swoop of the deck, I saw it clearly — the mast of a small ship. It lifted itself up out of the waves and behind it came the hull of the boat itself, drab white in the morning light.

'Griselda?' I said.

Mike nodded and passed me the glasses. She was certainly rolling. I could see the water streaming off her and every now and then a wave burst against her bows, throwing up a cloud of spray. 'If we'd gone about last night…'

'Well, we didn't,' I said. I glanced aft to where Patch sat hunched over the wheel in borrowed oilskins. 'Does he know?' I asked.

'Yes. He saw her first.'

'What did he say?'

'Nothing. He didn't seem surprised.'

I stared at the boat through the glasses again, trying to estimate her speed. 'What are we doing?' I asked. 'Did you get a log reading at six?'

'Yes. We did eight in the last hour.'

Eight knots! I glanced up at the sails. They were wind-bellied out, tight and hard, solid tons of weight pulling at the mast, hauling the boat through the water. My God! it was hard that we hadn't shaken them off after a whole night of sailing.

'I've been thinking,' Mike said. 'If they come up with us…'

'Well?'

'There's not much they can do really, is there? I mean…' He hesitated, glancing at me uncertainly.

'I hope you're right,' I said and went into the charthouse. I was tired and I didn't want to think about it. I worked out our dead-reckoning, based on miles logged, courses sailed and tides, and found we were ten miles north-north-west of the Casquets. In two hours' time the tide would be east-going, setting us in towards Alderney and the Cherbourg Peninsula. But that damned boat lay between us and the coast, and there was no getting away from her, not in daylight.

I stayed on in the charthouse and got the forecast: wind moderating later, some fog patches locally. A depression centred over the Atlantic was moving slowly east.

Shortly after breakfast we raised the Casquets — the north-western bastion of the Channel Islands. The tide turned and began to run against us and we had the Casquets with us for a long time, a grey, spiked helmet of a rock against which the seas broke. We thrashed our way through the steamer lane that runs up-Channel from Ushant, seeing only two ships, and those hull-down on the horizon. And then we raised Guernsey Island and the traffic in the steamer lane was just smudges of smoke where sky and sea met.

All morning Patch remained on deck, taking his trick at the helm, dozing in the cockpit or sitting staring at the grey acres that separated us from Griselda. Sometimes he would dive into the charthouse and work frenziedly with parallel rule and dividers, checking our course and our E.T.A. at the Minkies. Once I suggested that he went below and got some sleep, but all he said was, 'Sleep? I can't sleep till I see the Mary Deare.' And he stayed there, grey and exhausted, existing on his nerves, as he had done all through the Enquiry.

I think he was afraid to go below — afraid that when he couldn't see her Griselda would somehow creep up on us. He was frighteningly tired. He kept on asking me about the tides. We had no tidal chart and it worried him. Even when the tide turned around midday, pushing us westward again, he kept on checking our bearing on the jagged outline of Guernsey Island.

I should perhaps explain that the tidal surge of six hours flood and six hours ebb that shifts the whole body of water of the English Channel builds up to an extraordinary peak in the great bight of the French coast that contains the Channel Islands. At 'springs', when the tides are greatest, it sluices in and out of the narrow gap between Alderney and the mainland at a rate of up to 7 knots. Its direction in the main body of the Channel Islands rotates throughout the twelve hours. Moreover, the rise and fall of tide is as much as from 30 to 40 feet.

I mention this to explain our preoccupation with the tide and because it has a bearing on what followed. Moreover, the whole area being strewn with submerged reefs, rock outcrops and islands, there is always a sense of tension when navigating in this section of the Channel.

Holding to our course, we were headed direct for the central mass of Guernsey. I was relying on the westward thrust of the tide to push us clear, and as we closed with the broken water that marked the submerged rocks known as Les Frettes, we were all of us watching to see what Griselda would do. In fact, she had no alternative, and when the rock cliffs of the island were close to port she altered course to come in astern of us.

The westernmost tip of Guernsey is marked by Les Hanois, a lighthouse set seaward on a group of rocks. We passed so close that we could see every detail of it — the cormorants standing like vultures on the rocks and the swell breaking white all along the edge; and dead astern of us Griselda followed in our wake, pitching and rolling with the spray flying from her bow wave. She was less than a quarter of a mile away and Patch stood with his body braced against the charthouse, staring at her through the glasses.

'Well,' I said, 'is it Higgins?' I could see a figure moving on the deck.

'Yes,' he said. 'Yes, it's Higgins all right. And Yules, too. There's another of them in the wheel-house, but I can't see who it is.'

He handed me the glasses. I could recognise Higgins all right. He was standing by the rail, staring at us, his big body balanced to the movement of the boat. Higgins and Yules and Patch — three of the men who had sailed the Mary Deare! And here we were, within forty miles of where the ship was stranded.

Mike was at the wheel and he suddenly called to me. 'If we turn now, we could make Peter Port ahead of them.'

It was a straight run before the wind along the southern coast of the island. We could make St Martin's Point without their gaining on us and then a few miles under engine and we should be in Peter Port. I glanced at Patch. He had stepped down into the cockpit. 'I'll relieve you,' he said. It wasn't a suggestion. It was an order.

'No,' Mike was staring at him, anger flaring up into his eyes.

'I said I'll relieve you.' Patch reached for the wheel.

'I heard what you said.' Mike swung the wheel over, shouting to me to ease the sheets. But Patch had his hands on the wheel, too. Standing, he had more purchase and he slowly got it back, holding it there whilst Mike shouted obscenities at him. Their two faces were within a.foot of each other — Patch's hard and tense, Mike's livid with rage. They were like that for a long two minutes, held immobile by the counteracting force of their muscles like two statues.

And then the moment when we had any choice of action was past. Griselda, clear of Les Hanois rocks, was altering course to get between us and Peter Port. Patch had seen it and he said, 'You've no choice now.' He hadn't relaxed his grip of the wheel, but the tension was out of his voice. Mike stopped cursing at him. He seemed to understand, for he turned his head and stared at the motor boat. Then he let go of the wheel and stood up. 'Since you appear to be skippering this boat, you'd better bloody well steer her. But by Christ!' he added, 'if anything happens to her…' He stared coldly at me, still trembling with anger, and went below.

'I'm sorry,' Patch said. He had seated himself at the wheel and his voice was weary.

'This isn't your boat,' I reminded him.

He shrugged his shoulders, looking round at Griselda. 'What else did you expect me to do?'

There was no point in discussing it. We were committed now to go on until we reached the Mary Deare. But if the wind dropped… 'Suppose Higgins catches up with us?' I said.

He looked at me quickly. 'He mustn't.' And then he added, 'We've got to get there first.'

'Yes, but suppose he does?' I was thinking that after all Higgins had got to keep within the law. 'He can't do very much.'

'No?' He laughed a little wildly. 'How do you know what Higgins can do? He's frightened.' He looked at me, sideways out of the corners of his eyes. 'Wouldn't you be frightened if you were Higgins?' And then he glanced up at the sails and his voice was quiet and practical again as he asked me to ease the sheets and he altered course for the north-west Minkies buoy.

After that we didn't talk any more and gradually I became conscious of the sound of the motor boat's engine. It was very faint at first, a gentle undertone to the swish of the sea going past, but it warned me that the wind was easing. The overcast had thinned and a humid glare hung over the water so that the outline of Jersey Island away to port was barely visible. I started the engine and from that moment I knew Griselda would overtake us.

The forecast announced that the depression over the Atlantic was deepening, moving eastwards faster. But it wouldn't help us. All the time the wind was dropping now and Griselda was coming up abeam of us, keeping between us and Jersey Island. The glare faded, leaving sea and sky a chill, luminous grey. There was no horizon any more. Patch went below to get some more clothes. It had suddenly become much colder and the wind was fluky, blowing in sudden puffs.

I sat at the wheel and watched Griselda draw steadily ahead of the beam, wallowing in the swell. I wondered what Higgins would do, what I would do in his place. I tried to think it out rationally. But it's difficult to think rationally when you're cold and tired and sitting alone, almost at water level, isolated in an opaque void. That sense of isolation! I had felt it at sea before, but never so strongly. And now it chilled me with a feeling of foreboding. The sea had an oily look as the big swells lumbered up from the west and rolled beneath us.

I didn't notice the fog at first. I was thinking of Higgins — and then suddenly a grey-white plasma was creeping towards us across the sea, shrouding and enveloping the water in its folds. Mike came up from below and I gave him the wheel, shouting for Patch to come on deck. Griselda had seen the fog, too, and she had turned in towards us. I watched her coming, waiting for the fog to close round us and hide us from her. 'We'll go about as soon as we lose sight of her,' I said as Patch came up through the hatch.

She wasn't more than two cables away when her outline blurred and then she vanished, swallowed abruptly. 'Lee-ho!' Mike called and spun the wheel. Sea Witch turned into the wind and through it, the big yankee flapping as I let go the jib sheet. And then the main boom was across and Patch and I were winching in the starboard jib sheet as we gathered way on the port tack.

We were doubling back on our tracks through a cold, dead, clammy world and I straightened up, listening to the beat of the motor boat's engines, trying to estimate her position, wondering whether the fog was thick enough for us to lose her.

But Higgins must have guessed what we'd do, or else we had lost too much time in going about, for the sound of Griselda's engines was abeam of us and, just as I realised this, the shape of her reappeared. Her bows seemed to rip the curtain of fog apart and suddenly the whole of her was visible, coming straight for us.

She was coming in at right-angles, her engines running flat out and her sharp bows cutting into the swell, spray flying up past her wheelhouse. I shouted to Mike to go about again. We were heeled over, going fast and I knew that if both boats held their course we must hit. And when he didn't do anything, my throat was suddenly dry. 'Put her about!' I yelled at him. And at the same moment Patch shouted, 'Turn man! For God's sake turn!'

But Mike stood there, his body braced against the wheel, staring at the on-coming boat with a set expression on his face. 'Let him turn,' he said through his clenched teeth. 'I'm holding on.'

Patch jumped down into the cockpit. 'He's going to ram you.'

'He wouldn't dare.' And Mike held obstinately to his course, watching Griselda through narrowed eyes, his face suddenly white. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Higgins lean out of his wheelhouse. He was shouting and his powerful voice reached across to us through the roar of engines — 'Stand by! I'm coming alongside.' And then Griselda was turning, swinging to come in on our bows and crowd us up into the wind.

Everything happened very fast then. Mike shouted at us to ease the sheets. 'I'm going to cut under her stern.' He turned the wheel and Sea Witch began to swing her bows in towards the motor boat. Griselda was halfway through her turn. There was just room for us to pass astern of her if we turned quickly.

But things went wrong. I eased out on the jib sheet, but Patch, unaccustomed to sail, failed to ease out on the main. And at the same moment we heeled to a puff of wind. It was that unlucky puff of wind that did it. With the full weight of it on the mainsail, Sea Witch failed to come round fast enough. And Higgins had throttled down to bring his boat alongside us. We drove straight into Griselda's counter, drove straight into it with all the force of our powerful engine and tons of wind-driven canvas. We caught her on the port side just a few feet from her stern as it was swinging in towards us on the turn. There was a rending, splintering crash; our bows reared up as though to climb over her and then we stopped with a horrible, jarring shudder. I caught a glimpse of Yules, staring open-mouthed, and then I was flung forward against the charthouse. The boom jerked free of the mast and swung in towards me. I threw up my arm and it caught my shoulder a shattering blow, wrenching it from its socket and flinging me against the guardrails.

I remember clutching at the guardrails, blinded with pain, and then I was lying on the deck, my face pressed close against a metal jib sheet lead and the noise of rending wood was still there and somebody was screaming. I shifted myself and pain stabbed through me. I was looking down into the water and a man's body drifted past. It was Yules and he was thrashing wildly at the water, his face white and scared with a lock of hair washed over his eyes.

The deck vibrated under me. It was as though compressed-air drills had been put to work on the hull. I could feel the juddering all through my body. 'You all right?' Mike reached a hand down and dragged me to my feet. My teeth clenched on my lip.

'The bastard!' He was staring for'ard, his face paper-white, all the freckles showing a dull orange against his pasty skin, and his hair flaming red. 'I'll kill him.' He was shaking with anger.

I turned to see Higgins erupt from Griselda's wheelhouse. He was shouting something, his great bellowing voice audible above the noise of the engines and the continuing, rending sound of wood. The two boats were locked together and he caught hold of our bowsprit, his teeth bared like an animal, his head sunk into his bull neck and his shoulder muscles bunched as he tried to tear the boats apart with his bare hands.

Mike moved then. He had the grim, avenging look of a man who has seen something he loves and has worked for wantonly smashed up. I called to him, for the fool was running for'ard up the sloped deck, yelling at Higgins, cursing him; and he flung himself from the bowsprit, straight at the man, hitting out at him in a blind fur)' of rage.

The boats separated then with a tearing of wood and bubbling of water and I didn't see any more. Patch had put our engine into reverse and I staggered into the cockpit, shouting at him to stop. 'Mike is still there. You can't leave him.'

'Do you want the belly torn out of your boat?' he demanded, turning the wheel as Sea Witch began to go astern. 'Those props were drilling the guts out of her.' Dimly I realised that he meant Griselda's props and understood what had caused the deck planks to vibrate under my body.

I turned and watched as the gap between us and the motor boat widened. Griselda was down by the stern with a hole torn out of her port quarter as though a battering ram had hit her. Higgins was going back into the wheelhouse. There was nobody else on her deck. I suddenly felt sick and tired. 'What happened to him?' I asked. The sickly-sweet taste of blood was in my mouth where I'd bitten through my lip. My arm and all that side of my body was heavy and numb with pain. 'Did you see what happened?'

'He's all right,' Patch said. 'Just knocked cold.' He started to ask me about my shoulder, but I was telling him to get into forward gear and start sailing again. 'Don't lose her!' Already Griselda's outlines were fading and a moment later she disappeared. Patch had put the gear lever into neutral and we could hear her engines then, racing with an ugly, grinding noise. There was a sharp report and, a little later, another. After that we couldn't hear her any more.

'Prop shafts by the sound of it,' Patch said.

Sails and mast and boat began to spin before my eyes and I sat down. Patch seemed immensely tall, standing at the wheel, and his head swung dizzily over me. I steadied myself and the roll of a swell lapped into the cockpit. I stared at it stupidly, watching the water roll back down the forward-sloping deck. And then the engine spluttered and gave out.

I shook my head, bracing myself against the dizziness that threatened to overwhelm me. There was nobody at the helm. I called to Patch and struggled to my feet. He came up out of the main hatch, his trousers dripping. 'It's up to the galley already.' And then my eyes took in the tilt of the deck, following it down to where the bowsprit was buried in the back of a wave. All the foredeck was awash. I stared at it, taking it in slowly, whilst he pushed past me into the charthouse. He came out with a jack-knife in his hand. 'She's going down,' I said. My voice sounded dead and hopeless in my ears.

'Yes,' he said. 'Not much time.' And he began slashing at the dinghy tie-ers. I watched him hoist the pram over so that she fell with her keel on the guardrails and he was able to slide her into the water.

We were still sailing, moving sluggishly through the water, and over Patch's back, as he bent to secure the dinghy painter, I caught a glimpse of the Griselda again, a vague shape rolling sluggishly on the edge of visibility.

'Is there any food up here?' Patch was gathering up things from the charthouse and tossing them into the dinghy — blankets, duffle coats, torches, flares, even the hand-bearing compass.

'Some chocolate.' I got it from the drawer of the chart table — three small slabs and some sweets. I got life-jackets, too, from the locker aft. But my movements were slow and clumsy and by the time I had dropped them in the dinghy the whole length of the deck was awash, the mast tilted forward and the foot of the yankee below the water.

'Quick!' Patch said. 'In you get.' He was already untying the painter. I clambered in. It wasn't difficult.

The dinghy rode level with the deck. He followed me and pushed off.

I never saw her go down. As we rowed away from her, she slowly disappeared into the fog, her stern a little cocked-up, the big jib and the mizzen still set, and nothing but sea for'ard of the charthouse. She looked a strange sight — like the ghost of a ship doomed everlastingly to sail herself under. I could have wept as she faded and was suddenly gone.

I turned then to look at Griselda. She was lying like a log, badly down by the stern and rolling slowly to the long swell — as useless as only a motor boat can be when her engines are out of action. 'Pull on your right,' I told Patch.

He stared at me, not saying anything, his body moving rhythmically to the swing of the oars. 'For God's sake pull on your right,' I said. 'You're still not headed for Griselda.'

'We're not going to Griselda.'

I didn't understand for a moment. 'But where else…' My voice broke off abruptly and I felt suddenly deadly scared. He had the box of the hand-bearing compass set up at his feet, the lid open. His eyes were watching it as he rowed. He was steering a compass course. 'My God!' I cried. 'You're not going to try and make it in the dinghy?'

'Why not?'

'But what about Mike?' I was suddenly desperate. I could see Higgins struggling to get his dinghy into the water. 'You can't do it.' I seized hold of his hand as he leaned forward, gripping hold of one of the oars, pain bursting like an explosive charge in my body. 'You can't do it, I tell you.'

He stared at me, his face only a foot or two from mine. 'No?' His voice grated in the stillness, and faint across the water came a cry for help — a desperate, long drawn-out cry. He wrenched the oar free of me and began to row again. 'If you don't like it, you can get out and swim for it like that poor bastard.' He nodded across his left shoulder and at the same moment the cry came again. This time I was able to pick him out on the lift of a swell, a black head and two dripping arms thrashing their way towards us. 'H-e-l-p!'

Patch rowed on, ignoring the cry. 'Are you going to leave him to drown?' I said, leaning forward, trying with my voice to touch some spark of humanity in him.

'It's Yules?' he answered. 'Let Higgins pick him up.'

'And Mike?' I said. 'What about Mike?'

'He'll be all right. That boat isn't going to sink.' The oars dipped and rose, dipped and rose, his body swinging back and forth. And I sat there and watched him row away from the man. What else could I do? My shoulder had been driven out of its socket; he had only to touch it to send pain searing through me, and he knew it. I thought maybe he was right about the boat. It was only the stern that was damaged. All the fore part would be water-tight. And Higgins would pick Yules up. He had his dinghy launched now and was pulling away from Griselda.

In the weird, fog-belt light he looked like a giant specimen of those insects that are called water-boatmen. Yules had seen him coming and had ceased to thrash about in the water. He was directly between us and Higgins and he lay still in the water, not crying out any more, just waiting to be picked up.

I don't know why I should have stayed, twisted round like that, in a position that gave me a lot of pain. But I felt I had to see him picked up. I had to know that there was no justification for the feeling of horror that had suddenly gripped me.

Higgins was rowing fast, a long, sweeping stroke that was full of power, and at each pull a little froth of white water showed at the dinghy's blunt bows. Every now and then he turned and looked over his shoulder, and I knew that it was at us he was looking and not at the man in the water.

We were pulling away from Yules all the time and I couldn't be sure how near Higgins was to him. But I heard Yules call out, 'Alf!' And he raised one hand. 'I'm here.' The words were distinct and very clear in the stillness of the fog. And then suddenly he was shouting and swimming with frantic desperation, his arms flailing the water, his feet kicking at the surface.

But Higgins never checked, never spoke a word to him. He left him to drown and the oars dipped and rose with terrible regularity, the water streaming from them at every stroke as he came after us.

There was one last despairing cry, and then silence. Sickened, I turned to look at Patch. 'It's a bigger dinghy than ours,' he said. He meant it as an explanation. He meant that Higgins couldn't afford to stop — not if he was to catch up with us. His face was quite white. He was rowing harder now, the sweat glistening on his forehead. His words sent a cold shiver through me, and I sat there, rigid, all pain momentarily forgotten.

After that I was conscious all the time of the dinghy behind us. I can see it still, like a deadly water-beetle crawling after us across the sea, everlastingly following us through an unreal miasma of fog; and I can hear the creak of the rowlocks, the dip and splash of the oars. And I can see Patch, too, his set face leaning towards me and then pulling back, endlessly moving back and forth as he tugged at the oars, tugged till his teeth were clenched with the pain of his blistered hands, until the blisters broke and the blood dripped on the oars — hour after wretched hour.

At one time Higgins was less than fifty yards behind us and I could see every detail of his boat. It was a gay blue metal dinghy, a little battered, with the paint flaking and dulled with age, and round the gunn'ls was a heavy canvas fend-off. The thing was meant to hold five or six people and it had bluff bows so that every time he pulled it smiled an ugly, puffy smile as the thrust piled the water up in front of it.

But he had used his brute strength recklessly and he didn't gain on us any more.

The fog thinned out as night fell until it was no more than a tattered veil through which we caught glimpses of the stars. The young moon gave it a queer luminosity so that we could still see Higgins following us, little drops of phosphorescence marking the oar blades as they lifted clear of the water.

We stopped once and Patch managed to jerk my shoulder back into its socket, and a little later I moved over to the centre thwart and took the left oar, rowing one-handed. Though I was in considerable pain, we were fairly well balanced, for by then he was very tired.

We continued like that all night, holding our course by the hand-bearing compass that stood at our feet, its card glowing faintly. The moon set and the luminosity faded. We lost sight of Higgins. A wind sprang up and waves broke on the swell, slopping water over the gunn'ls. But it died away again about four and at last the stars paled in the first glimmer of returning daylight. It was one of those cold, cloud-streaked dawns that come reluctantly. It showed a lumpy sea, full of tidal swirls, and a blanket of fog lay ahead of us, clamped down between us and the coast of France.

We breakfasted on three squares of chocolate. It was half of all we had left. The woodwork of the dinghy was beaded with dew, our clothes sodden with it. Water slopped about over the floorboards as we pitched in the sea, and in our exhaustion it was becoming more and more difficult to row a course. 'How much farther?' I gasped.

Patch looked at me, his face grey, the eyes deep-sunk. 'I don't know,' he breathed. His lips were all cracked and rimed with salt. He frowned, trying to concentrate his mind. 'Tide's west-going. Be with us in two hours.' He dipped his hand in the sea and wiped salt water over his face. 'Shouldn't be long.'

Not long! I gritted my teeth. The salt was behind my eyeballs, in my mouth; it pricked my skin. The dawn's chill gripped me. I wished to God I'd never met this gaunt stranger who rowed like death at my shoulder. My mind blurred to a vision of Mike and our plans. And now the future was dead, Sea Witch gone and nothing in the world to think about but the Minkies, with each stroke an agony.

The sea at dawn had been empty. I could have sworn it had been empty. I had searched it carefully — every trough, every swirl, every sudden humped-up heap of water. There had been nothing — absolutely nothing. And now, suddenly, I was looking at a speck away over Patch's shoulder. The sun was coming up in a great ball of fire and the clouds that streaked the east were glowing orange and blazing to red at their edges — and all this vivid surge of colour, imprinted in the sea, seemed designed solely to show me that speck etched black in silhouette. It was a boat with two oars and a man rowing.

Ten minutes later the fog folded its clammy blanket round us again. The speck blurred and vanished. And at that moment I thought I heard a bell, very faint to the east of us. But when we stopped rowing it was gone. There wasn't a sound, except the sea. It was all round us in our grey, boxed-in world — the wet slop of water. But a little later there was a murmuring and a sucking in the veil through which our eyes couldn't see, and almost immediately the fog darkened, became black, and a shape slid past us like the towering superstructure of a battleship. It was there for an instant, blurred and indistinct, a great mass of black rock with the swell frothing gently at its base, and then it was gone as the tide hurried us on. 'My God! We're there,' I gasped.

We had stopped rowing and all around us was the murmur of the sea. Another rock appeared out of the grey curtain of the fog, a sinister pillar of rock like a crooked finger that slid stealthily by with a froth of white water at its foot as though it were sailing past us. For a moment that damnable fog almost convinced me that I was in a geological nightmare in which the rocks steamed through the water under their own power. And then a swell came up, grew big and broke suddenly. Water surged over the gunn'l and we were thrown backwards as the dinghy hit a submerged rock. The tide swung us round and dragged us clear before the next swell broke. We were soaked, the dinghy half full of water. It was hopeless to go on with the tide swirling us through a maze of dangerous rocks. We had reached the Minkies, but in an area of reefs almost twenty miles by ten we had no hope of getting our bearings. 'We'll have to wait till the fog clears,' Patch said. 'It's too dangerous — almost dead low water.'

In the lee of an ugly island of rock we found a little inlet where the water was still, like glass, tied the dinghy to an upended slab and clambered stiffly out. We stamped and moved about, but the sweat still clung to us in an icy film and we shivered under our sodden duffle coats. We ate the last of our chocolate and talked a little, grateful for the sound of our voices in that cold, dismal place.

I suppose it was inevitable that Patch should have talked about the Mary Deare. We were so close to her, frustrated by the fog. He talked about Rice for a bit and then he was telling me about Taggart's death. He seemed to want to talk about it. 'Poor devil!' he whispered. 'For the sake of that girl of his he'd sold his soul in every port in the Far East. He'd ruined his health and drunk himself stupid, engaging in every shady deal that would pay him more than a captain's wage. That's why they got him up from Singapore.'

'Did Gundersen engage him then?' I said.

'Probably. I don't know.' He shrugged his shoulders. 'Whoever it was, they picked the wrong moment. The old vulture was going back home to his daughter, and he wasn't going to sink a ship on his last voyage.'

'And so Dellimare got rid of him — is that what you're suggesting?' I asked.

He shook his head. 'No, I don't think he intended to kill him. I think he just got hold of his liquor and was waiting until the old man was sufficiently softened up to do what he wanted. He couldn't have known he'd die that night.' He smiled at me out of the corner of his mouth. 'But it amounts to the same thing, doesn't it?' He had sat with Taggart for several hours that night, listening to a life story told in scraps of delirium — the risks and the crockery and the shady deals… and then two men had been drowned. That was what had started Taggart drinking. 'Like most of us, he just wanted to forget.' And he went on, conjuring up the ghost of that dreadful old man, completely absorbed in the tragedy of it, standing there on that rock like a Trappist monk, his body shivering under the limp brown folds of his duffle coat.

He switched suddenly to the daughter… that photograph, what it had meant to him. Her image had been his confidant, his inspiration, a symbol of all his desperate hopes. And then the meeting in St Malo — the shock of realising that there were things he couldn't tell her, that she knew he was hiding something from her.

'You're in love with her, aren't you?' I said. We were strangely close, alone together in the eerie stillness of the fog with the sea all round us.

'Yes.' His voice had a sudden lift to it, as though even here the thought of her could raise his spirits.

'Despite what she did to you in Court?'

'Oh, that!' He dismissed it. That last night in Southampton — she had come to apologise. And after that he had told her everything — all the things he had confided to her picture. 'I had to tell somebody,' he murmured.

He lifted his head suddenly and sniffed at a breath of wind that came to us out of the dripping void. 'Still westerly,' he said, and we talked about how soon the fog would clear. He hadn't liked the look of the dawn. 'That depression,' he muttered. 'We've got to reach the salvage ship before it starts to blow up dirty.' The words were ominous.

And shortly after that we had to go back to the dinghy. The tide had risen, covering the rocks of our inlet, and it kept us constantly on the move then. We were in a strange submarine world where everything dripped water and the floor of the sea rose steadily until the towering bastion of rock had dwindled to a miserable little island barely two feet above the level of the sea. It was two o'clock then and the swell had increased and was showering us with spray as we sat huddled together in the dinghy.

I was barely conscious of time. The fog hung round us, very thick, so that it seemed as though nothing could exist in the whole world except that miserable strip of rock and the ugly, surging water.

We didn't talk much. We were too desperately cold. We took it in turns to sit and drift into a sort of coma. The tide went down again and the rock re-emerged like some monster lifting its dripping body out of the sea.

It was just after five that the fog began to clear. A wind sprang up and gradually the greyness lightened until it was an iridescent dazzle that hurt the eyes. Shapes began to emerge, forming themselves into rocks, and the sea stretched farther and farther away from us. Above our heads a patch of sky appeared, startlingly blue, and suddenly the fog was gone and the sun shone. We were in a sparkling world of blue-green water littered with rock outcrops.

We made the dinghy fast and scrambled up the barnacle-covered, weed-grown fortress of the rock. It was suddenly very warm, and from the top, which only a few hours before had been a bare, wave-worn little island, a fantastic sight met our eyes. All round us the sea was islanded with rock — mile upon mile of sinister reefs and outcrops — the Minkies at one hour before low water. Beyond the rock islands, we had glimpses of open sea — except to the south-west; to the south-west the islands became so numerous that they merged to form a solid barrier.

The beacon on Maitresse He, which stands 31 feet at high water, was easily identified, and from it Patch was able to get our bearings. The rock on which we stood was on the northern side of the Minkies, about a mile inside the outer bastion of the Pipette Rocks, and he reckoned that the Mary Deare must lie almost due south of us. I have checked since with the large-scale chart and find that he was just about right. But the three miles that separated us from our objective constituted the main body of the reefs. We didn't appreciate this at the time, nor did we fully understand the extraordinary change in configuration of the above-water reefs that could occur in the last stages of the falling tide.

The wind was blowing quite fresh and an ugly little chop was forming on the long swell that marched steadily eastward through the reefs. Already there was a good deal of white water about, particularly in the vicinity of submerged rocks, and I think we should have been more cautious if we hadn't suddenly caught sight of Higgins. He was standing on a big rock mass not half a mile to the east of us. It was probably the Grand Vascelin, for there was a black and white beacon on it, and even as Patch pointed him out to me, I saw Higgins move and begin to scramble down to his dinghy, which we could see bobbing about at the base of the rock, its blue paint looking bright and cheerful in the sunshine.

We moved fast then, slithering and tumbling down to our own dinghy, scrambling into it and pushing off with no time to plan our route across the reefs, knowing only that the tide, which was west-going at that time, favoured Higgins and that we had to cover those three miles and reach the safety of the salvage company's vessel before he caught up with us.

Of course we should never have shown ourselves against the skyline at the top of that rock. If we had thought about it at all, we must have known that, the instant the fog cleared, he would be standing on some vantage point watching for us. It wasn't that we had forgotten about him. You can't forget a man when he has followed you all night through a treacherous, abandoned stretch of sea with murder in his heart. But I think the fog had so isolated us mentally that the moment it cleared we rushed to the highest point to get a sight of the world that had been hidden from us for so long. It was an instinctive reaction, and in any case we were dull-witted with cold and exhaustion.

The one sensible thing we did was to put on our life-jackets and then we pushed off from the rock that had been our perch for almost twelve hours and Patch began to row, heading south-west across the tide. Away from the lee of the rock we were conscious immediately of the weight of the wind and the way the sea was kicking up; it was a west wind, blowing over the tide, and already the waves were beginning to break. It crossed my mind that this might be the beginning of the depression. The sunshine had a brittle quality and long tongues of pale cloud, windblown like mares' tails, were licking out across the sky.

The tide wasn't strong, but it carried us inexorably towards the greatest mass of the dried-out reefs. This mass is actually split by two channels, but we couldn't see that and for a time Patch attempted to make up against the tide to pass to the east of it, where we could see there was open water. But then, suddenly, he altered course. I was baling at the time, using a sou'wester, and I looked up inquiringly. I thought perhaps the tide had become too strong or that he felt we were shipping too much water.

But he nodded across the stern. 'Higgins,' he said, and I turned to see the big blue dinghy emerging from behind a jagged huddle of rocks. It wasn't more than two cables behind us.

We were in open water then, in the broad channel that separates the outer wall of reefs from the main fortress mass. There were no rocks to shelter us and the breaking wave-tops constantly slopped over the gunn'ls so that, though I never stopped baling, the water in the bottom of the dinghy steadily increased. I could hear Patch's breath escaping between his teeth and every time I glanced aft, it seemed that Higgins was nearer, the big metal dinghy riding higher and easier than ours. He was keeping a little to the east of us, heading us off from the open water, and all the time the outer rocks of the main reef were slowly closing in on us, the swell breaking all along their edge, the white water piling in over the black teeth of the outer fringe.

'You'll have to turn into the wind,' I shouted.

Patch glanced over his shoulder, still rowing steadily, and then nodded. The twenty-foot wall of rocks was very close now. But each time he turned, the starboard bow of the dinghy caught the full force of the breaking waves and water poured in, threatening to sink us. There was nothing for it but to hold our course, head for the rocks and hope for the best.

The tide helped us here, sliding us westward, along the face of the rampart, into a bay where the swell built up to 4 or 5 feet and broke on outlying ledges in a cataract of foam. Every stroke of the oars carried us deeper into the bay, making escape from it more impossible. 'We'll never get out of this,' I shouted to Patch.

He said nothing. He had no breath left to talk. I glanced over the stern and saw that Higgins had closed the distance to less than two hundred yards. Patch had to go on rowing. And then, over his shoulder, I saw the rocks at the inner end of the bay draw apart and, unbelievably, there was open water between them. 'Look!' I pointed.

Patch glanced quickly over his right shoulder, saw the gap and turned the dinghy towards it. We were in the first of the two channels with the wind behind us. The dinghy rose and fell to the steep swell. We shipped hardly any water now and I was able to bale her right out so that we rode light and easy. 'We'll make it now!' Patch's voice came to me through the wind and the noise of the sea breaking along both sides of the channel and it was full of confidence. He was grinning through his bared teeth, recklessly squandering his energy as he rowed with quick, straining tugs at the oars.

As soon as I had finished baling I took my place on the thwart beside him and we rowed in unison, not saying anything, just pulling and watching Higgins as he fell into the troughs of the endless waves and was borne aloft again on the next crest. The world smiled with the brittle glitter of white water. Only the rocks were ugly and their menace was oddly enhanced because the sun shone.

We reached the narrowest point of the channel, guarded by a single rock outcrop, and then it suddenly opened into a broad area of water with a reef mass ahead, but plenty of water round it. It was protected somewhat from the wind so that, though the swells still surged across it, there were few white-caps — just patches of broken water here and there.

But as we moved out into that broad patch of open water, a strange and terrifying change began to come over it. The first indication of something wrong was a swell that suddenly reared up behind the dinghy's stern and broke, slewing us broadside in the surf and very nearly turning us over. Patch shouted to me that we were on a reef and we pulled the dinghy clear of the danger spot. The swell was building up and breaking continuously at that point. And now, looking round, I noticed it was breaking at many other points — places where it hadn't been breaking only a few minutes before.

'The tide!' Patch yelled in my ear. 'Pull, man! Pull! It's the tide!'

I needed no urging. I would have pulled both arms out of their sockets to get out of that fearful place. All round us now were patches of white water, patches that joined up with other patches till there were irregular lines of surf breaking. What had been, only a few minutes ago, open water, was now, suddenly, transformed into a seething, roaring cauldron of broken water as the tide dropped like a lift to expose the rocks and gravel of the sea bed contained within the ramparts of the central reef mass.

I had only just grasped what was happening when a sudden wave lifted us up and crashed us down on to a rock. The jolt of it ran right up my spine like a blow to the base of the head. Water boiled all round us, white in the sunshine, glittering like soapsuds; rocks and boulders showed for an instant and then vanished as another wave of green water swept in, lifted us up and crashed us down again. And in the instant of being uplifted I have a sort of panoramic recollection of the scene: black reefs piled round that arena and the water all brittle white and boiling mad and little sections of sea bed showing — all passing before my eyes as the dinghy was swung violently round and then finally smashed down upon a little exposed hillock of grey gravel. It was a tiny oasis in the middle of chaos that came and went as the surf rolled across it.

We stumbled out, knee-deep in the spill of a wave, and, as it receded, we tipped the dinghy up, emptying it of water. But one glance told us that it was damaged beyond any repair we could effect on the spot — two planks were stove in for practically the whole length of the boat. 'Doesn't matter,' Patch shouted. 'We'd have to abandon it, anyway. Come on!' He bent down and removed the hand-bearing compass from its case. It was all he took. 'Come on!' he repeated. 'We walk and swim the rest.'

I stood and stared at him. I thought for a moment that he'd gone mad and imagined he was Christ, capable of walking the surface of that surging carpet of broken water. But he wasn't mad. He was a seaman and his mind worked quicker than mine. Already a change had come over the scene — there was less white water, and rocks and boulders and patches of gravel were appearing as the tide receded. And two hundred yards away Higgins was ploughing through water up to his knees, dragging his dinghy after him.

I bent to pick up the painter of our own dinghy and then realised it was useless. 'Come on!' Patch said again. 'We've got to be out of here before the tide comes back.' He had started to walk south and I followed him, stumbling over hidden boulders, floundering into pot-holes, wet and dazed and exhausted.

The noise of the surf rolled back till it dwindled to a distant murmur, and in a moment, it seemed, all those acres that had been a roaring holocaust of tumbled water were suddenly still and quiet. No waves broke. Little raised beaches of boulder-strewn gravel shone wet in the sun and about them lay pools of water ruffled by the wind, and all round were the black rocks of the reef.

The sense of isolation, of loneliness and remoteness, was appalling. And it was enhanced by something that Higgins did, following on behind us. He came to our dinghy and, glancing back, I saw him pick it up in his two hands and smash it down against an outcrop of rock. The splintering crash of the wood breaking up was a sharp, savage sound. All the bows were stove in and my last contact with Sea Witch was wantonly destroyed.

And then Higgins started after us again, still dragging his dinghy. The tinny sound of it striking against the boulders was with us for a long time as we stumbled across stretches of exposed beach or waded through water that was sometimes so deep we had to swim. And at the back of my mind was the thought that we were twenty miles from the French coast, in an area that only a few of the local fishermen ever dared to visit. And in six short hours all this area of rock-strewn debris would be thirty feet below the sea, compressed, imprisoned, flattened by countless million tons of water. The only thing that kept me going was the thought of that salvage ship, so close now. It couldn't be more than two miles away, three at the most… and there'd be a bunk and dry clothes and hot soup.

I saw Patch stumble and fall. He got up and staggered on. We were halfway to the black southern bastion of the reefs, floundering over a stretch of jagged, up-ended rocks. He fell several times after that. We both did. There was no strength left in us and when a foot slipped, the muscles gave. Our sodden clothing weighed us down, tripped us up.

The sun gradually died amongst the mares' tails. Thicker clouds came up. I didn't see them come. The sweat was in my eyes. I saw nothing but what was immediately at my feet. But rock and gravel became drab and sombre. And later, much later, there was a light drizzle on my face. The sound of the sea began to come back, but by then we were crawling amongst the great up-ended slabs of rock that lay strewn about the main outcrop.

I hadn't looked back for a long time then. I didn't know where Higgins was. I couldn't hear the sound of his dinghy any more. It was lost in the noise of the sea and the drumming of the blood in my ears. And then we were clawing our way up the final slope of weed-grown rock. I paused to see Patch up at the top, leaning against a shoulder of rock and staring southwards. 'Can you see her?' I gasped.

'No.' He shook his head.

I came out on to the top beside him and stared south. It was still the Minkies. But different. More sea. There were still rock outcrops. But they were fewer, more isolated. All ahead of us was open water, dimmed and blurred by the drizzle of rain. 'I don't see her,' I gasped.

'She's there somewhere.' His voice was flat and weary. His black hair hung wet over his eyes and his hands and face were streaked with blood where he had fallen — blood and dirt and sodden, shapeless clothing. He took my arm. 'You all right?' he asked.

'Yes,' I said. 'Yes, I'm all right.'

He stared at me and for the first time I saw an expression of concern in his eyes. He opened his mouth to say something and then thought better of it and turned his head away. 'I'm sorry,' he said, and that was all.

'How much farther do you reckon?' I asked.

'About a mile.'

A mile to swim. I wondered whether we should ever make it.

He took my arm again and pointed across the litter of outcrops to a compact mass that stood higher than any of the others. 'I think that's Grune a Croc.' It stood on the edge of visibility, half hidden by the drizzle, and at the mention of its name it abruptly vanished as the rain thickened and drove across it. Somewhere beyond that rock lay the Mary Deare.

Behind us, the tide came licking hungrily back across the beaches, coming in from the north-west, driven by the wind and the south-going set of the stream. But Higgins was clear of it by then, rowing slowly, easily, to a nearby rock, where he moored his dinghy and sat watching us like an animal that has treed its quarry. He could afford to wait, for with each foot the tide rose the size of our rock perch was halved.

We found an over-hanging slab of rock that gave us some shelter from the wind and the rain and still enabled us to watch him, and there we crouched, huddled close together for warmth whilst the tide rose and night closed in. If only the visibility had been better; if we could have seen the Mary Deare, perhaps attracted the attention of the salvage people. But we could see nothing; we couldn't even hear them. All we could hear was the waves pounding on the other side of the reef mass and I wondered what it would be like at the top of the tide. Would the waves break right over these rocks? But by then we should be gone. Our plan was to slip into the water an hour before high tide and make for Grune a Croc. We were relying on a southward thrust from the tide coming through the main reef body to spill us out towards the rock, and though Patch had lost the hand-bearing compass, we thought the rock would be reasonably conspicuous, since it was the only one in the whole area to the south of us that would be exposed at high water.

Once we had decided what to do, we had nothing to occupy our minds. It was then that I became conscious of hunger pains for the first time. It wasn't only the pains that worried me, but the feeling that I had no warmth left in me, as though the rain and the bitter cold had reached the central fires on which my body depended and put them out. I fell into a sort of coma of misery and through bleared eyes I watched the rock to which Higgins had moored slowly submerge. And then he was rowing again, and gradually the tide beat him. Oddly enough it gave me no sense of pleasure. I was too tired. As the tide ran faster so he had to row harder to keep abreast of our position. And then gradually his strokes became weaker until he was forced to steer to another rock and cling to it. But the tide rose and covered that, too, and, though he started to row again, the tide carried him slowly farther and farther from us. Night was closing in by then and I lost him in the gathering darkness.

It meant, of course, that we shouldn't have to worry about where Higgins was when we abandoned our rock and took to the water, but when you are faced with a long swim and are afraid you may be too weak to do it, then the question of whether there may or may not be a dinghy in the way doesn't seem very important. In any case, I was slipping into unconsciousness. I was so cold, so utterly drained of warmth — I had no sense of feeling left.

It was the water that woke me. It was warmer than I was and it lapped round my legs like a tepid bath. And then it slopped into my face. That was when consciousness returned and I felt Patch stir. 'Good God!' he murmured. 'It must be just about high water.'

We stood up, stiff to the joints, forcing our bodies to unbend. Was it high water? Had the tide turned already? My numbed brain groped for the answer, knowing it was important, but not knowing why. The rain had stopped. There were stars and low-scudding clouds. A glimmer of moonlight made pale reflections on the ink-black water. 'Well, do we go? What's the time?' Patch's voice was no more than a croak. 'What's the time, for God's sake? My watch has stopped.'

Mine had stopped, too. There was no means of knowing the time, no means of knowing which way the tide was flowing. Jolted by sudden fear, the sleep cleared from my brain and I saw clearly that we had no alternative. If we stayed on that rock we should die of exposure — tomorrow perhaps or the next day, but we should die. After tonight we should never have the strength to swim that mile. And the water was warm — warmer than the sodden, icy clothes draped round our bodies, warmer than the wind and the ice-cold driving rain that would come again. Besides, we had life-jackets and, if the tide was wrong, there were other rocks to cling to and die on. 'Ready?' I said.

Patch hesitated and I suddenly realised that he wasn't sure of himself any more. He was a seaman. He was used to boats, not to the sea itself as an element in which to exist, body buoyed up by water. 'Come on,' I said. 'We're going now. Keep close to me and don't talk.'

We inflated our life-jackets fully and then together we stepped off the ledge of rock on which we had huddled. When we had first come to that ledge it had been a thirty-foot drop to the rocks below. Now we stepped off into water, warm, buoyant water, and, lying on our backs, swam slowly south, our feet to the Pole Star, glimpsed every now and then through rents in the tattered cloudbase.

We kept abreast of each other, just two arms' lengths away, moving steadily and unhurriedly. Soon we were clear of the rocks, rising and falling gently to a big swell that was rolling in across the reefs. We could hear it pounding against distant rocks — the rocks to the west of us that got the full brunt of it. 'Storm coming up,' Patch whispered.

The wind had dropped. The swell was big, but gentle-sloped with no broken water. The sea slept, heaving as it slumbered. Yet I was sure Patch was right. Though the wind was light, the clouds were hurried and torn to shreds and the pounding of that surf was ominous, like gunfire to the west. A wave suddenly reared up out of nowhere and broke, pouring surf over us, spilling us away from it. My feet touched rock for an instant. And then everything was quiet as before and we rose and fell, rose and fell to the swell. We had crossed one of those sentinel-like pillars of rock that we had seen at low water.

The rock on which we had spent half the night was disappearing now — disappearing astern of us so that I knew we were all right. We hadn't missed the tide. Patch stopped swimming, treading water. 'I can't see Grune a Croc,' he said, and his teeth chattered. 'I think we should strike more to the west.'

So we swam on with the Pole Star and the Plough to our left and I wondered how long we could last. My teeth were chattering, too, and the sea, which had felt so warm at first, was now a cold compress chilling all my stomach. We had no food inside us to generate warmth. Soon one of us would get cramp, and that would be the end.

Our sodden clothing weighed us down. The inflated life-jackets made us clumsy. Each stroke had to be powerful to drive our bodies through the water; and power meant energy — our vital, last reserves of energy. God knows how long we swam that night. We seemed to go on and on for ever. And each stroke was imperceptibly weaker than the last. And all the time I was thinking if only I were wearing a foam rubber suit or at least had my fins on my feet. It was years since I had swum in this clumsy fashion. My mind sank into a coma, a slough of pain and deep exhaustion, in which I saw myself again ploughing down to the old tanker through clear bright Mediterranean waters that glimmered with colour — the white of the sand and the silver gleam of fish; and myself, buoyant and carefree, exactly balanced, warm and breathing comfortably through my mouthpiece.

'John! John!' I opened my eyes. Black night surrounded me. I thought for an instant I was deep down, on the verge of going into a rapture of the depths. And then I saw a star and heard the surge of a wave breaking. 'John!' The voice called again out of the darkness.

'Yes. What is it?'

'There's a rock. I can just see it.' It was Patch's voice. Funny, I thought. He'd never called me John before. And then he said, 'You gave me a scare just now. I couldn't make you hear. I thought I'd lost you.'

The concern in his voice filled me with a sudden warmth for the man. 'Sorry,' I said. 'Just dreaming. That's all. Where's this rock of yours?' I turned, treading water, and there, not more than a hundred yards to my right, the dark shape of a rock stood out for an instant against the white gleam of a breaking wave. I searched the blackness beyond it. More waves were breaking out there and I thought I saw the solid mass of something.

And then it came to me that there would be lights on the Mary Deare. With a salvage company working on her there would have to be lights. I searched the blackness all round, each time I was lifted to the top of a swell, but there was nothing, not the faintest flicker of a light. Perhaps they were being so secret about their salvage operation that they didn't show lights. And then the thought came to me that perhaps they had lifted her already and towed her away. The cold came back into my body, more intense now, more destructive, and I felt the muscles of my left leg begin to screw themselves together in a knot.

'There's something beyond this rock,' Patch croaked. 'Shall we make for that?'

'All right,' I said. It didn't seem to matter. To die in the water was better than to die of exposure on one of those God-forsaken rocks. I lay back, kicking out feebly with my legs, thrusting at water that was no longer warm, but icy cold, swimming automatically whilst my mind tangled itself up with the matter of those lights. There should have been lights. Unless we'd been swept back into the central mass of the reefs we should have seen lights right from the start. 'There should be lights,' I mumbled.

'Lights. That's it. There should be lights.' His voice sounded weak, a little scared. And then, after a bit — 'Tell them to put the lights on.' He was back on a ship, his mind wandering. 'Put those lights on, do you hear?' And then he suddenly called 'John!' His voice was very faint.

'Yes?'

'I'm sorry I landed you into this.' He muttered something about my boat. And then I heard him say, 'I should have slit my useless throat.' Silence for a moment and then: 'They booed me, that first time. Outside the Court.' Broken water slapped my face and the next thing I heard was — '.. kick against the pricks. I should have chucked it then.' A wave broke and silenced him. He didn't speak again after that. His arms didn't move. I could just see the outline of his head, motionless.

'Are you all right?' I called out.

He didn't answer and I swam over to him. 'Are you all right?' I shouted again.

'Look! Do you see it?'

I thought his mind had gone. 'Wake up!' I shouted at him. 'We're going to swim to that rock — do you hear?'

He caught hold of my arm with the iron grip of a drowning man and, as I wrenched myself free of him, he screamed at me. 'Look, man. Look at it, damn you! Tell me I'm not dreaming!'

He had raised his arm and was pointing. I turned my head and there, against the stars, I saw the tall finger of a mast and, below it, all the black bulk of her superstructure caught for an instant in the white phosphorescent glitter of a breaking wave.

We swam then, cold and exhaustion forgotten, tugging our weary, unwieldy bodies through the water. We were coming up on her bows and they were like a reef awash: the waves rolled over them, but in the troughs their shape emerged as the sea cascaded from them. And then, beyond the bows, beyond the tall finger of the mast, the bridge deck emerged and the funnel and all the line of the decks sloping upwards to her cocked-up stern.

In the trough of a wave a hard line sprang suddenly taut, catching at my left arm so that I screamed with pain, gulping in salt water; and then it flipped me over and the top of a wave engulfed me. I swam clear of the bows then, moving painfully down the ship, just clear of the streaming bulwarks, and then swam in on her where the fo'c's'le dropped to the well-deck and Number One hatch. I came in on the top of a wave that broke as it surged over the bulwarks and then I was flung down on to the hatch coaming with a force that jarred all the torn muscles of my side and my feet scrabbled on weed-grown, slippery plating whilst the wave receded in a swirl of white water.

I fetched up in the scuppers with my hand gripped round the capping of the bulwarks, and as the next wave piled in, I fought my way aft until I was clear of the water and could reach the mast, and there I clung, shouting for Patch in a high, cracked voice, for I was scared I'd lost him. That moment of panic seemed endless. I was the better swimmer. I was trained to the sea. I should have stayed with him, seen him safe on board, and I knew I hadn't the guts to go back and search for him in the darkness; I was tired, desperately tired, with all the muscles of my body curling up with the threat of cramp. And, even more, I didn't want to be alone on that ship. It was a dead ship — dead as the rocks of the Minkies. I knew it, instinctively. I could sense that it was dead through all my body and I needed him desperately. And so I clung to the mast and screamed his name and the seas came thundering in across the bows with wicked gleams of white as the water surged and swirled and poured off them in the troughs.

I didn't see him come aboard. I was still screaming his name and he was suddenly there beside me, staggering drunkenly, an ungainly, top-heavy shape in his life-jacket caught in silhouette against the break of a wave. 'It's all right,' he gasped. 'I'm here.' He reached out and caught hold of my hand, and we clung there, gasping for breath, grateful for the sudden comfort of that touch. 'There should be lights,' he said at length. There was a sort of childish disappointment in his voice, as though the salvage company had robbed him of a pleasure to which he had been looking forward.

'They've probably closed down for the night,' I said, but without conviction. I knew the ship was dead.

'But there should be lights,' he said again. And then we staggered aft, past Number Two hatch, up the ladder to the upper deck. The door to the deckhouse stood drunkenly open, crumpled and torn from its hinges. We felt our way along the alley, past his old cabin and Dellimare's and out through the empty gap of the door beyond, out on to the upper deck, where the twisted shapes of the empty davits stood like crooked fingers against starlit patches of the sky, and on, past the dim-seen shape of the funnel, crumpled and lying away from us at a precarious angle.

Squelching soggily on the steel of the deck, our bodies thin as paper in the cold night air, we traipsed the length of the Mary Deare, aft to the little deckhouse on the poop and back again up the starboard side, and every now and then we shouted — 'Ahoy! Anybody there? Ahoy!' Not even an echo came back to us. The frail sound of our voices was lost in the cold, black night, buried in the noise of the waves surging over the bows.

No salvage boat lay alongside. No light suddenly flickered to guide us to the warmth of a cabin. We called and called, but nobody answered. The ship was dead, devoid of life — as dead as she had been the day we'd left her there.

'My God!' Patch breathed. 'We're the first. Nobody has been here.' There was a note of relief, almost exultation in his voice, and I knew he was thinking of the thing that lay buried amidst the coal of the port bunker. But all I cared about at that moment was that I was cold and wet and hurt and that, instead of the bunk and dry clothes, the warmth of food and drink and the companionship of human beings I had expected, there was nothing — nothing but the slime-covered, barnacle-encrusted shell of a wreck that had been battered by the seas for six long weeks.

'We'll get some dry clothes and have a sleep,' he said. 'We'll feel better then.' He had sensed my mood. But when we had staggered back to the bridge housing and felt our way down the black iron tunnel of the alley-way to what had been his cabin, we found that the sea had been there. The door grated on sand as we forced it open and a freezing wind drove at us through portholes that stared like two luminous eyes, empty of glass. The desk had been ripped from its fastenings and lay on its side in a corner, the drawers of the bunk that contained his and Taggart's clothes were full of water and the big wall cupboard contained nothing but a sodden, gritty heap of blankets, coats and old papers.

We tried the main deck then, where the saloon and the galley were. But that was worse. The sea had swept the whole length of the alley-ways, into the officers' cabins and right aft to the crew's quarters. Everything we touched in the pitch-black darkness was sodden, filmed with slime; there wasn't a place the sea hadn't reached.

'Maybe the poop is still dry.' Patch said it wearily, without hope, and we began to move back down the port alley-way, feeling our way, bodies dead and numbed with cold, shivering uncontrollably. God, let the poop be dry! And then I staggered and hit my shoulder against the wet steel plate of the wall, thrown there by a sudden movement of the ship. I felt it through my whole body, a quiver like the first faint tremor of an earthquake. And then the ship moved again. 'Listen!' Patch's voice was urgent in the darkness. But I could hear nothing except the noise of the sea lapping at the hull. 'She's afloat,' he whispered. 'Just afloat on top of the tide.'

'How can she be?' I said.

'I don't know, but she is. Feel her!'

I felt her quiver and lift, and then she thudded back into her gravel bed. But she still went on quivering and from deep down in the bowels of her came a slow grating sound; and all the time she was trembling as though she were stirring in her sleep, struggling to free herself from the deadly reef bed on which she lay. 'It's not possible,' I murmured. The ship couldn't be afloat when her bows were submerged like a reef and the waves were rolling over them. This must be a dream. And I thought then that perhaps we had drowned out there. Did drowned men go back to their ships and dream that they shook off the reef shackles and voyaged like ghosts through dark, unnatural seas? My mind was beyond coherent thought. The ship was dead. That I knew, and beyond that, all I wanted was to lose consciousness of cold and pain, to lie down and sleep.

A hand reached out and gripped me, holding me up, and my feet trod the iron of the passage-way and climbed, without volition, up into the cold of the night air, to glimpses of stars and a drunken funnel and the unending noise of the sea. Down aft we stumbled over a steel hawser laid taut across the well-deck. It thrummed and sang to the sea's roll, and the ship moved like a drunkard, tottering its masts against the sky, as we climbed the ladder to the poop's platform and vanished into the black abyss of the little deckhouse. There was clothing there in the bos'un's cabin. As I remember, it was neither wet nor dry, but it had more warmth than my own sodden clothes, and there was a dank bunk, with blankets smelling of wet like a dog's fur, and sleep — the utter oblivion of sleep, more perfect than any heaven ever dreamed of by a well-fed man seated by his own fireside.

A long time after, it seemed — many years, perhaps — the tread of a man's feet entered into that heavenly oblivion. I can't say that it woke me or even that I struggled back to consciousness. Not immediately. It was just that the tread of his feet was there; a solid, metallic sound — the ring of boots on steel plates. It was a penetrating, insistent sound. It was above my head, beside my bed, first one side, then the other, and then farther away — a slow, unhurried, purposeful tread… the march of a dead man across the sleep of oblivion. And when it was no longer there I woke.

Daylight stabbed at my bleared eyes and a huddle of sodden blankets in the corner of the dank steel prison in which I lay, stirred and rose. It was Patch, his face ashen with fatigue. 'I thought I heard footsteps,' he said. His eyes looked wild, black marbles sunk deep in ivory sockets. 'I swear I heard somebody.'

I crawled out of the bunk, sweaty with the salt-heat of a soggy mass of blankets, but cold and stiff with a gnawing pain in my belly and my shoulder aching like hell. It all came back to me then, hitting me like a physical blow, and I stumbled to the door and looked out. It was true then — not a dream. I was back on the Mary Deare, and… God, she was a wreck! She was a rust-red nightmare of a ship, smeared with a film of green slime, with a stubble-growth of grey that was the barnacles. Her funnel lay over at a crazy angle and all the bridge deck was twisted and gnarled and battered. The tide was low and, beyond the wreck of her, the Minkies gnashed their black teeth, foam-flecked where the stumps of rock stuck up out of the sea. No salvage ship lay anchored off, no tug, not even a fishing boat. There was nothing — just the ugly, familiar shape of Grune a Croc and the mass of reefs beyond… not a single sign of life, and the sky savagely grey, with an ugly pallor that made the cloud shapes black and cold-looking.

'My God!' I croaked. Instinctively, perhaps, I knew what we had to face — what the pallor of the dawn meant and the savage grey of the sky.

And Patch, sniffing the air over my shoulder, muttered, 'There's a heap of dirt coming up.'

The sky to the west of us was sombre, a black wedge of cloud that left the horizon sharp as a line ruled between air and sea. There wasn't much wind, but the thunder of the waves on the exposed reefs had an ominous sound, and, even here, in the shelter of the rocks, the swell that slopped against the Mary Deare's side was big and solid.

'Those footsteps,' I said. 'What were they?'

He shook his head, not answering, and his eyes avoided mine. God knows what he was thinking, but a shudder ran through him, and it crossed my mind that a lot of men had died because of this ship. And then a strange thing happened: a little cloud of rust rose like red steam from the well-deck bulwark as a steel hawser ran out over the side. The bight appeared, checked on the rail, and then fell over into the sea with a faint splash. When it was gone, the ship was still again — no movement anywhere, and I was conscious that Patch was gripping my arm. 'Queer,' he said, and his voice had a hollow sound.

We stood rooted to the spot for a long time, staring along the length of the ship. But everything was still and motionless — nothing moved except the sea.

There's somebody on board,' he said. His tone was uneasy and his face was as drawn and haggard as it had been on the day I had first met him. 'Listen!' But I could hear nothing — only the slap of the waves against the ship's side and the pounding of the swell on the reefs. The wreck was as still and as quiet as the grave. A lone sea-bird drifted by, soundless on the wind and white like a piece of paper against the clouds.

Patch descended then to the well-deck and stopped to gaze at the cover of Number Four hatch. And when I joined him I saw that it wasn't the usual tarpaulin cover fixed with wooden wedges, but steel plates fresh-welded to the coaming. He had a look at the derrick winches and then we went past Number Three hatch, which was also plated over, and up the ladder to the boat deck. Here all the ventilators had been removed and lay about the deck like truncated limbs, the ventilation holes covered by rusty plating. The funnel had been cut through at the base by a blow torch, shifted to one side and the vent plated over. The engine-room skylight was screwed down tight and the water-tight doors to the port and starboard main deck alley-ways had been removed and the holes plated over.

There was no doubt whatever that the report of the St Helier fisherman had been correct. A salvage company had been working on the wreck. They had sealed off the whole hull of the Mary Deare and probably they had also repaired the leak in the for'ard holds. It explained the way she had lifted at the top of the tide and the rake of the decks to the cocked-up stern. The ship was watertight, almost ready to float off. I found Patch standing by the port bunkering chute, his eyes riveted on the hatch cover, which had been torn from its hinges and lay abandoned on the deck. In its place a steel plate had been welded over the chute, effectively sealing the bunker off. It meant that Dellimare's body would remain there in its steel coffin until the hulk was towed into port and officials came on board with equipment to open up the ship. It meant days, possibly weeks of suspense for him, and there was despair in his face as he said, 'Well, that's that.' And he turned away, to stare aft along the length of the ship. 'They should have had a stern line out,' he said.

I wasn't following his trend of thought. I was thinking that there was all this work completed and no salvage ship. 'Why do you think they left?' I asked him.

He glanced at the sky, sniffing the breeze from the west, which was coming now in irregular puffs. 'The forecast was probably bad,' he said. 'Maybe they had a gale warning.'

I stared at the jagged reefs, remembering what it had been like before. Surely to God…

'What's that?' His voice came sharp and clear, and through it, beyond the barrier of the bridge-deck, the cough of a diesel engine settled to a steady roar. I could feel the deck vibrating under my feet, and for a moment we stood, quite still, listening to the music of it. Then we were running for the bridge-deck alleyway. We came out at the head of the ladder that led down to the for'ard well-deck and there, just aft of Number Two hatch, stood a big suction pump, lashed to the deck. The engine was going full bat and the thick suction pipe was pulsating with the flow of water where it disappeared through a hole cut in an inspection hatch. Water was sluicing out of the far side of the pump, flooding across the deck and disappearing through the scuppers. And yet there was nobody there. The well-deck was empty and in all the fore part of the ship there wasn't a living soul.

It was uncanny.

'Try the bridge,' Patch said. 'Somebody started that pump.'

We dived back into the alley-way and up the ladder to the bridge. It was all so familiar, but horribly changed. The glass was gone, the doors smashed and the wind was whistling through it, pushing little rivulets of water across the sand-smeared platform. There was nobody there — nobody in the chartroom. And then, out on the bridge again, Patch gripped my arm and pointed. Beyond the bows a pillar-like rock stood like a bollard with the bite of a thick steel hawser round it. The hawser ran taut from rock to ship, an anchor against the pull of the tides. It was the hawser that had fouled me during the night as I swam in over the bows.

But Patch was pointing to something else — a small blue dinghy pulling out from under the Mary Deare's bows. It was Higgins, and he was rowing out to the rock. The peaked cap on the bull head, the massive shoulders and the blue seaman's jersey — it was all so clear in the cold grey light. It was clear, too, what he intended to do. I shouted to him, but he couldn't hear me from the bridge. I dived back down the ladder, down to the well-deck and up on to the fo'c's'le. 'Higgins!' I screamed at him. 'Higgins!'

But it was blowing quite strong in the gusts now and Higgins didn't hear me. He had reached the rock and was tying the dinghy to a snag, and then he began to climb. He reached the bight of the hawser and, with an iron bar he had brought with him for the purpose, began to lever it up the rock, whilst I shouted to him, standing up in the wind, balanced right on the slippery point of the Mary Deare's bows.

He had his back to me all the time and when he'd freed the loop, he pushed it up over the jagged point of the rock, and the whole line of the wire that anchored the ship, right from where it ran out through the hawse-hole, went slack as it fell with a splash into the sea. Then he clambered back down the rock and got into his dinghy.

He saw me just as he'd unhitched the painter and he sat looking at me for a moment. His face was without expression and his big shoulders sagged with the effort he had made. And all the time I was shouting to him, telling him to fix the hawser back on to the rock. 'There's a gale coming,' I shouted. 'A gale!' I kept on repeating that one word, trying to din it into his thick head.

Maybe I succeeded, for Higgins suddenly let go of the rock, pivoted the dinghy on one oar and began to row back towards the Mary Deare. Whether he panicked and was making a desperate attempt to get back on board, or whether he was moved to unexpected pity by the desolate character of the place and was trying to take us off, I shall never know, for the tide was north-going, about three knots, and though he worked like a man possessed to drag that heavy dinghy through the water faster than the tide ran, he made not more than twenty yards headway. He tired quickly and, after the first burst of energy, he made no further progress; and then, gradually, the tide took control and he drifted farther and farther away from the ship, still desperately rowing.

In the end he gave it up and steered the dinghy across the tide into the lee of Grune a Croc, and there he sat, clutching the rock, staring at the ship, his head bowed to his knees, his whole body slack with exhaustion.

The noise of the suction pump died and ceased abruptly so that I was suddenly conscious of the wind whining through the broken superstructure. Patch had switched the engine off and as I climbed down off the fore-peak he came to meet me. 'We've got to flood the ship,' he called out, his voice loud and clear. 'It's our only hope.'

But there was no way of flooding her now. Every vent and hole was sealed off and we couldn't get at the sea cocks. Even the doors of the engine-room had been welded to keep the water out. The salvage company had sealed that hull up as tight as a submarine. 'We'll just have to hope for the best,' I said.

Patch laughed. The sound had a hollow ring down there in the steel vault of the alley-way. 'A westerly gale will bring a big tide. She'll float off at high water. Bound to, with nothing to hold her. She's pumped dry, all but the two for'ard holds.' His voice sounded hoarse and cracked. 'I wouldn't mind for myself.' He was staring at me. 'But it's tough on you.' And then he shrugged his shoulders and added, 'Better see if we can find some food.'

I was appalled by his acceptance of it, and as I followed him back down the alley-way to the galley, I was thinking that if only I had woken in time. The French salvage men had had her securely moored with hawsers fore and aft, and Higgins had let them go. I couldn't hate the man. I hadn't the strength to hate. But if only I'd got up the instant I heard those footsteps… And as though he knew what was in my mind, Patch said, 'One thing — Higgins is going to have a bad time of it out there in that dinghy.'

The galley was dark and it stank. The sea had been there before us, and so had the French. There wasn't a tin of any sort in the place. There was a cupboard full of bread that was a pulped, mildewed mass and there was meat that heaved with maggots and butter thick with slime and sand. All we found was some cheese that was good in the centre, a jar of half-dried mustard, some pickles and a broken pot of marmalade. We broke our fast on that, wolfing it down, and then we searched the saloon and all through the officers' cabins and the crew's quarters. We found a sticky mass of boiled sweets and a jar of ginger and, best of all, some stoker had gone to earth with two tins of bully beef. We took our miserable haul back to the little deckhouse on the poop and ate it, sitting there, shivering and listening to the rising note of the wind.

The gale came up fast with the turn of the tide and soon the waves, breaking against the side of the wreck were reaching up to the bridge-deck and we could feel the stern beginning to move under us. Once, when I went to look out of the door, I saw the blue dinghy still bobbing in the lee of Grune a Croc.

By midday it was blowing full gale. All the forepart of the Mary Deare was being pounded and battered by huge seas, her bridge-deck hidden every now and then in sheets of white water, the whole hull quivering to the onslaught. Water swirled across the well-deck below us and the boom of the waves striking against the plates of her side was so shattering that I found myself holding my breath, waiting for them, as though the blows were being struck against my own body. The noise went on and on. It filled my head and left no room for any thought beyond the terrible, everlasting consciousness of the sea. And out beyond the sea-swept wreck of the Mary Deare, the stumps of the reefs dwindled as the Minkies gradually vanished in a welter of foaming surf.

I saw Higgins once more. It was about two hours before high water. The Mary Deare was beginning to lift and shift her bottom on the gravel bed and Grune a Croc was a grey molar stuck up out of a sea of foam with water streaming white from its sides and spray sweeping across in a low-flung cloud, driven by the wind. Higgins was moving on the back of the rock, climbing down towards the dinghy. I saw him get into it and pick up the oars. And then a squall came, blurring the shape of the rock, and I suddenly lost sight of him in a curtain of rain.

That was the last I saw of Higgins. It was the last anybody saw of him. I suppose he was trying to reach the Mary Deare. Or perhaps he thought he could reach the mainland in the dinghy. He had no choice, anyway; Grune a Croc would have been untenable at high water.

I stood in the doorway of our deckhouse for a long time, my eyes slitted against the rain and the driving spray, watching for a glimpse of him through the squall. In the end the seas drove me in and when I told Patch how Higgins had gone, he shrugged his shoulders and said, 'Lucky bastard! He's probably dead by now.' There was no anger in his voice, only weariness.

The cabin in that deckhouse was about ten feet by six, steel-walled, with a bunk, some broken furniture, a window that had no glass in it and sand on the floor. It was damp and cold, the air smoking with wind-driven spray, and it resounded like a tin box to every sound throughout the ship. We had chosen it for our refuge because it was perched high up on the stern, and it was the stern part of the ship that was afloat.

For a long time we had been conscious of movement, a rising and falling of the steel walls that coincided with the gunfire bursts of the waves crashing against the hull below us. But now there was a shifting and a grating of the keel. It was a sound felt rather than heard, for nothing was really audible except the incredible, overwhelming noise of the sea. And then gradually it lessened. Spray ceased to come in through the window. The door blew open with a crash. The Mary Deare had struggled free of the sea bed and was turning head to wind.

I looked out and saw that Grune a Croc was no longer on the port bow, but away to starboard. The Mary Deare was afloat. The movement was easier now, the noise of the sea less terrifying. The high stern was acting as a steadying sail and she was bows-on to the breaking waves. I could hear them thundering against the bridge deck, see them burst in a great cloud of spray, forcing water through every opening of the bridge housing as the broken tops swept by on either side. And all the time Grune a Croc was fading away.

I shouted to Patch that we were clear and he came out from the cabin and stood looking at the incredible sight — a wreck floating with her decks streaming rivers of water and sloped down so that all the fore part of her was below the waves. 'We're clear,' I cried. 'If we clear Les Sauvages we're all right.'

He looked at me. I think he was considering leaving me in ignorance. But then he said, 'It must be very near high water.'

I nodded. 'Just about,' I said. And then it came to me: for six solid hours after high water the tide would be north- and west-going — driving us back on to the Minkies, back on to the Minkies at low water with all the reefs exposed. 'God Almighty!' I breathed, and I went back into the cabin and lay down on the bunk.

The hell of it was, there was nothing we could do — not a single damn' thing we could do to help ourselves.

We struck towards dusk in a maelstrom of white water where there wasn't a single rock showing. I don't know whether I was asleep or merely lying there on the bunk in a sort of daze, but the shock of our hitting threw me to the floor. It came like the blow of a mailed fist, a fearful crash up for'ard and then a slow crunching as the plates gave and the rocks disembowelled her; and the thunder of the seas became suddenly louder, more overwhelming.

I lay quite still where I had fallen, feeling the probing teeth of the rocks through my whole body, expecting every moment that the waves would engulf us as she slid under. But nothing happened, except that a thin mist of spray touched my face as it drifted over the ship and the grinding, gut-tearing sound went on so continuously that it became a part of the general uproar of the sea.

The cabin floor was canted over and, as I got to my feet, a sudden shifting of the ship flung me through the door and I fetched up against the bulkhead with a sickening thud that wrenched at my arm and drove the breath out of my body. I saw the ship then, and the pain didn't seem to matter any more. She was lying heeled over, all the length of her clear against a boiling background of surf. Her bridge-deck was a twisted, broken mass of wreckage, the funnel gone, the fore-mast snapped off halfway up and hanging loose in a tangle of derrick wires. And over all the for'ard half of her the seas broke and rolled and tumbled incessantly.

Patch was lying, half-reclined against the steel plates of the deckhouse entrance and I shouted to him: 'How long…' The words seemed to get caught up in my throat.

'Before she goes?'

'Yes. How long?'

'God knows.'

We didn't talk after that, but stayed there, too cold and tired and fascinated to move, watching as the first jagged points of the reef showed through the foam. The weary half light faded very slowly into darkness. We heard the bows break off; a protracted agony of tortured metal, tearing and rending up there beyond the wreck of the bridge-deck. And then the remainder of the ship lifted slightly as it was freed of their weight, shifting across the saw-edged rocks with a terrible trembling and groaning. We could see the bows then, a black wedge out in the break of the waves to port, with cargo spilling out of a cavern of a hole where the plates had been torn open. Bales of cotton bobbed about in the white water and the waves played with the great square cases that were supposed to contain aero engines, smashing them to matchwood on the reef.

Patch gripped my arm. 'Look!' he shouted. A case had been flung towards us and it was splitting open. The contents cascaded into the sea. God knows what it was. The light by then was very dim. But it certainly wasn't the solid lump of an aero engine.

'Did you see?' He had hold of my arm and was pointing. And then the sudden excitement left him as the wreck on which we stood split across at the after end of the upper deck. A great crack was opening up across the whole width of the ship. It tore the port ladder leading down to the well-deck from its fastenings, twisting it slowly as though an invisible hand were squeezing it. Rivet fastenings were torn out in machine-gun bursts and steel plates were ripped like calico. The gap widened — a yard, two yards; and then it was dark and night clamped down on the Mary Deare. By then the falling tide had exposed the reef, the seas had receded and the wreck was still.

We went back into the cabin and lay down under our sodden blankets. We didn't talk. Maybe we slept. I don't remember. I have no recollection of that night. It is like a blank in my mind. The sea's incessant roar, the wind piping a weird note through twisted metal and the sporadic clanging of a loose plate — that is all my recollection. I didn't feel any sense of fear. I don't think I even felt cold any more. I had reached that stage of physical and mental exhaustion that is beyond feeling.

But I remember the dawn. It filtered into the dim recesses of my mind with the sense of something strange. I was conscious of movement — a long, precipitous roll, first one way, then the other. I could hear the sea, but there was no weight in the sound. The crash and roar of mountains of water smashing down on to rocks was gone, and someone was calling me. Bright sunlight stabbed my eyeballs and a face bent over me — a face that was sweaty and flushed under the greying stubble of a beard with eyes sunk deep in hollow sockets and skin stretched taut across forehead and cheekbone. 'We're afloat!' Patch said. His cracked lips were drawn back from his teeth in a sort of grin. 'Come and look.'

I staggered weakly to the entrance and looked out on a strange scene. The reefs had disappeared. The sun shone on a heaving sea, but there wasn't a sign of a rock anywhere. And all the Mary Deare for'ard of the well-deck had gone, vanished. The well-deck was under water, but it was as Patch had said — we were afloat; just the stern section and nothing else. And the sun was shining and the gale was diminishing, I could feel Patch trembling where he stood against me. I thought it was excitement. But it wasn't. It was fever.

By midday he was too weak to move, his eyes staring, his face flushed with unnatural colour and the sweat pouring out of him. He had been too long in the East to stand up to nights of exposure in sodden clothing without food. Towards nightfall he became delirious. Much of his raving was unintelligible, but now and then the words came clear and I realised he was back on that voyage up through the Bay, giving orders, talking to Rice… disjointed scraps that were an appalling revelation of the strain to which he had been subjected.

Towards evening a small aircraft flew over. I watched it circling low down to the north-west, its wings glinting in the setting sun. They were searching for us on the Minkies. And then night closed in and we still floated, very low in the water. There was a young moon hanging in a clear sky full of stars and the wind had gone so that the moon carved a small silver path across a placid, kindly sea that still heaved gently like a giant resting.

That night I was almost too weak to move and Patch lay like a corpse, shivering occasionally, his face still hot and his eyes wide in the faint moon-glow. Once he started up and seized my hand, trembling all over, words tumbling from his lips, words that had no meaning. But this sudden outburst — this raving — lasted only a short while. He hadn't the strength to keep it up and he suddenly fell back exhausted. I lay close against him all the rest of the night, but I had no warmth to give and in the morning he looked like a ghost, small under the stinking blankets.

I saw the Minkies again just after the sun had risen. They were on the horizon, small, jagged points of black etched sharp against the western sky. And then, much later, I heard the sound of an aircraft's engines. I had dragged Patch out on deck to get the warmth of the sun, but he was unconscious then. The aircraft went past us. I saw the shadow of it cross the water and I pulled myself up, searching the sky for it through bleared and gritty eyes. Then I saw it turning, banking out of the sun and coming back, very low over the water. I clutched the rail for support and waved a blanket at it as it zoomed over just above my head with its engines snarling. It flew off towards the Minkies and a long time afterwards, as I lay on the warmth of the deck in a semi-coma, I heard the putter of an engine and the sound of voices. It was the Peter Port lifeboat. They came alongside and life stirred again at the sound of friendly voices… strong hands helping me over the rail, a lit cigarette thrust into my mouth. They stripped us of our salt-stiff, sodden clothing, wrapped us in blankets, and then sleep came to me, the wonderful relaxed warmth of sleep. But I remember, just before I lost consciousness, a voice saying, 'Want to take a last look at your ship?' And a hand lifted me up. I shall always remember that last glimpse of what was left of her. She was stern-on to us, very low in the water so that the deckhouse, in which we had lived for two nights, looked like a chicken coop floating on the surface of the water. And then, in the trough of a swell, I saw the rust-streaked lettering of her stern — MARY DEARE — Southampton.

As far as I was concerned the story of the wreck of the Mary Deare ended there on the edge of the Minkies. But for Patch it was different. He was more directly involved and I was reminded of this as soon as I woke in the hospital at Peter Port. I didn't know it at the time, but I had slept for more than twenty hours. I was immensely hungry, but all the nurse brought me was a small plate of steamed fish, and she told me there was somebody urgently waiting to see me. I thought perhaps it was Mike, but when the door opened it was a girl standing there.

'Who is it?' I asked. The blinds were drawn and the room all darkened.

'It's Janet Taggart.' She came to the side of my bed and I recognised her then, though she looked very tired and there were dark hollows under her eyes. 'I had to see you — as soon as you woke.'

I asked her how she had got here and she said, 'It was in the papers. I came at once.' And then she leaned down over me. 'Listen, Mr Sands. Please listen to me. I'm only allowed to stay a moment.' Her voice trembled with urgency. 'I had to see you before you talked to anybody.'

She hesitated then, and I said, 'Well, what is it?' I found it difficult to concentrate. There were so many things I wanted to know and my mind was still blurred.

'The police will be coming to take a statement from you soon.' She paused again. She seemed to have difficulty in putting whatever it was she wanted to say into words. 'Didn't Gideon once save your life?'

'Gideon?' She meant Patch, of course. 'Yes,' I said. 'Yes, I suppose he did.' And then I asked her how he was. 'Didn't somebody tell me he had pneumonia?' I had a vague memory of the doctor telling me that when he was examining my shoulder.

'Yes,' she said. 'He's very ill. But he passed the crisis last night. He'll be all right now, I hope.'

'Have you been with him all the time?'

'Yes, I insisted. I had to — in case he talked.' And then she went on quickly: 'Mr Sands — that man Dellimare… You know what happened, don't you?'

I nodded. So he'd told her that, too. 'Nobody need ever know now,' I murmured. I felt tired and very weak. 'All the for'ard part of the ship broke up on that reef.'

'Yes, I know. That's why I had to see you before you made any statement. Don't tell anybody about it, will you. Please. He's suffered enough.'

I nodded. 'No. I won't tell anybody,' I said. And then I added, 'But there's Mike. He knows.'

'Mike Duncan? I've seen him. He hasn't said anything yet — either to the Press or to the police. He said he'd do nothing about it until he'd seen you. He'll do whatever you do.'

'You've seen Mike?' I pulled myself up in the bed. 'How is he? Is he all right?'

'Yes, he's here in Peter Port.' She was leaning down over me again. 'Can I tell him you're going to forget what Gideon told you? Can I tell him you want him to keep quiet about it, too?'

'Yes,' I said. 'Yes, of course — there's no point in saying anything about it now. It's over — finished.' And then I asked her how Mike had been picked up.

'It was a fisherman from St Helier. He found the motor boat just before the storm broke. There was a man called Burrows on board, too. He was badly injured, but he made a statement to the police — about Higgins.' And then she said, 'I must leave you now. I want to see Mr Duncan and then I must be with Gideon when he wakes — to see that he doesn't talk. It's the sort of silly thing he might do.' She smiled wanly. 'I'm so grateful to you.'

'Tell Mike to come and see me,' I said. And as she reached the door, I added, 'And tell — Gideon — when he wakes that he's nothing to worry about any more… nothing at all.'

She smiled then — a sudden warmth that lit her whole face up; for an instant she was the girl in the photograph again. And then the door closed and I lay back and went to sleep. When I woke again it was morning and the curtains were drawn back so that the sun streamed in. The police were there and I made a statement. One of them was a plain clothes man from Southampton, but he was uncommunicative. All he would say about Patch was that he'd no instructions at the moment to make any arrest. After that there were reporters, and then Mike arrived. The police had refused to let him see me until I had made my statement.

He was full of news. The stern section of the Mary Deare had gone ashore on Chausey Island. He showed me a newspaper picture of it lying on its side in a litter of rocks at low water. And yesterday Snetterton had been through Peter Port. He'd had a salvage team with him and they had left for Chausey Island in a local fishing boat. 'And I've been on to our insurance people,' he said. 'They're meeting our claim in full. We'll have enough to build to our own design, if we want to.'

'That means losing a whole season,' I said.

He nodded, grinning. 'As it happens there's a boat for sale right here in Peter Port would suit us nicely. · I had a look at her last night. Not as pretty as Sea Witch, of course…' He was full of plans — one of those irrepressible people who bounce back up as soon as they're knocked down. He was as good a tonic as I could have wished for, and, though he still had a piece of adhesive tape stuck across the side of his jaw where the skin was split, he seemed none the worse for his thirty hours on the water-logged wreck of that motor boat.

I was discharged from hospital next day and when Mike came up to collect me, he brought a whole pile of London papers with him, 'Altogether you've had a pretty good Press,' he said, dumping them on my bed. 'And there's a newspaper fellow flew in this morning offering you a tidy little sum for a first-hand account of what happened. He's down at the hotel now.'

Later we went and looked at the boat Mike had discovered. She was cheap and sound and we bought her on the spot. And that night Snetterton turned up at our hotel, still neat, still dapper in his pin-stripe suit, though he'd spent two days on Chausey Island. They had cut into Number Four hold at low water and opened up three of the aero engine cases. The contents consisted of concrete blocks. 'A satisfactory result, Mr Sands. Most satisfactory. I have sent a full report to Scotland Yard.'

'But your San Francisco people will still have to pay the insurance, won't they?' I asked him.

'Oh, yes. Yes, of course. But we shall recover it from the Dellimare Company. Very fortunately they have a big sum standing to their credit in a Singapore bank — the proceeds of the sale of the Torre Annunziata and her cargo. We were able to get it frozen pending investigation. I think,' he added thoughtfully, 'that Mr Gundersen would have been better advised to have organised the re-sale of the aero engines through another company. But there — the best laid schemes…' He smiled as he sipped his sherry. 'It was a clever idea, though. Very clever indeed. That it failed is due entirely to Mr Patch — and to you, sir,'

he added, looking at me over his glass. 'I have requested the H.B. & K.M… well, we shall see.'

I wasn't able to see Patch before I left Peter Port. But I saw him three weeks later when we gave evidence before the resumed Court of Enquiry. He was still very weak. The charges against him had already been dropped; Gundersen had slipped out of the country and Burrows and other members of the crew were only too willing to tell the truth now, pleading that they had supported Higgins's story because they were frightened of him. The Court found the loss of the Mary Deare was due to conspiracy to defraud on the part of the owners, Patch was absolved from all blame and the whole matter was referred to the police for action.

A good deal of publicity was given to the affair at the time and, as a result of it, Patch was given command of the Wacomo, a 10,000-ton freighter. He and Janet were married by then, but our diving programme had prevented us from attending the wedding and I didn't see him again until September of the following year. Mike and I were in Avonmouth then, getting ready to dive for a wreck in the Bristol Channel, and the Wacomo came in from Singapore and moored across the dock from us. That night we dined on board with Patch.

I barely recognised him. The lines were gone from his face and, though the stoop was still there and his hair was greying at the temples, he looked young and full of confidence in his uniform with the gold stripes. On his desk stood the same photograph in its silver frame, but across the bottom Janet had written: For my husband now — bans voyages. And framed on the wall was a letter from the H.B. & K.M. Corporation of San Francisco.

That letter had been handed to Janet by Snetterton at their wedding reception, and with it a cheque for £5,000 for her husband's part in exposing the fraud — a strangely apt figure! At the time Mike and I had been working on a wreck off the Hook of Holland and when we got back I found a similar letter waiting for me, together with a cheque for £2,500 — as some compensation for the loss of your vessel.

The body of Alfred Higgins was never recovered, but in August of that year a metal dinghy, with patches of blue paint still adhering to it, was found wedged in a crevice of the rocks on the south side of Alderney. It had been battered almost flat by the seas. One final thing — an entry in the log of Sea Witch II made on September 8, just after we had located and buoyed the wreck in the Bristol Channel. It reads: 11.48 — Freighter WACOMO passed us outward-bound for Singapore and Hong Kong. Signalled us: 'Captain Patch's compliments and he is not, repeat not, trying to run you down this time! Good wrecking!' She then gave us three blasts on her siren, to which we responded on the fog-horn. A month later, with Sea Witch II laid up for the winter, I began this account of the loss of the Mary Deare.