Levkas Man

PART FOUR

We anchored off in 4 fathoms at the head of the inlet, the sun hidden by the western hills, and as we rowed ashore, the houses of Vathy glimmered honey-coloured in the evening light, their reflections mirrored in the still water. I could see Zavelas sitting at his usual place at the kafeneion and he beckoned to us. "Kalaspera. You are back, eh?" It was difficult to know whether he was pleased or not, his face impassive. "Good trip?"

"Yes," I said. And Florrie added, "The islands were beautiful."

"I see them when I'm a kid. In caiques then. Not since." A flicker of a smile showed in his eyes. "Now it is cool and you like some cawfee, eh?" He waved aside Bert's mention of the Customs Officer. "I send for him and you do your business here. Is more comfortable after you have been at sea." He called to a boy playing in one of the boats and then clapped his hands for the proprietor.

Coffee and ouzo, the usual routine, and the ex-cop watching us, silent. There was something on his mind and it made me uneasy. Florrie felt it, too, for she was talking quickly, nervously, in a mixture of English and Greek.

"Why you come back?" Zavelas asked abruptly, the question directed at me.

Why had I come back? It was a question I had been asking myself. Curiosity, or was it something deeper, a premonition, some sixth sense warning me? Gilmore, when he had shown me Reitmayer's letter, had promised to let me know the result of the investigation. He knew the date we would be in Samos, but there had been no letter waiting for me at the Harbour Office there. "Are they continuing work on the dig behind Tiglia?" I asked.

"Yes. But not Professor Holerod. He is in London. Only Mr. Cartwright and the Dutch boy work there."

"And my father-is he still at Vatahori?"

He shook his head. "No. The Doctor is on Levkas. He has a small tent there and works alone."

"In that bay you showed me-Dessimo?"

"No. It is somewhere else."

"Where?"

"That's a secret between him and Cristos Pappadimas. But I can take you there if you want." And he added, "An' I guess the Doctor will be glad to see you. He's no money, and that's mighty hard on a poor Greek man like Pappadimas. He takes him what he can, and Miss Winters helps."

"Is she still here?"

"In my house."

I hadn't expected that and the thought of her so near brought back into my mind the picture I had of her, small, intense and slightly lost … it had been there all the voyage, the last sight of her standing on the quay at Vathy, a solitary figure waving us goodbye. The Customs Officer arrived, and whilst he dealt with Bert's transit-log, I sat there, drinking my ouzo and wondering about myself and the complexity of my motives as I exchanged small talk with Zavelas.

It was just after the Customs Officer left that a boat came in, passed close to Coromandel and then headed for the quay. I saw her head, pale tow against the dark-featured Greek at the outboard. She was searching the quay. I waved and she waved back, and then I was hurrying across to meet her. Flor-rie's eyes followed my movement; she knew how I felt-at least that's what she said afterwards, that she'd known all along I was in love with her. But I didn't know it myself then, only that the sight of her, so fresh-looking, so blonde and slim — alien corn amongst the Turk-dark Greeks-gave a sudden lift to my spirits.

"Paul." Her face lit in a smile as she leapt like a cat from boat to quay. "We saw you sailing in. From beyond Tiglia. I thought it was Coromandel. So we started straight back." She was laughing, her face flushed, the words coming in a rush.

We talked for a moment, nothing in particular, talking for the sound of our voices, the sense of communication. The outboard coughed and died and the world broke in with Pappadimas tying the painter to a ring on the quay. "Two days ago I had a cable." She felt in the pocket of her anorak. "From Dr. Gilmore. I don't understand it." She fished it out and handed it to me.

Urgent Vandervoort understands damage inflicted Hol-royd's reputation. My letter Paul explains. Tell him on arrival possibility Holroyd returning Meganisi. Gilmore. It was dated June 14.

"Do you know what it means?"

"No," I said.

"But the letter-he says he wrote to you."

"I was expecting a letter from him at Samos." And I told her about the investigation. "Have you shown this cable to my father?"

"Yes. That's why I went out there with Cristos this afternoon."

"And what did he say?"

"Nothing, just read it and handed it back to me. He didn't say a word."

"Did he know what it was about?"

"I don't know. Yes, I think so. He must have done or he would have asked me about it. Instead, he just smiled."

But I was wondering about the letter, what it had contained. "You're staying with Zavelas."

"Yes. I was at Vatahori till your father moved over to Levkas. Then I came here."

"Zavelas knows something. I saw it as soon as he greeted us.

"About Dr. Van der Voort?"

"I don't know. Something. You don't know what it is?"

"No."

"And you've no idea what this cable is about?"

"No. Except that Hans is puzzled. So is Alec. It's almost a month since Professor Holroyd left and they've been working on that dig all the time. They've found nothing. Nothing at all since they dug up those skulls. It's very odd."

But I was still wondering what had happened to Gilmore's letter, how I could get hold of the facts with the least possible delay. Something must have come out at the investigation, something more than just a failure to give credit to another anthropologist for his earlier work on the site. I glanced at my watch. It was already well past six. "If we took the boat now, how long would it take to get there-half an hour?"

"Three quarters at least," she said. "It's at the south end of the Meganisi Channel."

It would be getting dark by then. "See if you can fix it with Pappadimas," I said, and went back to the kafeneion to tell the Barretts where I was going. We left at quarter to seven, and by the time we were in the Meganisi Channel the island of Tiglia was a dark bulk between shadowed walls of rock with the mess tent a blue glow reflected in the shallows. Above us, the mountains of Levkas loomed black against the last of the sunset glow.

South of Tiglia, Pappadimas edged the boat close to the west side of the channel. The rocks were getting difficult to see, darkness closing in and the first stars showing above the dim outline of Meganisi. "It's not far now," Sonia said. Her voice sounded nervous. "You won't find him very communicative. He lives in a world of his own. I'm afraid. ." She hesitated, her voice barely audible above the noise of the outboard. "It may be all in his imagination, you see. And yet he's convinced that if he could only get through the rock fall. ." She was leanino so close to me that I could feel the breath of her sigh on my cheek. "I don't know what to think. But I'm glad you're here. Perhaps he'll talk to you. So long as you're patient with him. He's very secretive about it. Hans came with me once, but he wouldn't speak to him, wouldn't show him anything. Said he was Professor Holroyd's stooge, accused him of coming to spy and practically threw him out. It was all very unpleasant and Hans had brought some stores, things he desperately needed." The engine died as the bows nuzzled the rocks. "Anyway, you'll see for yourself."

We were in a narrow gut and Pappadimas came for'ard, hauling the boat along, both hands on the rock, until it grounded on a shelf of gritty sand. The water was very still, no sound at all. We got out and she took my hand, leading the way. There was a path of sorts, winding up between the rocks. It led to a steep slope and there was a musty smell of broom in the air. "It's about another hundred feet up." She let go of my hand. "You'll find him camped under the overhang. I'll wait for you here."

I hesitated, staring up at the dim outline of what appeared to be an enormous cavity scooped out of the cliff above. Then I went on alone, and where the overhang jutted black against the stars, the slope levelled off abruptly, and I stopped. The line of the cliff, the pale glimmer of open sea beyond. It struck a chord. The light was different, of course, but standing there, noting the configuration of sea and land, I had no doubt. This was where Cassellis had taken the pictures. I called to him then, stumbling among fallen rocks, but there was no answer and his tent when I found it was empty. It was a very small tent, the sort you have to crawl into on your hands and knees, and I stood there, wondering at his toughness, alone up here,

living little better than the primitive men whose movements he was trying to trace.

The site was a good one, the sort of position that the ancient Greeks, with their eye for country, might have chosen for one of their temples. It looked down into the channel, and to the south I could just make out the fiat expanse of the sea running out to Arkudi and the island of Ithaca. A solitary light, flashing red every 3 seconds, signposted the route to the Gulf of Patras. It was like standing on the bridge of a ship, for this natural platform was almost at the tip of a promontory formed by a spur of Mount Porro. There was no breath of air, no sound, everything very still. And then suddenly, from behind me, the clink of metal on rock, the clatter of stones.

I turned then, feeling my way deeper into the shadow of the overhang. Past a great rock fallen from the roof I saw the glimmer of a light. It came from beyond a mound of rubble, and when I had climbed to the top of it, I found myself looking down into a steeply-sloped cavern. I could see him then, a dark figure in silhouette. The light came from an old acetylene lamp and the single small jet of flame showed the cavern blocked by a fall. He was bending down, levering at the face of the fall with a crowbar, and he was so intent on what he was doing that he didn't hear the scattering of rubble as I scrambled down to the floor of the cave.

I was about ten yards from him then and I paused, curious at the care with which he was prising loose a lump of rock wedged against the cavern wall. He put the crowbar down and began tapping at it with a sharp-pointed hammer. It broke and then he was using the crowbar again, and when the rock finally fell away in pieces, he pulled a rag from his pocket, dusting the wall carefully. Then he put on his steel-rimmed half spectacles, picked up the lamp and peered at it closely, moving the lamp this way and that like a miner searching for traces of some precious metal in the face of the rock.

I was so fascinated I stood rooted to the spot, not moving, not saying anything. A strange guttural sound came from his

throat, an exclamation of excitement, of satisfaction. And then some sixth sense seemed to warn him of my presence, for he turned suddenly, straightening up and facing me, the lamp held high. "Who's that?" He reached for the crowbar, and I thought he was going to come at me with it, but instead he backed against the wall as though to conceal something.

"It's Paul," I said, and I heard his breath escape in a long sigh. He took his glasses off then, leaning slightly forward, peering at me.

"What are you doing here? What do you want?" His voice was thick, a whisper I barely recognized. The beetling brows, the blue eyes lit by the lamp, wide and staring. Remembering that photograph, the hair prickled on my scalp, my nerves taut as I recalled what Gilmore had said: Loneliness, identification with the subject that had engrossed him for so many years.

I began talking to him then, explaining my presence, the words too fast. With an effort I forced myself to speak quietly, gently, the way you would talk to an animal defending its territory, and gradually he relaxed, became himself again.

"I thought for a moment. ." He put the crowbar down and wiped the sweat from his face with the rag he had used to dust the w^all behind him. Silence then, a silence that dragged, his breathing heavy, the only sound in the stillness of the cave. He was leaning against the w-all, his lungs gasping air-an old man near the point of exhaustion.

He wiped his face again, recovering fast. He still had reserves of energy. "Last time you were here, I said I might have something to show you." His mood had changed, his personality too. He was smiling now and the smile transformed his face, lighting it with some inner excitement, so that he was suddenly like a child who has discovered something and cannot keep it to himself. "Come here."

He had turned and was holding the lamp to the wall, moving it slowly back and forth as he had done when I stood watching him. "Do you see anything?"

I had moved forward and was peering over his shoulder,

wondering what I was supposed to see on the pale, grey surface of the rock.

"You don't see it?"

"I'm not a geologist," I said, thinking it was something to do with the nature of the rock.

He sighed. "You've got sharp eyes-you could always pick out a grey plover. . Now look-" And he began tracing a shape with his finger. "Do you see it now?"

"What is it?" I asked, trying to understand.

"A rhinoceros," he said. "A woolly rhinoceros. See it? There's the back, the head, the horn. And there's what the French call les macaronis-the lines the cave artists drew to show the weapons entering the body, the moment of kill. The men who drew these animals were the witch doctors of their day and by picture-writing the kill, they gave their hunters confidence. Do you see it now?"

He was looking at me anxiously, expectantly, waiting to see my own excitement reinforce his own. "Yes," I said. "Yes, I see it." And for a moment I almost thought I did. But the rock wall was so marked by natural indentations, so scored by falls from the roof, that you could imagine almost any shape in the cracks and lines.

"It's not very clear," he said, his voice mirroring his disappointment at my lack of enthusiasm. "And the paint has gone. They scratched the outline first. Then painted the beast with ochre or charcoal, using a stick brush-sometimes blowing it on in the form of a dry powder. Here the paint is all gone. The effect of the air. But when I get deeper into the cave, beyond the rock fall. ." He moved the light. "Here's another."

Again he traced an outline, but it was difficult to know whether it was real or whether he was imagining it, the way, when you're ill, you lie in bed seeing shapes in the cracks of the ceiling. "And here-" He took me nearer the entrance. "I discovered this last year. A pigmy elephant I think, but it's so vague and indistinct I can't be sure about it. Do you know Malta? Ghar Dalam-a cave-there are the bones of small elephants there, and if the land bridge existed. ." He straightened up. "I thought it worth investigating, and now I'm certain. If I had somebody working with me. ." He stared at me, his eyes fixed on my face, willing me, I thought, to offer to help him clear the rock fall. "Nobody knows why I'm here, what I'm doing-not even Sonia." He leaned towards me, his eyes boring into me. "You're not to talk about it, you understand? You're not to breathe a word to anybody."

"Of course not," I said, wondering what it was all about. Skull fragments I could understand, bones and primitive weapons, but the scratches he had shown me on the wall here … "I came to see you about that cable from Gilmore."

His head jerked up. "Cable? What cable?"

"Sonia says she showed it to you."

"I know nothing about it." He was on the defensive, staring at me, his face expressionless.

I couldn't believe he had forgotten about it. But he was so locked up in himself. . "Those skull fragments Holroyd found. ."

"It's not my fault if he leapt to the wrong conclusions," he said quickly.

"It was your dig," I reminded him. "You were working there last year."

"Did he say it was my dig? Did he tell Congress that I discovered it? "

"No."

"Then he's only himself to blame." He was suddenly laughing, that strange, jeering sound, as though sharing a joke with himself.

I couldn't make up my mind whether he knew what had emerged at that investigation or not. But the thought was in my mind that he had known all along what would happen.

"Sonia showed you that cable," I said, trying to pin him down. "What did Gilmore mean when he referred to Hol-royd's reputation being damaged?"

He didn't answer, but just stood there, staring at me, smiling secretly.

"You know he may be coming out here again."

"Then tell him to keep away from here." The big hands moved, clenched involuntarily, his hatred of the man naked and revealed. And then, his voice rising to some inner need for self-justification: "I'm a South African. The English- they hate the South Africans. Always have." He was reaching back to the Boer War and beyond, to the long rivalry of the Dutch and English, and he added, "You're half Afrikaans yourself, whether you like it or not. I need you now." The tone of his voice had fallen to an urgent whisper. "I need your strength, Paul." I thought he meant my physical strength to break through that rock fall. But then he went on: "You're not contaminated by the touch of the thing, and I don't imagine you believe in ghosts. Maybe it's just my preoccupation with the past, but when I hold it in my hand-I feel something, a power-the power of evil, or so it seems to me. Something terrible." He stared at me, his eyes gleaming in the dark. "You don't understand? I'll show you." He took me to his tent and bent down, reaching into it with his arms. "Here you are. Hold this."

It was heavy, a stone about the size of a man's head. The edges of it had been roughly shaped, the flat surface of it hollowed out in a shallow basin. "What is it?" I asked.

"A lamp," he said. "A stone lamp."

Of course-the lamp he had been holding when Cassellis took those pictures. "Old?" I asked.

He nodded. "Very old."

I stood there, holding it in my hands, conscious that he was watching me intently, feeling that sense of evil again. "No substance in the universe-" he was speaking very quietly- "not even rock, is inanimate. Absorbed into the fabric of that stone is the knowledge that I seek. It's like the walls of a house. It breathes the atmosphere of the past. Surely you've felt that in a house-the atmosphere left by those who have lived and died there?" And when I nodded, he said, "But holding that stone, you don't feel anything, you've no sense of the past stirring in you?"

I didn't dare answer him, knowing that the horror building lip inside me came, as it always had done, from him.

He mistook my silence for insensibility. "Good!" he said. "Now you understand why I need your help."

But I didn't understand. I was confused, uncertain how to meet his need. "I don't quite see. ." But the sudden grip of his arm silenced me.

"I need you here. I need the companionship of somebody whose mind is closed to what I think I'm going to find here. You don't comprehend the evil here. You don't think about the world you live in, your own species. You're just a normal, healthy human animal. That's why I need you. To keep me from thinking about my own species-the explosion of its populations, the massing in concrete jungles, the destructive assault upon the balance of nature which can only lead to nature's retaliation-a long, slow, terrible battle of disease, famine and war." He let go of my arm, pushing his hand up through his hair and staring seaward as though looking beyond the dim line of the horizon into the distant past. "This species of ours," he said, speaking very slowly and clearly, "is Mousterian man all over again. But whereas my knowledge of the steady debasement of Mousterian stock is founded solely on the deterioration of his artefacts, the case of modern man is quite different. Here the material progress is fantastic, his 'artefacts' reaching out to the planets. It is the spiritual progress that has halted, even gone into reverse."

He paused, breathing heavily, and his eyes slowly shifted from the horizon to my face. "I once asked a great Swedish painter, a man who had travelled widely and who had lived, like I have, amongst peasant communities in many parts of the world, whether he thought we were a rogue species, and he looked at me, his blue eyes cold and full of dreadful certainty: 'But of course,' he said. And yet there's good as well as evil. I know that. The old Devil and the old God-Sade's doctrine and Christ's. And when I look at you I am reminded of Ruth. Your mother was artistic, cultured, the sweet goodness of mankind personified. And when I was with her my soul had

no evil in it, none at all. So stay with me, Paul. For Christ's sake stay with me." And he added, on a lighter note, "My own mother was Irish, you know, Celt and Boer-it's like mixing the grape and the grain." He reached for the lamp and I gave it to him, and he stood there for a moment, holding it in his hands, then he put it back in the tent.

"That man Barrett," he said, straightening up, his voice suddenly practical. "He's an underwater diver. And that's a chance I'll never get again if you could only talk him into it."

"Into what?" I asked him.

"This cave." He had turned and was looking back at the dark shadow below the overhang. "It wasn't tunneled out by the flow of an underground river. It's like Rouffignac, a sea cavern. In Rouffignac there are over a hundred gravures of mammoths. If I could get into the lower galleries here. ." He picked up his anorak and slipped it on, still talking, urgently, intently, about some theory he had that the whole great circle formed by the heights of Levkas, Meganisi, Ka-lomo and the mainland was the rim of a huge crater invaded by the sea after a volcanic explosion even more violent than that of Santorin. "I never believed in Atlantis. The continent that disappeared beyond the Pillars of Hercules is nonsense- an error due to the story having emanated from Egypt. It was the Minoan civilization-'far to the west' from the Egyptian point of view-that was destroyed when Santorin was blown to pieces, their fleet sunk, their cities and their fertile plains drowned by huge tidal waves. And if the Santorin eruption could do that, why not here, with the level of the water altered, the old cave entrance drowned? Much further back, of course-ten thousand, maybe even fifteen thousand years ago."

And he went on to talk of the geological formation, volcanic rock overlying limestone, and the Central Mediterranean fault, running up through Pantelleria, Etna, Vulcano, Stromboli, branching off to the Ionian isles. "Every year, in the hot weather, there are earth tremors here-in Levkas, Ithaca and Cephalonia in particular. Every so often there is an earthquake. Ithaca lost a thousand dead in nineteen fifty- three. They still talk of that earthquake on Meganisi. It did little damage there, but in Ithaca and Cephalonia whole towns and villages had to be rebuilt. When you get back to your boat, you look at the chart-you'll see it then, the great crater circle formed by Levkas, Meganisi and the mainland mountains."

He led me to the edge of the platform, clear of the overhang, so that we could see the stars and the whole shadowy vista of sea and islands. "Suppose I'm right," he said, his hand gripping my arm. "Then all to the south of us was dry land, all that area of sea we're looking at now was one vast plain full of game. Pygmy elephant, lynx and ibex, hippopotamus even. And then with the last Ice Age, reindeer and the woolly rhinoceros, to be replaced as the ice receded by bison, the first cattle, small horses, a whole new breed of animals. And if this were part of a more general cataclysm, then perhaps this is the Flood-not rain, but inundation by the sea." He laughed, excited now, his imagination running away with him. "Picture it for yourself, this vast plain stretching away to what is now the Western Desert, a grazing ground for all the animals whose bones we have found in Africa. And amongst them, primitive man, standing erect, weapons in his hands-the jaw-bones of hyenas, deer-leg clubs, stones-hunting, killing, evolving all the time, and fascinated, like any child or ape today, by the holes in the rocks, the caves left by an earlier sea period. In those caves he searched for his first primitive god-a goddess, in fact-the Earth Goddess, to whom he owed his whole animate being. What more natural than that he should seek her in the bowels of the earth, offering propitiation, paying tribute to his wizard priests and in return having his next meal drawn on the rock canvas with his own weapons stuck in the beast's guts to ensure a successful hunt."

The stillness of the night, the calm sea running away to the blink of that distant light, and the old man's voice conjuring a strange primeval world. Was it fantasy, the idea that this had all been land long, long ago? But listening to him, speaking, now that he had sea and land to point to, m a way

that he had never done when I was a kid, vividly and with extraordinary intensity, it didn't seem to matter. To him, at any rate, it was real. Convinced himself, he came near to convincing me.

"Paul!" Sonia's voice, calling to me out of the darkness, broke the spell. "I thought maybe you'd lost your way," she said quickly, apologetically, conscious that she had broken in upon a moment of intimacy between us.

He saw us down to the boat, silent now, declining my offer of a night in comfort on board C or o man del. He was anxious to start work on that rock fall at first light, convinced he would break through at any moment to the gallery beyond. "Don't forget," he said. "Ask Barrett if he'll do an underwater survey of the area."

I nodded, sitting on the thwart and looking up at him as he stood balanced on a rock, a dark outline against the stars. "That means anchoring here. What's the holding like?"

He hadn't thought of that. He didn't know what the bottom was like or whether there was any current moving through the channel. "It depends on the weather," I said, and started to tell him how exposed the boat would be. But at that moment Pappadimas started the outboard and the noise of it drowned my voice, beating back and forth between the rock planes that formed the sides of the channel.

Later that evening, sitting in the saloon with a drink in my hand, I found it quite impossible to convey to Bert the extraordinary sense of reality conjured by the old man's words. For that you needed to be standing on that promontory below the cave's overhang looking out across the flat plain of the sea, dim under the stars. But though to Bert the land-bridge theory was a lot of visionary nonsense, the cave was real enough, the prospect of discovering something of antiquity below the sea a lure, a challenge. "If it weren't for those damned packages of Borg's. ." He was torn between the urge to make an interesting dive and the desire to clear for Pantel-leria and get shot of his unwelcome cargo. In the event, we did neither, the weather deciding for us. We were up in the

early hours laying out a kedge, and all next morning we rode to two anchors with a gale from the north-west driving a steep scend into the inlet.

That evening, with the weather moderating, a caique came in loaded with vegetables from Corfu, and when we went ashore after dark, Zavelas told us Holroyd had arrived. He also told us that the Russian fleet was reported to be patrolling south of Rhodes, that the Israelis had launched a series of Commando raids against missile emplacements on the west side of the Suez Canal and that Egypt was appealing to the Security Council. He had a little Japanese transistor set on the table in front of him. "There is also a rumour that Turkey may mobilize. They are already concentrating more troops on the Anatolian coast opposite Cyprus and along the shores of the Black Sea." The wind was dying now, the night quiet except for the radio, a woman's voice singing a Greek song.

Vassilios was bringing his boat into the quay. I waited, sipping my ouzo and watching for Holroyd. And when he came I got up and walked to meet him on the quay.

He stopped when he saw me, his head lowered like a bull on the defensive. He looked older, less cocky, a hunch to his shoulders. "Well, young man?" He stood with his legs braced as though still feeling the movement of the sea, his head thrust forward. "What do you want?"

"Where are you going?" I asked him. "To your dig at Tiglia?"

"Where else?"

"I thought you might be going out to see my father."

"Later. That'll come later." And he added, his eyes narrowing so that the creases running back from the corners were very pronounced. "You were in on it, were you? You knew what he was up to-wasting public money, making a fool of me. And with what object? Can you tell me that?" The anger was building up in him. "Thought he'd get rid of me. Is that it? A clear field whilst he worked on the cave that really mattered. Well? Well, haven't you got anything to say?"

"I know nothing about it."

"Well, if you won't talk I'll have to have it out with Van der Voort."

"You leave him alone," I said. I could see the old man now, his big hands opening and clenching. There'd be murder if Holroyd tried to interfere with him. "Stick to Tiglia or go off and find some dig of your own. But don't cross the channel to where my father is working."

"Why not?"

"Because he'll kill you if you do."

I saw his eyes widen and he stood there, staring at me for a moment. And then without another word he went past me to the boat and Vassilios helped him in. The outboard roared and they slid away from the quay, out into the calm waters of the inlet, the light fading, everything still. I stood there, watching until they were out of sight, wondering what was going to happen. And then I turned to find Sonia standing a few yards away.

"He mustn't worry Dr. Van der Voort," she said in a small, tense voice. "Did you tell him that?"

"Of course I did." I was angry as her for stating the obvious, angry with myself for yielding to a compulsion I did not understand. And as I stood there, facing her, I was remembering the sense of something altogether evil I had felt up there alone with him the previous night.

She took my arm suddenly, her fingers gripping tight. "What is it?" she asked. "You're trembling."

But I couldn't tell her what it was, for I didn't know myself. "Do you remember those photographs Dr. Gilmore brought with him to Amsterdam? The second one-he was holding something in his hand. A stone lamp, Gilmore said. D'you remember? What did they use a stone lamp for?"

"The ancients?"

"Yes, the ancients." It was a strange, archaic word to use. "Was there something special about a stone lamp?"

"No, of course not." She said it briskly. "They had to see and it was the only lamp they knew-a hollowed stone with animal fat and the wick floating in it. Isn't that what the Eskimos use?"

"Probably."

She left me shortly afterwards and I rowed off to the boat. I needed a drink, a good stiff drink.

I was on my second Scotch when the Barretts came off in Zavelas's boat. They were very subdued. Even Florrie. They'd made up their minds. They wanted to clear for Pylos in the morning, and once through the channel, head direct for Pantelleria.

"Without going to Pylos to hand in our transit-log?"

"Yes," Bert said. And his wife nodded. "It's dangerous here." They were thinking of the cargo we carried. I was thinking of Holroyd and my father.

"Zavelas is suspicious. I think he knows something."

So they had felt it, too. "Okay, "I said. All day, whilst we had been cooped up on board waiting for the weather to moderate, we had talked of little else, chewing it over with the intensity of people who have no means of getting away from each other. And now that they had finally made up their minds, I knew there was no shifting them. Like most easygoing men, Bert could be very obstinate once he had been forced to a decision.

"We can always plead stress of weather, an engine breakdown, something like that," he said. "The regulations allow for that, provided I post the transit-log back to the port of entry and give the reason for not clearing foreign."

I nodded. We'd be in the clear then to come back if I could wring enough money out of Borg. "So long as we stop in the channel-I'd like to have a word with my father before we leave."

"Of course. But I'm not making a dive." And Florrie added, "Zavelas warned us about that. If Bert dives, then they'd have to examine the boat to make certain he hadn't lifted some archaeological treasures off the bottom." I knew that, but I had thought that in a little place like this … "A pity," I said and left it at that. It was no use arguing with them.

We had supper then, and afterwards I took the dinghy and rowed ashore to say goodbye to Sonia. I still had some drach-

mas and I wanted to leave the money with her. It would be just enough to keep him going for a month or two the way he was living and I wasn't certain he'd take it from me.

It was very hot ashore, a preternatural stillness hanging over the little port. Zavelas was no longer at the kafeneion, but the proprietor sent his daughter with me to show me the house. She was about fourteen, a bright, dark-eyed girl shyly conscious of the fact that she was just emerging from the puppy-fat stage. Her short, white frock, immaculately laundered, gleamed in the dark. It was a breathless, suffocating night, no stars and the air hanging heavy. By the time we reached the house my shirt was sticking to my back. "Spiti Zavelas," she said, and with a quick smile and a swirl of her skirt she was gone, still looking as fresh as when we started.

Zavelas opened the door to me himself. "Come in, fella." And he showed me in to a ground-floor room that was like a stage version of a Victorian parlour. "So you're leaving in the morning, and now you want to see the Dutch girl, eh?" He was smiling, not quite a leer, but as near as dammit. "Well, you're welcome." He left me and I heard him calling to Sonia up the stairs.

There were lace antimacassars on the chairs, bric-a-brac everywhere, and the walls crowded with photographs-group pictures mainly, of cops and sailors and loggers. An English Parliament clock showed the time as nine forty-seven. I was still wondering where that had come from when the door opened behind me and I turned to find Sonia standing there. No puppy-fat on her and her face looking hot and strained. "Mr. Zavelas has told me. You're leaving in the morning."

"Yes." I began to explain the reason, but she cut me short:

"You could have stayed if you'd wanted to. You don't have to go with them." I could almost hear her saying. You're running out on him again.

"I came to give you this," I said quickly, getting out my wallet and explaining to her why it was better for her to have it. She took the dirty notes, counting them carefully. "Eight hundred and seventy-five drachs," she said.

It was a little over £12, not very much. "I'm afraid it's all I've got left."

"Never mind. It will help. And he's vegetarian-except for eggs and cheese. He eats a lot of eggs." And she added, "It's extraordinary the energy vegetarians have. Yet they're much gentler than meat-eaters." She was just talking for the sake of talking, and she wanted to think of him as a kindly man. "Are you a vegetarian?" I asked. She hadn't appeared to be when she was cooking for Cartwright and her brother at Despotiko, but I didn't really have any idea what she liked to eat.

"I think I might be-with a little encouragement. In Amsterdam I was. But it's so difficult, with other people."

We might have gone on talking like that, keeping to neutral topics and avoiding personal contact, but at that moment the walls seemed to move, the ground swaying under my feet. It was the heat and the drink. That was my first thought, that all the liquor I had consumed that day had caught up with me. I could feel my body swaying, the room swimming before my eyes. And then, with a conscious effort, I seemed to have control of myself. The room was still again and I said, "Vegetables are cheap in the islands here. At least he won't starve." My voice sounded over-careful, the words thick and blurred. I must be drunk. Even in this cool, Victorian room, the air was stifling. I could feel the sweat on my forehead, my whole body clammy with the heat. "I'll go now," I said, remembering that time in Amsterdam when I'd flung her against the wall. "I just came to give you those notes." But she didn't seem to hear. She was standing very tense, her eyes wide, and there were beads of sweat on her forehead and on her short upper lip. "What was that?" she breathed.

And then it came again, the room swimming, the ground moving under my feet. A piece of plaster fell from the ceiling, a puff of white dust on the lovingly polished case of the Parliament clock, and the clock itself shifting slightly before my eyes so that I thought it was going to fall. But then everything was still again and the clock remained there on the wall, oddly askew, and Sonia was close against me, my arm around

her. We had come together instinctively, an involuntary movement, the two of us seeking comfort in each other. I could feel the warmth of her body. She was pressed close to me and my hand, touching her, feeling the warmth of her flesh beneath the thin fabric of her dress, discovered she was wearing nothing underneath it. She was as stark as if she were in her nightdress. "That was an earthquake?" I murmured.

She shook her head. "An earth tremor, I think they'd call it. We had one the other day. But not as bad." She was still clinging to me and I put my hand under her chin and tilted her head back.

"Scared?"

She smiled. "Not really. Surprised, that's all. It came as a shock."

I kissed her then and for a moment we stood there, locked in each other's arms, unconcious of the risk we ran staying indoors, the world reduced to the two of us, the pounding of our blood louder than any movement of the earth. And then feet sounded heavy on the stairs and Zavelas called down to us: "Van der Voort-Sonia! You get outside. Ghrighora! Quickly!"

He was there before us, with his wife and everybody else who lived in the street, standing in the middle of the road, very still and quiet, waiting anxiously. The air was oppressive, hot and humid. But nothing happened. "Finished now I think," Zavelas said finally. "A tremor. Nothing serious." And he laughed, a little uncertainly. "Not like San Francisco, eh? Guess if we were down at Fisherman's Wharf they'd all be reckoning it was the end of the world. That's a real big fault they're sitting on there. In Meganisi it's not so dangerous."

His wife went back into the house, a big, broad, motherly soul already intent upon making certain that none of the things she treasured had been harmed. Through the open windo^v we saw her in the room we had left, already working with brush and dustpan to sweep up the fall of plaster. "It's the heat," Zavelas said. "When it's like this there is always a little danger. But usually later in the year." He looked at me and his manner changed, a cop again, responsible to authority for the security of the island which was his home. "It is reported to Levkas that you leave for Pylos. I guess they'd like the Doctor to go with you. We will know for sure in the morning, but I would advise you to arrange it."

"I don't think he'd agree to that," I said.

He stared at me, the blue eyes hard. "I'm warning you. That's all." And then he shrugged. "None of my business, you understand." His voice was kindly, almost paternal, and he patted me on the shoulder with his big hairy paw. "But I think it's better he goes with you. Okay?"

"They can't force him," Sonia said in a small, tight voice.

"They can do anything they damn well like. You know that, Sonia." And Zavelas added, "I think maybe Kotiadis come here in the morning." And with that he left us and went back into the house.

Sonia walked with me down to the quay and we didn't talk. Something had happened to us, and we knew it, so that we were both of us absorbed in trying to sort ourselves out. "I'll see him in the morning," I said as I got into the dinghy. "We'll stop in the channel on the way out."

"If Pappadimas is here, I'll come out there," she said. "Anyway, I'll be on the quay to wave you off." And she added quickly, "I think Zavelas is right. I think he should go with you."

The thought was in my mind too-but not because of the authorities. "I'll have a talk with him."

She nodded, looking very solemn. "He's interested in Pantelleria. That might help."

"He's also obsessed by that damn cave of his." I hadn't much hope that he'd agree. "Goodnight." And I pushed away from the quay without touching her, feeling she was a million miles away, the old man between us again.

"Goodnight, Paul."

She turned, not looking back, and I started to row out to the boat.

We were up at six-thirty the following morning, for in a boat the size of Coromandel there is always a lot to be done in preparation for a long sea passage and we had the kedge to recover. By eight Bert was away in the dinghy to see the Customs official, leaving me to get the sails ready for hoisting whilst Florrie cleared the breakfast things and stowed everything below. It was a perfect day for the start of a voyage, clear and bright with the wind back in the north-west-very light, but since this was the prevailing wind direction along the coast we could expect it to increase during the day. By eight-thirty everything was ready, only the main anchor to bring in, and we were waiting for Bert.

It was almost nine before he put off from the quay, and as he sculled the dinghy alongside I could see by his face that something was wrong. "You've been a long time," Florrie said as he tossed the painter to me.

He nodded, sitting there in the dinghy, looking up at me. "I had to wait while they phoned through to Levkas for instructions." He reached up, gripping the bulwarks, and hauled himself on board. "They're being difficult," he said. "It's that bloody man Kotiadis. He's at police headquarters in Levkas. We can sail, but on one condition-that we take Dr. Van der Voort with us." He was staring at me. "You'd better fix it, otherwise God knows what will happen." He was angry. AngTy because he was scared. "I've a good mind to throw those packages overboard, right here in the harbour, and by Christ I'll do it if you don't get us out of here."

"I can't very well shanghai him," I said. "What happens if he says No?"

"Then they'll impound the boat, maybe arrest the three of us. That's what your copper friend implied." He turned on his wife then. "You thought that escapade off the Turkish coast just a bit of fun. It was easy. I grant you that. A piece of cake. But they've got all our movements taped, every port we've been in and the dates. And they've a pretty good idea what we were up to in the Samos Straits that night."

"How do you know?" she asked, on the defensive.

"Zavelas. I had about a quarter of an hour, with him hinting at all sorts of things-even the possibility that we might have an agent stowed away on board. Maybe it's just an excuse. I don't know. It doesn't matter, anyway. They know enough to justify any action they care to take, and they want to get shot of V^an der Voort."

"But why?" I asked. "He's doing no harm, working quietly away. ."

"It's the international situation. Kotiadis is still convinced that he's some sort of an agent." And he added, "I don't care how you do it, but get him on board and let's get out of here. I'm not having my boat impounded, for you or anyone else-it's all Florrie and I have got. If you don't get him on board, then I'll come ashore and do it myself." He was near to tears, he was so upset, the words pouring out of him.

"Okay," I said. "If that's what you want, we'll fetch the anchor now and go round and pick him up." My hands were trembling at the thought, but there was nothing else for it. I could see it from the Greek point of view, the Middle East flaring and themselves on the edge of the volcano. They had a right to get rid of anybody they didn't trust. "You've got clearance for Italy, have you? Or do they still want us to go to Pylos for clearance?"

"I don't know," he said. "The Customs official is coming round with us in Zavelas's boat. He's keeping the transit-log until they've seen Dr. Van der Voort on board, and Kotiadis is coming from Levkas in a coastal patrol boat. I think we're going to be escorted outside territorial waters."

I pulled the dinghy astern and made the painter fast to a cleat aft. Then we got the anchor up and jilled around, the engine just ticking over. We didn't talk. There was nothing else to be said. Zavelas came down to the quay and got into his boat. The Customs official joined him and they put off, arrowing a wake into the inlet, the outboard noisy in the quiet of the port. Sonia stood close by a bollard, a small, still figure. She didn't wave and we got under way, the three of us subdued and silent.

Half an hour later we were in the Meganisi Channel, the water glass-calm and no breeze at all under the sheltering heights of Levkas. The depth at the southern end was 65 fathoms, too deep to anchor, and Bert steered close in to the rocks on the Levkas side, holding her there whilst I hauled the dinghy alongside and jumped into it. Florrie passed me the oars, and as I pulled away she called to me-"Paul. There's a boat in there. I can just see the outboard."

I leaned on the oars, letting the dinghy drift whilst I turned to look. High above me I could see the overhang, the great scooped-out hollow in the near-vertical hillside pale in the sunlight. I couldn't see the boat, only the shape of the rocks that marked the gut where Sonia and I had landed. I had a sudden premonition, a feeling I had arrived too late, and I bent to the oars, pulling hard for the shore. It was barely twenty yards, and in a moment I had opened up the gut and there was Vassilios in his dirty singlet dozing in his boat. "Where's Professor Holroyd?" I called to him.

He turned and stared at me uncomprehendingly, moving aft to catch the dinghy's bows. "Professor Holroyd-poo ine?" He pointed above us towards the overhang, now hidden by the rocks, and I scrambled past him, the boats rocking violently as I leapt for the shore. Christ Almighty! The bloody fool! I'd warned him. The track zig-zagged up through the rocks and I clambered up it, moving fast, praying to God that I wasn't too late. The low beat of Coromandel's engine drummed against the cliff, and to the north I could hear the waspish sound of Zavelas's outboard coming down the channel. It was hot and the blood pounded in my head as I clawed my way up.

And then a voice said, "You're too late."

I stopped then, looking up to see Holroyd standing poised on a rock above me, wearing a pair of red bathing trunks and a white shirt.

"How do you mean?" The words came in a gasp and I stood there, panting, wondering what the hell he'd been up to. "What happened? What have you done?"

"Done?" He seemed puzzled. "Nothing," he said. "Nothing I could do. He's gone."

I didn't get it for a moment. But he wasn't hurt. He hadn't been in a fight. That was all that mattered and a feeling of relief flooded through me. I climbed the last few feet and joined him where he stood on the slope below the platform. "You stay here," I said. "I want to talk to him alone."

"Well, go ahead. Maybe you know where he is." And he stood aside to let me pass.

I had started up the slope, but then I paused. Something in his voice, his choice of words … I stared at him, but I couldn't see the expression of his eyes. He was wearing dark glasses, his head bare, and from where I stood now he was a slightly ridiculous figure, the shirt hiding his bathing trunks so that he looked as though he were wearing a mini skirt. "He'll be in the cave," I said.

But he shook his head. "I've tried there."

"Beyond the rubble? It goes in about ten yards."

"I've been right to the end," he said.

"And he's not in his tent?"

"No. And I searched everywhere."

"Then probably he's at Vatahori."

"Vassilios says not. He saw Pappadimas this morning." He thrust his head forward. "If you ask me, he's abandoned his dig and cleared out." And he added angrily, "But I'm not falling for it this time."

"I don't believe it," I said. "He's just avoiding you. That's all." It seemed the most sensible thing for him to do.

"Maybe," he said, but I could see he wasn't convinced, "You go and have a look for yourself. I'll go on down to the boat and wait for you there."

I left him then and climbed the slope to the platform below the overhang. I hadn't been there in daylight before and I stood for a moment staggered by the view. The island of Arkudi was almost due south, a massive pile seared brown by the sun, with the flat plain of the sea all round it, its surface rippled by the breeze. And beyond Arkudi, Ithaca and Cepha- Ionia, merged into one great mountainous mass half-hidden in a haze of heat. To the west, beyond the long scorpion tail of Meganisi, more islands and the mainland mountains rearing misty heights. I could hear the old man's voice talking as though in a dream of the hunting lands of early man, and again I felt the strange atmosphere of the place. Even in daylight, in the full blaze of the sun, it had an eeriness, a sense of evil. Or was that just my imagination?

I shrugged it off and turned to the tent. It was still there, and when I peered inside the first thing I saw was the stone lamp. He wouldn't have gone without that, surely? There was his camera, too, and his notebooks, and the sleeping bag was neatly spread as though it hadn't been slept in that night. I called his name then, but there was no answer except the sound of my voice echoing back from the cliff above. And when I had clambered to the top of the rubble, I could see at a slance that he wasn't in the cave. It was in dark shadow, of course, but I could see right to the rock fall and there was no way through.

I went back to the platform then and searched about for some way by which he could have climbed to the heights above or made his way to the end of the promontory. But the cliff was almost sheer, the great scooped-out hollow in it sealing the platform off entirely. There was no possible way of leaving the place except by the path up which I had climbed. And here, at the south end of the channel, it was a long swim across to Meganisi. To get away he would have to have had a boat.

Zavelas and the Customs official had arrived by the time I got down to the gut again and Holroyd was talking to them. "God knows," I heard him say, and Zavelas nodded: "We will see Pappadimas, but first we must wait for Kotiadis." He saw me and his eyebrows lifted. "You don't find him, eh? Then you must go back to your boat and tell your skipper he is to stay here. I guess Kotiadis won't be long now."

"We can't anchor here," I said. "It's too deep."

He conferred with the Customs official. "Okay," he said.

"Then you must go back to Vathy and wait there. You cannot leave without your transit-log. You understand?"

I could hear the chug of Coromandel's diesel very close, and once I had manoeuvred the dinghy out of the gut, I had only a few yards to row. Seeing me come off alone Bert knew something was wrong and his face, behind the glass windshield, looked sullen and angry as he backed out into mid-channel and cut the engine. "Well, what's happened? Where is he?" And when I told him, he shouted at me, "Then find him, for Christ's sake. The bloody old fool!" And he rounded on Florrie. "Why the hell did you persuade me to come back this way? If we'd gone direct to Pantelleria-"

"Paul had to come."

"Why? Why did he have to come this way?" And he added, his words coming wildly, "Paul wants this. Paul wants that. And this daft old man buggering up the whole trip."

"You're behaving like a child," she said stiffly.

"So I'm like a child, am I? Well, I'll tell you this-if we lose the boat, I'm through. I'll leave you and go back to the Persian Gulf. Make some real dough before I'm too old."

"You're too old now," she said. "You'll always be too old." And she turned and went below, leaving him with a shocked look on his face.

"Christ!" he breathed. "I should have left that bitch years ago. All the things I've done to keep her happy. ." His face had crumpled, a sad, tired face on the verge of tears. "To hell with her! You, too-to hell with you both!" And he went into the wheelhouse, standing there, staring at the chart, anything to drive out the loneliness that was in him.

He was a failure and he knew it, and I was sorry for him. "I'm going ashore again now," I said.

He nodded, not saying anything, not looking at me, a shut look on his face. God! I thought. Loneliness must be a terrible thing, the loneliness of a marriage gone wrong. And I had contributed to it. Without thinking I had thrust them over the edge of neutrality into open hostility. I felt guilty. But there was nothing I could do about it. If it hadn't been me, it would have been somebody else. Probably had been. Probably she'd thrown herself at other men,

I got back into the dinghy then and rowed towards the Levkas shore, leaving Coromandel drifting, with him standing there alone in the wheelhouse, not caring any longer. There was only Vassilios in the gut now. The others had gone up to the cave. He helped me ashore, and when I reached the platform I found them clustered around the tent, the old man's notebooks lying on the ground and Holroyd standing with the stone lamp in his hand. "Do you know what this is?" he asked me and there was an undercurrent of excitement in his voice.

"Yes," I said.

"Where did he get it?" He was looking at me intently, holding the thing in his two hands carefully as though it were some fragile piece of glass. "Brought it with him, I suppose-like those skull fragments."

"I don't think so."

"No?" He sounded doubtful. "I've seen stone lamps like these in the museum at Les Eyzies and at the Grotte de la Mouthe." He turned it in his hands, looking down at it with extraordinary intensity, like a connoisseur examining some precious antique. "Are you sure he didn't bring it with him?"

"Why are you so interested?" I asked.

He stared at it a moment longer, and then he put it down on the ground, carefully, and with obvious reluctance. "Do you know what it was used for?" he asked.

"To light their cave-shelters, I imagine."

He nodded. "But in the Vezere-at de la Mouthe and in some of the other caves-their cave artists used these lamps to light their work. That's how they painted in the dark recesses of their cave temples." He had turned and was staring towards the shadowed hollow of the overhang. "We'll go up there, shall we, and have another look?"

"There's nothing there," I said. "Just the cave blocked by a rock fall."

He was looking at me, trying to read a motive behind my

words. "Winters tells me Dr. Van der Voort was working night and day to clear it. Why?"

I shrugged, not wishing to excite his interest further. There was the sound of an outboard in the channel, a small boat headed for the gut. I could see Sonia in the bows so it must be Pappadimas. "I'll be up at the cave," Holroyd said, and he started up the slope, his white shirt flapping round his legs.

"It don't make sense to me," Zavelas said, "leaving his camera and his notes." He bent down and picked up one of the notebooks. "Know what language this is?" he asked, handing it to me. I opened it to see the familiar spidery writing, but no meaning to the words. "It sure ain't English."

"No," I said, sensing his uneasiness. As an ex-policeman he was intrigued by the mystery of my father's disappearance, but overlying that were his political responsibilities and the notebooks worried him. They worried me, too, for I knew they weren't written in Afrikaans.

He glanced at his watch and then at the channel. The white of a bow wave showed beyond the northern tip of Meganisi. "Kotiadis?" I asked.

He nodded. "I think so." He sounded relieved, anxious to hand the problem over to higher authority.

Sonia's reaction to the news, which she had heard from Vassilios, was one of absolute disbelief that my father's disappearance was deliberate. "Something's happened-an accident. He would never have left this place till he had got through that rock fall. You know that, Paul. You said last night that he was obsessed by the need to break through it. How could you possibly think he would abandon it?" She was breathless from her hurried climb, her voice coming in quick gasps. "Have you searched the rocks?" And she added, "I sent Pappadimas to search the channel, just in case."

I did my best to calm her. He'd disappeared once before. Why not again? With Holroyd in the vicinity I thought anything was possible. As for an accidental fall, he was as surefooted as a goat. But she didn't believe me. "You say Professor

Holroyd was already here when you arrived. Have you thought what might have happened when he met Dr. Van der Voort? Suppose …" she stared at me, her meaning obvious.

"Then we'd have found his body floating in the water."

"Not if he was unconscious. And Professor Holroyd may have been here before-during the night." It was what she wanted to believe-anything, even murder, rather than face the alternative that the old man's mind had given way.

"Holroyd's surprise at finding him gone was genuine," I said.

But she wouldn't accept that. "Something terrible has happened. I feel it. I feel it here." And she banged her hand against her firm little breasts. And then quite suddenly she turned on me as though I were to blame. "You don't want to believe me, do you? You leave me money for him, and you think that's that. You don't want to be involved in any trouble." The way she said it reminded me of Florrie hitting out at her husband and it made me suddenly mean.

"You tell me I'm running out on him once more, and by Christ I'll give you a hiding you won't forget."

"You said it, I didn't," she flashed.

Zavelas put his big hand on my shoulder. "I think we go up to the cave now."

Holroyd was down at the far end, close by the rock fall, brushing at the wall with his handkerchief. He had a torch in his hand and he moved it back and forth the way my father had done. "Do you see?" he cried, turning to us as we crowded the entrance of the cave. He didn't bother to conceal his excitement. "Look!" And he began to trace it for us with his finger. It was the rhinoceros the old man had traced for me- the rump, the tail, the two hind legs. "Some sort of animal," he said. "Do you see it?"

"Yes, I see it," Sonia said and her voice seemed to mirror his own excitement.

"That lamp," Holroyd went on, addressing himself to me. "Now we know what it was used for and that he found it here."

But all I could think of was the rhinoceros. Some sort of animal. Holroyd didn't know what it was-couldn't know, for the forelegs, all the head, were hidden by the rock fall. Or was this another outline? Had the old man found more animals etched deeper in the cave? "Give me the torch," I said and grabbed it from him, peering along the wall. But there was the elephant, a few feet nearer the entrance and coated thick with a new layer of dust. I heard Sonia's voice behind me exclaim, "Lieve help! Surely that's an animal. I can see the dome of its head." She caught hold of my arm. "It's what I told you — he'd never have left this place of his own accord."

I brushed her hand away and turned the torch on the cave end, on to the fall itself. The rocks were pale-coloured, sharp-edged, but that didn't prove anything. A new fall would look no different from the old fall opened up. But he'd a crowbar here and his geological hammer. The beam of the torch revealed no sign of any tools, and when I directed it above our heads it showed the roof, badly cracked and faulted. "Epikin-dynos-sigha!" Zavelas exclaimed. "Is dangerous."

"It must have been that earth tremor," I said, and I swung the beam of the torch back to the lines marking the rump of the rhinoceros. "Two nights ago he showed me the whole outline. He had just cleared it-the head, the horn, the whole animal. Now look at it, and he was working here all day yesterday." I turned to Holroyd. "Better collect Cartwright and Hans and start digging. Can you get some of your own people down here?" I asked Zavelas.

He nodded, quick to grasp my meaning, but not moving. "No hurry now," he said gently, and, with the two first fingers and thumb of his right hand together, he touched his forehead from right to left in the Orthodox manner. I saw Sonia's face very white in the beam of the torch. She didn't say anything. She knew as well as I did that Zavelas was right- the old man couldn't possibly have survived under the weight of that fall.

"I'm sorry," Holroyd said, and to give him his due I think he meant it. Probably this was something anthropologists feared, an occupational hazard. "I'll move camp up here and we'll start work right away." His eyes strayed towards the rhinoceros and I knew the incentive to dig was not the recovery of my father's body. His gaze shifted to the roof, squinting up at the cracks as though assessing the danger, measuring it against the scientific potentials. "We'll be back here with all our gear in about an hour." And he walked quickly out towards the bright gleam of sunlight beyond the rubble.

Zavelas patted my arm. "We all have to go some time, fella. And that way it is quick." The sympathy in his voice was real. But then he said, "Now I go and tell Kotiadis." And I knew he was relieved, the old man's death solving a problem that had worried him.

I followed him out of the cave, Sonia's hand in mine, her fingers clasping tight. I didn't look at her. I knew if I did she'd burst into tears. "He's right," she whispered as we came down off the rubble into the hot sun. "It must have been very quick." There was a catch in her voice as she added, "He wouldn't have liked to linger. Better to go whilst he was still driving towards something he believed in."

I could feel her nails in the palm of my hand. "You and I, " I said. "We should have been switched at birth. You'd have understood him."

"He'd still have wanted a son," Her voice sounded infinitely sad.

We were halfway across the platform then and I saw Kotiadis down by the tent. He came to meet us, still wearing the same light grey suit, his face impassive behind his dark glasses. He ignored Zavelas's greeting, walked right past him and thrust one of the notebooks at me. "You see this before?"

I nodded, surprised at the violence in his voice.

"Is written in Russian. Connaisez-vous? What for is he writing in Russian, eh?" His voice was literally trembling, so intense was his feeling at this discovery.

It didn't matter to him that the writer of those notes was dead. He didn't believe it, anyway, convinced that my father had disappeared "for convenience" as he put it. As for the suggestion that the notes were written in Russian for reasons of scientific security, he simply ignored it, firing questions at me in a steady stream-about the old man, about where he had been and where we were planning to go. I suppose he was imder pressure, his superiors and the Middle East tension, but I wasn't in the mood to make allowances. To me he was a stupid, bloody-minded bastard, a typical bureaucrat, and I told him so.

"You are under arrest," he shouted at me. "All of you." He pointed up the channel. "You go with the boat to Vathy now. Then I take you to police headquarters at Levkas."

Anger exploded in me then, exploded into violence, my hands reaching out to grip him by the collar and shake some sense into him. Sonia called to me and I hesitated, and in that moment my arms were seized and pinned to my side in a great bear-hug, Zavelas talking over my shoulder, fast and urgent in Greek. Unable to move, I let the torrent of words pour over me. They were both of them shouting now, the violence of their altercation drumming at the rocks, so that it sounded as though they were having a furious row. Then suddenly it was all over and Kotiadis was smiling, holding out his hand to me. "Pardon," he said. "I did not understand. Please to accept my sympathies." Zavelas released me then and Kotiadis added, "Now we must recover Dr. Van der Voort's body." The way he said it, the watchful, wary look in his eyes, I knew the future depended on that-the finding of my father's body.

Sonia's hand touched mine, a gesture of understanding, of sympathy, but I shook her off. I didn't want sympathy. I just wanted the clock turned back, the years in Amsterdam again. Atonement for my own callousness. I felt unutterably depressed. Not so much at the old man's death, but because of the wasted years.

It was in this mood that I took Kotiadis up to the cave and began clearing the loose debris of the new fall, Sonia working beside me, both of us for our own individual reasons endeavouring to lose ourselves in the hard physical work of shifting rock. Holroyd returned, bringing Cartwright, Hans and Vassilios with him. They had tools and a pressure lamp, but no wheelbarrow, so that everything still had to be taken out to the rubble pile by hand. It was hard, back-breaking work, fine rock dust hanging in clouds, clogging our nostrils.

By one-thirty the whole outline of the rhinoceros was clear on the wall again and we had progressed to the point where the cave was almost as deep as when I had surprised my father working in it late that night. We broke for lunch then, Sonia having come back with Florrie and a great pile of sandwiches they had cut on board. Apparently Bert had located a shelf of rock and the boat was moored bows-on to the shore with an anchor out astern. "He's planning a dive this afternoon." Florrie was looking tired and strained.

"Well, tell him to be careful," I said, conscious still of the atmosphere of this place and not wanting another tragedy.

She gave me a wan smile. "You don't have to worry about Bert when it comes to diving. It's something he's really good at.

I knew that. I'd watched him dive in the harbour at Patmos. And then later, under his instructions, I'd gone down myself in shallow water off Leros. I wouldn't have done that if I hadn't had complete confidence in him. But to start diving now. . "It would be more help if he came ashore and gave us a hand."

"He's not thinking of helping you," she said. "It's just to take his mind off things."

It was shortly after the lunch break that Hans uncovered the end of the crowbar. We felt we were near then, but time passed as we worked more carefully at the fact and we found nothing. It was all broken rock and the roof unsafe, the ceiling fractured so that you could pull great chunks of limestone away with your hands. Zavelas had brought three men from Spiglia and by evening we were in a distance of about eight yards. For the last hour Kotiadis had stood watching us. It was not difficult to guess what he was thinking.

We packed it in at sunset and, apart from the crowbar, all we had found was the old man's watch and a tin filled with carbide. They were not more than a foot apart. It would seem that, after refilling his acetylene lamp and lighting it, he had laid the carbide tin down and then, perhaps because he knew he had some hard, jarring work ahead of him with the crowbar, he had removed his watch from his wrist and put it down beside the tin. The watch was a write-off, of course, the face and works completely shattered. It had a stainless steel case and the leather strap was almost black with sweat. Sonia said he had bought it in Russia, but marks on the case showed that it was Swiss-made.

The only man who was satisfied that night was Holroyd. What looked like the head of a deer superimposed on the rump of some larger animal had been uncovered, and on the opposite wall the vague outline of a very complex drawing was just beginning to emerge. He was impatient for the morning when Zavelas had promised to bring more men and also at least one wheelbarrow. With a wheelbarrow the work would go much faster and he was sure that they would break through into an undamaged gallery beyond the fall.

Bert, too, was not unhappy. He had started diving shortly after three in the afternoon and had worked his way steadily along the underwater face of the Levkas shore below the cave. He described it as "very broken, with deep crevices between what looked something like the flying buttresses supporting a medieval cathedral." He had explored every one of those crevices, some of them over 50 metres in depth and most of them very narrow. In only one case had he failed to reach the end. This was more a cave than a fissure, the curved sides suggesting that it had been worn by water over a very long period. About 30 metres in it had been partially blocked by a fallen slab. There was a gap, but it was small. He had gone in about 2 metres with his aqualung scraping rock all the time.

"I was running short of air by then," he said. "Also I'd only got a small hand torch, so I backed out. I'll have another go at it tomorrow." He wasn't sure whether that was the end of the cave or whether it opened out further in. "There wasn't much light, you see. If I could anchor over it and take down a spotlight. . it's a bit tricky like, 'cos if it don't open up you've got to back all the way out."

Back at Vathy he was still talking about it. The row with his wife, the harsh words said, seemed wiped from his mind. And for her part, Florrie seemed to take it for granted that nothing had changed. Sonia was on board with us and when I told her what had happened between them earlier, all she said was, "What did you expect? Only a fool would go into marriage with her eyes shut to the sort of man she was tying herself to for life, and Florrie isn't a fool." She was looking at me very directly as though to say "and nor am I."

She had supper with us and then I rowed her ashore. She sat in the stern, her face a pale oval in the starlight, and she didn't speak until we were close in to the quay. "Bert seems very excited about that hole he's found."

"It's a challenge," I said. "An object for doing something he likes doing."

"Yes, but he seemed to think if he could get through he'll find the cave continuing."

"With pictures of animals painted in brilliant colours, I suppose." That was wliat the old man had hoped and the cave was Holroyd's now.

She caught the note of bitterness in my voice, for she said gently, "Surely to prove him right-wouldn't that be something worth while?"

"Not my department," I said, thinking of Holroyd starting at crack of dawn, intent on breaking through to the cave beyond. "I'll get his body out and then I'll go." And I added, without conscious thought, "There's something about that place, a voodoo, something-I don't like it."

The bows touched and she sat there for a moment, staring at me, silent. Then she jumped for the quay, and with a quick goodnight she was gone like a shadow into the night. I leaned on the oars, wondering what the hell she expected of me. The old man was dead, and though his death might mean more to her than it did to me, she surely couldn't be childish enough to think that I could carry on where he had left off.

When I got back to the boat, Bert was on deck to take the painter. "Can you give me a hand at the work bench?" he said. "I'm rigging a battery-operated spotlight. It'll be better than trailing a long cable, but I need help with the waterproofing."

I suppose you could call it a displacement activity. Give a man like Bert a technical problem and he lost himself in it completely, everything else forgotten. It took us just over two hours to fix and test that spot, and all the time he was talking about how he'd get through the crevice if he found the cave opening out beyond it.

Afterwards we tuned in to Radio Athens and listened to the English news broadcast. Florrie had gone to bed and we were alone in the wheelhouse, a drink in our hands and the announcer telling of gun duels across the Suez Canal, air strikes and Cairo in an uproar of militant demonstration. The Security Council of the Ignited Nations was meeting in the morning. Florrie used to get tracts from an outfit called the British Israelites," Bert said as he switched the radio off. "That was when we were in Great Yarmouth. Bloody queer stuff, too; prophecies based on the pyramids and the Bible, that sort of thing. Didn't go for it myself, but one thing I remember-they were convinced Armageddon would start in the Middle East." He raised his drink, his battered face creased in a smile. "It's times like this I'm glad I'm just a simple bloke with a boat of my own and things to occupy my mind. Give me a cave to explore or a bit of engineering to do and I don't give a damn whether the human race is hell-bent on self-destruction or not. There's so much in the world, why the hell aren't we content with what we've got? We go to the moon. Space platforms next. And yet we can't sort out a little matter like the Jews and the Arabs living together. And right here beneath our keel a whole underwater world, virtually unexplored, full of marvels and so bloody beautiful. Makes you sick, don't it?"

That was the longest speech I had heard him make in

the two months I had been with him. "Well, to hell with the human race!" He grinned and downed his drink. We went to bed then. Tomorrow they would dig out my father's body, and then I'd have to bury it again and we'd sail for Pan-telleria. I lay in my bunk, sleepless, thinking about the future, and about Sonia. A new dimension. I'd never had to think about anybody but myself before.

We were up at seven next morning, and after tea and a cigarette, began winching in the anchor chain. A boat put out from the quay, and by the time we had the anchor stowed, Zavelas was alongside with Kotiadis. "You do not mind if I come with you?" He climbed on board, smiling politely. The patrol boat had returned to Levkas and he was taking no chances.

The day was overcast, hot and very humid, the sea a sheet of glass. Bert and I took it in turns to go below for breakfast. Kotiadis had coffee, nothing else, and he didn't talk much, his eyes watching us warily. By eight forty-five we were in the Meganisi Channel, and as I wolfed my bacon and eggs, I wondered what he'd do if we continued straight through it, heading for the open sea. He came on deck with me as the engine slowed and we coasted in to the shore below the brown gash of the overhang. A boat lay in the gut, nobody in it and no sign of life on the rocks above. "They are working in the cave," Kotiadis said. "Today we discover the truth."

I turned on him angrily. "You won't be satisfied till you see his body, will you?"

He looked at me, his eyes hooded against the cloud-glare. "No. The evidence of my own eyes-that is important in my business."

Bert was manoeuvring close in, positioning Coromandel over the shelf to the south of the gut. I dropped the kedge over the stern and then, after taking the bow warp ashore in the dinghy and making it fast to the rock it had been looped over the previous day, Kotiadis and I hauled her in close while Bert paid out astern. When everything was fast, Coromandel was lying as before, bows-on to the shore with lines out fore and aft. Moored in this way, she was broadside to the direction of the channel and this had a bearing on what happened later.

"Don't be too long," Bert said as I got into the dinghy with Kotiadis. "Conditions are ideal and it may not last." His mind was set on the dive he had planned. It was a tricky one and Florrie had very sensibly insisted that he wait till I was back on board.

"I'll be right back," I told him. "They're not likely to have discovered anything yet."

But I was wrong there. The three of them had been working since first light, and when we reached the cave, Holroyd met us, stripped to the waist, his pale, almost hairless torso glistening with sweat. "I think we're almost there." He said it flatly, but there was a gleam of excitement in his eyes as he set the rock fragments he was carrying down on the pile, examining them almost automatically before going back into the darkness of the cave.

Kotiadis was not interested in prehistoric caves and he had clearly mistaken the gleam in the Professor's eye. "You have found Dr. Van der Voort's body?"

Holroyd turned and stared at him. Then he laughed, an extraordinary, almost macabre sound. "There is no body," he said. And I realized that the man was under extreme nervous tension, the laugh a sort of release. "Come on in. I'll show you."

Cartwright and Winters stopped work as we reached the fall. They had progressed another two yards or more since dawn. "Look at this." Holroyd picked up the pressure lamp, which had been placed to illimiinate the face of the fall, and held it up. "See the way the roof rises at that point? Didn't notice it yesterday-too intent on clearing the rubble."

"I did point it out," Cartwright said diffidently.

"But without drawing the obvious conclusion." Holroyd turned to Kotiadis. "You want to know what happened to Van der Voort. The answer is there. You can see the line of the old fall, and there, where the roof lifts up, all this section — that's the new cave-in."

Kotiadis lit a cigarette, the flame of his lighter illuminating his face, hard and uncomprehending. "I do not understand. Where is Dr. Van der Voort?"

Holroyd swung the lamp close to the rock fall. "In there," he said. And he added, "Show them. Alec."

Cartwright reached up, the crowbar in his hand, inserting the point of it into a dark gap they had opened up near the roof. The crowbar went in without meeting any resistance. "Another hour," Holroyd said, "and we'll be through the rock fall, into the gallery beyond."

"And you think Dr. Van der Voort is there?" Kotiadis asked.

"Where else could he be?"

But Kotiadis was not convinced. "Why does he not call out?"

Holroyd shrugged. "There are several possibilities. This is a sea cave. It may go in a long way. There may be other galleries, galleries on different levels even. Or we may find there has been another fall further in. As I see it. Van der Voort broke through the old fall some time during the twenty-four hours between this young man seeing him and my arrival here yesterday morning. There was that earth tremor, you remember. That would account for the new fall, and if he were in there, exploring the galleries at the time, then he would have been trapped."

"If he is trapped, then he must wish to get out," Kotiadis said, his cigarette glowing in the half-darkness. "Sound in a tunnel is very loud." He moved to where Cartwright stood, standing on tiptoe, his face close to the crowbar. "Dr. Van der Voort!" he shouted. And then again, listening intently after each call. "You see. He does not answer."

"As I say, there may be another fall. He may be injured, or possibly suffering from lack of air. He may be unconscious, even dead." The way Holroyd said it I thought he hoped it would be the latter.

These buggers talking, arguing about it. "We're wasting time," I said, and seizing hold of the crowbar, I began to attack the remnants of the fall. No need now to carry the rubble out. I just prised the rocks loose and thrust them behind me, working with a desperate, frenzied speed. If he were injured, or lying in a coma, half-asphyxiated, the sooner we got to him the better. The others responded to my urgency, even Kotiadis. The rocks and rubble flew, dust hanging in a choking cloud.

I had started at the point where Cartwright had thrust the crowbar through, hoping for a quick break-through. But the roof here was so badly fragmented that as fast as I cleared the rubble supporting it, fresh falls occurred. It meant prising all loose material out until I reached more solid rock, and this took time. In fact, it was about half an hour before I had opened up a safe gap into which I could work my head and shoulders. With the torch I had brought with me held out at arm's length, I could just see through the dust an open gallery beyond, and at the extreme limit of the torch's beam the cave seemed to narrow. But whether it was the end of it or another fall I could not be sure. I stayed wedged in the gap for a while, calling out to him, but there was no answer, and in the end I crawled back and Hans took my place.

The dust was very thick now, for Zavelas had arrived with Sonia and three extra men who were already at work trundling the rubble out in a wheelbarrow. "What could you see?" Holroyd asked. "Is the gallery clear?"

"For about twenty yards." I was feeling exhausted, my

shin sticking to me, heavy with rock dust. "After that I'm not sure. Maybe another fall. "

"And no sign of Dr. Van der Voort?" Kotiadis's voice was barely audible against the noise of rubble being shifted, his figure a dim outline in the dust-hazed cavern.

I shook my head. "None." I felt defeated, drained.

A hand touched mine, Sonia's head in outline against the glow of light from the entrance. "Come outside for a moment. You're wet through." She had sensed my mood. "The fresh air will do you good."

But there was no fresh air, only heat and a heavy, louring atmosphere, a sultry world, the clouds hanging low, a blanket of humidity. "What do you think has happened to him?"

"How the hell do I know?" He w^as either dead, or else he had gone deeper into the cave. "He may be shut in behind another rock fall." It was the best one could hope. "Why didn't the old fool wait till I returned? He must have known it was dangerous."

"He wouldn't think of that. Like my brother and Alec-Professor Holroyd, too-they don't think of danger when they feel themselves to be on the threshold of an important discovery. "

"No, I suppose not." I was thinking that Holroyd didn't care whether the old man was alive or dead. All he was interested in was the cave. And Kotiadis-all he wanted was a body to satisfy his superiors that the dangerous agent of his Communist-obsessed imagination was accounted for. "I'm going back now," I said. I wanted to be there when they broke through into the gallery beyond.

But it was another half hour before they had opened up a gap large enough and safe enough for a man to crawl in. Cartwright was at the face then so that he was the first through, calling to us that he could see the end of the cave. "Nobody here, I'm afraid." His voice came to us as a resonant whisper running through the rock.

Holroyd had shouldered his way through the Greeks and had his head and shoulders in the gap. "Have a look at the

walls, Alec." His voice was muffled, his broad buttocks almost filling the gap, and the distant whisper answered that there were traces of gravures, another rhinoceros, more reindeer.

By then I was on the rubble of the fall, right behind Holroyd, tugging at his shirt-tails. "To hell with your bloody scratchings," I shouted. "Either go on in or let me pass."

I could feel him hesitating. The gap was barely wide enough for his bulky body. But then his legs moved and he began to crawl through. I followed him, the rubble loose and jagged against my chest. Dust clouded the beam of my torch as we slithered down the rubble on the far side. And then we were on the packed dirt floor of the cave and could stand upright. Ahead of us the roof slanted down until it met the floor about thirty paces from us. No sign of Cart-wright. And then Holroyd moved and the beam of my torch showed the side tunnel, a black, gaping hole. "Are you there, Alec?" Holroyd's voice boomed in the confines of the cavern. A whisper answered us from the bowels of the earth: "Down here. There's a sort of chute. A blow hole I think. But go carefully. It slopes down quite steeply."

I went in then, Holroyd following, both of us bent almost double. The angle of descent was about twenty degrees, the floor brown dirt, packed hard, walls and roof smooth, hollowed out by water. And then suddenly I could see the end, the roof coming doAvn, the floor falling away into black shadow. I crawled past Cartwright on my hands and knees, and where the tunnel fell away, I lay prone, probing down with my torch. It certainly looked like a blow hole, the rock walls smoothed by the pressure of air and water and almost circular in shape, like a pipe angling do^vn very steeply. I couldn't see the end of it because it curved away to the left.

Holroyd crawled up alongside me, his breathing heavy in the still air of the tunnel. "We'll need a rope to get down there."

"Yes," I said, knowing that my father hadn't a rope. It wouldn't be difficult to get down the pipe, breaking your descent with your back against one wall, your feet braced against the other. But to climb back up again would be impossible. I was trying to reconstruct in my mind what had happened.

I heard the rattle of matches in a box and Holroyd struck one, a sudden, blinding flare, and then the flame burning steady without a flicker of movement. "No air current."

"It probably finishes below sea level." If Bert were right about that cave, then this was probably the vent for the air pressure caused by storm waves in the channel.

"He must have been desperate to go down there."

And Cartwright's voice behind us said, "He had no alternative."

That was true, if he had wanted to escape. But I knew that what had driven him to explore that blow hole was his obsession with the scratched drawings of early man, his hope of finding cave paintings. He would have gone down it whilst the light of his acetylene lamp was still bright. He would be in darkness now.

"Van der Voort!" Holroyd had inched himself forward, his hands cupped to his mouth. "Dr. Van der Voort!" The North Country accent boomed in the shaft. We listened intently for the faintest sound. But there was no answer, not the smallest whisper of a reply. "It sounds deep."

"We're still at least a hundred and fifty feet above sea level," I said.

"Aye. Just what I was thinking. And if it's water down there, then I'm afraid there's not much hope." He had moved back and was turning himself round. Facing Cartwright, he said, "I suppose that light nylon of ours is with the Land-Rover?"

"We've plenty of rope on board," I told him.

"Then the sooner we have it, the sooner we'll know what's down there." He was already moving back up the tunnel.

Daylight and the sight of sea and sky was a welcome relief after the claustrophobic confines of that cave. Sonia came with me back to the boat, her last hopes pinned to Bert's dive. He was waiting for us, pacing impatiently up and down the deck, "Have you found him?" And when I shook my head, he said, "Then what the hell have you been up to all this time? I warned you conditions might not stay like this."

"Well, they have," I snapped; no breath of air and the boat riding to her reflection, as still as if she were moored in a dock. "We want about fifty fathoms of rope, that's all. I'll take it to them and then I'll be right back." And I explained what it was for.

"So you think he's still alive?"

"I know he is," Sonia's voice was intensely determined.

"There's a chance," I said, and we looked out the rope. It was under the life jackets in a deck locker, 60 fathoms coiled on a light wooden drum, and I rowed across with it while Sonia stayed to help Bert get started on his dive. Hans had come down to the gut to collect the rope. I handed it to him and backed the dinghy out, and as soon as he saw me coming back Bert climbed over the side on to the ladder. He looked big and ungainly with his flippers and the cylinder on his back, his stomach bulging where the belt carrying the weights caused the flesh to sag. He wasn't wearing his wet suit for fear of snagging it on the rocks. I saw him slip his mask down over his eyes, settle the mouthpiece in place, and then Florrie passed him the spot, and with a wave in my direction, he flipped backwards to disappear under the oil-flat surface of the sea. Before I was halfway back to Coromandel the line of his bubbles passed me headed for the shore.

Sonia took the painter, and as I swung my leg over the low bulwarks Florrie came out of the wheelhouse. "Bert said to tell you the engine's all set to go if you need it."

I looked at her. "Why should I?"

"I don't know." Her face looked worried, lines of strain showing at the corners of the eyes. "He's been in a state about this dive all morning. It was the waiting, I think-when you didn't come back for so long. It made him nervous."

I looked up at the sky and south to the open sea, a weather check that was so automatic, so routine that I was barely conscious of it. I was thinking of the blow hole, the rock pipe twisting into the bowels of the earth with one of them slithering down it, the rope taut around his waist, and of Bert, deep underwater, following the beam of his spotlight into the cave's darkness. One of them should be able to produce the answer. An hour at most and we should know for certain.

I went into the wheelhouse and got the glasses. From our mooring the platform below the overhang was just visible. If they found him, they'd try to hail me from there. There was nobody visible at the moment. Sweat dripped into my eyes. The heat was heavier than ever. I wiped my face, envying Bert in the cool depths. "Would you like some coffee?" Florrie asked.

I shook my head.

"It's iced. I've had it in the fridge since breakfast."

Iced coffee! I nodded. "Please."

"I'll get it." Sonia left us quickly.

Florrie caught my eye. "She needs to keep herself occupied." And she added, quietly, "So do I. But there's nothing to be done, is there? Just wait."

"He's a bloody good diver," I said.

She nodded.

"Then what are you worrying about?"

She gave an exaggerated shrug. "It's the heat, I suppose. If we were in Malta I'd say it was sirocco weather."

The hot wind from the Sahara sucking up humidity as it crossed the sea. I nodded and raised the glasses. I had seen a movement on the platform. It was Kotiadis, pacing up and down, smoking a cigarette. Zavelas appeared and they talked together for a moment, standing with their faces turned towards me. Then Kotiadis nodded and they came on to the rock path, descending quickly towards the gut. A few minutes later Zavelas's boat shot out into the channel, the hornet noise of its outboard fading rapidly in the thick air as it headed north.

Sonia arrived with the coffee. It was ice-cold, black and sweet, and we drank it waiting in the sultry heat of the open deck. Florrie glanced at her watch as she put her glass down. "He's been gone a long time."

"How long?" She always kept a check on the time he was down. "Twelve and a quarter minutes."

"Stop fussing, you old hen," I said. It was extraordinary how possessive she was. She could call him a failure, spit in his face, cuckold him even, but she couldn't do without him — couldn't bear him out of her sight.

"I'm not an old hen." She was smiling, warmth in her eyes, a fondness. "A young one perhaps." She giggled. And then, suddenly serious again, "Bert's a cautious type. You can't have failed to notice that." An impish gleam in her eyes now. "Not like you. He likes to weigh things up, mull over every problem. Most things he thinks over so long somebody else has to make up his mind for him. But not when he's diving. He doesn't think under water; he just reacts. He's reckless as hell." There was a note of pride in her voice and I glanced at Sonia, wondering if she would behave with such extraordinary inconsistency if we were married.

"He's got just over an hour of diving time in that tank, and that's not allowing for the time he might be above water exploring inside the cave."

She nodded. "I know all that. But I still worry."

Time passed slowly, the three of us sitting around on the foredeck, no sun, the air thick, and its thickness plucking at our nerves. Nobody hailed us from the area of the overhang. There was nobody on the platform and no news. Bert had started his dive at 11:17. Before half an hour was up Florrie was looking uneasily at her watch. By midday she was voicing her anxiety. I was getting worried, too, wishing I had insisted on going down the blow hole myself, anything rather than sit here doing nothing.

"He's only three minutes' air left." Florrie's voice was taut.

Once again I reminded her that inside the cave he probably wouldn't need his aqualung. But I knew it didn't satisfy her. She was standing up now, leaning against the wheelhouse, the spare diving watch clumsy on her slender wrist as she stared at the sweep hand ticking off the seconds, occasionally stealing a quick glance at the rocks. "Paul. I think you should go and see what's happened. "

"He wanted me here on board."

"I know that, but he's been a long time. Too long." Her voice was urgent, the dark eyes suddenly pleading. "You've been down twice with him. You know how to do it."

"I think so." By then some of her anxiety had rubbed off on me. "I'll get the gear up anyway," I said reluctantly.

It was whilst I was below in the workshop that I felt the slight movement, Coromandel coming alive, rocking gently at her moorings. And then, when I was coming up with the spare diving equipment, Sonia's voice called to me. "There's somebody on the rocks, hailing us." I dumped the cylinder on the wheelhouse floor and seized the glasses. It was Vassilios. He was pointing towards the open sea. And then he was leaping down the rocks.

I turned, moving quickly to the port side. A dark line showed in the sticky haze, and beyond it, towards Ithaca, the sea white with broken water. My reaction was immediate, instinctive. I reached for the engine switch, turned it on, and then pressed the starter button. The big diesel thudded into life,

"No. No, Paul." Florrie was screaming at me. "You can't leave him." But then the black line reached us and the wind hit, a wild howl in the rigging. The ship heeled. A wave caught us and she lifted at the bow like a horse rearing and snubbed on the warp with a jar that nearly knocked me off my feet. I dived out of the wheelhouse, fighting the sloping deck and the \veight of the wind to throw off the bow warp. Florrie was there before me. "Mind your hands!" Released, the warp took charge, smoking as the turns whipped across the cleat, the wood charring.

White water on the shelf now and all along the shore rocks, and the boat swinging stem-on to the wind. But still too close. Much too close. The noise of the sea and the rocks, a great cacophony of sound like the roar of rapids made that clear. "I'll let go aft," I shouted at Florrie. "You take the helm. Head for the centre of the channel." I saw her eyes wide, her mouth agape, and then, thank God, she headed for the wheelhouse. Sonia was already crouched over the anchor warp when I reached the stern. "It's jammed," she shouted.

I thrust her hands away, not gently. The nylon line was stretched so taut it looked no thicker than a piece of heavy string. "Have to cut it," I shouted in her ear and ran for the diver's knife that was amongst the gear I had lugged into the wheelhouse. Just the sharp edge of it on the stretched nylon and it stranded and zinged away over the stern like a broken violin string. And Coromandel, released, went roaring up the channel with the wind. Florrie tried to bring her round, but the waves, beating back from the Meganisi shore, knocked her head off, and the wind held her. I tried myself, but it was no good. And anyway it didn't matter. Even if we could have got her round, we could never have stayed there, stemming the storm, for the whole channel was rapidly becoming a maelstrom as the waves, piling in against the narrowing rock walls, were flung back to meet in chaos in the middle. I piled on power and ran for the north end of the island, where the down-draughts blattered at us, the whole ship shivering; but here at least the sea was fiat, close under the lee of the cliffs.

By the time we were anchored in Port Vathy, Florrie was in a state of shock, moments of hysteria alternating with long periods in which she just sat, keening quietly to herself, her eyes staring into space. She was convinced Bert was dead, and having seen the millrace running through the channel, I didn't rate his chances of survival very high, particularly as the wind didn't start to ease for a good four hours. By nightfall it had gone completely, everything still and the sky clear.

But long before that I had weighed anchor and tucked the ship in under the cliffs west of Spiglia, within sight of the channel, waiting for the sea to moderate. Shortly after 17.00 hours I poked our bows round the corner. There was still a Steep sea running, but with the wind taking off it was lessening rapidly. As we came abreast of Tiglia a boat put out from the shallows behind the island-Vassilios waving to us frantically.

Florrie grabbed the glasses. "He's pointing back to the cove. It's Bert. I'm sure it's Bert." She was laughing, almost crying, as I swung the wheel to port. I caught Sonia's eye, both of us wondering how she'd take it if we found him dead there on the beach. Broadside to the waves the boat rolled wildly, and then we came under the lee of Tiglia and Vassilios was alongside, shouting excitedly, a flood of Greek lost in the din of the engine.

"Livas," Sonia said. "He keeps on repeating the word livas. I don't understand what he means."

Vassilios was scrambling on board. Florrie, crouched by the bulwarks, bulky in her scarlet oilskins, took the painter. He said something to her and then ran for'ard, barefoot on the spray-wet deck. "It's Bert," she called, her face white. "He'll guide you in and handle the anchor." And she disappeared aft to make fast the painter.

He took us close in to the island and let go the anchor in a patch of still water, the echo-sounder showing barely three feet under our keel, pale sand and the rocks of the island towering above our mast. Bert's aqualung cylinder lay on the sloping sand of the cove; his flippers, too-a lonely, tragic pile of gear,

Vassilios came aft as Florrie brought his boat alongside. He spoke to her, quickly, urgently, and her face cleared. "He's all right." She sat down suddenly on the rail capping, half laughing, half crying, relief flooding through her. "Wounded, he says. I think his arm is broken. But he's alive." And she added, "He was caught inside the cave by the livas. He swam all the way across the channel-under water with a broken arm. Isn't that wonderful!" She was a bundle of emotion, pride and excitement shining in her eyes.

Vassilios had made him as comfortable as he could in the lee of some rocks at the back of the cove. When we reached him, the excitement had gone from Florrie's eyes, in its place love and a great tenderness. She was like a mother with him then as we carried him down to the boat and ferried him across to Coromandel.

He was in considerable pain, the bone of his left forearm broken between wrist and elbow and shoAving white through the raw, bruised flesh. He'd lost a lot of blood and his face was pallid under the dark suntan. But he was conscious and whilst I got the morphine ampoule out of the medicine chest, he gritted his teeth and made an effort to tell me what had happened to him down there in that flooded cove.

He had arrived off the crevice entrance at 11.21. Depth 38 feet. The spotlight showed the crevice continuing, no block, and it seemed to widen out about five or six yards in. He described the entrance for me in detail, so that I could find it again, he said. The gap below the fallen slab was barely 2 feet high, and after scraping his cylinder and nearly ripping his air pipe on a snag, he had turned on his side. About two yards in he had been forced to turn into the normal position, and a little further in, the rock cleared from above him and he was able to use his flippers. A few more yards and the spot showed the walls receding on either side. He appeared to have entered a big cavern. The depth gauge showed 36 feet. Following a bearing of 240°, which was roughly the direction in which the entrance had run, he swam across the cave and was brought up by a solid wall of rock on the far side. The distance across he reckoned at about 20–25 yards. With no sign of any continuing tunnel, he had then circled the walls, maintaining a depth of between 35 and 40 feet.

"I thought I'd see what the height of it was then," he said, holdingr his rioht arm out so that I could roll his sleeve back to make the injection. "I hit the roof about fifteen to twenty feet up and that's Avhen I found the continuing gallery, a gaping hole slanting up quite steeply." He sucked in his breath as I jabbed the needle into his flesh none too skillfully. "Then I was out into another sort of expansion chamber, the water obscured by sediment and my gauge reading virtually nil. In fact, my head came out of the water almost immediately. It was quite a big cavern, shaped like a lozenge, with continuing galleries at each end and a hole in the roof, quite a small hole with a rope hanging down from it."

"Was that the bottom end of the blow hole?"

He nodded. "Looked like the rope we lent them-nylon, you see, and the same size, the end of it trailing in the water."

"Did you call to them?"

"Yes, but I didn't get any answer. And there was nobody in the cave that I could see, which didn't surprise me-you could come down the rope easily enough, but getting back up again would have been bloody near impossible."

"Too high?"

"No, it wasn't that. About ten or twelve feet, that's all. But the blow hole was sloping, so that the rope lay flush against a smooth lip of rock. You'd never get your fingers round it, not with the whole weight of your body dragging on the rope."

"They could have knotted it at intervals; or simply tied it round their body and been hauled up."

"Well, they hadn't done either." He said it irritably, his voice a little weaker. "But there was somebody down there."

"Who was it? Did you see him?"

"No, I didn't see anybody."

"Then how do you know somebody was there?"

"I just felt it. The way you sense when there's a shark around. A sort of presence."

The morphine was taking effect much quicker than I had expected, his eyes drooping, his voice trailing off. "And then the spotlight, you see. I'd swum to the western end. At that end the floor of the cave rose out of the water in a dark curve like the back of a whale. Very slimy. But I managed to climb out and up to the ledge leading to the gallery. It was low. Sloping up in a curve. I put the spot down and got the cylinder off my back. I was unfastening my belt. I didn't want weights or flippers hampering me as I clambered around in

that gallery. And then the spotlight shifted. I grabbed at it and the beam swung wildly as my flippers slid from under me. That's when I fell. I fell about six feet-into darkness." He was drowsy now, his voice fading. "No spotlight. It had gone. I swear it had been switched off." His words were slurring, his head beginning to loll.

"Somebody took it-is that what you mean?"

He nodded vaguely. "You don't believe me. ."

"You hit your head. Everything went black." It was the only possible explanation.

"Of course. Knocked out. And then the surge." His head dropped. "Scared me. That's what scared me. And the body."

"What body?"

"In the water. . something … it touched me."

"My father? Was it my father?"

"Don't know. Dark, you see, and the surge and this bloody arm." His voice trailed off. "No light. I was a long time-getting the cylinder back on-then feeling my way-remembering. ." His eyes closed.

Florrie's hand touched his brow, smoothing out the grooved lines. "He's out of pain now?" I nodded and went back up to the wheelhouse and started the engine. We got the anchor up and then I backed her out of the shallows and turned her bows to the north.

"Where are you making for?" Sonia asked. "Levkas? There's sure to be a doctor at Levkas."

"No, Vathy," I said. "I want a word with Kotiadis." Bert could have imagined it. He'd been scared and half dazed with pain. But somebody had to be informed. "He'll tell us where to find a doctor."

Vassilios joined us in the wheelhouse. The same dirty T-vest, the same frayed khaki shorts. I was at the wheel, thinking of the old man. A body, Bert had said. But he could have imagined it. And the spotlight? Had he imagined that, too? It could have slipped. But some instinct told me that it hadn't slipped, that the presence he had sensed was real. I set the engine controls to maximum revs. It was a lurid evening, shafts of sunlight slanting on the water, the underbellies of the clouds black and louring, and my mind darkened by the fear of tragedy.

At Vathy, Kotiadis promised to see Holroyd himself as soon as conditions made it possible for him to get down the channel. Meantime, he advised us to call in at Skropio on our way to Levkas in the hope of finding a doctor there. This was fortunate, for among the guests on that millionaire's island we found an eminent Athens surgeon. He not only set Bert's broken arm, but insisted that he and Florrie stay at the villa till he had recovered from the shock and the mild concussion.

"You'd better take Coromandel," Florrie said. "I'm sure Bert would agree." I would have taken it anyway. I think she knew that. This was after she had come back for the clothes they needed, the varnished launch alongside and a car waiting for her on the jetty. There followed a long list of instructions about the food on board and the need to turn off the gas to the galley stove, and then she was in the launch and with a quick wave she was whisked away towards the pine-dark loom of the island.

The time was 21.34 by the wheelhouse clock, and ten minutes later we had the anchor up and were motoring out of the little natural harbour, the resin scent of the pines following us until we were into the open water of Port Drepano.

It was the first time we had had the ship to ourselves. Such an opportunity for two people in love, and all we did was hold each other's hand and peer into the night, watching for Elia light on the north-east corner of Meganisi, which would enable us to clear the shoals between Skropio and Port Vathy. And at Vathy … if the news were good, then we could relax here on board, the ship to ourselves, nobody else. And suddenly I was thinking of Florrie.

But Sonia w'asn't like Florrie. She wasn't like any girl I'd had before. And even whilst I was imagining how it would be, I knew that when it did happen, it would somehow be entirely different.

"If there's no news. ." her fingers tightened on mine. "You'll try to get in underwater-the dive Bert did?"

Our minds had been on entirely different tracks. "There's the rope," I said. "They should have got him out by now."

But some intuitive sense seemed to warn her it wouldn't be as simple as that. She wanted to know how much practice I had had, how expert I was. I didn't tell her I'd only had two dives under Bert's instructions. The deepest I'd gone was twenty feet and that in the crystal clear water of the Aegean. "Bert had bad luck, that's all," I said. No point in two of us being scared.

It was almost midnight when we finally reached Port Vathy, the village in darkness, not a light to be seen anywhere. As soon as the anchor was down, we went ashore in the dinghy. Zavelas had seen us coming in and he met us on the quay. His face was grave. Part of the roof of the main cave had collapsed. Vassilios had just brought the news. "He says it could take two days, maybe more, to clear the fall, and they will need timber to support the roof." It collapsed at the point where we had broken through the earlier fall.

"Anybody hurt?" I asked.

"Vassilios didn't say, so I guess not." He glanced at Sonia. "Your brother's okay. He was out in the open with the anghlos constructing a ladder of rope."

"Which anghlos?" I asked. "Cartwright?"

"Ne-Cartwright."

"What about Holroyd?"

"Professor Holerod is missing. Also a Greek man from Spiglia-Thomasis."

"You mean they're trapped the other side of the fall?"

"I guess so. But no worry. Kotiadis is there and in the morning we will take timber over to support the roof. Also a caique leaves here for Levkas an hour ago with instructions for the patrol boat to come here with more timber." A hairy hand gripped my arm. "Don't you worry. Two days and we have them out. Okay? That's not too much. Just time to decide if there is a god or not, eh?" And he patted my shoul-

der, smiling gently. "Tomorrow we load timber and begin to dig. Maybe we're inside in one day. And there is a friend of yours arrived by caique tonight-the old guy who is with you when you first come."

"Dr. Gilmore?"

"Yeah, that's him. He's gone to sleep with the Pappas at his house."

"Is he all right?" Sonia asked.

"Sure, he's okay. I guess he's tougher than he looks. Two days in a caique-that's a long time for a man his age." And he added, "You go and see him in the morning. I tell him what happens, but I think he is too tired to understand. He kept shaking his head and saying the Professor and Dr. Van der Voort should not be together. It seemed to worry him that Professor Holerod was trapped inside the cave with the Doctor."

It worried me, too, and Sonia's face was a white mask in the darkness. But at least she hadn't heard Bert's rambling reference to a body.

We arranged that the baulks of timber to shore up the roof would be ferried out to Coromandel first thing in the morning, and then Zavelas went off to his house. Sonia went with him, leaving me to pull back to Coromandel on my own. It wasn't at all what I had planned.

I made the dinghy fast to the cleat aft and then relieved myself by the light of the stars. The night was soft and very still, the water brilliantly phosphorescent. It was the first time I had had the ship to myself, and when I went below the saloon seemed strangely empty. Complete and utter silence enveloped me. I poured myself a brandy and sat for a moment thinking about the cave with its unstable roof, Holroyd and the Greek marooned in the dark by the new fall.

A faint buzzing invaded the silence. Leaning my head back I could hear it vibrating in the hull, gradually getting louder. An outboard.

I went up on deck. The sound came from the entrance to the inlet. And soon I could make out the dim, dark shape of the boat. It passed quite close, Vassilios bringing Kotiadis back. But though I hailed them, they held on for the quay, my voice drowned in the ugly band-saw noise of the engine. I went down into the workshop then and looked over Bert's diving equipment, noting that there were still two cylinders full, mentally checking over the routine.

It was almost one o'clock before I got to bed. It had been a long, exhausting day, and I was tired, too tired perhaps, for in spite of the brandy, my mind kept going over all the details, particularly the details of Bert's dive.

I was woken shortly after six-thirty by the bump of a boat alongside and the sound of Greek voices. The first baulk of timber had been dumped on deck by the time I had my shorts on and had reached the wheel house. It was a glorious day, the sun already warm and a slight haze shimmering on the water. The timber was rough, the Greeks none too gentle, and by the time I had seen to the stowing of it, Zavelas was alongside with Dr. Gilmore.

He didn't look tired at all. Bright as a button, I thought, as I helped him aboard, whilst Sonia held the boat steady. "I haven't kept you waiting, I hope." He shook my hand, formal and dapper in his grey suit and panama hat. "A beautiful morning." He stood smiling and gazing round him. "It's so nice to be on the water again. London was very hot-a heat wave. But I had a day at Wimbledon-some very good tennis, a superb men's four." Sonia passed me his suitcase and a hand-grip. "Book presents," he said. "That's why it's so heavy. I managed to get an excellent treatise on submarine archaeology for Mr. Barrett. Do you think he'll like that?"

"I'm sure he will," I murmured.

"Good, good. And there's a book by Holroyd. I thought it would interest you. Also a typescript of the paper he read. Most revealing." And then, almost without pausing for breath, "And I'm sorry to hear about Mr. Barrett. Poor fellow. I was so looking forward to seeing him again. Is he in much pain?"

"He'll be all right," I said.

Sonia swung her leg over the bulwark. "Dr. Gilmore. I think we should leave now."

"Yes, yes, of course, my dear." He smiled at me, that same quick, bird-like glance. "I talk too much and you're in a hurry, naturally. But it is so nice seeing you again."

She took him below and I started the engine, whilst the two Greeks, who had been stowing the timber, dealt with the anchor. Zavelas took them off, and as I headed up the inlet, Sonia poked her head up the saloon companionway. "Paul. Have you had any breakfast?"

"It'll wait," I told her. I wasn't all that hungry.

"No it won't. Not if you have to make that dive." She was tense, excited, and it showed in her eyes. "Coffee and eggs? I know there are eggs on board. I got them for Florrie myself-fresh laid and about the size of ping pong balls."

Soon the smell of coffee began to drift up from below. And then Gilmore came up into the wheelhouse, looking a little incongruous in pale seersucker trousers and a blue shirt decorated with crimson sea horses. "I hope my rather strange apparel doesn't put you off your course."

"Very suitable," I said.

He smiled, a little self-consciously. "One of my students- a very distinguished professor now-insisted on taking my wardrobe in hand. It was really quite fun-I think he enjoyed it." He was silent for a moment, gazing at the bulk of Levkas straight ahead, his eyes crinkled at the glare. "Now, I want to talk to you about your father and this man Holroyd. There may not be time after we get to the cave, so I'd better tell you briefly now." He perched himself on the flap-seat at the side of the wheelhouse.

Quickly he ran over the situation as he had found it on his return to Cambridge. Holroyd had been entirely cooperative, submitting his specimens to the test called for by the committee, with only one proviso, that he was present throughout and that the bones and artefacts were never out of his sight. This the committee had regarded as reasonable since he was not only being accused of pilfering another man's work, but also of faking the basis of his paper.

Gilmore had reached Cambridge on June 1, only two days before the decisive meeting of the committee. By then all the tests had been completed, and the results known. Without exception they had proved satisfactory. He gave me a short summary of the results, covering chronometric and relative dating, with reference to the geological structure in which they had been found, and finally the carbon-14 method. "This last gave a date for all three skull fragments of around twenty-seven thousand years ago, and the teeth and bones were of the same period. They'd even passed the fluorine test, so that when I arrived fellow members of the committee greeted me with a certain coolness, in some cases outright hostility. They were all, of course, considerably younger than I was, a fact that Holroyd had used to advantage, the implication being that my ideas were antediluvian and the doubts I had expressed about his discovery and theory due to senility."

Sonia appeared with a tray, wafted into the wheelhouse by the smell of coffee. "You might have waited. I want to hear it too." She poured the coffee, while he repeated what he had just told me. "Well, if Professor Holroyd regards you as senile, he'll get a shock when he sees you in that shirt."

"It wasn't just Holroyd. It was most of the committee." He was smiling, his arms folded, and so pleased he seemed to be hugging himself. "Even Stefan thought I had gone too far. And Grauers made it clear that he doubted whether I had any evidence whatsoever to support my attack on such a distinguished member of the academic world."

We were off Spiglia then and Sonia took the wheel, while I sat on the starboard flap-seat eating my breakfast and listening, fascinated, to Gilmore's account of the scene as the Investigating Committee gathered in the lecture-room at Trinity College. Including Holroyd and himself, there were eight men and one woman present. The proceedings were not expected to tak^ long, a mere formality to clear Holroyd's name. The specimens were laid out on the table before him.

"I must tell you," Gilmore said, "that his statement that the skull fragments had been found by himself and the two other members of the expedition, and that their discovery was not in any way connected with Pieter Van der Voort had been accepted, and for reasons that will become self-evident I did not challenge this.

"The proceedings were opened by Professor Grauers, a short statement of the reasons for forming an investigating committee. He then called upon me to reiterate the charges. 'Or you may wish to withdraw them, in view of the rigorous tests which have been made?' I said I did not wish to withdraw anything, except the first charge of taking credit for another man's work. I then put the question to Holroyd again, asking him point-blank-had the discovery of the skull fragments been connected in any way with Dr. Van der Voort? 'The answer to that is No,' he said, directing his reply, not to me, but to the Committee-Grauers, in particular. I suppose any man as politically astute as Holroyd learns to be a consummate liar. He said it categorically, and then, still facing the Committee and speaking in that bluff, honest, North Country voice of his, he said, 'Van der Voort had been working in the area the previous year. This I have never tried to conceal from you, gentlemen. Owing to the circumstances, which you already know about, I had no opportunity of discussing it with him. As I have said before, the information which led me to the site was from a Greek source. He may have visited the site. In fact, I believe now that he did. But he failed entirely to recognize it for what it was. Instead- and this I learned subsequently-he concentrated on quite another site, not on the island of Meganisi, but in a bay known as Dessimo on Levkas.' "

Gilmore smiled. "A half truth, you see. So much more convincing. And they believed him. But to make it absolutely clear, I asked him whether, in that case, he took full responsibility for the authenticity of the specimens. He was looking at me then, and I thought I saw a mounting flicker of doubt

in his eyes. But by then he had committed himself too deeply. 'Of course.' And that was it. I had him then, provided I had guessed Pieter's intentions correctly."

He paused, his eyes searching the wheelhouse. "You haven't got a cigarette, have you?"

I found one for him and lit it. "Silly of me, but I never carry them now. They're supposed to be bad for me." He drew on it gratefully, holding it as usual between finger and thumb as though he had never smoked before in his life. "Now, where was I?"

"Dr. Van der Voort's intentions," Sonia said. "I don't quite understand. He couldn't have intended anything."

"Oh, but he did, my dear. This was his revenge. He planned it, every move." He was smiling gently to himself, as though enjoying some private joke, and his eyes were far away, back in that lecture-room at Trinity. "You remember I told you both about the Piltdown skull, how it had fooled everybody for years. And I also told you how Pieter had been caught faking the evidence. Piltdown had always had a fatal fascination for him. Now, unless my reading of human nature-his in particular-was quite inaccurate, he had done it again. But this time, he had rigged it so that the man who had made use of his work before, and was doing so again, would take the rap. At least, that was the supposition I was relying on when I reiterated my charges and accused Holroyd to his face of planting the skull fragments in that dig to substantiate a theory he had borrowed from another man."

"But I don't see-" Sonia had turned to him, fascinated, her eyes bright. "How could you be certain? How could you prove it?"

She was too excited to concentrate and I took the wheel from her, for we were close in under the cliffs, making the turn into the Meganisi Channel. Behind me I heard Gilmore say, "That was what they wanted to know, all of them hostile. And I wasn't sure I could prove it. I was playing a hunch, nothing more. I had been just two days in the country and the experts had been working on those specimens for almost a week. With the whole committee against me, even Stefan Feitmayer, I wasn't going to play my hand until I had seen theirs. Everything depended, you see, on their not having used a geiger-counter. I didn't think they had. Too simple for them. And anyway, too obvious. A man of Holroyd's standing, if he was salting a dig with fake specimens, wouldn't slip up on a thing that had bust the Piltdown hoax wide open. However, they had done a fluorine test. But in the main, Holroyd's case rested on the carbon-fourteen tests, which had given a similar dating for all his specimens. The committee were prepared to accept this as conclusive evidence."

"But it was, surely," Sonia said. "If they were all of the same date-"

"They could still be from different sites."

"You mean Dr. Van der Voort had deliberately collected together the fragments from different sites? I can't believe it. To be certain they'd stand up to tests, they'd all have had to be carbon-dated."

"Precisely." Gilmore was smiling happily.

"But he had no facilities for testing-either out here or in Amsterdam." She stared at him. "You mean they were from Russia?"

"Of course. All of them. Approximately the same date- twenty-seven b.p. All with about the same fluorine content. And the site in which he buried them was right too. But there had to be something, otherwise there was no point in his doing it. There had to be some simple way in which Holroyd could be discredited, and I was relying on my hunch that he would use Piltdown as his model."

He paused, still smiling, almost hugging himself with enjoyment. "They were sitting there, all of them looking at me, and I was thinking what an old fool I was, risking my own reputation for the sake of a man I'd only seen once since he'd been a student. There's no quarter in the academic world and to attack a man as influential as Holroyd was tantamount to suicide. I got up and went to the door, not saying

a word. They probably thought I was walking out, defeated." He gave a little chuckle and tossed the end of his cigarette out through the wheelhouse door into the sea. "At least, that's what it looked like when I came back into the room with the young technician and the equipment I had borrowed from Geology. They were all talking, and then suddenly they stopped and stared at me, and a sort of stunned silence gripped the room."

I had cut down the revs and now he stood up so that he could see down the channel. "That island must be Tiglia. That was the site of the dig. I remember now." He reached absent-mindedly for the packet of cigarettes that I had left lying on the shelf above the instrument panel. "If I'd gone ashore that day, I might have been the one to discover those skull fragments."

"But you wouldn't have claimed it as your own discovery," I said.

"No. And I suppose that's the difference."

"But what happened?" Sonia demanded. "You haven't told us what happened."

He smiled. "You want it all spelled out for you. Well, just what I'd expected. We didn't have to go beyond the skull fragments. The Cro-Magnon skull gave one count, the two Neanderthal-type skulls quite a different count. There was no argument. There couldn't be with the geiger-counter clicking away, proving beyond any doubt that the two types of skull could not have come from the same dig. Of course, Holroyd started to try and bluster it out. But they were all sitting there, staring at him, dumbfounded at first, then accusingly, and the words just stuck in his throat. Finally he got to his feet and walked out, leaving the skulls lying there on the table. In a way, that was more damning than anything-his sudden complete lack of interest in them."

"Has there been any public announcement?" I asked.

"No, no, my dear fellow, of course not. The press were never in on it, and officially it will all be hushed up. But no doubt it will leak out. There's a lot of talk already. Though

Holroyd hasn't yet resigned from any of the committees and other bodies he serves on, it will be the finish of him. Unless. ." He paused to light the cigarette he had taken.

"Unless what?" I asked, for he was staring out through the windshield, his mind apparently on something else.

"He's a very clever talker, very convincing. A political rather than an academic animal, and not to be underrated on that account. If he were to come up now with something spectacular-" He looked at me quickly, a darting glance. "Last night-that ex-policeman-he said there was a rhinoceros drawn on the wall of this cave and that Holroyd was very excited about it."

"There's a reindeer, too," Sonia said. "And what looks like an elephant-just scratch marks, very faint."

"And these gravures were discovered by Pieter Van der Voort, not by Holroyd?"

"Yes," I said. And I told him how I had found my father working on the rock fall that night, his desperate urgency to break through into the cave beyond.

He nodded. "It's what I suspected, that he was on to something of real importance. That's why I hurried out here, as soon as I knew Holroyd had left for Greece. I was afraid. ." He hesitated, staring at me, strangely agitated. "However, this is an accident. An earth tremor, they tell me." He shook his head. "Something nobody could have foreseen. Nevertheless, if Pieter is dead, then Holroyd can reasonably claim. ." He gave a little shrug. "Well, we'll just have to hope for the best."

We were past Tiglia then, the rock gut opening up and a boat lying there, the scar of the overhang just visible. I pointed it out to him and he shaded his eyes against the glare, staring at it, his interest quickening: 'A perfect site, very typical-provided, of course. ." He moved to the wheelhouse door, looking back over the port quarter at the site on Meganisi below the rock pinnacle. "Two of them, and both natural observation posts. Tell me, did your father say anything about the sea level here-what it would have been like twenty

thousand years ago?" And when I explained that all to the south of us, as far as the African shore, he believed to have been one vast plain, with Meganisi the western flank of a volcano, he nodded his head vigorously.

"You think that's possible?" I asked.

He smiled. "Anything is possible. But proof-that's another matter. We know so little." He was staring at the Meganisi shore. "A volcano, you say." His eyes gleamed, bird-like in the sun.

"He thought it might have erupted-a bigger eruption than Santorin."

He nodded, gazing ahead to the distant shape of Ithaca. "Fantastic! And the skull fragments, those bones he sent for dating-thirty thousand years ago at least." And then, speaking quietly, as though to himself: "Even as far back as that man knew how to knap or flake the hardest substances to produce sharp-cutting instruments-flint, for instance, and chert. And in volcanic regions, the brittle, black, glass-like substance we call obsidian. It's the oldest and most basic of all industries and a very good case has been made out recently for these primitive industrial centres-these city communities, you might call them, founded on the presence of a workable raw material-being the precursor of husbandry. It has put the whole conception of city centres much further back in time." He had apparently a theory of his own that the cave artists were a product of these first city communities, a means of encouraging the hunters on whom they depended for bartering their products, and that it was the superior organisation developed by Cro-Magnon man that had destroyed the Neanderthals.

"A little far-fetched perhaps," he murmured. "But something I would like to have discussed with Pieter, particularly if he has discovered the work of cave artists so close to an area that could have been rich in obsidian." He shook his head, smiling to himself. "All of scientific research into prehistory is a sort of jig-saw puzzle. Fitting facts to theories until the sum of all the facts establishes without doubt a complete and irrefutable picture."

A small boat was moving out of the gut, coming towards us now. It was Vassilios, and Hans was in the bow, his blond hair immediately recognizable. He came aboard, whilst Vassilios took the bow warp out.

We off-loaded the timber by throwing it into the water, where Vassilios secured it with a rope for towing ashore. And while he helped me get it overboard, Hans told me what had happened inside the cave the previous day. With the borrowed rope tied around his waist, he had descended the blow hole until he had reached the point where it entered the cavern in which Bert had surfaced. He confirmed that this cave was lozenge-shaped and that galleries entered it from either end; also that it seemed to be influenced by tidal variations or surge, since the walls and slopes of exposed rock were damp-looking and black with slime. After calling repeatedly without receiving any reply, he had untied the rope from about his waist and climbed back up the blow hole to report to Holroyd.

I asked him whether he had left the end of the rope hanging down into the water and he said he had. Cartwright had wanted to go down then, but Holroyd had ruled that there was no point imtil they had some means by which they could be certain of climbing out of the cave after they had lowered themselves into it. Finally, it was decided to construct some sort of rope ladder, and he and Cartwright had climbed back through the gap opened in the rock fall to do this. Holroyd had stayed on inside the cave to examine the walls for gravures and make rough drawings.

"Presumably he had a torch with him?"

"Yes. And the Greek stayed there to hold it for him."

"What about the rope? Was the upper end secured to anything?"

"The crowbar. We had it wedged across the upper end of the blow hole."

I then asked him if he could remember the exact time of the roof collapse.

"Yes." he said. "As soon as I was told what had happened,

I looked at my watch. I thought the time might be important. The fall occurred just before eleven-thirty."

"And how long since you had left Holroyd?"

"Oh, about a quarter of an hour, twenty minutes-something like that."

Which meant that if Holroyd's urge to examine the cave was so great that he Avas willing to go down the rope on his own, he could have been into the lower galleries about the time Bert was starting to work his way into the underwater entrance.

Vassilios was waiting and Hans climbed down into the boat, Sonia calling to him to be careful. He grinned, mouthing a reply against the scream of the labouring outboard. Slowly the raft of timbers drew away from the side. There was nothing now to hold me back and I was suddenly trembling as I stood there by the bulwarks, staring at the beauty of that sun-bright scene, the mountains falling to the narrow channel, the shallows by Tiglia bright emerald against the sea's deep blue, and white clouds hanging like puffs of smoke over the mainland heights. A fish broke the surface, a gleam of silver gone in a flash, and up by Spiglia a lone cottage poked a white face round a brown shoulder of rock. And above me the sun god riding high. All that beauty, and my mind six fathoms deep in the dark bowels of a sea-filled cave.

"Does that mean Holroyd has access to the gallery Pieter is in?" I turned to find Gilmore close behind me, peering at me with an intent bird-like expression. "Is that what he meant?"

I thrust my hands behind me, forcing my mind to concentrate. "He has access to where I think my father is. But that doesn't mean he's availed himself of it. Anyway, my father may be dead."

Gilmore nodded. "And that, of course, we won't know until they've cleared this roof fall and got Holroyd out. Unless, of course …" He hesitated, watching me speculatively, and I knew he was thinking of the underwater entrance. "How long will they take, do you think, to get through the fall?"

"Zavelas said maybe tomorrow."

Sonia was staring at me, her eyes wide, indignant with disbelief. "You're not going to wait till then, surely. He's been down there three days already."

"No, of course not. Only. ." But I stopped there. I couldn't tell her about the body, and Bert could have imagined it. "Give me a hand with the gear," I said, but she had already turned into the wheelhouse to get it.

Gilmore had followed her, but in a moment he popped out again, smiling, a book in his hand. "A present for you." He held it out to me. Homo Sapiens-Asia or Africa? by Professor W. R. Holroyd. I stared at it, thinking the old boy had chosen one hell of a moment to present me with a book on anthropology by Holroyd. "The book can wait," he said as I took it from him. "But I would like you to read what I have written on the flyleaf. Sonia has told me about this dive, that you hope to get into the cave by an underwater passage. If you succeed, I fear you may find yourself involved in tragedy."

1 stared at him, wondering what he meant. But he didn't say anything further and I opened the book. On the blank page at the beginning he had written: For Paul Van der Voort: This book, which luas published eighteen months ago, would appear to be largely based on your father's writings- the theory propounded in his unpublished work balanced against the arguments he used in The Asian Origins of Homo Sapiens, the second of his two books published in Russia and other Communist countries. He had signed it-Adrian Gilmore.

"I'm afraid he may know about that book."

"Yes," I said, glancing idly through it. "Yes, I think he does." A piece of paper fell out, fluttering to the deck. I stooped and retrieved it, a brief cutting from a newspaper headed Search for Embassy Official's Killer Switched to Continent. D.T. Mar 28 had been pencilled against it. "Dear me," he said as I read it. "I'm sorry. I quite forgot about that."

I looked at him. "You knew it referred to me?"

"Van der Voort is not a very common name-not in England, anyway."

"But this is from the Daily Telegraph presumably, of March twenty-eighth. It wasn't something you happened on by accident."

"No. No, I'm afraid I was curious-I asked a young friend of mine to check the newspaper files for me."

"I see." I put the cutting back between the pages and closed the book. So Interpol had been informed. That meant that Kotiadis knew, had known probably since we had left for Samos, certainly since our return to Meganisi. Zavelas, too, I thought, remembering how he had watched me that first evening. "Well, if I make a balls of this dive …" I laughed, an attempt to dispel the tension. "Solve a lot of problems, wouldn't it?" But it wasn't Kotiadis that worried me, or any information about my background that had been passed on to Interpol. It was the dive I was scared of-the dive and what I might find down there. Trembling, I reached for the jacket of the wet suit Sonia was holding out to me and struggled into it. By the time I had zipped it up she had dumped the cylinder on the deck beside me. It was heavy, 72 cubic feet of air compressed to 2250 p.s.i., and the stem indicator showed that it was full. It should last me an hour if I controlled my rate of breathing-if I didn't panic in that cave entrance and start sucking in air like a locomotive. I held out my hand for the demand valve and she handed it to me, watching as I screwed it on and checked that it was working properly. Then she helped hoist the tank on to my back, passing the straps over my shoulders as I settled the Aveight and secured it in position. Watch, depth meter, diving knife, torch and mask; finally, the heavy lead-weighted belt. I was all set then, the mask pushed up on my forehead, the gum pad in my mouth. I cracked the valve and heard the air hiss as I drew a shallow, tentative breath. It was okay. Everything was okay. Except for my heart, which was thumping nervously as I thought about that cave.

Slowly I waddled backwards to the ladder. The whole outfit seemed to weigh a ton as I manoeuvred myself outboard, wishing to God Bert was there, if not to dive with me, at least to give me moral support. Again I tested the air supply, checked the stem indicator. Tank full. Air coming easily. I started down the ladder. "Good luck!" Sonia was wearing a bright artificial smile. I didn't say anything, thinking of all the women down through time who had seen men off into danger with that same bright smile. I pulled the mask down over my face, down over my eyes and nose, my teeth grinding on the gum pad teats as I began to breathe through the mouthpiece. I had no confidence, only a feeling of fear. And I was still afraid when I hit the water.

I had gone in backwards, both hands holding the mask to my face, the way Bert had taught me, the masts and their two faces v;hirling against the sky to vanish abruptly as the sea closed over my head. Then I turned over onto my belly in a froth of bubbles, hanging there in the water, blind and weightless now^ and sinking slowly as I exhaled, the beating of my heart seeming unnaturally loud. The froth of bubbles drifted away and the bottom leaped into vision, clear in the glass pane of the mask and looking nearer than the 18 fathoms in which we had anchored. It was rock and sand, with weed waving, and I was alone. Nobody else in all that wet world. The shape of the boat, etched in shadow, moved lazily with the weed, and the kedge warp was a pale line looping down to the anchor, which lay on its side like some forgotten toy.

I was still trembling, my heart pounding loud in my waterlogged ears. Not because of the aqualung, the unfamiliarity of dependence on compressed air-I was already breathing gentlv and regularly. It was the dim buttressed shape of the underwater shore at the extreme edge of visibility, the knowledge that I had to penetrate into the interior of the rock, squeezing through a narrow hole into flooded galleries that had already nearly cost an experienced diver his life. The fear of that had been with me all night, had been building up throughout the morning.

I lav face downwards, my head back, staring: ahead through the sunlit flecks that hung suspended like dust in the water to the dark wall that edged the shelf, trving to stop the trem-blinsr. to kev mv nerves to action. Mv left hand came out, an involuntary flipper movement to hold myself on an even keel, looking white and verv close, the diving watch staring at me. the dial enormous against mv wrist.

It ^vas the sight of that watch that got me started. The movable dial had to be set. That was the first thing-the time check. I twisted the bevelled edge until the zero mark was on the minute hand. The time was 09.47. In theory the cylinder on my back contained at least 60 minutes of air. but only if I were careful and controlled my breathing the way an experienced diver would. That was what I was doing now, the periodic hiss of the demand valve as I took in short, shallow breaths, followed by the blatter of bubbles behind mv head as I breathed out. But would I be so in command of my breathing inside that cave? I thought I had better work on the basis of minimum duration-30 minutes. That meant being out of the cave by 10.17. And something else I had to remember, not to hold mv breath if I came up in a hurry. That way vou could rupture vour lungs as the pressure lessened and the compressed air in the lungs expanded.

I was still looking at the dial of my watch, magnified by the water, and the sight of the second hand sweeping slowly round the dial made me realize that time was passing and every minute spent hanging around was a minute of underwater time wasted. Mv reaction to that was immediate, a sort of reflex. I jack-knifed, diving down and heading for the shore, arms trailing at my side, my legs scissoring so that the flippers did the work and bubbles trailing away behind me as I exhaled to make depth.

A school of small-fry changed from dingy grey to a glitter of silver as they skittered away from me to re-form like soldiers on parade beyond my reach, all facing me, motionless, watchful. A rock grew large in a sea of grass, a starfish flattened against it and somebody's discarded sandal lying forlorn and alien in this world of water. And everything about me silent, so that the hiss of air as I cracked the demand valve to breathe in was unnaturally loud. And every time I exhaled, the rush of bubbles past my head sounded like the burbling wake of an outboard motor.

The silence and the loneliness pressed on my nerves and at that rock I turned to stare back. I could just see Coro-mandel's hull, a dark whale shape bulging from the ceiling of my wet world. The depth meter on my right wrist showed 32 feet. Everything was deadened as the pressure built up on my eardrums. With thumb and forefinger pressed into the hollows of the mask, pinching my nose, I blew my ears clear. Instantly the noise of my breathing, the pops and crackles, the hiss of the demand valve, were preternaturally loud.

Reassured by the dim outline of the boat, I turned and flipper-trudged to the underwater cliffs, gliding weightless along great fissured rocks. Like flying buttresses, Bert had said. But it was the dark, gaping mouths of the fissures that held my gaze. I was thinking of octopuses and groupers big as sharks, my imagination filling the black cavities with all the monsters of the deep.

It was the loneliness, of course. In my two previous dives I had been following Bert. Not only had he been there to instruct me, to give me confidence, but he had kept ahead of me so that I had had him always in my field of vision, a fellow human being who was both nurse and companion. Now I had nobody, and I had to penetrate the deepest of those yawning fissures, negotiate a hanging slab of rock, and then find my way up through flooded caves and blow holes.

I looked at my watch. Four and a half minutes gone already. I should have come in on a bearing, but I had forgotten the diving compass. I wasted time trudging north and had to turn back when I failed to find the fissure Bert had described in such detail. I reached it at 09.58 and hung there, motionless, off the black gut between two buttresses of rock. It was like the entrance to an ancient tomb, or the adit shaft of a drowned mine.

Through my mind flashed the things Bert had told me- the sense of something lurking, his spotlight disappearing, the touch of a body on the surface water of that cavern. Imagination? And then I was thinking of the old man, locked up alone inside those cliffs for more than three days. That was enough in itself to drive a man mad-even a sane man with no knowledge of the prehistory of the place, the world these caves had known before a blasting of the earth's crust had brought the sea flooding in.

Thinking of the old man had one good effect, it overlaid my fear of lurking sea creatures with a deeper, more personal fear. I unhooked the torch from my belt, hung it by its strap to my wrist, and then, with a quick movement of my flippers, plunged head-first into the blackness of the gut. The rock walls closed in, the water skylight above my head a dull, greenish glimmer, but enough to dim the light of my torch.

The depth gauge read 38 feet.

And then the water sky disappeared. I was in black darkness, rock all round and the fallen slab blocking my path. The gap was a long gash barely two feet high, an ugly mouth with sea anemones lurking and the movement of nameless things in crevices and cracks. I could hear my heart pounding, and the hiss of the demand valve, the burp of my bubbles, were loud in the confines, resonant like the movements of some monstrous stomach.

I turned on my side and squirmed my way in, the torch thrust out ahead, my shoulders scraping rock. The cylinder on my back thumped with an unearthly clang. Bubbles of exhalation clouded my vision. Queer sounds dinned in my ears, that stomach coming with me, noiser and more monstrous in the confines.

And then my arm thrust clear, and with a final heave, I was through, back into the vertical narrowness of the fissure, so that I had to flip over onto my belly to still the clanging din of metal scraping rock. The torch showed the walls a paler colour. Limestone by the look of it, which meant that I was already inside the volcanic overlay. Also, they were smooth as glass, a calcareous coating the significance of which I did not appreciate at the time.

More curious than afraid now, I straightened my body into a near-standing position, the tips of my flippers just touching the floor. With my arms stretched up I could touch the roof. It was smooth and curved in an arch. Either it had been fashioned by man, or it had been worn that way by water-the sea or some underground river.

A dozen yards or so farther in the walls fell back abruptly on either side. I had entered the first cavern. Here I did not have to waste time searching for the outlet. I simply breathed in and so lifted myself to the roof, and in a moment I had located the blow hole Bert had talked about.

I switched the torch beam to my watch and was astonished to find it was only 10.04. It had taken me just six minutes to negotiate the entrance. It had seemed an age. The depth gauge read 23 feet.

I was suddenly full of confidence then. The blow hole was more like a rising gallery, but even so it would only be a moment or two before I surfaced in the upper cavern where Bert had seen the rope hanging. And it was in that moment that I nearly drowned. I suppose I had knocked my mask scraping through the fissure. At any rate, there was water in it, and suddenly it was over my nose and I panicked. I forgot that it was my mouth I was breathing through, that the nose didn't matter. Desperate, I held my breath, stationary, alone, only the torch beam stabbing at impenetrable darkness. And then I tried to suck in air through my nostrils, got sea water instead and tore at the mask, driving with my flippers for the surface. But there was no surface, only rock. A rock prison like a huge tombstone holding me in a watery grave. It was the thought that this was a grave that brought me to my senses, made me remember the drill for clearing a mask that Bert had taught me sitting on bright sunlit sand in six feet of water. Lean the head back, hold the top of the mask against the forehead, tilting it, and blow through the nose. I did it, my head hard up against the rock ceiling, emptying my lungs in one despairing snort. Bubbles poured past my face, my head no longer bumping rock as I began to sink; with absolute concentration I forced myself to breathe in through my mouth. The hiss of air as I cracked the demand valve, the feel of life in my lungs again-and miraculously my mask was clear. I felt suddenly drained, utterly exhausted, and yet at the same time wondrously exhilarated as though I had surmounted some great obstacle.

Feeling more confident than at any time during the dive, I relocated the entrance to the blow hole and flippered my way into it, head first. It was circular in shape and about four feet across at the entrance. Inside, it proved very irregular. There were places where it narrowed to little more than a pipe, others where it widened out into expansion chambers, and the angle of the slope, as well as its direction, varied considerably. Also the walls, though smooth, were not glazed like the entrance cave below.

All this was observed more or less automatically, my mind being concentrated on what I would find when I broke surface in the upper cave. Thus it was that, when the beam of my torch showed me a man's legs, I was slow to react.

I had just paused in one of the expansion chambers to glance at my depth gauge. It now read 10 feet and I remember thinking that I was already over halfway up the blow hole. The walls closed in again as I entered a particularly narrow section, and it was then that the beam of the torch showed him swimming away from me.

At least, that was my first thought, seeing in the dim light of my torch the soles of his feet, the white of legs disappearing into the red of swimming trunks. And for a moment I accepted it, noting that, as I checked, he seemed to swim away up the tunnel, his legs trailing off into the miasma of sediment-saturated water through which the torch beam could not penetrate. And because I could swim and breathe in that tunnel it didn't shock me the way it should have done to find another man down there.

I suppose the truth is that my nerves were so concentrated upon what I was doing that my reactions to anything extraneous were uncommonly slow. I went on after him, the tunnel rising more steeply, and round the bend, where it was wider, I saw him lying like a log broadside to me, white shirt clinging to a white body overblown by the optic enlargement of the water.

No flippers. No cylinders. No belt, no mask, and the legs and arms bent as though in movement, but quite still.

It was Holroyd.

That was when I reacted, when my heart turned over and my stomach suddenly became a void, wanting to evacuate itself. I knew now what I had been swimming through that hung suspended like miasma in the still water.

He was dead, of course. He couldn't possibly be alive, lying so still in the water without a mask, his eyes staring straight at me, unnaturally enlarged. He looked like a very learned frog, an albino, pop-eyed, ready-to-croak frog. Indeed, at that moment a bubble of air, or gas rather, detached itself from him and went sailing away up the final slope of the tunnel to burst with a noise like a distant gunshot at the surface.

And when I had watched that bubble break and knew I was at the threshold of the upper cavern, my gaze returned to something that had puzzled me. Holroyd's right hand was gripped around a metal object that shone dully in the beam of my torch. I paddled nearer and reached out. The fingers were crooked, stiff as hooks in their state of rigor, and yet when I caught hold of the object it lifted clear of his hand. Instantly the corpse drifted up the last few feet of the tunnel to break surface, gently, silently, in the cavern.

I was left holding in my hand the heavy spotlight that Bert claimed had been whipped away from him by some unseen presence.

I did not at that moment draw any conclusions from the fact that the stiffened fingers were not actually gripped round the torch handle. My mind simply recorded it, too shocked by the discovery of his body to think of anything else as I followed it upwards and broke surface myself in the cavern.

There is something instinctively revolting about being in a confined space of water with the corpse of a drowned man. I played the beam of my torch over the cavern, saw that it was as Bert had described it-the lozenge shape with gallery entrances yawning at either end, the rope hanging down from the gaping hole in the roof, the ledges of darkened rock-and then I had propelled myself to the side and was hauling myself up out of the water. The rock was blackened with slime and very slippery, indicating some sort of tidal or surge movement of the water level inside the cavern.

Just clear of the water, I pushed the mask back off my face, removed the mouthpiece and lay there panting. The atmosphere was warm, the air I sucked into my lungs heavy and humid. Stretched out on a sloping slab of rock, I reached up and got a fingertip on the ledge above me. The belt and cylinders were heavy after the weightlessness I had experienced during the dive. The time was 10.09. I had been 22 minutes under water-22 minutes of diving time gone. I had to remember that.

Somehow I got out on to the ledge and slithered forward on my stomach until at last I was above the tidemark, safe on dry rock. Here I relieved myself of the weight of the belt and shucked myself out of the straps that held the cylinder to my back. I had been making for the entrance of what I believed to be the western gallery, and after removing my flippers, I climbed the last few feet to the mouth of it. Only then did I put my gear down, on the flat of the gallery floor where there was no chance of anything slipping down the sloping ledges of rock into the water.

Standing there, my head almost touching the gallery roof,

I tried Bert's spot, pressing the rubber we had so carefully taped over the switch. The bulb glowed dully and then faded, the battery exhausted. There had been hours of light in that new battery when Bert had started his dive. I put the spot down with the rest of my things and turned the beam of my diving torch on to the hole in the roof of the cavern where the rope hung forlornly, a pale umbilical cord, its end falling to the black pool of water. The surface of the pool was still now, flat like a floor of glass, except for Holroyd's body floating there, motionless, the white shirt clinging like an attenuated shroud. And beyond the body, dark rocks climbing to the gaping arch of the gallery's continuation on the far side.

No sound-the whole cavern gripped in utter silence; a grave-like stillness. Only my own breathing for company, the thud of my heart. I was remembering what Bert had said. Was there a "presence" here? He had said he had sensed it the way you sense a shark lurking. But that might have been the hypersensitiveness of a man alone in an underwater cave.

The spotlight's faded bulb was a reminder that my own torch had a limited life and I switched it off to save the battery. Instantly, I was enveloped in darkness so black that I felt as though my eyes had suddenly become sightless. How the hell had Bert managed to grope his way out with no torch and under water? I was shivering, but not with cold, the jacket of the wet suit clinging snugly to my body. I was thinking of Holroyd. Had he been alive, here in this cave, when Bert climbed out to where I stood now? Was it Holroyd's presence he had sensed?

I sat down abruptly, still shivering, and tried to think it out. Holroyd had come down that rope, and the rope's end trailed in the water. But he couldn't have drowned there, not with rock ledges all round. And the spotlight. Was it his hand that had reached out from the dark to grab that source of light? But then I remembered how his fingers had been crooked so loosely over the handle and a sudden chill invaded my stomach.

Of course, if he had slipped, as Bert had slipped, his grip

could easily have been loosened as he fell. But if he'd taken the torch, then he must have been alive when Bert entered the cave. Alive, he would surely have spoken to him, made his presence known. And Bert had talked of a body-the cold touch of a body as he had sunk through the water towards the blow hole tunnel.

Afraid suddenly of the dark thoughts in my mind, I switched on my torch again and instantly the beam of it flooded the pool with light. Quickly I scrambled to my feet, stepping forward, intent on reaching Holroyd's body. I had to examine it. That was my one thought. I had to find out for myself the cause of death. Nothing else would drive out the dreadful thought that was then at the back of my mind. But moving forward, quickly like that, my feet on the slime instead of hard rock, I only just saved myself from the sort of fall that had knocked Bert out and broken his arm.

Panting with fright, I recovered myself, turning and stepping back into the yawning archway of the gallery behind me. And then I saw it. The beam of my torch was on the gallery wall and the etched shape of a mammoth stared me in the face. The high-domed head, the great curve of the tusks-it seemed to be charging towards me along the pale rock wall. And behind it was another, etched more deeply, the lines of the drawing sharp and black, and it too was possessed of an extraordinary sense of movement.

I stood there, rooted to the spot, panic mounting with the sense of remembered evil. Then, slowly, I began to advance into the gallery, Holroyd forgotten, my imagination running riot. My thoughts had taken a frightening turn. And as I moved forward, I saw mammoth after mammoth, the torch beam shadowing the deep-cut lines, so that the shapes of the beasts stood out very clear, with hard scratched lines running into their bodies. And there were other drawings, scratch marks that were geometrical, like a hut, a rhinoceros superimposed on the slanting rump of a mammoth, the suggestion of a fish, or perhaps a lizard. And then, suddenly, there was colour.

It was on the roof, where it sloped upwards-a great band of red. I didn't see it as a shape, not until I was right underneath it. Then suddenly I saw it, a large-horned bull sprawled lengthways along the run of the gallery roof, a beast in full flight and falling, forelegs stiffened, head thrown back, the eyes staring, wild with fear. The realism of it was fantastic, the painting enormous-so enormous that I wondered how the artist, using the bulges of the rock for belly and rump, had been able to keep the perspective of the whole in mind.

I swung the beam of my torch away from that monstrous death-throe painting, probing the continuation of the gallery, and where the roof rose, the gallery opened out into a cavern, and it was all red. That was the overwhelming impression- a cave the colour of dried blood. But as I moved slowly into it the colouring separated into individual paintings-bulls and bison, some reindeer, a lynx, three ibex close together and a bunch of tiny horses galloping over a cliff.

The torch trembled in my hand, the beam fastening on a bull, vertical on the wall. Again the head was reared back, the forefeet braced, the whole animal ochre red, caught and held in the moment of its fall to death. I was appalled. Standing in the centre of that cavern, which was about fifty by thirty feet, I played my torch on the walls and roof, and one by one the red beasts dying leaped to life as the beam touched them. The whole cave was a charnel house, a portrait gallery of hunted animals, and all so life-like, so animated, so full of the dreadful certainty of death.

A short gallery led to another, bigger cave. I moved into it in a daze. The roof was lower, the smooth silt floor humped in strange pits, and the witch doctor artists had filled every inch of their rock canvas. Bulls and deers and bison, ochre-painted the colour of stale blood, and at the far end my father sitting, his back propped against the wall and his eyes staring like blue stones into the beam of my torch. I thought he was dead. But then his mouth opened, and the breath of a question came from him, sibilant in the stillness-"Who are you?"

"Paul," I said, my voice barely recognizable, so gripped was I by my dreadful surroundings.

"Paul?" he seemed not to understand, his appearance wild, his voice dazed.

I shifted the torch in my hand, directing the beam of it onto my face.

He recognized me then. "So it's you!" His words sounded like a sigh of relief and I saw his limbs move, an awkward attempt to rise to his feet. His face was grey with stubble, the eyes deep-sunk and staring. "Give me that torch." His voice was hoarse, a harsh whisper desperate with urgency.

I didn't move. There were questions that had to be answered, and I stood there, rooted to the spot, my mouth dry, my tongue mute. There was an atmosphere about that place-something old, very old, that touched a chord, a deep sub-conscious instinct. And as though he read my thoughts, he said, "You are in the presence of the Earth Goddess. Man's oldest god. And this-" His thin hand moved-"This is her temple. Move the beam of your torch to the right-over there. Those bison-they're being driven over a cliff. Superb!" he breathed. "And I've been here in the dark, unable to see since. ." He checked himself. "How long is it? How long have I been down here?"

"Almost three days," I said.

"And only a few hours-of light-to see what I had found. All those years, searching. ." He was trembling, his voice on the edge of tears. And then he moved, sheer willpower pushing him up till he stood erect, the rock wall supporting him and his limbs shaking under him. His head-ascetic, skull-like with age and exhaustion-was outlined against the red flanks of a charging bull. "The torch," he whispered, the urgency back in his voice, his hand held out-begging for the light.

I passed it to him then, and he snatched it from my hand in his eagerness to see what he'd been living with in darkness-his fantastic discovery. Slowly he swung the beam, illuminating that butcher's cavern with its great beasts tumbling into traps, driven over cliffs, or caught in the moment of death with the weapons of the hunters scoring their flanks. "Look!" he breathed, the beam steadying on the red shape of a bison painted on the roof. "See how the cave artist used the bulge of that rock to emphasize the weight of the head, the massive power of the shoulders." The torch trembled in his hand, the croak of his voice almost breathless with wonder. "I haven't seen anything like this since I was in Font de Gaume. I was just a youngster then, and I had left the Dordogne before they discovered Lascaux. I've seen photographs, of course, but that's not the same."

By then I had a grip on myself, was thinking of Bert, and Holroyd's body in the pool out there beyond the further cavern. "What happened after the rock fall trapped you?" I took hold of his arm. It was thin and hard, all bone under my hand as I pressed him for an answer. But he was still intent upon the beam of the torch, lost in a world of his own as he feasted his eyes on the paintings. It was only when I asked him how he'd found them that I got any sensible reaction.

"By accident," he said, his eyes following the beam as it illuminated a gory melee of animals superimposed one upon another. "I'd only matches. And not many of those-no other light. But that's how I saw it first-this temple to Man the Killer." He said those words as though they carried a personal message. "Look! See how the charcoal has been used to express the terror in that reindeer's eyes-marvellous!"

I slid my hand down his arm and took hold of the torch. "I have to save the battery," I said. But he didn't seem to understand. He was beyond practicalities, entirely rapt at the wonder of his find, and he tightened his grip on the torch so that I had to wrench it from him. It wasn't difficult. There was no strength left in him.

"Give it to me." He was suddenly like a child, pleading. "You don't realize what it means-all the hours sitting here-waiting, praying for a light to see them by."

"Sit down." My hand was on his shoulder, urging him. And then I switched off the torch and in the dark he cried out as though I'd hurt him physically. Then suddenly he sank to the floor of the cave, exhausted.

"Now," I said, sitting down beside him, my back against the wall. "Tell me what happened. You were through the old rock fall, exploring the upper cave, when that earth tremor brought the roof down. What happened then?"

The darkness was total, and in the darkness I could hear his breathing, a rasping sound, very laboured.

"Did you have your acetylene lamp with you?"

"Of course."

"And you'd found the blow hole?"

"Yes. I was in there, examining the walls, when it happened-the ground trembling and the crash of rock falling." In the blackness, without the distraction of the cave paintings, he began to talk. And once he had started, it was like a dam breaking, the whole story of his discovery pouring out of him.

He had gone back up to the cave-shelter to examine the rock fall, and realizing there was no way out, that he was trapped with little chance of being rescued, he had explored the only alternative, going down the blow hole until at last he reached the end of it. Then, with his back braced against the wall of it, he had peered down, leaning perilously over the gap and holding his lamp at the full stretch of his arm. He had seen the glint of water, the vague shape of the rock ledges and the shadowed entrance to a gallery beyond. "I was afraid at first." His voice breathed at me out of the darkness, a croaking whisper, tired and faint. "It seemed a desperate step, to let myself fall into the water, the lamp extinguished-no light, nothing but darkness."

He had tried to climb back up the slope of the blow hole, but it was too steep and his muscles were tired. And then gradually the acetylene flame of his lamp had weakened. Finally he had worked his way back down to the end of the blow hole. There he had managed to slip the box of matches he carried into the empty wallet in his hip pocket, and as the flame of his lamp dwindled to nothing, he had let himself fall. "I had no alternative. I was at the end of my strength." He paused, breathing heavily, reliving in the darkness his experience. "It was easier than I had expected. The water was cool, refreshing. And when I'd hauled myself out and recovered from the shock, I felt my way into the gallery and worked along it with my arms stretched wide, touching the walls, and when the walls fell away, I knew I had entered some sort of a cave. That was when I struck my first match."

He was excited then, his words coming faster: "Can you imagine, Paul-how I felt? The sudden realization. All those paintings. And nobody to share my discovery, no means of telling the world what I had found." He laughed then, that same hard jeering laugh that I remembered and hated. But this time he was laughing at himself, at the irony of it. "All my life-seeking. And now suddenly I had stumbled by chance on what I had been searching for. I struck match after match. I was crazed with excitement." He paused. Then added slowly, "In the end there were no more matches. I was in darkness, complete darkness, standing like a fool in the greatest art gallery in the world and I couldn't see it." He sighed, a dreadful, tearing sigh. "Well, that's how it was. That's how I stumbled on the work of Levkas Man." He repeated those words slowly-Levkas Man. "That's the name I have given to him. Sitting here in the dark I've had time to think-about this cave and about what it means. I've no doubts now. My theory was right. A land-bridge did exist. And now I must start at the other end-at Pantelleria. If something similar exists on Pantelleria. . Give me that torch again." His hand clawed at my arm. "I've been in the dark so long. Ho^v long have I been here, did you say? Three days?"

"About that."

"Seventy-two hours."

"But not all in darkness," I said. "You had a spotlight, didn't you?"

"Yes. For a few hours. It was magnificent-very bright. But then it faded."

"Bert could have lielped you. He was an expert diver. He could have got you out." I was angry, angry at his stupidity. "Why did you do it? If you'd only spoken to him. ."

"So it was Barrett. I didn't know." His voice sounded suddenly tired. "If he'd spoken to me, explained who he was. I thous;ht-"

'How could he?" I cut in. "You damn near killed him. He's suffering from concussion and a broken arm."

"I'm sorry. It was that torch of his. I had to see."

"He was lucky to get out alive."

His hand was on my arm again. "You don't understand. You can't imagine. To be alone-in the dark-unable to see these paintings. All my life-"

"To hell with your life, and your scientific searchings! We're talking about people now. Live people. A man called Barrett." And I added harshly, 'There's Holroyd, too. He's dead now. But he was alive Avhen he came down that rope."

There ^\as silence then, a ghastly stillness, no sound of breathing even. It was as though the shock of my words had rendered him speechless.

"What happened to him?"

Silence.

"He was dead when you hooked the spotlight onto his fingers. He'd been dead some time."

"The battery was just about exhausted then," he murmured, as though that constituted some sort of an explanation.

"Was that why you took Bert's spot-for fear he'd see what you'd done?"

He sighed. "You don't know what it's like to be in total darkness and then to watch his glow-worm figure climbing down out of that hole in the cave roof."

"You knew who it was then?"

"Of course. " His voice sounded remote, infinitely sad. And then, as though Holroyd's death was of no real importance, he said, "When I began my Journal, I was endeavouring to strike a balance between the good and the evil

that was inside me, to find out whether there was any hope for our species-what sort of a being Man really was. Well, now I know." There was a pause, and then he said, "Do you remember that night you came to me, up above in the entrance to the cave-shelter, I said this place was evil?"

"It was outside," I said. "Under the stars, and you were holding that stone lamp in your hand."

"Yes. I could feel it in the stone of that lamp. And all the time I have been alone here in the dark, that sense and knowledge of evil has burned itself into me. Man is a killer, and he carries the seed of his own destruction in him. Switch the torch on again, just for a moment-so that you can see what I'm talking about."

I did so and his skull-like head leaped out of the dark at me, its beetling brows, its deep lines and the mane of white hair standing up from the dome of his forehead. He was leaning back, his head against the wall, pressed against the red belly of that bull. His eyes stared past me as I swept the beam of the torch over the cave. "Now, just the two of us- seeing it for the first time. There have been bears here- those pits in the floor are their hibernating beds. But no humans. We are back twenty thousand years at least and in all that time man hasn't changed."

'You killed him? Is that what you're saying?"

He stared at me, frowning. "Haven't you understood a word I've been saying? I'm talking about my Journal-about my attempt to define the nature of Man."

"And I'm talking about Holroyd," I said, trying to pin him down. "I have to know what happened."

"Why? What possible interest is it to you?" And he added slowly, staring up at the bison pawing the roof, "He shouldn't have come here. You shouldn't have let him." And he added wearily, "He could have climbed back up that rope."

"He was trapped, trying to rescue you."

But my words didn't register. "Instinctive defence of territory," he murmured. "It's in all of us, and it goes very deep." He gave a dry cough. "You didn't bring any water with you, I suppose?"

"No. Nor any food."

"The food doesn't matter. But I'm dry-very dry. It makes it difficult to talk." He leaned forward, his eyes fastening on mine. "All my life has been a struggle. Always seeking after truth. Nothing else has ever mattered to me-not since your mother was killed. There was a moment when I thought I could live life differently, through you. But I failed in that, and afterwards I resumed my restless seeking." He reached out suddenly, grabbing hold of my hand, his fingers hard and dry, his voice urgent. "When we get out of here-we'll go on together, eh? Promise me, boy." His gTip was weak, his hand trembling. "You're bound for Pantelleria, isn't that right? We'll start there-on Pantelleria. Then we'll complete the chain of evidence-irrefutable proof. They'll have to recognize me then. They'll have to accept my theory."

It was fascinating, almost terrifying, his sheer egotism. He seemed to be living in a world of his own, divorced from other people. "All the time we've been talking," I said, "there are men up above us working at that rock fall, trying to get through to you."

His eyes widened, suddenly blazing. "Then stop them."

"They're trying to reach you."

"I don't want them here. This-" His hand moved, indicating the cave-"This is something between us alone. Just the two of us. Nobody else. Tell them I'm dead, anything- but keep them out of here. I'm not going to have anybody else-"

"They're also looking for Holroyd," I said.

"Then tell them you've seen him and that they needn't bother any more."

I shook my head. "There's still the Greek. There was a Greek with him."

He was suddenly very still, his body sagging. "Who's up there-Cartwrigh t?"

"Cartwright and Hans Winters, about half a dozen men from Vathy. Zavelas, too, and Kotiadis." He didn't say anything after that and I got to my feet. "If they don't get through that fall by tonight, I'll have to try and get you out underwater."

"No." He said it emphatically, a total rejection of the possibility that made me turn and look at him. His eyes were closed and there was a stillness about him, a resignation. I had a feeling then that he had accepted the inevitability of death and that his closed eyes were a conscious rejection of sight, preparation for the darkness that would close in on him again when I had left. This feeling was so strong that for a moment I felt completely numb. It was strange, the two of us so distant all these years and yet the sense of closeness, of communication without words.

"You can't stay here," I heard myself murmur.

He didn't say anything for a moment, his body shuddering. "I'm not afraid of death." It was a declaration. His eyes opened and he stared about him with extraordinary intensity, as though trying to fix the painted walls of his prison firmly on the retina of his brain. And then suddenly he put his hands up to his face, covering his eyes, and his body shook with a strange sobbing sound.

"I'll go now," I said awkwardly.

"Yes, go-quickly. And remember, when you sail from Levkas, there'll be nobody alive but yourself who has seen the work of these cave artists. It will be your secret-and mine. Do you understand?"

I was staring at him, appalled.

"Do you understand, Paul?"

"Yes. Yes, I think so."

He reached up and seized hold of my hand again. "If I'm right-and I am right-the trail of Levkas Man leads on through the Sicilian offshore islands of Levanzo and Maret-timo to Pantelleria and the coast of Africa-Tunisia probably, maybe Djerba." The grip on my hand tightened convulsively. "Paul! Promise me. Promise me that you'll go on. That you'll follow the trail, prove me right."

"I've no qualifications. And anyway. ."

"You don't need qualifications. All you need is conviction and the driving urgency that it gives you. Experts will always follow a dedicated, determined man. Look at Schliemann- an amateur. He believed in Homer. And as a result, he discovered Troy, Mycenae, Knossos. You could be the same. Building on my reputation and on the manuscripts I have left with Sonia. Promise me." He was staring up into my face, the grip of his fingers suddenly like iron.

I didn't know what to say. That I'd no money? That his world was too remote? That, anyway, Cartwright would break through that rock fall to discover Holroyd's body and the painted cave that he so desperately wanted to preserve for himself as a total secret? "I'm going now," I said finally.

The grip on my hand slowly relaxed until his arm dropped slackly, and he sat there, his back against the wall, his body bowed. He seemed suddenly to have shrunk, the collapse of his spirit deflating him physically. I left him then, feeling sick at heart, hating the place and the evil that lurked there, glad when the paintings were behind me. I didn't look back as I entered the gallery of the mammoths. I didn't want to see his loneliness, the crumpled dejection of his body squatting there below the red belly of that bull.

I came out into the cave beyond with its pool of black sea water. And there was Holroyd's body still floating, a reminder that something had been done here that could not be undone. The atmosphere of evil breathed down my neck, emanating from the painted caves. Alone, I had difficulty getting the heavy cylinder onto my back. I did it in a sitting position, and as I struggled to my feet, the torch shone on a half-segment of stone. I recognized it instantly-another of those Stone Age lamps. I should have realized the significance of it, lying there broken on the rock floor, but my mind was on other things and it didn't connect. All I knew, as I slung the lead belt round my waist and pulled the mask down over my face, was that its presence added to my sense of evil. I was in such a hurry then that I almost forgot to check the state of my air. Nervously my fingers felt for the stem indicator, relieved to find that the cylinder was still almost half-full.

I entered the water with only one thing in my mind, to get the hell out of that place as quickly as possible. But then, when I was in the water, my fears left me. The practical side of me seemed to take command. Almost without thinking I swam over to the rope, drew the diver's knife from the sheath strapped to my calf, and cut the end of it where it trailed in the water. I tied a bowline, and then, making a noose, slipped it over Holroyd's arm. That was when I saw the wound in his head, the white of bone jagged around a grey pulp. His skull had been cracked like the shell of an egg. I trod water for a moment, staring at that wound half-concealed by the dark hair waving like weed in the water, understanding now what the old man had been talking about, his total rejection of rescue. Understanding, too, the broken segment of that stone lamp.

I felt suddenly very cold, cold in my guts, and I turned quickly and dived for the blow hole, trailing the corpse behind me like a dog on a lead. What I had started to do instinctively, a sort of tidying-up operation, now became a matter of urgency, for I couldn't leave it there in the pool to stare the first rescuer in the face. But it was only when I came out through the roof into the lower cavern, the hiss of the demand valve in my ears and the blatter of my bubbled exhalations disappearing into the hole behind me, that I paused to consider what I was going to do with it.

If I took it out into the channel it would be discovered almost at once, and then the questions would start. The alternative was to conceal it in a crevice, but that meant weighting it with a rock, and the only means I had of fastening a rock to it was with the rope. I hung there in the cave, the body ballooning above me, ghostly at the end of its umbilical nylon cord. Tie a rock to it and if it were discovered, then it would be obvious that his death had not been a natural one. The bubbles of my breathing warned me that I could not stay there indefinitely. I glanced at the watch on my wrist. It was 1 1.12- almost an hour and a half since I had left the boat. And I had forgotten to check the time when I had entered the water in the cavern above.

I dived then to where daylight showed as a pale glimmer below the fallen slab. My torch showed a crevice above the slab. I pulled on the rope, got hold of the stiff cold body and pushed it in, trudging energetically with my flippers. I left him there, taking the rope end with me, and wriggled through inider the slab into the open water of the Meganisi Channel.

I can still remember the growing brightness of the sunlight as I slanted upwards, going out past the rock with the sandal on it, across a plain of sea grass until I could see the underwater shape of Coromandel, a dark whale-shadow bulging below the surface of the sea, which was like the back of a mirror, flecked with a myriad dust-motes iridescent in the sun. And as I broke through it and saw the boat with its masts against the blue sky, it was like coming out of a nightmare.

I reached the ladder, clambering awkwardly out, no longer weightless, cylinder and belt dragging at me. And then Sonia's face, as I pushed the mask up blinking in the sun, and Gilmore behind her, the red sea horses bright as blood. "Are you all right, Paul? What happened? You've been so long." Her voice was remote, a muffled sound, my ears clogged.

"I'm okay," I mumbled, collapsing on the hot deck, where I lay in a pool of water, my lungs gasping for air. I felt utterly drained, tired beyond belief. Her hands were on my shoulders, \vorking at the straps. She was bending over me, and when she had freed me of the weight of the cylinder, she groped under my body to find the quick release clasp of the belt and slipped the lead weight from my waist.

I sat up then, feeling dazed-the sunshine, the sky, the smell of the land and the mountains towering brown; but it was like a picture postcard, something unreal. The reality was in my mind, the memory of that cave with my father

talking and Holroyd's body floating in the still dark pool.

"What happened? Did you find him?" Sonia, still bending over me, her face drained, her eyes large. "Are you all right?"

"Yes, I'm all right." My voice sounded disembodied, remote.

"What happened then?"

"Nothing."

"You've been gone over an hour and a half. What did you find?"

"Nothing, I tell you." I got to my feet, standing there shivering in the sunlight.

"But. ." She was staring at me, searching my face, probing for the truth I dared not tell her. "You found him? You must have found him."

I started to push past her, but she gripped my arm. "Please-" She was clinging to me and I flung her off.

"Leave me alone," I said.

"Tell me, Paul. Please tell me what you found." And then she added on a conciliatory note, "You're shivering. I'll get you a towel."

"I'll get it myself."

I was at the wheelhouse door, her hands clutching at me. "What happened, for God's sake?"

I looked down at her, seeing her pale face, frightened and bewildered, and wondering whether to tell her. But this wasn't something I could share with anybody else, not even her. And Dr. Gilmore there, listening, alert and curious. "It's up to the others now." I got clear of her then and went below, where I peeled off the jacket of the wet suit and towelled myself down, standing naked in the saloon, my mind going over and over everything I'd seen, the things he'd said. And when I was dry, I wrapped the towel round me and went over to the drink cupboard. I thought a cognac would steady me, help me to see things in perspective. I poured myself a stiff one and drank it neat, feeling the fire in it reach down into my guts. But it needed more than that to deaden the memory of what had happened. I poured myself another,

drinking it slowly this time and trying to think. And then Dr. Gilmore came in.

He sat himself down facing me, still alert and curious, but not saying anything. He just sat there watching me, waiting until I was ready. And gradually I realized I would have to tell him.

He had shifted his position, was leaning slightly forward. "Holroyd's dead, is he?" And when I didn't answer, he added, "That's why you're drinking-why you were so abrupt with Sonia."

I nodded. "Yes, he's dead," I said.

"And Pieter?"

"He's very weak-exhausted. He says he's not afraid of death. He wants to be left there."

After that he got it out of me, bit by bit-the cave, the body, the whole story of that fifteen minutes or so I had spent with him. And when it was done and I had told him everything, he sat there, silent and sad-looking, not commenting, not condemning, just quietly thinking it out whilst I had another cognac. And then footsteps on the companionway and Sonia standing there.

"Well?" she looked from one to the other of us, searching our faces. "All this time I've been waiting up there, not knowing. ." Her voice trailed off as she stared at Gilmore.

"Bill Holroyd is dead."

"But Dr. Van der Voort?" She didn't care about Holroyd. His death meant nothing to her. Wide-eyed, her gaze switched from Gilmore to me. "Did you find him?"

"Yes."

"Then why didn't you tell me? To leave me in doubt. ." She stopped there, conscious suddenly of the atmosphere, the sadness in Gilmore's eyes, the lack of any sense of relief that I'd found him. "He's dead-is that what you mean?"

I didn't say anything. What could I say? I finished my drink, staring down at the empty glass, her eyes fixed on me, feeling a coldness in my stomach, seeing him still, propped against that wall, against the red belly of that bull.

"Tell me," she said. "For God's sake tell me. I'm not a child."

Her gaze had shifted to Gilmore and there was a long silence. And then finally the old man said, "I think, my dear, you have to face the fact that they're both dead."

I felt a sense of relief then. The decision I had been groping for confirmed and taken out of my hands. But she was too determined a person to accept it without knowing the details. "But how-what happened?" She was facing me again, white-faced. "Why didn't you tell me? Something happened whilst you were down there."

"Nothing happened," I said. -

"Then what are you hiding from me? Why didn't you go straight ashore?"

"Ashore?" I was confused now; the strain and the effect of the cognac. I thought she had guessed that Gilmore was lying. "Why should I go ashore?"

"To tell them, of course. To tell Hans he needn't risk his life any more. ."

"You tell him," I said, and reached for the bottle.

Her eyes widened, two angry spots of colour showing in her cheeks. "You're drunk."

I nodded. "That's right. You expect me to stay sober after a dive like that?" The neck of the bottle was rattling on the rim of the glass.

She frowned. "It's not the dive that's scared you."

"No?" I couldn't stand it any more, this persistent probing. "I'm too tired to argue," I said. "I'm going to my bunk."

And I went past her, walking carefully, the glass in my hand. Let Gilmore sort it out, tell her what he liked. I got to my cabin and sat on the bunk for a moment, drinking slowly, wondering what they'd do when they got through that rock fall. But my mind was comfortingly dulled, and when I'd finished my drink, I crawled naked onto my bunk. I didn't care any more. I didn't care what they did. I didn't care what they thought. I didn't even care if the wind got up and the ship broke adrift. I closed my eyes and sank into oblivion. Somebody else could deal with the whole damned mess.