No Comebacks

THE EMPEROR

'And there's another thing,' said Mrs Murgatroyd.

Beside her in the taxi her husband concealed a small sigh. With Mrs Murgatroyd there was always another thing. No matter how well things were going, Edna Murgatroyd went through life to the accompaniment of a running commentary of complaints, an endless litany of dissatisfaction. In short, she nagged without cease.

In the seat beside the driver, Higgins, the young executive from head office who had been selected for the week's vacation at the expense of the bank on the grounds of being 'most promising newcomer' of the year, sat silent. He was in foreign exchange, an eager young man whom they had only met at Heathrow airport twelve hours earlier and whose natural enthusiasm had gradually ebbed before the onslaught of Mrs Murgatroyd.

The Creole driver, full of smiles and welcome when they selected his taxi for the run to the hotel a few minutes earlier, had also caught the mood of his female passenger in the back, and he too had lapsed into silence. Though his natural tongue was Creole French, he understood English perfectly well. Mauritius, after all, had once been a British colony for 150 years.

Edna Murgatroyd babbled on, an inexhaustible fountain of alternating self-pity and outrage. Murgatroyd gazed out of the window as Plaisance airport fell away behind them and the road led on to Mahebourg, the old French capital of the island, and the crumbling forts with which they had sought to defend it against the British fleet of 1810.

Murgatroyd stared out of the window, fascinated by what he saw. He was determined he would enjoy to the full this one-week holiday on a tropical island, the first real adventure of his life. Before coming, he had read two thick guidebooks on Mauritius and studied a large-scale map of it from north to south.

They passed through a village as the sugarcane country began. On the stoops of the roadside cottages he saw Indians, Chinese and Negroes, along with the métis Creoles, living side by side. Hindu temples and Buddhist shrines stood a few yards down the road from a Catholic chapel. His books had told him Mauritius was a racial mix of half a dozen main ethnic groups and four great religions, but he had never seen such a thing before, at least, not living in harmony.

There were more villages passing by, not rich and certainly not tidy, but the villagers smiled and waved. Murgatroyd waved back. Four scrawny chickens fluttered out of the way of the taxi, defying death by inches, and when he looked back they were in the road again, pecking a seemingly impossible living from the dust. The car slowed for a corner. A small Tamil boy in a shift came out of a shack, stood at the kerb, and lifted the hem of his garment to the waist. Beneath it he was naked. He began to pee in the road as the taxi passed. Holding his shift with one hand he waved with the other. Mrs Murgatroyd snorted.

'Disgusting,' she said. She leaned forward and rapped the driver on the shoulder.

'Why doesn't he go to the toilet?' she asked.

The driver threw back his head and laughed. Then he turned his face to answer her. The car negotiated two bends by remote control.

'Pas de toilette, madame,' he said.

'What's that?' she asked.

'It seems the road is the toilet,' explained Higgins.

She sniffed.

'I say,' said Higgins, 'look, the sea.'

To their right as they ran for a short while along a bluff, the Indian Ocean stretched away to the horizon, a limpid azure blue in the morning sun. Half a mile from the shore was a white line of breaking surf marking the great reef that encloses Mauritius from the wilder waters. Inside the reef they could see the lagoon, still water of palest green and so clear the coral clusters were easily visible 20 feet down. Then the taxi plunged back into the cane fields.

After fifty minutes they passed through the fishing village of Trou d'Eau Douce. The driver pointed ahead.

'Hotel,' he said, 'dix minutes.'

'Thank goodness,' huffed Mrs Murgatroyd. 'I couldn't have taken much more of this rattletrap.'

They turned into the driveway between manicured lawns set with palm trees. Higgins turned with a grin.

'A long way from Ponder's End,' he said.

Murgatroyd smiled back. 'Indeed it is,' he said. Not that he had no reason to be grateful to the commuter suburb of Ponder's End, London, where he was branch manager. A light-industry factory had opened nearby six months previously and on a stroke of inspiration he had approached both management and workforce with the suggestion that they minimize the risk of a payroll robbery by paying their weekly wages like the executive salaries — by cheque. Somewhat to his surprise they had mostly agreed and several hundred new accounts had been opened at his branch. It was this coup which had come to the attention of head office and someone there had proposed the idea of an incentive scheme for provincial and junior staff. In the scheme's inaugural year he had won it, and the prize was a week in Mauritius entirely paid for by the bank.

The taxi finally halted in front of the great arched entrance of the H6tel St Geran, and two porters ran forward to take the luggage from the boot and the roof rack. Mrs Murgatroyd descended from the rear seat at once. Although she had only twice ventured east of the Thames estuary — they usually holidayed with her sister at Bognor — she at once began to harangue the porters as if, in earlier life, she had had half the Raj at her personal disposition.

Followed by the porters and the luggage the three of them trailed through the arched doorway into the airy cool of the vaulted main hall, Mrs Murgatroyd in the lead in her floral print dress, much crumpled by the flight and the drive, Higgins in his natty tropical cream seersucker, and Murgatroyd in his sober grey. To the left lay the reception desk, manned by an Indian clerk who smiled a welcome.

Higgins took charge. 'Mr and Mrs Murgatroyd,' he said, 'and I am Mr Higgins.'

The clerk consulted his reservations list. 'Yes, indeed,' he said.

Murgatroyd stared about him. The main hall was made of rough-hewn local stone and was very lofty. High above him dark timber beams supported the roof. The hall stretched away towards colonnades at the far end, and other pillars supported the sides so that a cooling breeze wafted through. From the far end he saw the glare of tropical sunlight and heard the splash and shouts of a swimming pool in full use. Halfway down the hall, to the left, a stone staircase led upwards to what must be the upper floor of the bedroom wing. At ground level another arch led to the lower suites.

From a room behind reception a blond young Englishman emerged in a crisp shirt and pastel slacks.

'Good morning,' he said with a smile. 'I'm Paul Jones, the general manager.'

'Higgins,' said Higgins. 'This is Mr and Mrs Murgatroyd.'

'You're very welcome,' said Jones. 'Now, let me see about the rooms.'

From down the hall a lanky figure strolled towards them. His lean shanks emerged from drill shorts and a flower-patterned beach shirt flapped about him. He wore no shoes but he had a beatific smile and clutched a can of lager in one large hand. He stopped several yards short of Murgatroyd and stared down at him.

'Hullo, new arrivals?' he said in a discernible Australian accent.

Murgatroyd was startled. 'Er, yes,' he said.

'What's your name?' asked the Australian without ceremony.

'Murgatroyd,' said the bank manager. 'Roger Murgatroyd.'

The Australian nodded, taking the information in. 'Where you from?' he asked.

Murgatroyd misunderstood. He thought the man said, 'Who are you from.'

'From the Midland,' he said.

The Australian tilted the can to his lips and drained it. He burped. 'Who's he?' he asked.

'That's Higgins,' said Murgatroyd. 'From head office.'

The Australian smiled happily. He blinked several times to focus his gaze. 'I like it,' he said, 'Murgatroyd of the Midland, and Higgins from Head Office.'

By this time Paul Jones had spotted the Australian and come round from behind the desk. He took the tall man's elbow and guided him back down the hall. 'Now, now, Mr Foster, if you'll just return to the bar so I can get our new guests comfortably settled in…'

Foster allowed himself to be propelled gently but firmly back down the hall. As he left he waved a friendly hand towards the reception. 'Good on yer, Murgatroyd,' he called.

Paul Jones rejoined them.

'That man,' said Mrs Murgatroyd with icy disapproval, 'was drunk.'

'He is on holiday, my dear,' said Murgatroyd.

'That's no excuse,' said Mrs Murgatroyd. 'Who is he?'

'Harry Foster,' said Jones, 'from Perth.'

'He doesn't talk like a Scotsman,' said Mrs Murgatroyd.

'Perth, Australia,' said Jones. 'Allow me to show you to your rooms.'

Murgatroyd gazed in delight from the balcony of the first-floor twin-bedded room. Below him a brief lawn ran down to a band of glittering white sand over which palm trees scattered shifting shoals of shadows as the breeze moved them. A dozen round straw-thatched paillots gave firmer protection. The warm lagoon, milky where it had stirred up the sand, lapped the edge of the beach. Farther out it turned translucent green and farther still it looked blue. Five hundred yards across the lagoon he could make out the creaming reef.

A young man, mahogany beneath a thatch of straw hair, was windsurfing a hundred yards out. Poised on his tiny board, he caught a puff of wind, leaned out against the pull of the sail and went skittering across the surface of the water with effortless ease. Two small brown children, black-haired and — eyed, splashed each other, screaming in the shallows. A middle-aged European, round-bellied, glittering sea-drops, trudged out of the water in frogman's flippers, trailing his face mask and snorkel.

'Christ,' he called in a South African accent to a woman in the shade, 'there's so many fish down there, it's unbelievable.'

To Murgatroyd's right, up by the main building, men and women in wraparound pareus were heading to the pool bar for an iced drink before lunch.

'Let's go for a swim,' said Murgatroyd.

'We'd be there all the sooner if you'd help me with the unpacking,' said his wife.

'Let's leave that. We only need our swim things till after lunch.'

'Certainly not,' said Mrs Murgatroyd. 'I'm not having you going to lunch looking like a native. Here are your shorts and shirt.'

In two days Murgatroyd had got into the rhythm of holiday life in the tropics, or as much as was allowed him. He rose early, as he always did anyway, but instead of being greeted as usual by the prospect through the curtains of rain-slick pavements, he sat on the balcony and watched the sun ride up from the Indian Ocean out beyond the reef, making the dark, quiet water glitter suddenly like shattered glass. At seven he went for a morning swim, leaving Edna Murgatroyd propped up in bed in her curlers, complaining of the slowness of breakfast service, which was in fact extremely fast.

He spent an hour in the warm water, swimming once nearly two hundred yards out and surprising himself with his daring. He was not a strong swimmer, but he was becoming a much better one. Fortunately his wife did not witness the exploit, for she was convinced sharks and barracuda infested the lagoon and nothing would persuade her that these predators could not cross the reef and that the lagoon was as safe as the pool.

He began to take his breakfast on the terrace by the pool, joining the other holidaymakers in selecting melon, mangoes and pawpaw with his cereal and forsaking eggs and bacon, even though these were available. Most of the men by this hour wore swim trunks and beach shirts, and the women light cotton shifts or wraparounds over their bikinis. Murgatroyd stuck with his knee-length drill shorts and tennis shirts brought out from England. His wife joined him beneath 'their' thatch roof on the beach just before ten to begin a day-long series of demands for soft drinks and applications of sun oil, although she hardly ever exposed herself to the sun's rays.

Occasionally she would lower her pink bulk into the hotel pool which encircled the pool bar on its shaded island, her permanent wave protected by a frilly bathing cap, and swim slowly for several yards before climbing out again.

Higgins, being alone, was soon involved with another group of much younger English people and they hardly saw him. He saw himself as something of a swinger and equipped himself from the hotel boutique with a wide-brimmed straw hat such as he had once seen Hemingway wearing in a photograph. He too spent the day in trunks and shirt, appearing like the others for dinner in pastel slacks and safari shirt with breast pockets and epaulettes. After dinner he frequented the casino or the disco. Murgatroyd wondered what they were like.

Harry Foster unfortunately had not kept his sense of humour to himself. To the South Africans, Australians and British who made up the bulk of the clientele, Murgatroyd of the Midland became quite well known, though Higgins contrived to lose the Head Office tag by assimilating. Unwittingly, Murgatroyd became quite popular. As he padded onto the breakfast terrace in long shorts and plimsoles he evoked quite a few smiles and cheery greetings of 'Morning, Murgatroyd.'

Occasionally he met the inventor of his title. Several times Harry Foster weaved past him, holidaying on his personal cloud, his right hand seeming only to open in order to deposit one can of lager and envelop another. Each time the genial Aussie grinned warmly, raised his free hand in greeting and called out, 'Good on yer, Murgatroyd.'

On the third morning Murgatroyd came out of the sea from his after-breakfast swim, lay under the thatch with his back propped against the central support and surveyed himself. The sun was rising high now, and becoming very hot, even though it was only half past nine. He looked down at his body which, despite all his precautions and his wife's warnings, was turning a fetching shade of lobster. He envied people who could get a healthy tan in a short time. He knew the answer was to keep up the tan once acquired, and not to revert between holidays to marble white. Some hope of that at Bognor, he thought. Their past three holidays had entitled them to varying quantities of rain and grey cloud.

His legs protruded from his tartan swim trunks, thin and whiskered, like elongated gooseberries. They were surmounted by a round belly and the muscles of his chest sagged. Years at a desk had broadened his bottom and his hair was thinning. His teeth were all his own and he wore glasses only for reading, of which most of his diet concerned company reports and banking accounts.

There came across the water the roar of an engine and he glanced up to see a small speedboat gathering momentum. Behind it trailed a cord at the end of which a head bobbed on the water. As he watched the cord went suddenly taut and out of the lagoon, streaming spray, timber-brown, came the skier, a young guest at the hotel. He rode a single ski, feet one in front of the other, and a plume of foam rose behind him as he gathered speed after the boat. The helmsman turned the wheel and the skier described a great arc, passing close to the beach in front of Murgatroyd. Muscles locked, thighs tensed against the chop of the boat's wake, he seemed carved from oak. The shout of his triumphant laughter echoed back across the lagoon as he sped away again. Murgatroyd watched and envied that young man.

He was, he conceded, fifty, short, plump and out of condition, despite the summer afternoons at the tennis club. Sunday was only four days away, and he would climb into a plane to fly away, and never come back again. He would probably stay at Ponder's End for another decade and then retire, most likely to Bognor.

He looked round to see a young girl walking along the beach from his left. Politeness should have forbidden him to stare at her, but he could not help it. She walked barefoot with the straight-backed grace of the island girls. Her skin, without the aid of oils or lotions, was a deep gold. She wore a white cotton pareu with a scarlet motif, knotted under the left arm. It fell to just below her hips. Murgatroyd supposed she must be wearing something underneath it. A puff of wind blew the cotton shift against her, outlining for a second the firm young breasts and small waist. Then the zephyr died and the cloth fell straight again.

Murgatroyd saw she was a pale Creole, wide-set dark eyes, high cheekbones and lustrous dark hair that fell in waves down her back. As she came abreast of him she turned and bestowed on someone a wide and happy smile. Murgatroyd was caught by surprise. He did not know anyone else was near him. He looked round frantically to see whom the girl could have smiled at. There was no one else there. When he turned back to the sea the girl smiled again, white teeth gleaming in the morning sun. He was sure they had not been introduced. If not, the smile must be spontaneous. To a stranger. Murgatroyd pulled off his sunglasses and smiled back.

'Morning,' he called.

'Bonjour, m'sieu,' said the girl, and walked on. Murgatroyd watched her retreating back. Her dark hair hung down to her hips, which undulated slightly beneath the white cotton.

'You can just stop thinking that sort of thing for a start,' said a voice behind him. Mrs Murgatroyd had arrived to join him. She too gazed after the walking girl.

'Hussy,' she said, and arranged herself in the shade.

Ten minutes later he looked across at her. She was engrossed in another historical romance by a popular authoress, of which she had brought a supply. He stared back at the lagoon and wondered as he had done so often before how she could have such an insatiable appetite for romantic fiction while disapproving with visceral intensity of the reality. Theirs had not been a marriage marked by loving affection, even in the early days before she had told him that she disapproved of 'that sort of thing' and that he was mistaken if he thought there was any need for it to continue. Since then, for over twenty years, he had been locked into a loveless marriage, its suffocating tedium only occasionally enlivened by periods of acute dislike.

He had once overheard someone in the changing room at the tennis club tell another member that he should 'have belted her years ago'. At the time he had been angry, on the point of emerging round the cupboards to remonstrate. But he had held back, acknowledging that the fellow was probably right. The trouble was, he was not the sort of man to belt people and he doubted she was the sort of person whom it would improve. He had always been mild-mannered, even as a youngster, and though he could run a bank, at home his mildness had degenerated into passivity and thence into abjection. The burden of his private thoughts came out in the form of a gusty sigh.

Edna Murgatroyd looked at him over the top of her spectacles. 'If you've got the wind, you can go and take a tablet,' she said.

It was on the Friday evening that Higgins sidled up to him in the main hall as he waited for his wife to come out of the ladies.

'I've got to talk to you… alone,' Higgins hissed from the corner of his mouth with enough secrecy to attract attention for miles around.

'I see,' said Murgatroyd. 'Can't you say it here?'

'No,' grunted Higgins, examining a fern. 'Your wife may come back at any minute. Follow me.'

He strolled away with elaborate nonchalance, walked several yards into the garden and went behind a tree, against which he leaned and waited. Murgatroyd padded after him.

'What's the matter?' he asked when he caught up with Higgins in the darkness of the shrubbery. Higgins glanced back at the lighted hallway through the arches to ensure the distaff side of Murgatroyd was not following.

'Game fishing,' he said. 'Have you ever done it?'

'No, of course not,' said Murgatroyd.

'Nor me. But I'd like to. Just once. Give it a try. Listen, there were three Johannesburg businessmen who booked a boat for tomorrow morning. Now it seems they can't make it. So the boat's available and half the cost is paid because they forfeited their deposits. What do you say? Shall we take it?'

Murgatroyd was surprised to be asked. 'Why don't you go with a couple of mates from the group you're with?' he asked.

Higgins shrugged. 'They all want to spend the last day with their girlfriends, and the girls don't want to go. Come on, Murgatroyd, let's give it a try.'

'How much does it cost?' asked Murgatroyd.

'Normally, a hundred American dollars a head,' said Higgins, 'but with half paid, it's only fifty dollars each.'

'For a few hours? That's twenty-five pounds.'

'Twenty-six pounds seventy-five pence,' said Higgins automatically. He was after all in foreign exchange.

Murgatroyd calculated. With the taxi back to the airport and the various extra charges to get him home to Ponder's End, he had little more than that left. The balance would be assigned by Mrs Murgatroyd for duty-free purchases and gifts for her sister in Bognor. He shook his head.

'Edna would never agree,' he said.

'Don't tell her.'

'Not tell her?' He was aghast at the idea.

'That's right,' urged Higgins. He leaned closer and Murgatroyd caught the whiff of planter's punch. 'Just do it. She'll give you hell later, but she'll do that anyway. Think of it. We'll probably not come back here again. Probably not see the Indian Ocean again. So why not?'

'Well, I don't know.'

'Just one morning out there on the open sea in a small boat, man. Wind in your hair, lines out for bonito, tuna or kingfish. We might even catch one. At least it would be an adventure to remember back in London.'

Murgatroyd stiffened. He thought of the young man on the ski, hammering his way across the lagoon.

'I'll do it,' he said. 'You're on. When do we leave?'

He took out his wallet, tore off three £10 traveller's cheques, leaving only two in the booklet, signed the bottom line and gave them to Higgins.

'Very early start,' Higgins whispered, taking the cheques. 'Four o'clock we get up. Leave here by car at four-thirty. At the harbour at five. Leave port at a quarter to six to be on the fishing grounds just before seven. That's the best time; around dawn. The activities manager will be coming as escort, and he knows the ropes. I'll see you in the main lobby at four-thirty.'

He strode back to the main hall and headed for the bar. Murgatroyd followed in bemusement at his own foolhardiness and found his wife testily waiting. He escorted her in to dinner.

Murgatroyd hardly slept at all that night. Although he had a small alarm clock he dared not set it for fear it would waken his wife when it went off. Nor could he afford to oversleep and have Higgins rapping on the door at half past four. He catnapped several times until he saw the illuminated hands approaching four o'clock. Beyond the curtains it was still pitch dark.

He slipped quietly out of bed and glanced at Mrs Murgatroyd. She was on her back as usual, breathing stertorously, her arsenal of curlers held in place by a net. He dropped his pyjamas silently on the bed and pulled on his underpants. Taking plimsoles, shorts and shirt, he went quietly out by the door and closed it behind him. In the darkened corridor he pulled on the rest of his clothes and shivered in the unexpected chill.

In the hall he found Higgins and their guide, a tall, raw-boned South African called Andre Kilian, who was in charge of all sporting activities for the guests. Kilian glanced at his attire.

'It's cold on the water before dawn,' he said, 'and bloody hot afterwards. The sun can fry you out there. Haven't you got a pair of long trousers and a long-sleeved windcheater?'

'I didn't think,' said Murgatroyd. 'No, er, I haven't.' He did not dare go back to his room now.

'I've got a spare,' said Kilian and handed him a pullover. 'Let's go.'

They drove for fifteen minutes through the dark countryside, past shacks where a single glim indicated someone else was already awake. At length they wound their way down from the main road to the small harbour of Trou d'Eau Douce, Cove of Sweet Water, so called by some long-gone French captain who must have found a drinkable spring at that point. The houses of the village were battened and dark, but at the harbourside Murgatroyd could make out the shape of a moored boat and other shapes working on board it by the light of torches. They pulled up close to the wooden jetty and Kilian took a flask of hot coffee from the glove compartment and handed it round. It was very welcome.

The South African left the car and went along the jetty to the boat. Snatches of a low conversation in Creole French drifted back to the car. It is strange how people always speak quietly in the darkness before dawn.

After ten minutes he came back. There was by now a pale streak on the eastern horizon and a few low, ribbed clouds gleamed faintly out there. The water was discernible by its own glow, and the outlines of jetty, boat and men were becoming clearer.

'We can get the gear aboard now,' said Kilian.

From the rear of the estate car he hauled a refrigerated vacuum box which was later to provide the cold beer, and he and Higgins carried it down the jetty. Murgatroyd took the lunch packs and two more coffee flasks.

The boat was not one of the new, luxurious fibreglass models, but an old and beamy lady of timber hull and marine-ply decking. She had a small cabin up forward which seemed to be crammed with assorted gear. To starboard of the cabin door was a single padded chair on a high stem, facing the wheel and the basic controls. This area was covered in. The after area was open and contained hard benches along each side. At the stern was a single swivel chair, as one sees in a city office, except that this one had harness straps hanging loose from it and was cleated to the deck.

From either side of the afterdeck two long rods stuck out at angles, like wasp aerials. Murgatroyd thought at first they were fishing rods, but later learned they were outriggers to hold the outer lines clear of the inboard lines and prevent tangling.

An old man sat on the skipper's chair, one hand on the wheel, and watched the last preparations in silence. Kilian heaved the beer chest under one of the benches and gestured the others to sit down. A young boat boy, hardly in his teens, unhitched the after painter and threw it on the deck. A villager on the planks beside them did the same up front and pushed the boat away from the quay. The old man started the engines and a dull rumble began beneath their feet. The boat turned its nose slowly towards the lagoon.

The sun was rising fast now, only just below the horizon, and its light was spreading westwards across the water. Murgatroyd could clearly see the houses of the village along the lagoon's edge and rising plumes of smoke as the women prepared the breakfast coffee. In a few minutes the last stars had faded, the sky turned robin's egg blue and swords of shimmering light thrust through the water. A catspaw, sudden, coming from nowhere, going nowhere, ruffled the surface of the lagoon and the light broke up into shards of silver. Then it was gone. The flat calm returned, broken only by the long wake of the boat from its stern to the receding jetty. Murgatroyd looked over the side and could make out clumps of coral already, and they were four fathoms down.

'By the way,' said Kilian, 'let me introduce you.' With the growing light, his voice was louder. 'This boat is the Avant, in French that means "Forward". She's old but sound as a rock, and she's caught a few fish in her time. The captain is Monsieur Patient, and this is his grandson Jean-Paul.'

The old man turned and nodded a greeting at his guests. He said nothing. He was dressed in tough blue canvas shirt and trousers from which two gnarled bare feet hung downwards. His face was dark and wizened like an old walnut and topped by a battered chip hat. He gazed at the sea with eyes wreathed in wrinkles from a lifetime of looking at bright water.

'Monsieur Patient has been fishing these waters man and boy for sixty years at least,' said Kilian. 'Even he doesn't know just how long and no one else can remember. He knows the water and he knows the fish. That's the secret of catching them.'

Higgins produced a camera from his shoulder bag. 'I'd like to take a picture,' he said.

' I'd wait a few minutes,' said Kilian. 'Andhold on. We'll be going through the reef in a short while.'

Murgatroyd stared ahead at the approaching reef. From his hotel balcony it looked feathery soft, the spray like splashing milk. Close up, he could hear the boom of the ocean breakers pounding themselves into the coral heads, tearing themselves apart on ranks of sharp knives just below the surface. He could see no break in the line.

Just short of the foam, old Patient spun the wheel hard right and the Avant positioned herself parallel to the white foaming line 20 yards away. Then he saw the channel. It occurred where two banks of coral ran side by side with a narrow gap between them. Five seconds later they were in the channel, with breakers left and right, running parallel to the shore half a mile to the east. As the surge caught them, the Avant bucked and swung.

Murgatroyd looked down. There were breakers now on both sides, but on his, as the foam withdrew, he could see the coral ten feet away, fragile feathery to the sight but razor sharp to the touch. One brush and it could peel boat or man with contemptuous ease. The skipper seemed not to be looking. He sat with one hand on the wheel, the other on the throttle, staring ahead through the windshield as if receiving signals from some beacon known only to him on that blank horizon. Occasionally he tweaked the wheel or surged the power and the Avant moved surely away from some new threat. Murgatroyd only saw the threats as they swept frustrated past his eyes.

In sixty seconds that seemed an age it was over. On the right side the reef continued, but on the left it ended and they were through the gap. The captain spun the wheel again and the Avant turned her nose towards the open sea. At once they hit the fearsome Indian Ocean swell. Murgatroyd realized this was no boating for the squeamish and he hoped he would not disgrace himself.

'I say, Murgatroyd, did you see that damned coral?' said Higgins.

Kilian grinned. 'Quite something, isn't it? Coffee?'

'After that I could do with something stronger,' said Higgins.

'We think of everything,' said Kilian. 'There's brandy in it.' He unscrewed the second vacuum flask.

The boat boy began at once to prepare the rods. There were four of them which he brought from the cabin, strong fibreglass rods about 8 feet long with the lower 2 feet wrapped in cork to aid the grip. Each was adorned with a huge reel containing 800 yards of monofilament nylon line. The butts were of solid brass and cut with a cleft to fit into the sockets in the boat to prevent twisting. He slotted each one into its socket and secured them with lanyard and dogclip lest they fall overboard.

The first arc of the sun's edge rose out of the ocean and flooded its rays across the heaving sea. Within minutes the dark water had turned to a deep indigo blue, becoming lighter and greener as the sun rose.

Murgatroyd braced himself against the pitch and roll of the boat as he tried to drink his coffee, and watched the preparations of the boat boy with fascination. From a large tackle box he took a variety of lengths of steel wire, called traces, and a selection of different lures. Some looked like brilliant pink or green baby squids in soft rubber; there were red and white cockerel feathers and glittering spoons or spinners, designed to flicker in the water and attract the attention of a hunting predator. There were also thick, cigar-shaped lead weights, each with a clip in the snout for attachment to the line.

The boy asked something in Creole of his grandfather and the old man grunted a reply. The boy selected two baby squids, a feather and a spoon. Each had a 10-inch steel trace protruding from one end and a single or triple hook at the other. The boy attached the clip on the lure to a longer trace and the other end of that to the line of a rod. Onto each also went a lead weight to keep the bait just under the surface as it ran through the water. Kilian noted the baits being used.

'That spinner,' he said, 'is good for the odd roving barracuda. The squid and the feather will bring in bonito, dorado or even a big tuna.'

Monsieur Patient suddenly altered course and they craned to see why. There was nothing on the horizon ahead. Sixty seconds later they made out what the old man had already seen. On the far horizon a group of sea birds dived and wheeled above the sea, tiny specks at that distance.

'Terns,' said Kilian. 'The birds have spotted a shoal of small fry and are diving for them.'

'Do we want small fry?' asked Higgins.

'No,' said Kilian, 'but other fish do. The birds act as our signal for the shoal. But bonito hunt the sprats and so do the tuna.'

The captain turned and nodded to the boy, who began to cast the prepared lines into the wake. As each bobbed frantically on the foam he unlocked a catch on the reel to which it was attached and the reel spun free. The drag took the bait, lead and trace far away down the wake until it disappeared completely. The boy let the line rim Out until he was satisfied it was well over a hundred feet clear of the boat. Then he locked the reel again. The rod tip bent slightly, took the strain and began to tow the lure. Somewhere, far back in the green water, the bait and hook were running steady and true beneath the surface like a fast-swimming fish.

There were two rods slotted into the after edge of the boat, one in the left-hand corner, the other at the right. The other two rods were in sockets farther up each side of the afterdeck. Their lines were clipped into large clothespegs, the pegs attached to cords running up the outriggers. The boy threw the baits from these rods into the sea and then ran the pegs up to the tip of the rigger. The spread of the riggers would keep the outer lines free of the inner ones and parallel to them. If a fish struck, it would pull the line free of the mouth of the peg, and the strain. would revert direct from reel to rod to fish.

'Have either of you ever fished before?' asked Kilian. Murgatroyd and Higgins shook then-heads. 'Then I'd better show you what happens when we get a strike. It's a bit late after that. Come and have a look.'

The South African sat in the fighting chair and took one of the rods. 'What happens when a strike occurs is that the line is suddenly torn out through the reel which, in turning, emits a high-pitched scream. That's how you know. When that happens the person whose turn it is takes his place here and either Jean- Paul or I will hand him the rod. OK?'

The Englishmen nodded.

'Now, you take the rod and place the butt here in this socket between your thighs. Then you clip on this dogclip, with its lanyard secured to the seat frame. If it is torn from your grasp, we don't lose an expensive rod and all its tackle. Now, see this thing here…'

Kilian pointed to a brass wheel with spokes that jutted out from the side of the reel drum. Murgatroyd and Higgins nodded.

'That's the slipping clutch,' said Kilian. 'At the moment it is set for a very light strain, say five pounds, so that when the fish bites the line will run out, the reel will turn and the clicking noise of a turning reel is so fast it sounds like a scream. When you are settled — and be quick about it because the longer you spend getting ready the more line you have to pull in later — you turn the clutch control slowly forward, like this. The effect is to stiffen up the reel until the line stops going out. The fish is now being pulled by the boat, instead of the fish pulling out your line.

'After that, you reel him in. Grip the cork here with the left hand and reel in. If he's really heavy, grip with both hands and haul back till the rod is vertical. Then drop the right hand to the reel and reel in while lowering the rod towards the stern. That makes reeling easier. Then do it again. Double grip, haul back, ease forward while reeling in at the same time. Eventually you'll see your prize coming up in the foam beneath the stern. Then the boat boy will gaff him and bring him inboard.'

'What are those marks for, on the slipping clutch and the brass casing of the drum?' asked Higgins.

'They mark the maximum permissible strain,' said Kilian. 'These lines have a one-hundred-and-thirty-pound breaking strain. With wet line, deduct ten per cent. To be on the safe side, this reel is marked so that when these marks are opposite each other, the slipping clutch will only concede line when there's a hundred pounds pulling on the other end. But to hold a hundred pounds for very long, let alone reel it in, will nearly pull your arms out, so I don't think we need bother about that.'

'But what happens if we get a big one?' persisted Higgins.

'Then,' said Kilian, 'the only thing is to tire him out. That's when the battle begins. You have to let him have line, reel in, let him run again against the strain, reel in, and so forth, until he is so exhausted he can pull no more. But we'll handle that if we get to it.'

Almost as he spoke the Avant was among the wheeling terns, having covered the three miles in thirty minutes. Monsieur Patient reduced power and they began to cruise through the unseen shoal beneath them. The tiny birds with tireless grace circled twenty feet above the sea, heads down, wings rigid, until their keen eyes spotted some glitter along the heaving hills of water. Then they would drop, wings back, needle beak forward, into the heart of the swell.

A second later the same bird would emerge with a struggling silver matchstick in the mouth, which instantly went down the slim gullet. Their quest was as endless as their energy.

'I say, Murgatroyd,' said Higgins, 'we'd better decide who gets first strike. Toss you for it.'

He produced a Mauritian rupee from his pocket. They tossed and Higgins won. A few seconds later one of the inner rods bucked violently and the line hissed out. The turning reel gave a sound that rose from a whine to a scream.

'Mine,' shouted Higgins delightedly and leaped into the swivel chair. Jean-Paul passed him the rod, still unreeling but slower now, and Higgins slammed the butt downward into its socket. He attached the dogclip and lanyard, and began to close the slipping clutch. The unreeling line stopped almost at once. The rod bent at the tip. Holding with his left hand, Higgins reeled in with his right. The rod bent some more, but the winding went on.

'I can feel him thudding on the line,' gasped Higgins. He went on winding. The line came in without objection and Jean-Paul leaned over the stern. Taking the line in his hand he swung a small, rigid silver fish over into the boat.

'Bonito, about four pounds,' said Kilian.

The boat boy took a pair of pliers and unhooked the barb from the bonito's mouth. Murgatroyd saw that above its silver belly it was blue-black striped like a mackerel. Higgins looked disappointed. The cloud of terns dropped astern and they were through the shoal of sprats. It was just after eight o'clock and the fishing deck was becoming warm but only pleasantly so. Monsieur Patient turned the Avantin a slow circle to head back to the shoal and its marker of diving terns, while his grandson threw the hook and its baby- squid lure back into the sea for another run.

'Maybe we could have it for dinner,' said Higgins. Kilian shook his head regretfully.

'Bonito are for bait fish,' he said. 'The locals eat them in soups, but they don't taste much good.'

They made a second run through the shoal and there was a second strike. Murgatroyd took the rod with a thrill of excitement. This was the first time he had ever done this and the last he ever would again. When he gripped the cork he could feel the shuddering of the fish 200 feet down the line as if it were next to him. He turned the clutch slowly forward and eventually the running line was silent and still. The rod tip curved towards the sea. With his left arm tensed he took the strain and was surprised at the strength needed to haul back.

He locked his left arm muscles and began methodically to turn the reel handle with his right. It turned, but it took all his forearm to do it. The pulling power at the other end surprised him. Maybe it was big, he thought, even very big. That was the excitement, he realized. Never quite knowing what giant of the deep was fighting down there in the wake. And if it was nothing much, like Higgins's tiddler, well, the next one could be a monster. He continued turning slowly, feeling his chest heave with the effort. When the fish was 20 yards short of the boat it seemed to give up and the line came quite easily.

He thought he had lost the fish, but it was there. It gave one last tug as it came under the stern, then it was over. Jean-Paul gaffed and swung it in. Another bonito, bigger, about 10 pounds.

'It's great, isn't it?' said Higgins excitedly. Murgatroyd nodded and smiled. This would be something to tell them at Ponder's End. Up at the wheel old man Patient set a new course for a patch of deep blue water he could see several miles farther on. He watched his grandson extract the hook from the bonito's mouth and grunted something to the boy. The lad undipped the trace and lure and put them back in the tackle box. He stowed the rod in its socket, the small steel swivel clip at the end of the line swinging free. Then he went forward and took the wheel. His grandfather said something to him and pointed through the windshield. The boy nodded.

'Aren't we going to use that rod?' asked Higgins.

'Monsieur Patient must have another idea,' said Kilian. 'Leave it to him. He knows what he is doing.'

The old man rolled easily down the heaving deck to where they stood and without a word sat crosslegged in the scuppers, selected the smaller bonito and began to prepare it as bait. The small fish lay hard as a board in death, crescent tail fins stiff up and down, mouth half open, tiny black eyes staring at nothing.

Monsieur Patient took from the tackle box a big single-barbed hook to whose shank was stoutly spliced a 20-inch steel wire, and a 12-inch pointed steel spike like a knitting needle. He pushed the point of the spike into the fish's anal orifice and kept pushing until the blood-tipped point emerged from its mouth. To the needle's other end he clipped the steel trace and with pliers drew needle and trace up through the bonito's body until the trace was hanging from its mouth.

The old man pushed the shank of the hook deep into the bonito's belly, so that all disappeared except the curve and the needle-sharp point with its barb. This jutted stiffly outwards and downwards from the base of the tail, the tip pointing forward. He drew the rest of the trace out of the fish's mouth until it was taut.

He produced a much smaller needle, no larger than a housewife would use for her husband's socks, and a yard of cotton twine thread. The bonito's single dorsal and two ventral fins were lying flat. The old man nicked his cotton through the leading spine of the dorsal fin, whipped it over several times and then pierced the needle through a fold of muscle behind the head. As he drew the thread tight, the dorsal fin erected, a series of spines and membranes that give vertical stability in the water. He did the same to both ventral fins, and finally sewed the mouth closed with neat and tiny stitches.

When he had finished the bonito looked much as it had in life. Its three body fins stuck out in perfect symmetry to prevent rolling or spinning. Its vertical tail would give direction at speed. The closed mouth would prevent turbulence and bubbles. Only the line of steel between its clenched lips and the vicious hook hanging from its tail root betrayed the fact that it was baited. Lastly the old fisherman clipped the few inches of trace from the bonito's mouth to the second trace hanging from the rod's tip with a small swivel, and consigned the new bait to the ocean. Still staring, the bonito bobbed twice in the wake until the leaden cigar pulled it down to begin its last journey beneath the sea. He let it run 200 feet out, behind the other baits, before he secured the rod again and went back to his command chair. The water beside them had turned from blue-grey to a bright blue-green.

Ten minutes later Higgins took another strike, on the spinner bait this time. He hauled and reeled for a full ten minutes. Whatever he had hooked was fighting with mad fury to be free. They all thought it might be a fair-sized tuna from the weight of its pull, but when it came inboard it was a yard-long, lean, narrow-bodied fish with a golden tint to its upper body and fins.

'Dorado,' said Kilian. 'Well done; these lads really fight. And they're good to eat. We'll ask the chef at the St Geran to prepare it for supper.'

Higgins was flushed and happy. 'It felt like I was pulling a runaway truck,' he gasped.

The boat boy readjusted the bait and consigned it again to the wake.

The seas were running higher now. Murgatroyd held one of the supports that sustained the timber awning over the front part of the deck in order to see better. The Avant was plunging more wildly amid great rolling waves. In the troughs they were staring at great walls of water on all sides, running slopes whose sunlit sheen belied the terrible strength beneath. On the crests they could see for miles the plumed white caps of each great wave and westwards the smudged outline of Mauritius on the horizon.

The rollers were coming from the east, shoulder to shoulder, like serried ranks of great green guardsmen marching upon the island, only to die in the artillery of the reef. He was surprised that he was not feeling queasy for he had once felt ill on a ferry crossing from Dover to Boulogne. But that had been a bigger vessel, hammering and butting its way through the waves, its passengers breathing in the odours of oil, cooking fat, fast-food, bar fumes and each other. The smaller Avant did not contest the sea; she rode with it, yielding to rise again.

Murgatroyd stared at the water and felt the awe that dwells on the edge of fear, so much companion to men in small boats. A craft may be proud, majestic, expensive and strong in the calm water of a fashionable port, admired by the passing socialite throng, the showpiece of its rich possessor. Out on the ocean it is sister to the reeking trawler, the rusted tramp, a poor thing of welded seams and bolted joints, a frail cocoon pitting its puny strength against unimaginable power, a fragile toy on a giant's palm. Even with four others around him, Murgatroyd sensed the insignificance of himself and the impertinent smallness of the boat, the loneliness that the sea can inspire. Those alone who have journeyed on the sea and in the sky, or across the great snows or over desert sands, know the feeling. All are vast, merciless, but most awesome of all is the sea, because it moves.

Just after nine o'clock Monsieur Patient muttered something to no one in particular. ‘Ya quelque chose,' he said. 'Nous suit.'

'What did he say?' asked Higgins.

'He said there was something out there,' said Kilian. 'Something following us.'

Higgins stared around him at the tumbling water. There was nothing but water. 'How on earth can he know that?' he asked.

Kilian shrugged. 'Same way you know there is something wrong with a column of figures. Instinct.'

The old man reduced power by a touch and the Avant slowed until she seemed hardly to be making way. The pitching and tossing seemed to increase with the drop of engine power. Higgins swallowed several times as his mouth filled with spittle. At a quarter past the hour one of the rods bucked sharply and the line began to run out, not fast but briskly, the clicking of the reel like a football rattle.

'Yours,' said Kilian to Murgatroyd and jerked the rod out of its socket in the transom to place it in the fishing seat. Murgatroyd came out from the shade and sat in the chair. He tagged the rod butt to the dogclip and gripped the cork handle firmly in the left hand. The reel, a big Penn Senator like a beer firkin, was still turning briskly. He began to close the control of the slipping clutch.

The strain on his arm grew and the rod arched. But the line went on running.

'Tighten up,' said Kilian, 'or he'll take all your line.'

The bank manager locked the muscles of his biceps and tightened the clutch still further. The tip of the rod went down and down until it was level with his eyes. The running line slowed, recovered, and went on running. Kilian bent to look at the clutch. The marks on the inner and outer ring were almost opposite each other.

'That bugger's pulling eighty pounds,' he said. 'You'll have to tighten up some more.'

Murgatroyd's arm was beginning to ache and his fingers were stiffening round the cork grip. He turned the clutch control until the twin marks were exactly opposite each other.

'No more,' said Kilian. 'That's a hundred pounds. The limit. Use both hands on the rod and hang on.'

With relief Murgatroyd brought his other hand to the rod, gripped hard with both, placed the soles of his plimsoles against the transom, braced his thighs and calves and leaned back. Nothing happened. The butt of the rod was vertical between his thighs, the tip pointing straight at the wake. And the line kept on running out, slowly, steadily. The reserve on the drum was diminishing before his eyes.

'Christ,' said Kilian, 'he's big. He's pulling a hundred plus, like tissues from a box. Hang on, man.'

His South African accent was becoming more pronounced in his excitement. Murgatroyd braced his legs again, locked his fingers, wrists, forearms and biceps, hunched his shoulders, bent his head and hung on. No one had ever asked him to hold a 100-pound pull before. After three minutes the reel finally stopped turning. Whatever it was down there, it had taken 600 yards of line.

'We'd better get you in the harness,' said Kilian. One arm after the other he slipped the webbing over Murgatroyd's shoulders. Two more straps went round the waist and another broader one up from between the thighs. All five locked into a central socket on the belly. Kilian pulled the harness tight. It gave some relief to the legs, but the webbing bit through the cotton tennis shirt in front of the shoulders. For the first time Murgatroyd realized how hot the sun was out here. The tops of his bare thighs began to prick.

Old Patient had turned round, steering one-handed. He had watched the line running out from the start. Without warning he just said, 'Marlin.'

'You're lucky,' said Kilian. 'It seems you've hooked into a marlin.'

'Is that good?' asked Higgins, who had gone pale.

'It's the king of all the game fish,' said Kilian. 'Rich men come down here year after year and spend thousands on the sport, and never get a marlin. But he'll fight you, like you've never seen anything fight in your life.'

Although the line had stopped running out and the fish was swimming with the boat, he had not stopped pulling. The rod tip still arched down to the wake. The fish was still pulling between 70 and 90 pounds.

The four men watched in silence as Murgatroyd hung on. For five minutes he clung to the rod as the sweat burst from forehead and cheeks, running down in drops to his chin. Slowly the rod tip rose as the fish increased speed to ease the pull at his mouth. Kilian crouched beside Murgatroyd and began to coach him like a flying instructor to a pupil before his first solo flight.

'Reel in now,' he said, 'slowly and surely. Reduce the clutch strain to eighty pounds, for your sake not his. When he makes a break, and he will, let him go and tighten the clutch back to a hundred. Never try to reel in while he's fighting; he'll break your line like cotton. And if he runs towards the boat, reel in like mad. Never give him slack line; he '11 try to spit out the hook.'

Murgatroyd did as he was bid. He managed to reel in 50 yards before the fish made a break. When it did the force nearly tore the rod from the man's grasp. Murgatroyd just had time to swing his other hand to the grip and hold on with both arms. The fish took another 100 yards of line before he stopped his run and began to follow the boat again.

'He's taken six-fifty yards so far,' said Kilian. 'You've only got eight hundred.'

'So what do I do?' asked Murgatroyd between his teeth. The rod slackened and he began winding again.

'Pray,' said Kilian. 'You can't hold him over a hundred-pound pull. So if he reaches the end of the line on the drum, he'll just break it.'

'It's getting very hot,' said Murgatroyd.

Kilian looked at his shorts and shirt. 'You'll fry out here,' he said. 'Wait a minute.'

He took off the trousers of his own track suit and slipped them over Murgatroyd's legs, one at a time. Then he pulled them up as far as he could. The webbing harness prevented them reaching Murgatroyd's waist, but at least the thighs and shins were covered. The relief from the sun was immediate. Kilian took a spare long-sleeved sweater from the cabin. It smelt of sweat and fish.

'I'm going to slip this over your head,' he told Murgatroyd, 'but the only way to get it farther is to undo the harness for a few seconds. Just hope the marlin doesn't break in those seconds.'

They were lucky. Kilian slipped off the two shoulder straps and pulled the sweater down to Murgatroyd's waist, then reclipped the shoulder straps. The fish just ran with the boat, the line taut but without much strain. With the sweater on, Murgatroyd's arms ceased to hurt so much. Kilian turned round. From his seat old man Patient was holding out his broad-brimmed chip hat. Kilian placed it on Murgatroyd's head. The band of shadow shielded his eyes and gave more relief, but the skin of his face was already red and scorched. The sun's reflection from the sea can burn worse than the sun itself.

Murgatroyd took advantage of the marlin's passivity to reel in some more line. He had taken 100 yards, each yard making his fingers ache on the reel handle, for there was still a 40-pound strain on the line, when the fish broke again. He took his 100 yards back in thirty seconds, pulling a full 100 pounds against the slipping clutch. Murgatroyd just hunched himself and held on. The webbing bit into him wherever it touched. It was ten o'clock.

In the next hour he began to learn the meaning of pain. His fingers were stiff and throbbed. His wrists hurt and his forearms sent spasms up to his shoulders. The biceps were locked and shoulders screamed. Even beneath the track suit and pullover the merciless sun was beginning to scorch his skin again. Three times in that hour he won back 100 yards from the fish; three times the fish broke and clawed back his line.

'I don't think I can take much more,' he said between gritted teeth.

Kilian stood beside him, an open can of iced beer in his hand. His own legs were bare, but darkened by years in the sun. He seemed not to burn.

'Hang on, man. That's what the battle's about. He has the strength, you have the tackle and the cunning. After that it's all stamina, yours against his.'

Just after eleven the marlin tail-walked for the first time. Murgatroyd had brought him in to 500 yards. The boat was for a second on the crest of a roller. Down the wake the fish came surging out of the side of a wall of green water and Murgatroyd's mouth fell open. The sharp needle beak of the upper jaw lunged for the sky; below it the shorter lower mandible was hanging open. Above and behind the eye the crested dorsal fin, like a cock's comb, was extended and erect. The glittering bulk of his body followed and as the wave from which he had come ebbed from him, the marlin seemed to stand on his crescent tail. His great body shuddered as if he were walking on his tail. For one second he was there, staring at them across the waste of whitecaps. Then he crashed back into another moving wall and was gone, deep down to his own cold dark world. Old man Patient spoke first to break the silence.

'C'est l’Empereur,' he said.

Kilian spun round on him. 'Vous étes sûr?' he asked.

The old man just nodded.

'What did he say?' asked Higgins.

Murgatroyd stared at the spot where the fish had gone. Then, slowly and steadily, he began to reel in again.

'They know this fish around here,' said Kilian. 'If it's the same one, and I've never known the old man be wrong, he's a blue marlin, estimated to be bigger than the world record of eleven hundred pounds, which means he must be old and cunning. They call him the Emperor. He's a legend to the fishermen.'

'But how could they know one particular fish?' said Higgins. 'They all look alike.'

'This one's been hooked twice,' said Kilian. 'He broke the line twice. But the second time he was close to the boat, off Riviere Noire. They saw the first hook hanging from his mouth. Then he broke line at the last minute and took another hook with him. Each time he was hooked he tail-walked several times and they all got a good look at him. Someone took a photograph of him in mid-air, so he's well known. I couldn't identify him at five hundred yards, but Patient for all his years has eyes like a gannet.'

By midday Murgatroyd was looking old and sick. He sat hunched over his rod, in a world of his own, alone with his pain and some inner determination that he had never felt before. The palms of both hands were running water from the burst blisters, the sweat-damp webbing cut cruelly into sunflayed shoulders. He bowed his head and reeled in line.

Sometimes it came easy as if the fish too were taking a rest. When the strain came off the line the relief was a pleasure so exquisite that he could never later describe it. When the rod was bent and all his aching muscles locked again against the fish the pain was like nothing he could have imagined.

Just after noon Kilian crouched down beside him and offered him another beer. 'Look, man, you're pretty crook. It's been three hours, and really you're not fit enough. There's no need to kill yourself. If you need any help, a short rest, just say.'

Murgatroyd shook his head. His lips were split from sun and salt-spray.

'My fish,' he said, 'leave me alone.'

The battle went on as the sun hammered down onto the deck. Old Patient perched like a wise brown cormorant on his high stool, one hand on the wheel, the engines set just above the idle, his head turned to scan the wake for a sign of the Emperor. Jean-Paul was crouched in the shade of the awning, having long since reeled in and stowed the other three rods. No one was after bonito now, and extra lines would only tangle. Higgins had finally succumbed to the swell and sat miserably head down over a bucket into which he had deposited the sandwiches he had taken for brunch and two bottles of beer. Kilian sat facing him and sucked at his fifth cold lager. Occasionally they looked at the hunched, scarecrow figure under his native hat in the swivel chair and listened to the tickety-tickety-tick of the incoming reel or the despairing ziiiiiiing as the line went back out again.

The marlin had come to 300 yards when he walked again. This time the boat was in a trough and the Emperor burst the surface pointing straight towards them. He came in a climbing leap, shaking spray from his back. The arc of his leap was down the wake and the line suddenly went completely slack. Kilian was on his feet.

'Take line,' he screamed. 'He'll spit the hook.'

Murgatroyd's tired fingers worked in a blur on the handle of the drum to take up the slack. He managed just in time. The line went tight as the marlin dived back into the sea and he had gained 50 yards. Then the fish took it all back. Down in the still dark depths, fathoms beneath the waves and the sun, the great pelagic hunter with instincts honed by a million years of evolution turned against his enemy's pull, took the strain at the corner of his bony mouth and dived.

In his chair the small bank manager hunched himself again, squeezed aching fingers around the wet cork grip, felt the webbing sear into his shoulders like thin wires, and held on. He watched the still-wet nylon line running out, fathom after fathom, before his eyes. Fifty yards were gone and the fish was still diving.

'He'll have to turn and come up again,' said Kilian, watching from over Murgatroyd's shoulder. 'That will be the time to reel in.'

He stooped and peered at the brick-red, peeling face. Two tears squeezed out of the half-closed eyes and ran down Murgatroyd's sagging cheeks. The South African put a kindly hand on his shoulder.

'Look,' he said, 'you can't take any more. Why don't I sit in, just for an hour, eh? Then you can take over for the last part, when he's close and ready to give up.'

Murgatroyd watched the slowing line. He opened his mouth to speak. A split in his lip cracked wide and a trickle of blood ran onto his chin. The cork grip was becoming slick from the blood coming from his palms.

'My fish,' he croaked. 'My fish.'

Kilian stood up. 'All right, Engelsman, your fish,' he said.

It was two in the afternoon. The sun was using the afterdeck of the Avant as its private anvil. The Emperor stopped diving and the line-strain eased to 40 pounds. Murgatroyd began again to haul in.

An hour later the marlin leapt out of the sea for the last time. He was only a hundred yards away. His jump brought Kilian and the boat boy to the transom to watch. For two seconds he hung suspended above the foam, snapping his head from side to side like a terrier to shake the hook that drew him inexorably towards his enemies. From one corner of his mouth a loose strand of steel wire flickered in the sunlight as he shivered. Then with a boom of meat on water he hit the sea and vanished.

'That's him,' said Kilian in awe, 'that's the Emperor. He's twelve hundred pounds if he's an ounce, he's twenty feet from tip to tail and that marlin-spike bill can go through ten inches of timber when he's moving at his full forty knots. What an animal.'

He called back to Monsieur Patient. 'Vous avez vu?'

The old man nodded.

'Quepensez vous? Il va venir vite?’

'Deux heures encore,' said the old man. 'Mais il est fatigue.'

Kilian crouched beside Murgatroyd. 'The old man says he's tired now,' he said. 'But he'll still fight for maybe another couple of hours. Want to go on?'

Murgatroyd stared at where the fish had gone. His vision was blurring with tiredness and all his body was one searing ache. Shafts of sharper pain ran through his right shoulder where he had torn a muscle. He had never once had to call on his ultimate, last reserves of will, so he did not know. He nodded. The line was still, the rod arched. The Emperor was pulling, but not up to 100 pounds. The banker sat and held on.

For another ninety minutes they fought it out, the man from Ponder's End and the great marlin. Four times the fish lunged and took line, but his breaks were getting shorter as the strain of pulling 100 pounds against the clutch drag sapped even his primal strength. Four times Murgatroyd agonizingly pulled him back and gained a few yards each time. His exhaustion was moving close to delirium. Muscles in his calves and thighs flickered crazily like light bulbs just before they fuse. His vision blurred more frequently. By half past four he had been fighting for seven and a half hours and no one should ask even a very fit man to do that. It was only a question of time, and not long. One of them had to break.

At twenty to five the line went slack. It caught Murgatroyd by surprise. Then he began to reel in. The line came more easily. The weight was still there, but it was passive. The shuddering had stopped. Kilian heard the rhythmic tickety-tickety-tick of the turning reel and came from the shade to the transom. He peered aft.

'He's coming,' he shouted, 'the Emperor's coining in.'

The sea had calmed with the onset of evening.

The whitecaps were gone, replaced by a quiet and easy swell. Jean-Paul and Higgins, who was still queasy but no longer vomitting, came to watch. Monsieur Patient cut the engines and locked the wheel. Then he descended from his perch and joined them. In the silence the group watched the water astern.

Something broke the surface of the swell, something that rolled and swayed, but which moved towards the boat at the bidding of the nylon line. The crested fin jutted up for a moment, then rolled sideways. The long bill pointed upwards, then sank beneath the surface.

At 20 yards they could make out the great bulk of the Emperor. Unless there was some last violent force left in his bones and sinews he would not break for freedom any more. He had conceded. At 20 feet the end of the steel wire trace came up to the tip of the rod. Kilian drew on a tough leather glove and seized it. He pulled it in manually. They all ignored Murgatroyd, slumped in his chair.

He let go of the rod for the first time in eight hours and it fell forward to the transom. Slowly and painfully he unbuckled his harness and the webbing fell away. He took the weight on his feet and tried to stand. His calves and thighs were too weak and he slumped in the scuppers beside the dead dorado. The other four were peering over the edge at what bobbed below the stern. As Kilian pulled slowly on the wire trace that passed through his glove, Jean-Paul leaped to stand on the transom, a great gaff hook held high above his head. Murgatroyd looked up to see the boy poised there, the spike and curved hook held high.

His voice came out more a raucous croak than a shout.

‘No.’

The boy froze and looked down. Murgatroyd was on his hands and knees looking down at the tackle box. On top lay a pair of wire cutters. He took them in the finger and thumb of his left hand and pressed them into the mashed meat of his right palm. Slowly the fingers closed over the handles. With his free hand he hauled himself upright and leaned across the stern.

The Emperor was lying just beneath him, exhausted almost to the point of death. The huge body lay athwart the boat's wake, on its side, mouth half open. Hanging from one corner was the steel trace of an earlier struggle with the game-fishermen, still bright in its newness. In the lower mandible another hook, long rusted, jutted out. From Kilian's hand the steel wire ran to the third hook, his own, which was deep in the gristle of the upper hp. Only part of the shank was showing.

Succeeding waves washed over the marlin's blue-black body. From 2 feet away the fish stared back at Murgatroyd with one marbled saucer eye. It was alive but had no strength left to fight. The line from its mouth to Kilian's hand was taut. Murgatroyd leaned slowly down, reaching out his right hand to the fish's mouth.

'You can pat him later, man,' said Kilian, 'let's get him home.'

Deliberately Murgatroyd placed the jaws of the cutters either side of the steel trace, where it was spliced to the shank of the hook. He squeezed. Blood came out of his palm and ran in the salt water over the marlin's head. He squeezed again and the steel wire parted.

'What are you doing? He'll get away,' shouted Higgins.

The Emperor stared at Murgatroyd as another wave ran over him. He shook his tired old head and pushed the spike of his beak into the cool water. The next wave rolled him back onto his belly and he dropped his head deeper. Away to the left his great crescent tail rose and fell, driving wearily at the water. When it made contact it flicked twice and pushed the body forward and down. The tail was the last they saw, laborious in its fatigue, driving the marlin back beneath the waves to the cold darkness of its home.

'Bloody hell,' said Kilian.

Murgatroyd tried to stand up, but too much blood had rushed to his head. He remembered the sky turning slowly once in a big circle and the dusk coming very fast. The decking rose up to hit him first in the knees and then in the face. He fainted. The sun hung suspended above the mountains of Mauritius in the west.

It had set by one hour when the Auantcruised home across the lagoon and Murgatroyd had come awake. On the journey Kilian had taken back the trousers and sweater, so the cool evening air could play on the scorched limbs. Now Murgatroyd had drunk three beers in a row and sat slumped on one of the benches, shoulders hunched, his hands in a bucket of cleansing salt water. He took no notice when the boat moored beside the timber jetty and Jean-Paul scampered off towards the village.

Old Monsieur Patient closed the engines down and made sure the painters were secure.

He threw the large bonito and the dorado onto the pier and stowed the tackle and lures. Kilian heaved the cold-box onto the jetty and jumped back into the open well.

'Time to go,' he said.

Murgatroyd pulled himself to his feet and Kilian helped him to the quay. The hem of his shorts had fallen to below his knees and his shirt flapped open about him, dark with dried sweat. His plimsoles squelched. A number of villagers were lining the narrow jetty, so they had to walk in single file. Higgins had gone ahead.

The first person in the line was Monsieur Patient. Murgatroyd would have shaken hands but they hurt too much. He nodded to the boatman and smiled.

'Merci,' he said.

The old man, who had recovered his chip hat, pulled it from his head. 'Salut, Maitre,' he replied.

Murgatroyd walked slowly up the jetty. Each of the villagers bobbed his head and said, 'Salut, Maitre.' They reached the end of the planking and stepped into the gravel of the village street. There was a large crowd of villagers grouped round the car. 'Salut, salut, salut, Maitre,' they said quietly.

Higgins was stowing the spare clothing and the empty brunch box. Kilian swung the cold-trunk over the tailboard and slammed the door. He came to the rear passenger side where Murgatroyd waited.

'What are they saying?' whispered Murgatroyd.

'They're greeting you,' said Kilian. 'They're calling you a master-fisherman.'

'Because of the Emperor?'

'He's something of a legend around here.'

'Because I caught the Emperor?'

Kilian laughed softly. 'No, Engelsman, because you gave him his life back.'

They climbed into the car, Murgatroyd in the back where he sank gratefully into the cushions, his hands cupped, palms burning, in his lap. Kilian took the wheel, Higgins next to him.

'I say, Murgatroyd,' said Higgins, 'these villagers seem to think you're the cat's whiskers.'

Murgatroyd stared out of the window at the smiling brown faces and waving children.

'Before we go back to the hotel we'd better stop by the hospital at Flacq and let the doctor have a look at you,' said Kilian.

The young Indian doctor asked Murgatroyd to strip down and clucked in concern at what he saw. The buttocks were blistered raw from the contact backwards and forwards with the seat of the fishing chair. Deep purple welts furrowed shoulders and back where the webbing had bitten in. Arms, thighs and shins were red and flaking from sunburn and the face was bloated from the heat. Both palms looked like raw steak.

'Oh, dear me,' said the doctor, 'it will take some time.'

'Shall I call back for him in, say, a couple of hours?' asked Kilian.

'There is no need,' said the doctor. 'The H6tel St Geran is close to my journey home. I will drop the gentleman off on my way.'

It was ten o'clock when Murgatroyd walked through the main doors of the St Geran and into the light of the hallway. The doctor was still with him. One of the guests saw him enter and ran into the dining room to tell the late eaters. Word spread to the pool bar outside. There was a scraping of chairs and clatter of cutlery. A crowd of holidaymakers soon surged round the corner and came down the hall to meet him. They stopped halfway.

He looked a strange sight. His arms and legs were thickly smeared with calamine lotion, which had dried to a chalky white. Both hands were mummified in white bandages. His face was brick red and gleamed from the cream applied to it. His hair was a wild halo to his face and his khaki shorts were still at knee-length. He looked like a photographic negative. Slowly he began to walk towards the crowd, which parted for him.

'Well done, old man,' said someone.

'Hear hear, absolutely,' said someone else.

Shaking hands was out of the question. Some thought of patting him on the back as he passed through, but the doctor waved them away. Some held glasses and raised them in toast. Murgatroyd reached the base of the stone stairway to the upper rooms and began to climb.

At this point Mrs Murgatroyd emerged from the hair-dressing salon, brought by the hubbub of her husband's return. She had spent the day working herself into a towering rage since, in the mid-morning, puzzled by his absence from their usual spot on the beach, she had searched for him and learned where he had gone. She was red in the face, though from anger rather than sunburn. Her going-home perm had not been completed and rollers stuck out like Katyushka batteries from her scalp.

'Murgatroyd,' she boomed — she always called him by his surname when she was angry — 'where do you think you're going?'

At the midway landing Murgatroyd turned and looked down at the crowd and his wife. Kilian would tell colleagues later that he had a strange look in his eyes. The crowd fell silent.

'And what do you think you look like,' Edna Murgatroyd called up to him in outrage.

The bank manager then did something he had not done in many years. He shouted.

'Quiet…'

Edna Murgatroyd's mouth dropped open, as wide as, but with less majesty than, that of the fish.

'For twenty-five years, Edna,' said Murgatroyd quietly, 'you have been threatening to go and live with your sister in Bognor. You will be happy to know that I shall not detain you any longer. I shall not be returning with you tomorrow. I am going to stay here, on this island.'

The crowd stared up at him dumbfounded.

'You will not be destitute,' said Murgatroyd. 'I shall make over to you our house and my accrued savings. I shall take my accumulated pension funds and cash in my exorbitant life-assurance policy.'

Harry Foster took a swig from his can of beer and burped.

Higgins quavered, 'You can't leave London, old man. You'll have nothing to live on.'

'Yes, I can,' said the bank manager. 'I have made my decision and I am not going to go back on it. I was thinking all this out in hospital when Monsieur Patient came to see how I was. We agreed a deal. He will sell me his boat and I will have enough left over for a shack on the beach. He will stay on as captain and put his grandson through college. I will be his boat boy and for two years he will teach me the ways of the sea and the fish. After that, I shall take the tourists fishing and earn my living in that manner.'

The crowd of holidaymakers continued to stare up at him in stunned amazement.

It was Higgins who broke the silence again. 'But Murgatroyd, old man, what about the bank? What about Ponder's End?'

'And what about me?' wailed Edna Murgatroyd.

He considered each question judiciously.

'To hell with the bank,' he said at length. 'To hell with Ponder's End. And, madam, to hell with you.'

With that he turned and mounted the last few steps. A burst of cheering broke out behind him. As he went down the corridor to his room he was pursued by a bibulous valediction.

'Good on yer, Murgatroyd.'