The Diamond Hunters

“Yes,” Benedict turned to Ruby, as they settled down in the manager’s office with a tray of diamond rings in front of them. “You cannot examine a diamond properly in its setting.” He selected the biggest diamond, took from his pocket a gold-plated penknife fitted with a special tool and prised open the claws of the setting to a chorus of horrified squeals from the staff.

“I will make good any damage,” he snapped, and they subsided as

Benedict took the loose stone and laid it on the velvet-covered tray.

“Firstly, size. This stone is about one carat.” He looked for confirmation to the manager who nodded. “Let us say the value of this stone is 500 pounds. Ten similar stones will be worth 5,000 pounds, right?

However, a ten-carat stone may be worth as much as 175,000. So the price per carat rises sharply as the total weight of the stone increases. If I were investing I would not touch a stone under three carats.” The staff were listening now with as much attention as Ruby.

“Next, colour,” said Benedict, and glanced at the manager. “A

sheet of clean white paper, please.” The manager scratched in his drawer and laid a sheet of paper in front of Benedict who placed the stone upon it, bottom upwards.

“We compare the colour it “draws” from white paper in good natural light.” He looked up at the manager. “Switch off the fluorescent lights, and open those curtains, please.” The manager obeyed with alacrity.

“This is a matter of experience. The colour is judged by a standard. We forget about the fancy rare colours like blue and red and green, and take our top standard as blue-white.

A stone so white as to appear slightly blue, after which the distinctions drop to “fine white”, and “white”. Then stones which “draw” a yellowish tinge which we call “Cape” - in different shades, then finally stones which “draw” a brown colour - which will reduce the value of a stone by up to eighty percent.” Benedict fished in his fob pocket and pulled out a guinea case which he opened.

“Every expert carries a special diamond which he uses as a gauge for colour by which to judge all other stones. This is mine.” The staff exchanged apprehensive looks as Benedict placed a small diamond beside the other. He studied them a moment then replaced his gauge in the case.

“Second Silver Cape, I’d say,” he grunted, and the staff looked suitably abashed. “Now we consider the stone’s perfection.” He looked at the manager. “Please lend me your I loupe.

“Loupe?“The manager was mystified.

“Yes, your jeweller’s glass.” the manager was deeply embarrassed.

“You sell diamonds - Yet you do not own a loupe.” Benedict shook his head in disapproval. “No matter, I have my own.” Benedict took the glass from his inner pocket and placed it in his eye.

“Imperfections can be almost negligible - a “natural” at the girdle, or a bubble or pinpoint of carbon in the stone, on the other hand they can be gross “cracks”, “clouds”, “ice”, or “feathers” which will ruin the value of the stone.

But this one is flawless - so when the certificate of flawlessness is issued there will be no misrepresentation.” Benedict closed the glass and tucked it back into his pocket.

However, in order to produce a flawless stone, the cut has been squeezed.” He held up the stone between thumb and forefinger.

“The cut or “make” of a stone is the fourth and final decider of its value. The “make” should conform closely to the “ideal”. This stone has been cut to exclude a flaw, and in consequence it is badly proportioned - heavy and out of round. I would prefer to see a graceful stone which includes a slight imperfection rather than a grotesque little cripple like this He put the diamond down on the desk.

“The asking price by Paradise Jewellers for this stone is “500 pounds. - which would be fair and correct for a gem. However, the colour is poor and although it is flawless it is of ungainly make. Its true value would be about - ah, let’s see - 185 pounds. approximately.” There was another chorus of protest from the assembled staff, led by the manager.

“I assure you, sir, that all our stones have been most carefully appraised.”

“How long have you been with Paradise Jewellers?” Benedict demanded brusquely. “Four months, isn’t it?” The manager gaped at him.

“Before that you were a salesman in the showroom of a large firm of embalmers and undertakers.” 1, well - I mean.” The manager fluttered his hands weakly. “How did you know that?”

“I like to know about all my employees.”

“Employees?“The manager looked stunned.

“That’s correct. My name is Benedict van der Byl. I own Paradise

Jewellers.” Ruby clapped her hands and cooed her applause.

“What a bundle of surprises you are!” she exclaimed.

Benedict smiled in acknowledgement and inclined his head.

“Now,” he said, as he rose and helped Ruby to her feet.

“We will go and buy some real diamonds. Aaron Cohen sold them two fine white twin marquisecut brilliants, and Ruby chose the mounting for a pair of white-gold earrings from a leather-bound catalogue.

Benedict gave Aaron his cheque for twenty thousand pounds, then turned to Ruby.

“Now,” he said. “We’ll have lunch at the Celeste Grillroom. The food is bloody awful - but the decor is stupendous. We had best phone and reserve a table - it isn’t really necessary but they get terribly hurt if you don’t.” As they settled back in the lush upholstery of the

Bentley, Benedict instructed the chauffeur.

“Go past Trafalgar Square, Edmund. I want to pick up the newspapers from South Africa House.” Edmund double-parked outside the

Ambassador’s entrance, and the doorman recognized the car and hurried inside to fetch the bundle of newspapers.

As they pulled away around the square towards Haymarket, Benedict selected a copy of the Cape Argus.

“Let’s see what’s happened at home.” He glanced at the front page, and stiffened perceptibly.

“What is it?” Ruby leaned towards him anxiously, but he ignored her. His eyes were darting across the page like the shuttle of a loom.

She saw the colour fade from his face, leaving it white and intent.

He finished reading, and pushed the paper towards her. She spread the page.

VAN DER BYL DIAMONDS WIN VALUABLE CONCESSION.

APPEAL COURT SUPPORTS KAISER’S MINERAL GRANT.

LANCE GETS THUNDERBOLT AND SUICIDE.

Bloemfontein, Thursday.

“In an urgent application by the Central Diamond Mines Ltd, to prevent Van Der Byl Diamonds Ltd prospecting and mining a concession area off the South West African Coast, Mr. justice Tromp today dismissed the application with costs stating in his judgment: “The original concession granted by German Imperial Decree in 1899, and subsequently ratified by Act of the Union Parliament in Act 24 of the 1920 must hold good in law, and will take precedent over any subsequent grant or concession purporting to have been made by the Minister of Mines to any other party.”

“The area in dispute covers 100 square kilometres surrounding two small islands lying some fifteen miles south of Cartridge Bay and five miles offshore. The islands are known as Thunderbolt Island and

Suicide Island, and at the turn of the century were the site of considerable exploitation by a German guano company. Mr. John Rigby

Lance, the General Manager of Van Der Byl Diamond Co. Ltd, acquired the rights to the concession when he took over the inoperative guano company.

“In Cape Town today Mr. Lance stated: “It’s the opportunity I have waited for all my life. All indications are that Thunderbolt and

Suicide will prove to be one of the richest marine diamond fields in the world.”

“Van Der Byl Diamond Co. had a diamond-dredging vessel nearing completion in the United Kingdom, and Mr. Lance stated that he hoped to begin recovery operations off Thunderbolt and Suicide Islands before the end of the year.” Ruby lowered the paper and looked at Benedict.

What she saw was an intense physical shock.

Benedict had crumpled down in the seat. Gone was all the assurance and savoir fare. His face was deathly pale, but now his lips trembled and with disgust she saw that his eyes were swimming with tears. He hunched forward over his hands, shaking his head gently and hopelessly.

“The bastard,” he whispered, and his voice was soggy and muffled.

“He does it every time. I thought that I had him at last but - Oh God, I hate him He looked at her, his face soft with self-pity. “He does it every time. Often I’ve thought I had him, but he just-” She was mystified by his reaction.

“Aren’t you pleased? Van Der Byl Diamonds will make millions-“

“No! No!” he cut in savagely, and then the years of hatred and frustration and humiliation began pouring out.

Ruby listened quietly, slowly beginning to understand it all, marvelling at the accumulation of pain and hatred that he exposed for her. He remembered conversations from twenty years ago. Small childhood episodes, innocent remarks that had festered and rankled for a decade.

“You don’t want him to succeed, is that it?“she asked.

I want to crush him, break him, humiliate him.” For ten seconds

Ruby was silent.

“Well, what are we going to do about it?“she asked flatly.

“Nothing, I suppose.” Benedict’s tone irritated her. “He always comes out on top, you just can’t-, “Nonsense,” Ruby snapped. She was angry now. “Let’s go over it carefully, and see how we can stop him. He is only human, and you have shown me enough to prove you are a brilliant and successful businessman.” Benedict’s expression changed, becoming trusting and animated. He turned to her almost eagerly: he blinked his eyes. “Do you really believe that?”

The bunk was too narrow, Sergio Caporetti decided, much too narrow.

He would have one of the carpenters alter it today.

He lay on his back, wedged in firmly, with the blanketcovered mound of his belly blocking his view southwards.

He lay and assessed his physical condition. It was surprisingly good. There was but a small blurred pain behind his eyes and the taste of stale cigars and rank wine in the back of his throat was bearable.

The leaden feeling in his lower limbs alarmed him until he realized that he was still wearing his heavy fisherman’s boots. He remembered one of the girls complaining about that.

He hoisted himself on one elbow, and looked at the girls.

One on each side of him, jamming him solidly into the bunk with magnificent hillocks of pink flesh. Big strong girls both of them, he had chosen them with care, neither of them an ounce under twelve stone.

Sergio sighed happily it had been a wonderful weekend. The girls were snoring, in such harmony that it might have been a rehearsed stage act.

He listened to them with mild admiration for a few minutes, then crawled over the outside girl and stood in the centre of the cabin, clad only in his heavy boots. He yawned extravagantly, scratching the thick black wiry curls that covered his chest and belly, and cocked an eye at the bulkhead clock. Four o’clock on a Monday morning, but it had been a truly memorable weekend.

The table was hidden under a forest of empty wine bottles, and dirty plates. There was a congealed mass of cold spaghetti bolognaise in a dish and he picked it up. As he clumped out of the cabin on to

Kingfisher’s bridge he was scooping up spaghetti with his fingers and cramming it into his mouth.

He stood at the rail of the bridge, a naked hairy figure in tall black boots clutching a dish of spaghetti to his chest, and looked around the dockyard.

Kingfisher was in stocks undergoing the modifications that Johnny

Lance had ordered. She was standing high above the level she would attain when she was launched.

Although she was a vessel of a mere 3,000-ton displacement, she appeared black and monstrous in the floodlights that illuminated the ship-builders” yard. It was obvious from her unusual silhouette that she was designed for a special purpose. Her superstructure was situated well aft like that of an oil tanker, while her foredeck was crowded by the huge gantry which would control the dredge, and by the massive storage tanks for the compressed air.

At this hour of the morning the shipyard was deserted, and wisps and tendrils of sea mist drifted about Kingfisher’s bulk.

Standing fifty feet above the dry dock, still wolfing cold spaghetti, Sergio urinated over the rail - deriving a simple honest pleasure from the long arching stream and the tinkle of liquid striking the concrete far below.

He clumped back into his cabin, and looked down fondly on his two sleeping Valkyries while he finished the last of the spaghetti. Then he wiped his fingers carefully on his chest hair and called to them gently.

“Come, my kittens, my little doves, the time for play she has passed - the time for work she commences.” With Latin gallantry he bundled them into a taxi at the dockyard gates, pressing on to each of them a lusty kiss, a banknote, a bottle of Chianti, protestations of deep affection, and the promise of another party next Friday night.

He picked his way back through the dockyard jungle of machinery and buildings, lighting a long black cigar and inhaling smoke pleasurably until he came in sight of Kingfisher and halted with surprise and annoyance. There was a big honey-coloured Bentley parked near the gangway that led up to Kingfisher’s deck. He resented visits from the Company bosses, especially this one, and especially at this ridiculous hour on a Monday morning.

The hose spiralled down into greenness, and they followed it down holding hands. Tracey was still a little nervous. This was not like the Mediterranean, a warm blue friendly embrace of waters to welcome the diver - it was the wild Atlantic, coldly menacing, green and untamed. It frightened her, and Johnny’s hand gave her comfort.

Their Draeger demand valves repeated their breathing in a singing metallic wheeze, and icy leaks and rivulets kept finding their way into the cuffs and neck of Tracey’s rubber suit.

Sixty feet below the surface Johnny paused, and peered into the glass window of her mask. He grinned at her, his mouth distorted by the bulky mouthpiece, and she gave him a thumbs-up sign. They both looked upwards. The surface was silvered like an imperfect mirror, and the black cigar shape of the boat was lapped in strange light. The hose and anchor chain pierced the silver ceiling and hung down into the shady green depths.

Johnny pointed downwards, and she nodded. They put their heads down, pointed their flippers to the surface, and still hand in hand they paddled steadily towards the sea bed.

Tracey was aware of a crackling hissing sound now, and from out of the greeny blackness below them scudded clouds of silver bubbles twisting and writhing towards the surface.

She strained her eyes downwards, following the line of the hose, and slowly out of the murk materialized the black rubber-clad forms of the two men working at the end of the hose; they appeared weird and mystical like black priests performing a satanical mass.

She and Johnny reached the sea bed and hung just above it, a little way off from the two men on the hose. Johnny indicated the depth gauge that he wore like a wrist watch.

It showed a depth of 120 feet. Then he turned and by a hand signal showed her the direction of the reefs.

They were in a valley between these long peaked underwater ridges of black rocks, the same reefs that Tracey had seen from the air.

There was a distinct pull of water as the current drifted at right angles to the direction of the reefs.

Johnny squeezed her hand, and then pulled her down.

They lay on their bellies on the floor of the sea, and Johnny scooped a handful of the white sand, washed it quickly so that the smaller particles were carried away in a cloud on the current, then he showed her the coarse gravel which remained. Again he grinned, and she returned his smile.

Still leading her by the hand, he swam slowly towards the two men working on the hose, and stopped to watch them.

Attached to the end of the hose was a rigid steel pipe two inches in diameter, and twenty feet long - although now only half of its length was visible above the sand bottom. The two divers were forcing it down through sand and gravel to reach bedrock. The hose itself was attached to a compressor on the deck of the boat which was generating a vacuum in the hose and sucking up the sand and gravel as the steel pipe was forced downwards.

They were prospecting the Thunderbolt and Suicide field. Taking these two-inch samples at 500-foot intervals to ascertain the depth of water, the thickness of the overburden, and the content of the gravel beds. They were also mapping and plotting the reefs, so that by the time Kingfisher arrived they would have a fairly clear picture of the topography and aspect of the field. They would know where to begin dredging, and roughly what to expect when they did.

So far the results had endorsed Johnny’s most optimistic expectations. There was a good thick catchment of gravel in the gullies between the reefs. As he had expected, the heavier gravels had been laid down in the gullies closest to the gap between Thunderbolt and Suicide, and the smaller and lighter gravels had been carried further. In some of the gullies the gravel beds were fifteen feet deep, and the types of stone present were all highly promising. He had isolated garnet, jasper, ironstone, beryl chips and titanium dust.

However, the conclusive and definite proof had also come up through that two-inch hose out of the depths.

They had already pulled the first diamonds from the Thunderbolt and Suicide fields. When you considered the odds against finding a stone in a two-inch sample at 500-foot centres and that payable gravel contained one part diamond in fifty million, it was exciting and encouraging that they had already recovered four diamonds. Small stones, to be sure, not one of them more than half a carat, but diamonds for all that, and some of them of excellent quality.

One of the men on the hose turned and gave Johnny a flathanded cut-out sign. The pipe was on bedrock. Johnny nodded and jerked a thumb upwards, and drawing Tracey with him, started for the surface.

They climbed the ladder over the survey boat’s counter, moving clumsily under the weight of the air bottles strapped to their backs, but there were willing hands to help them aboard and strip off the heavy equipment, and unzip the clinging rubber suits.

Tracey accepted a towel gratefully from one of the crew, and while she tilted her head to dry her sodden mane of hair, she looked across half a mile of green sea to the two white whale-backed islands with their attendant clouds of seabirds. The wave bursts on the cliffs sounded like distant artillery, or far thunder.

“God, this is a wild and exciting place.” Her voice bubbled with excitement as she scrubbed at her hair. “It makes one come alive,” Johnny understood her feelings, it was the forbidding restless sea and the harsh land that promised danger and adventure. He was about to reply, but the two hose men came aboard at that moment, the taller of them spitting out his mouthpiece and letting it fall to his chest.

“We’ll move up to the next point, if it’s okay by you, Mr. Lance?”

The man pulled off his mask and hood, exposing white-blond hair and a sun-broiled face.

“Fine, Hugo,“Johnny agreed, and watched approvingly as Hugo Kramer gave the orders to get the anchor and the hose up before taking Wild

Goose seawards to her next prospecting point. Johnny had been reluctant to charter Wild Goose as the prospecting vessel and as the service boat for Kingfisher. He did not know Hugo Kramer, and Benedict van der Byl’s insistence on the man had made him suspicious.

However, it was natural that they should use a skipper from the van der Byl fleet and Johnny was now prepared to admit he had been wrong. Kramer was an intelligent and willing worker, resourceful and trustworthy, a fine seaman who handled Wild Goose with all the skill it would need to bring her alongside Kingfisher in a heavy sea. His unfortunate physical appearance Johnny hardly noticed any more, although the original shock of that pink face, white hair and those blind-looking eyes had been considerable.

Tracey was not so charitable. The man made her uneasy.

There was a wild-animal ferocity about him, a barely controlled violence. The way he looked at her sometimes made her skin prickle.

He did it now; turning back from issuing his orders he ran his eyes over her body. In the black silk costume her good round breasts showed at their best, and Hugo Kramer looked at them with those white-fringed bland eyes. Instinctively she covered them with the towel, and it seemed as though his lips twitched with amusement as he turned to

Johnny.

“They tell me this dredger of yours is something special, Mr. Lance?”

“She is, Hugo. Not like the other half-baked barges and bastardized conversions that have been tried by other companies. She’s the first diamond recovery vessel designed expressly for the job.”

“What’s different about her?”

“Nearly everything. Her hose is operated off a gantry on the foredeck, it goes out through a well pierced through her hull.”

“What kind of hose?”

“Eighteen-inch armoured woven steel with rubber liner.

We can get it down to a hundred fathoms, and it has a compensating section in it to stop it plunging with the wave action of the hull.”

“Eighteen inches is pretty big. How will you build up vacuum?”

“That’s the point, Hugo. We don’t suck - we blow! We evacuate water from the hose by purging it with compressed air, the inrush of water into the opening of the hose sucks in the gravel.”

“Hey, that’s neat. So the deeper you work the more effective it will be.”

“Right

“What about the actual recovery? Are you going to have the usual screening, ball mill, and grease table arrangement?”

“That’s what killed the other companies - trying to separate by the old methods. No. We’ve got a cyclone to start with.”

“Cyclone?”

“You know a cream separator?”

“Yeah.”

“Same principle. just spin the gravel in a circular tank and float off everything with a specific gravity of less than 2.5. Take what is left, dry it, spread it on a conveyor belt and run it under an X-ray machine which pinpoints every single diamond. As you know, diamonds fluoresce under X.

rays and they show up crisply. The X-ray machine reports the diamond to the central computer. Johnny’s voice and whole attitude was charged with enthusiasm which was impossible for his listeners to resist. Tracey was carried along with him, watching his eyes and his mouth as he talked, smiling when he smiled, her lips following his faithfully.

This is the cyclone room,” Benedict van der Byl explained as, with a hand on her elbow, he helped Ruby Lance down off the last rung of the ladder. “I explained to you how it worked.”

“Yes.” Ruby nodded, and looked around the room with interest. The roughly riveted and grey painted plating of Kingfisher’s hull formed a square metal box, in the centre of which stood the cyclone. It was also painted battleship grey, a ten-foot-high cone-shaped circular tower.

“The gravel is blown in through here.” Benedict indicated the eighteen-inch pipe which entered the cyclone room through the forward bulkhead, then connected to the bottom of the cyclone. “Up it goes.”

Benedict flung his hand upwards. “And round it goes.” He made a stirring motion.

“The heavy stuff is thrown off and led away through that.” A

smaller pipe emerged from the shoulder of the cyclone and disappeared through the farther bulkhead. “While the lighter stuff shoots out through the top and is sprayed overboard again.”

“I understand. Now, where is the weak spot?“Ruby asked.

“Come.” Benedict led her across the room, picking their way among the litter left by the workmen who still swarmed through Kingfisher.

They reached a steel door in the bulkhead.

“Watch your head.” They ducked into a long passageway with doors at both ends. On their right hand was an enclosed tunnel that ran the length of the room.

“This is the conveyor room,” Benedict explained. “The concentrated gravels fall through a hot air draught from an electric furnace to dry them. They are gathered on a conveyor belt, concealed in that tunnel, and carried through into the X-ray room.” “This is where you will fit it?” Ruby asked.

“Yes. In the conveyor tunnel. It will mean moving that inspection hatch back twelve feet to give us the space.” Ruby nodded.

“The man who will do the work - can you trust him? “Yes. He has worked for me before.” Benedict did not add that the same man had designed the electronic equipment for the balloons used by the Ring, and had flown out from Japan to convert the ASDic equipment on Wild Goose.

“All right.” Ruby seemed satisfied. More and more she was becoming the driving force in the alliance, bolstering Benedict’s resolution when he showed timidity or when he tried to evade the actions which must, in time, lead to a confrontation with Johnny Lance.

“Let’s see the X-ray room.” It was a tiny cupboard-like compartment. The floor, roof and all four walls were clad with thick sheet lead. Suspended from the roof was the X-ray machine, and under it a circular table the surface of which was covered with a honeycombpatterned stainless steel sheet.

“The concentrated gravel spills on to the table, and the table revolves under the X-ray machine which fluoresces each diamond and the computer picks it up and reports its size and exact position on the table. The computer then commands one of those - ” Benedict pointed to a forest of hard plastic tubes, each attached to a metal arm, to swing out over the table exactly above the diamond and suck it up. The computer selects the correct diameter of tube for the size of the diamond - and, after the tube has obeyed the computer, the table passes under a second X-ray machine which confirms that the diamond has been collected. If, by chance, the tube fails to suck up the stone, then the computer automatically sends the table on another circuit. If, however, the diamond is safely gathered then the waste material is scraped from the table and it swings round to pick up more gravel from the cyclone room - and repeat the whole process. The system is 100 percent effective.

Every single diamond is recovered by it. Even stones as small as sugar grains.” “Where is the computer?“Ruby asked.

“There.” Benedict pointed through the small leaded glass window which overlooked the X-ray table. Beyond it was another small compartment. Ruby flattened her nose against the glass, and peered in.

The computer occupied most of the room, a huge glossy enamelled cabinet not unlike a refrigerator despite the switches and dials.

Benedict peered in beside her.

The computer runs the entire operation. It controls the flow of compressed air into the dredger pipe, it regulates the cyclone, runs the X-ray machine and the table, it weighs and counts the diamonds recovered before depositing them in a safe, and it even navigates the

Kingfisher and reports to the bridge her exact position over the sea bed, it checks the lubrication and temperature of the engines and power plant and on request will make -complete and immediate report of the whole or any part of the operation.” Ruby was still peering into the computer room.

“What happens to the diamonds once they have been picked off the revolving table?” she asked.

“They are sucked through an electronic scale which weighs each stone, then they are carried through into the computer room and deposited in that safe.” Benedict pointed out the steel door set in the bulkhead. “The safe has a time and combination lock. So the system works without a diamond being touched by human hand.”

“Let’s go and talk to the Italian peasant,” suggested Ruby, and as she turned from the window Benedict slipped his arm about her shoulders and hugged her possessively.

“Not now,” snapped Ruby irritably, shrugging off his arm, and she led the way out of the X-ray compartment, passing the locked door of the computer control room opposite the door to the conveyor room. She was impressed with the ingenuity of the system - but the fact that it had been constructed by Johnny Lance made her angry.

Her loyalties had changed completely, going to the highest bidder.

sergio Caporetti felt a small twinge of pity when he looked at Ruby

Lance. So thin, and with a backside like a boy. She would be little comfort to a man on a cold night. Sergio worked the cheroot from one corner of his mouth to other, anointing the stub with saliva in the process. Also she was cold-blooded, he decided. Sergio had a very sensitive intuition when it came to judging the temperature of a woman’s passion. Cold like a snake, he decided, his pity giving way to revulsion. He repressed a small shudder as he watched her settle on to the day couch in his cabin, and cross her long golden legs precisely.

just like a snake, she would eat a man as though he were a little hopping frog. Sergio had admiration for Johnny Lance, but - he decided - not even he would be safe with a woman like this.

“You like my ship?” he asked, an attempt at friendliness.

“She is very fine ship.” Sergio actually used a more forceful adjective than very, one that suggested Kingfisher was capable of procreation, and Ruby’s lips curled with disgust. She ignored the question and lit a cigarette, swinging one leg impatiently, and turned her head to stare through the porthole.

Sergio was hurt by the rebuff, but he had no time to brood on it for Benedict van der Byl came to stand in the centre of the cabin with his hands clasped lightly behind his back.

“Mr. Caporetti-” he asked quietly. “How much do you like money?”

Sergio grinned, and pushed the grubby maritime cap to the back of his head. “I like it pretty good, I like it better than mother - and I

love my mother like my life he said.

“Would you like to become a rich man?” Benedict asked, and Sergio sighed wistfully.

“yes.” he nodded. “But it is the impossible thing. There is too much vino, too much lovely girls, and the cards they are cruel like

Sergio paused to find a suitable simile and glanced at Ruby, like a thin woman. No. Money she does not stay long, she comes and she goes.” “What would you do for 25,000 pounds?” Benedict asked.

“For twenty-five thousand - ” Sergio’s eyes were dark liquid and lovely as those of a dying gazelle or a woman in love,” - there is nothing I will not do.” Kingfisher sailed for Africa on the 4th of

October. As the representative of the owners, Benedict van der

Byl drove down from London to bid her bon voyage, and he spent an hour behind locked doors with Sergio Caporetti before the departure of the vessel.

Kingfisher made good time southwards on her first leg of the voyage, but the unscheduled delay of ten days at the island of Las

Palmas infuriated Johnny. His urgently cabled enquiries from Cape Town elicited the reply that there were teething troubles in Kingfisher’s engine room which were being attended to in the Las Palmas dockyards.

The voyage would be resumed as soon as the repairs had been effected.

The Japanese gentleman who welcomed Kingfisher to Las Palmas was named Kaminikoto. This was too much for Sergio’s tongue, so he called him

“Kammy’.

Sergio’s crew was sent ashore with the excuse that the work on

Kingfisher was dangerous. They were installed in the best tourist hotel and liberally supplied with intoxicating liquor. Sergio did not see them for the next ten days that he and Kamy were busy on the modifications to Kingfisher’s computer, and recovery equipment.

During those ten days Sergio and Kammy discovered that despite physical appearances they were brothers.

Kammy had mysterious packing-cases brought on board and they worked like furies from dawn until after dark each day. Then they relaxed.

Kammy was half Sergio’s size with a face like a mischievous monkey. At all times he wore a Homburg hat. On the one occasion that

Sergio saw him in his bath without his head-gear he discovered that Kammy was as bald as St. Peter’s dome. Kammy’s abundant tastes in women were identical to Sergio’s. This made the hiring of partners an easy matter, for what suited the one suited the other. Sergio took south with him fond memories of the little Japanese clad only in his Homburg hat, uttering bird-like cries of encouragement and excitement, while perched like a jockey on top of a percheron mare.

When at last Sergio shepherded his debauched crew back aboard

Kingfisher the only obvious sign of their labours was that the inspection hatch on the conveyor tunnel had been moved back twelve feet.

“It is my best work,” Kammy told Sergio. Already he was sad at the prospect of parting. They were brothers. “I signed my name. You will remember me when you see it.”

“You good guy, Kammy. The best!”

Sergio embraced him, lifting him off his feet and kissing him heartily on each cheek while Kammy clutched desperately at his Homburg.

They left him standing on the wharf, a forlorn and solitary figure, while Kingfisher butted out into the Atlantic and swung away southwards.

Duefully Johnny Lance glanced over at the mountain of empty champagne bottles beyond the barbecue pits. The bill for this little party would be in the thousands, but it was not an extravagance. The guest list included all Van Der Byl Diamond Company’s major creditors and their wives. Johnny Lance was showing them all what they were getting for their money. To appear prosperous was almost as reassuring to a creditor as being prosperous. He was going to stuff them full of food and champagne, show them over the Kingfisher and fly them back home, hoping sincerely that they would be sufficiently impressed to stop badgering him for a while - and let him get on with the business of taking the Company out into the clear.

Tracey caught his eye. Her humorous roll of the eyes was a plea for sympathy, for she was surrounded by a pack of middle-aged bankers and financiers whom champagne had made susceptible to her charms.

Johnny winked at her in reply, then glanced around guiltily to find

Ruby, and was relieved that she was in deep conversation with Benedict van der Byl in a far corner of the marquee.

He made his way out of the crowd to the edge of the dune, and lit a cigarette while he looked back across Cartridge Bay.

The chartered Dakotas that had flown the guests and caterers up from Cape Town were standing on the airstrip beyond the buildings.

The marquee was situated on the crest of a sand dune overlooking the narrow entrance to the bay. The dune had been bulldozed to accommodate the tent, the laden tables, and the barbecue pits around which whiteclad servants were busy, and the spitted carcasses of three sheep and a young ox were already browning crisply and emitting a cloud of fragrant steam.

Tracey watched Johnny standing out on the edge of the dune. He looked tired, she thought. The strain of the last few months had worn him down. Looking back on it now she realized that every few days had thrust a crisis upon him. The terrible worry of the court case that had won them Thunderbolt and Suicide had barely ended before Johnny had faced the delays in the construction of Kingfisher, the bullying of creditors, the sniping of Benedict and a hundred other worries and frustrations.

He was like a prize-fighter coming out to the bell of the last round, she thought tenderly, as she studied the profile of his face now staring out to sea. His stance was still aggressive, the big jaw pushed out and the hand with the missing finger that held the cigarette balled into a fist, but there were blue shadows under his eyes and lines of tension at the corners of his mouth.

Suddenly, there was an alertness in Johnny’s attitude, he shaded his eyes with a hand before turning back towards the marquee.

“All right, everyone!” he called, stilling the babble of their voices. “Here she comes.” Immediately the uproar was redoubled and the whole party trooped out into the sunlight, their excitement and the shrillness of their voices enhanced by the Pommery they had been walloping back since midmorning.

“Look! There she is!”

“Where? Where?”

“I can’t see her.”

“Just to the left of that cloud on the horizon.”

“Oh yes! Look! Look!” Tracey took a second glass of champagne from one of the waiters, and carried-it across to Johnny.

“Thanks.” He smiled at her with the ease that now existed between them.

“It’s taken her long enough to get here.” Tracey picked out the faraway speck on the green ocean that was Kingfisher. “When will she begin working?”

“Tomorrow.”

“How long will it be before we know - well, if it has come off?”

“A week.” Johnny turned to her. “A week to be certain, but we’ll know in a day or two how it’s shaping up.” They were silent then, staring out at the gradually approaching speck. The crowd lost interest quickly and drifted back to the liquor, and the fragrant steaming platters of golden-brown meat that were coming from the barbecue pits.

Tracey broke the long friendly silence at last. She spoke hesitantly, as though reluctant to bring up a painful subject.

“How long has Ruby been back now - ten days?”

“About that,” Johnny agreed, glancing at her quickly. “I haven’t seen much of her, he admitted. “But she seems to be a lot more relaxed - and at least she’s kept off my back.”

“She and Benedict seem to have become very pally.” Tracey glanced across to where the other couple were now included in a boisterous circle of revellers.

“She bumped into him in London,” Johnny agreed, sounding offhand. “She tells me they had lunch a couple of times.” She waited for him to continue, to express some suspicion or reservation, but he seemed to have no further interest in the subject; instead he began running over the day’s further arrangements with her.

“I’m relying on you to take charge of the wives when we go aboard.

Keep an eye on Mrs. Larsen particularly - she’s up to her gills in bubbly.” For the next two hours that it took Kingfisher to make her approach and enter the channel of Cartridge Bay, Johnny hardly took his eyes from her unusual silhouette.

She was not a pretty vessel but the white lightning insignia of

Van Der Byl Diamonds on her funnel gave her a special beauty in his eyes. As she passed below them and entered the bay, Larsen proposed a toast to her successful career, then they all descended the dune and climbed into the waiting Land-Rovers and drove round the bay to meet her.

By the time they arrived Kingfisher had made fast alongside the jetty, and Captain Sergio Caporetti was waiting to welcome them aboard.

He stood at the head of the gangway, and sensible to the importance of the moment he was decked in his finest and best; a double-breasted suit with a cream and lilac pinstripe set off the tomato-red silk tie, but his two-tone black and white crocodile skin shoes drew attention to his large feet and his gait was that of an emperor penguin. A liberal application of a hair pomade with a penetrating smell of violets had flattened his black hair into a shiny slick, bisected by the ruler-straight line of white scalp which was his parting. However, the aroma of the pomade was at odds with the particularly stinky cheroot of a brand which Sergio reserved for weddings, funerals and other special occasions.

His beautiful gazelle eyes became passionate and dark as they lit on Fifi Larsen. Mrs. Larsen’s tight-fitting slacks moved as though they were full of live rabbits and her pink sweater was straining its seams.

Her eyes were sparkling with champagne and she giggled without apparent reason, flushing under Sergio’s scrutiny.

The tour of Kingfisher began, Sergio Caporetti taking up an escort position directly behind Mrs. Larsen. They had hardly descended the first ladder when Mrs. Larsen let out a small squeak and shot about eighteen inches into the air, before coming back to earth with all her plentiful womanhood aquiver.

“My dear Fifi, whatever is wrong?” Her husband was all solicitude, while behind her Sergio Caporetti wore an expression of cherubic innocence. Johnny felt dizzy with alarm, for he had seen Sergio’s great hairy paw settling comfortably on to those majestic buttocks.

Mrs. Fifi Larsen had been thoroughly goosed.

In relieved disbelief Johnny heard her reply, which was preceded by another giggle.

“I seem to have twisted my ankle. Perhaps there is somewhere I

could sit down.” Johnny looked around frantically for Tracey to get Mrs. Larsen out of Sergio’s clutching range, but before he could signal her, Fifi was limping away on Sergio Caporetti’s arm, bravely declining all offers of help.

“Please don’t let me spoil your fun. I’ll just sit in the

Captain’s cabin for a few minutes.” Quickly Johnny moved up beside the silver-haired Larsen and resolved to stay close beside him. Even if he could not prevent Fifi visiting Sergio’s quarters, he was going to make good and sure that the husband didn’t join the party.

“This is the explosives locker.” Johnny took Larsen’s arm and led him away. “We keep a store of plastic explosives for underwater blasting-” Larsen’s concern at his wife’s injury dissolved and he became immersed in the tour of Kingfisher. Johnny followed the line of production for him from the moment the gravel was sucked in through the dredge.

As they left the cyclone room Johnny preceded him, holding the steel door open for Larsen.

“From the cyclone the concentrates pass through here into-” He stopped with surprise as they entered the narrow compartment beyond the cyclone.

“What’s wrong, Lance?” Larsen demanded.

“No. It’s nothing,” Johnny assured him. After the surprise of finding that the inspection plate in the conveyor tunnel had been moved he realized that it was as well from a security angle. Probably the marine architects had ordered the modification. “The concentrates are carried through into the next compartment to the X-ray room. This way, please.” As Johnny led the way to the next door he resolved to check with the architects. Larsen asked a question and he replied and the conveyor tunnel was forgotten. They went through into the X-ray room.

He noticed it.” Benedict puffed quickly and nervously at the cigarette cupped in his hand. “He doesn’t miss a thing. The bastard.”

“He noticed it, yes. But he accepted it.” Ruby was definite.

“I know him. I was watching him. He was disturbed for a second then he rationalized it. I could almost see his mind work. He accepted it.” They stood together on the exposed angle of Kingfisher’s bridge. Suddenly Ruby laughed.

“Don’t look so worried,” she warned him merrily. “We are being watched by your sister again. She’s down on the foredeck. Come.”

Still smiling she led him around the angle of the bridge house, and out of sight she was immediately deadly serious again.

“That sister of yours is getting suspicious. We must keep away from each other until you tell Johnny.” Benedict nodded.

“When are you going to tell him?” she demanded.

“Soon.”

“How soon?” Ruby would not be able to rest until it was out in the open, until Benedict had committed himself, yet she must not push him too hard.

“As soon as Kingfisher runs the Company under. I will pick the moment that he is beaten financially, then I will tell him. I want it to be the coup de grace.”

“When will it be, Benedict darling? I am so anxious to be with you - without all this subterfuge.” Benedict opened his mouth to reply and froze like that, his expression changing slowly into that of a man who doubts the evidence of his own eyes. He was staring over Ruby’s shoulder.

Ruby turned quickly. The curtain across the Captain’s porthole behind her was open a chink. She looked in upon a spectacle of such whole-hearted rubicund magnitude that it should have occurred only to

Olympus between Jupiter and Juno.

In the cabin Fifi Larsen was receiving treatment for her sprained ankle.

Well, you’ve got your toy now. Let’s hope for all our sakes you can do something with it,” Benedict smiled pleasantly as he came across to where Johnny stood with Larsen under the great gallowsshaped gantry on the foredeck of Kingfisher that would raise and lower the dredging head.

“Toy, Mr. van der Byl?” Larsen’s white eyebrows bristled.

“Surely you have no doubts? I mean, now that you’ve got this

Thunderbolt and Suicide concession?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say doubts, Mr. Larsen. Reservations perhaps, but not really doubts. Mr. Lance has been the champion of this venture. His enthusiasm has carried it in the face of all opposition. Even that of my late father.” Benedict turned to Larsen smoothly.

“Your father opposed the scheme? I didn’t know thad” Larsen was perturbed.

“Not opposed it, Mr. Larsen.” Benedict smiled reassuringly. “Not really opposed it. But you will notice that he was prepared to risk your money - not his own. That will give you some idea of how he felt.” There was a chilled silence, before Larsen turned to Johnny.

“Well, Lance, thank you for an interesting day. Very interesting.

I’ll be watching your progress with attention close attention.“And he turned away and strode to where a subdued and demure Fifi was waiting with a group of the other wives.

“Thanks.“Johnny gave Benedict a bleak grin.

“Don’t mention it.” Benedict smiled that charming boyish smile.

“At the end of this week I’ll take that little speech of yours, roll it into a ball and ram it down your throat,” Johnny promised him softly, and Benedict’s expression changed. His eyes slitted and his grin showed his teeth and tightened the soft line of his jaw.

“You’re pretty slick with your mouth, Lance.” They glared at each other, the antagonism so apparent, as elemental as a pair of rutting stags, that they were suddenly the centre of all attention. The guests stared curiously, aware of the drama but not understanding it.

Ruby started forward quickly to intervene, taking Johnny’s elbow, her voice sugary.

“Oh, Benedict, do you mind if I talk to Johnny a moment?

I have to know if he’s returning to Cape Town with me this evening She led him away, and the tension dissolved. The disappointed guests began drifting to the gangplank and filing down on to the jetty.

In the confusion of embarkation aboard the two Dakotas, Johnny managed to exchange a last word with Tracey.

“You’ll stay here until you know?” she asked. He nodded.

“Good luck, Johnny. I’ll pray for you,” she whispered, then followed Ruby Lance up into the fuselage of the Dakota.

Johnny watched the two big aircraft taxi down to the end of the strip, turn in succession and roar away into the purple and red sky of evening.

After they had gone it was very still, and the silence of the desert was complete. Johnny sat in the open Landrover and smoked a cigarette while the night came down around him.

He was uneasy, aware of a deep-down tickle of apprehension and foreboding which he could not pin down.

The last glow of sunset faded from the western sky, and the desert stars were bright and hard and close to the earth, silvering the dome of space with the splendour that the city-dweller would never guess at.

Still Johnny hunched in the seat of the open Land-Rover trying to explore the source of his uneasiness, but with so little success that at last he must attribute it to the strain and fatigue of the last few months, his involvement with Tracey, his steadily worsening relationship with Ruby - and the latest clash with Benedict.

He flicked the stub of his cigarette away, watching morosely the explosion of red sparks as it struck the earth, then he started the

Land-Rover and drove slowly down towards the jetty.

Kingfisher’s lights were smeared in paths of yellow and silver across the still waters of the bay. Every porthole was lit brightly, giving her the festive air of a cruise ship.

Johnny left the Land-Rover at the head of the jetty, and walked out to her. The muted throb of her engines cheered him a little, the knowledge that the vessel was preparing for the morrow.

On deck he paused beside the gigantic compressed air tanks, each the size of a steam locomotive, and checked the pressure gauges. The needles were moving perceptibly around the dials, and his mood lightened a little.

He went up the ladder to the bridge, and into the chartroom where

Sergio and Hugo were drinking coffee.

“Not my fault, Mr. Lance,” Sergio began defensively. “I am a gentleman - I cannot refuse a lady.”

“You’ll dig your own grave with that spade of yours one day,” Johnny warned him grimly, as he went to the chart table and hung over it.

“Now let’s get cracking.” Johnny’s sense of dread lifted completely as he looked down at the large-scale Admiralty chart. The twin humps of Thunderbolt and Suicide were clearly marked. “Hugo, have you got the prospecting schedules?”

“There, on the table.” Hugo and

Sergio came to stand on each side of Johnny while he opened the bound file of typewritten sheets.

“The soundings we made differ from the Admiralty chart.

We’ll put in our figures, before we plot the dredging pattern.”

The three of them settled over the chart with dividers and parallels to begin marking in the path that Kingfisher would follow through the maze of reefs and gullies.

It was long after midnight before Johnny made his way wearily to the guest cabin below the bridge. He kicked off his shoes, lay on the bunk to rest a moment before undressing and fell into a deathlike sleep of exhaustion.

He was awakened by one of the crew with a mug of coffee and he pulled on a windbreaker before hurrying on to the bridge.

Kingfisher was just passing out through the channel of Cartridge

Bay into the open sea, and Sergio grinned at him from where he stood beside the helm.

Dawn was only a lemon-coloured promise over the desert behind them, and the sea was black as washed anthracite, kicked into a chop by the small morning wind. They stood on the darkened bridge and sipped steaming coffee, cupping their hands around the enamel mugs.

Then they turned and ran south, parallel to the desert which was now touched with hot orange and violet. The seabirds were up, a flight of malgas turned to glowing darts of fire by the early sun as they winged swiftly across the bows.

With a dramatic suddenness the sun came up over the horizon, and highlighted the chalk-white cliffs of Thunderbolt and Suicide far ahead so that they shone like beacons on the cold green sea. The curtains of spray that burst on the islands flashed and faded as they shot into the sky and fell again.

Wild Goose was waiting for them lying under the tee of the islands, but she came out to meet them, staggering and plunging theatrically over the short uneasy sea that hooked around the islands or boiled through the gap between them.

The radio telephone began crackling and squawking as the sighting reports from Johnny’s watchtowers on the shore started coming in, cross-referencing to give Kingfisher her position over the ground.

There were short exchanges between Sergio and Hugo on Wild Goose as they came together, and the little trawler worked in close, ready to give assistance with the laying of the cables if she were needed.

But standing in the angle of the bridge, Sergio Caporetti had the situation under his control. The grubby marine cap pushed to the back of his head and a long black cheroot stuck in the side of his mouth, he stood balanced on the balls of his feet, his eyes darting from judging the set of the sea surf to the repeater of the computer which was feeding him his soundings and position - yet attentive to the RIT

reports from shore and from Wild Goose.

Johnny was contented with his choice of man as he watched Sergio at work. Kingfisher crept slowly up into the lee of Suicide Island, half a mile from the pearly white cliffs, then she hung there a moment before Sergio punched one of the buttons on her control panel.

From forward there was the harsh metallic roar of an anchor cable running out, and as Kingfisher backed away leaving a yellow-painted buoy the size of a barrage balloon bobbing under the cliffs of Suicide so one of the massive deck winches began automatically paying out its six-inch steel cable.

Kingfisher backed and crept forward, drifted down on the current or butted up against it while she went through the laborious but delicate operation of laying her four anchors at each point of the compass. Chained above each anchor floated the huge yellow buoys, and from each buoy the steel cables led to the winches on Kingfisher’s deck. On instructions from the computer the winches on each quarter would pay out or reel in the cable to hold Kingfisher steady over the ground while she worked.

It was midafternoon before Kingfisher was ready, pinned down like an insect to a board, and the computer reported that she was directly over the gully that Johnny had selected as the starting point. She had twenty-five fathoms of water under her - and then the thick bank of gravel.

“All is ready.” Sergio turned to Johnny, who had stood by quietly all this time - not interfering in the task of positioning. “You will begin the programme now?”

“Yes.“Johnny stirred himself.

“I would like to watch,” Sergio suggested, and Johnny nodded.

“All right, come.” Sergio handed over the bridge to the helmsman and they went down to the armoured door of the computer room.

Johnny opened the lock. There were only two keys to this compartment. Johnny had one and Benedict van der Byl had the other.

He had insisted on having the duplicate, and Johnny had reluctantly agreed not knowing that the key would be used in Las Palmas.

The heavy steel door swung back, and Johnny stepped over the coaming and seated himself before the console of the computer. Covered in cellophane and suspended on a clip above the keyboard of the computer were the cards containing the various programme codes.

Johnny selected the sheet headed: PRIMARY OPERATION: DREDGING AND

RECOVERY, and began feeding the code into the computer, punching it on the keyboard.

“Beta, stroke, oh, oh, seven, alpha.” And within the enamelled console, a change of sound heralded the beginning of the new programme, the hum of her reels and the click of the selectors, while on her control panel the lights blinked and flashed.

Now the computer’s screen began to answer the instruction, spelling out her response like a typewriter.

“New programme.”

“Primary Operation. Dredging and Recovery.”

“Phase One.”

“Initiate safety procedure:a) Report air pressure … I b)

Report air pressure … 2” Johnny leaned back in the padded stool and watched the exhaustive check that the computer now made of Kingfisher’s equipment, typing out the results on the screen.

“What she do now7 Sergio asked curiously, as though he had never spent ten days in this compartment assisting his Japanese friend.

Johnny explained the procedure briefly.

“How come you know this so good?” Sergio enquired.

“I spent a month at the Computer Company’s head office in America last year while they designed this machines

“You the only one in the

Company who can work it?”

“Mr. Benedict van der Byl has done the course as well. Johnny told him, then he leaned forward again. “Now she is set.” The screen on the computer reported itself satisfied.

“Phase One Completed.

Initiate Phase Two.

Lowering and siting of dredge head.” Johnny stood up. “Okay, let’s get upstairs.” He locked the door of the computer room and followed Sergio up to the bridge.

Johnny went to stand beside the repeater screen on the bridge, which was relaying the computer’s signals exactly as they were printed on the main screen in the compartment below. He could see out through the windows of the wheelhouse, and he watched the automatic response of the heavy equipment on the foredeck.

The gantry swung forward, and the steel arms picked the dredge head from its chocks, and lifted it with the armoured suction hose dangling behind it. Then the gantry swung back, and with a jerky mechanical movement lowered the head through the square opening in the deck. This well pierced the hull, and through it the hose began to snake a monstrous black python sliding into its hole. The huge reels that held the hose revolved smoothly, as the dredge was lowered to the sea bed.

“Head on bottom.” The computer screen reported, and the hose reels stopped abruptly.

“Phase Two Completed, Initiate Phase Three.

Cyclone Revolutions 300.

Vent dredge pump.” There was a rising high-pitched whine now, like the approach of a jet aircraft. The sound reached a peak, and steadied - and immediately another sound overlaid it. The dull roar of high-pressure air through water, a sound of such power and excitement that Johnny felt the hair on his forearms prickle erect. He stood still as a statue, his expression rapt and his lips set in a small secret smile. That sound was the culmination of two years of planning and endeavour, the sweet reward of the driving dedication that had made a dream into reality.

Suddenly he wished that Tracey was with him to share this moment, and then he knew instinctively that she had deliberately left him alone to savour his moment of triumph.

He grinned then, as he watched the thick black hose engorge and pulse with internal life, like a great artery pumping, pumping, pumping.

In his imagination Johnny could see the rich porridgy mixture of sea water and mud and gravel that shot up the hose into the spinning cyclone, he could imagine the steel head on the sea bed below the hull surging rhythmically to stir the sand and pound loose any gravel that pressure had welded into a conglomerate.

From the waste pipe over Kingfisher’s stern poured a solid steam of dirty yellow water mixed with the sand and gravel that had been rejected and spun out of the cyclone. It stained the green sea with a cloudy fecal discharge, like the effluent from a sewage outlet.

or three days and two nights Kingfisher’s pumps roared, and she inched forward along the marine gully like a fussy housewife vacuuming every speck of dust from her floor. As the third evening spread its dark cloak over her, Johnny Lance sat on the padded seat in front of the computer console. He sat forward on the stool with his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands for a full hour. He sat like that in the attitude of despair.

When he lifted his head, his face was haggard and the lines of defeat were clearly cut into his features with the cold chisel of failure.

From the meagre recovery of small diamonds that Kingfisher had made in the last three days it was clear beyond reasonable doubt that despite all the indications the Thunderbolt and Suicide field would not support the running costs of the vessel, let alone cover the overheads, or the interest charges and capital repayments on the loan account.

Van Der Byl Diamond Company was finished - and Johnny Lance was financially ruined beyond any possibility of ever finding redemption.

It remained only for the jackals to assemble and squabble over the carcass.

Sergio Caporetti leaned over the railing of the bridge, blowing long streamers of blue cheroot smoke from mouth and nostrils to help foul a morning which was already thick and grey with sea-fret. The islands of Thunderbolt and Suicide were blanketed by the mist, but the surf broke against their hidden cliffs like distant artillery and the seabirds” voices were plaintive and small lost souls in the void.

Wild Goose came bustling up out of the mist, swinging in under

Kingfisher’s side to hover there under power with two of her crew fending off.

Hugo Kramer stuck his white blond head out of the wheelhouse window, and shouted up at the deck.

“Okay, boss. Come on!” Sergio watched the tall figure on

Kingfisher’s deck rouse and look around like a man waking from sleep.

Johnny Lance lifted his head and looked up at the bridge, and Sergio noticed that he was unshaven, a new beard darkened his jaw and emphasized its prominence. He looked as though he had not slept, and he hunched into the wind breaker with the collar turned up against the mist. He did not smile, but lifted one hand in farewell salute to

Sergio who noticed incongruously that the index finger was missing from the hand. Somehow, that pathetic little detail struck Sergio. He was sorry, truly sorry. But there is always a loser in every game, and twenty-five thousand pounds is a lot of money.

“Good luck, Johnny.“Thanks, Sergio.” Johnny went to the rail lugging his briefcase and swung over it; he dropped swiftly down the steel rungs set in Kingfisher’s hull and jumped the narrow gap of surging water to Wild Goose’s deck.

The trawler’s engine bellowed, and she pulled away, rounding on to a course for Cartridge Bay. Johnny Lance stood on her open deck looking back at Kingfisher.

“He’s a good guy.” Sergio shook his head with regret.

“He’s a boss,” the helmsman grunted. “No boss is any good.”

“Hey, you! I am also a boss,” Sergio challenged him.

“Like I said.” The helmsman suppressed a grin.

“I kiss your mother,” Sergio insulted him with dignity, then changed the subject. “I go below now, take over.” Sergio opened the door to the control room with the duplicate key. He closed the door behind him, seated himself at the console and took from his pocket a sheet of paper headed: KAMINIKOTO SECONDARY RECOVERY PROGRAMME.

Ten minutes later he came out of the control room and locked the door.

“Kammy, I love you,” he chuckled as he closed off the watertight doors that isolated this deck from the one above.

He wound the locking bars into position to ensure that he was not interrupted by one of his own crew.

From the tool cupboard on the bulkhead he selected a pair of set spanners and went through into the conveyor room It took him twenty minutes to unscrew the heavy, deeply threaded bolts that secured the hatch. It had been designed to resist easy entry - a deterrent to casual investigation, but at last Sergio could lift the steel plate off its seating.

He eyed the small square opening with distaste, and reflexively sucked in his pendulous belly. The hatch had not been designed to afford passage to a man of his dimensions.

He took off his cap and jacket and hung them on the cock of one of the pipes, then he ground out his cheroot under his heel and brushed back the hair from his forehead with both hands, checked that his flashlight was in his pocket, and committed himself to the hatch.

He wriggled and kicked, and grunted and built up a heavy sweat for five minutes before he had squeezed through into the conveyor belt tunnel. He squatted on his haunches, panting heavily and flashed his torch along the tunnel.

Above his head the conveyor belt carrying the gravel ran smoothly, but the residual heat from the driers made it unbearably hot. He began to crawl rapidly to the end of the tunnel.

From the inside it was impossible to tell, without measuring, that the conveyor belt tunnel was shorter by twelve feet than the external length.

The end of the tunnel was false, and beyond it was a secret cubicle only just large enough to house Kaminikoto’s equipment through which all the gravel passed on its journey to the X-ray room.

The Japanese genius for miniaturization was demonstrated by the equipment in this secret cubicle. It was an almost exact copy of the sorting equipment in the main x-ray compartment - except that it had been scaled down to one tenth of the size without affecting its efficiency; in addition, this miniature plant could discriminate in the diamonds it selected. It would not allow a stone over four carats to pass through, and it screened out fixed percentages of the smaller stones - allowing only a proportion of the smaller and less valuable diamonds to proceed through into the main X-ray room.

It was an amazing piece of electronic engineering, but Sergio was unimpressed as he lay on his side in the cramped hot tunnel and began laboriously to unscrew another smaller plate in the false bulkhead.

At last it was open, and he reached through the opening; after a few seconds of fiddling and groping and heavy breathing he brought out a stainless steel cup with a capacity of about two pints. There were clamps on the cup to hold it in position below the chute under

Kaminikoto’s machine.

The metal cup was heavy, and Sergio placed it carefully on the deck beside him before propping himself on an elbow and shining the flashlight into the cup and took something out of it, stared at it a moment then dropped it back.

“By the blood of all the martyrs!” he gasped with shock, and then immediately contrite for his blasphemy he crossed himself awkwardly with the hand holding the flashlight.

Then again he shone the torch into the cup, and shook his head in disbelief. Quickly he pulled a canvas drawstring bag from his pocket, and lying on his side he carefully poured the contents of the cup into the bag, drew the string tight and stuffed it back into his pocket where it made a big hard bulge on his hip like a paper sack of rock-candy. He clamped the stainless steel cup back into position, screwed the coverplate over the opening, and backed away down the tunnel on hands and knees.

He very badly needed a cheroot.

Four hours later Hugo Kramer shinned up the ladder on to

Kingfisher’s deck while his helmsman took the trawler down to leeward to wait for him.

Sergio shouted down from the bridge.

“Johnny he has gone?” “Ja!” Hugo shouted back. “He should almost be in Cape Town by now. That Beechcraft is a fast plane.”

“Good.”

“How did it go with you?” Hugo countered.

“Come up - I’ll show you.” Sergio led him into his cabin behind the bridge and locked the door carefully. Then he went to each of the portholes and drew the curtains across them, before crossing to his desk and switching on the reading lamp.

“Sit down.” Sergio indicated the chair opposite the desk.

“You want a drink, or something?”

“Come on,” Hugo grated impatiently. “Stop mucking around, let’s have a look.”

“Ah!” Sergio looked at him sadly. “You Germans, you are always too much hurry. You cannot rest, enjoy life-“

“Cut the crap!” Hugo’s pate eyes were on his face, and Sergio was suddenly aware that this man was dangerous, like a tiger-shark. Coldly dangerous, without malice or passion. Sergio was surprised he had not noticed it before. I must be careful with this one, he thought, and he unlocked the drawer of his desk and took out the canvas bag.

He loosened the drawstring and poured the diamonds on to the blotter. The smallest was the size of a match head - perhaps point one of a carat, and the poorest quality was black and granular-looking, ugly little industrial stones, for Kammy had been careful not to take out only the best and so distort the Kingfisher’s recovery as to arouse suspicion. There were hundreds of these tiny crystals and chips which would fetch a few pounds in the industrial market; but there were other stones in the full range of quality and shapes and sizes - as big as green peas, or as marbles, and a few bigger than that. Some of them were perfect octahedron crystals, others water-worn, chipped or amorphous in shape.

They formed a dully glittering pile in the centre of the blotter, in all perhaps five hundred diamonds, yet all of these were dwarfed by one single stone that lay in the centre of the pile, rising out of it the way Mount Everest rises from her foothills.

There are freak diamonds so large or unusual that they become legend. Diamonds who have their own names and whose histories are recorded and invested with romance.

The great “paragons” - stones of the first water whose cut and finished weight exceed one hundred metric carats.

Africa has produced many of them: the Jonker Diamond, a 726-carat rough cut to a brilliant of 125 carats that hangs about the throat of the Queen of Nepal; The Jubilee Diamond, a superb 245-carat cushion of unearthly fire fashioned out of 650-carat rough - then the biggest of them all, a monstrous rough stone of 3,106 carats, the Cullinan which yielded not one, but two paragons. The Great Star of Africa at 530

carats and The Cullinan II at 317 carats. Both these stones grace the

Crown jewels of England.

Now on Sergio Caporetti’s desk lay a rough stone which would add yet another paragon to the list.

“Have you weighed it?” asked Hugo, and Sergio nodded.

“How much?”

“Three hundred and twenty carats,” Sergio said softly.

“Jesus!” whispered Hugo, and Sergio crossed himself quickly to dissociate from the use of names.

Reverently Hugo Kramer leaned forward and picked up the big diarriond. It filled the palm of his hand, the cleavage lane that formed its base was smooth and clean as an axestroke. There were bigger diamonds in history, but this diamond had a special feature which would set it in a niche of its own and endow it with peculiar value.

Its COIOUT was the serene blue of a high summer sky.

This stone could pay half the total bill for Kingfisher’s construction - if it were ever used for that purpose.

Hugo replaced the blue diamond on the desk and lit a cigarette without taking his eyes from it.

“This field - it is bigger - richer, far richer than we had guessed.” Sergio nodded.

“In three days we have taken diamonds that I hoped to see once in five years,” Hugo went on as he began picking out the larger diamonds from the pile and laying them in a line across the desktop in approximate order of size, while Sergio opened his desk drawer and took out a box of his special occasion cheroots.

“We must tell the boss, Hugo decided. He began arranging the diamonds in a neat circle about the big blue, thinking deeply. “He must know how rich it is before he talks to Lance. He must make arrangements. He will know what to do - he’s a clever one.”

“What about these?” Sergio indicated the treasure on the desk. “Are you going to take them off?” Hugo hesitated. “No,” he decided. “We could never get rid of this big Blue through the usual channel, it is too big, too distinctive. We will keep it aboard. When the boss takes over the Company again - then we will just declare it all nice and legal. No trouble.” He stood up. “Look after them. I must hurry if I

am to get a message to Cape Town in time.” The Company bears my father’s name, Mr. Larsen.

It’s as simple as that.” Benedict’s voice was husky with emotion, and he looked down at his hands. “I have a duty to my father’s memory.”

“My boy, well-” Larsen came to lay his hand on Benedict’s arm.

“Well, I just don’t know what to say. Honour is a rare and precious thing these days.” With his free hand he was groping almost frantically for the bell on the desk behind him. He must get this signed up solid before the youngster changed his mind.

“I tried to warn you, Mr. Larsen. My father and I never had any faith in this marine recovery scheme. Lance pushed it through-“

“Yes, quite so,” Larsen agreed, and turned to his assistant who came into the office at the trot in response to the bell.

“Ah, Simon. The Van Der Byl Diamond loan. Will you have an agreement made out immediately - Mr. van der Byl will take over the capital amounts, and the outstanding interest as well.” By rolling his eyes Larsen tried to convey to his assistant the deadly urgency of the situation. The young man understood and fifteen minutes later laid the

Agreement on Larsen’s desk. Larsen unscrewed the cap of his pen and handed it to Benedict.

Larsen and three of his young men Ushered Benedict out through the glass doors of the batik and across the pavement to where the Rolls stood in the reserved parking bay in Adderley Street.

Benedict settled into the back seat, acknowledged the bank official’s farewells, and tapped on the chauffeur’s window. As they pulled away, Ruby Lance slipped her hand through his arm and squeezed it.

“Did you get it?” she asked.

Benedict grinned happily. “I frightened five years” growth out of old Larsen. He almost broke his neck in the hurry to give it to me.”

“Now you’ve got it all.” Ruby snuggled a little closer to him on the soft leather upholstery. Benedict nodded, and checked his watch.

“The meeting is set for fifteen minutes” time. I’ll go up the front way, but I want you to go up in the private lift from the basement garage, and wait in my office. We will be in the Board Room.

I will ring you at the right moment.” The Rolls picked its way slowly down around the Heerengracht and double-parked outside the building.

The chauffeur came to open the door, but before he alighted Benedict smiled into Ruby’s face.

“This will be one of the high moments of my life,” he said softly.

“This time I’ve got the bastard cold.” “I’ll be waiting for You,” Ruby said, and he climbed out of the Rolls. He waited until it had turned into the entrance ramp of the basement garage, then he crossed the pavement into the main lobby of the skyscraper. He strode to the elevator with long eager strides, and his mouth kept pulling into a small excited smile.

The Board Room was set high, and the picture windows looked up at the great squat mountain, whose sheer cliffs dropped directly to the wooded slopes up which the first buildings of the city straggled.

Johnny Lance stood at the head of the table. He had lost weight in the last few days, so that his shoulders appeared bony and gaunt under the white silk shirt. He had discarded his jacket, and pulled the knot of his tie down an inch. The bones of his cheeks and jaw made harsh angles that were accentuated and not softened by the deep shades of fatigue that darkened his eyes. His hands were thrust deep into his pockets, and he spoke without reference to the sheaf of paper that lay on the table before him.

“Our working costs are as close as dammit to a hundred pounds an hour; right Mike?” And Michael Shapiro nodded.

“Well, we worked the Suicide main gully for sixty-six hours, and we recovered a princely 200 carats of the lousiest pile of junk I’ve ever seen. If we get a thousand quid for the lot we’ll be doing well.

This for an expenditure of six and a half thousand.” Johnny paused, and looked around the table. Michael Shapiro was doodling on his note pad with fierce concentration, Tracey van der Byl was pale, her eyes never left Johnny’s face and her expression ached with pity and helpless compassion; Benedict van der Byl was looking out of the window at the mountain, he was slumped comfortably in his chair, smiling a little and listening politely.

“The Suicide main gully is one of the five most likely parts of the entire concession. It’s no good, so the rest of the field may be useless. We have the two other concessions, the original fields, to try. However, it will take three or four days to get Kingfisher moved up the coast.” Johnny paused, and Benedict swivelled his chair, still with the small smile on his lips.

“The interest payments fall due on the 30th - three days” time.

Where are you going to find one hundred and fifty thousand Rand?”

“Yes,” Johnny nodded. “I think I can persuade Larsen to extend for a few weeks; he will bloody well have to if he wants to protect his.-” “Hold on,” Benedict murmured. “Larsen has got nothing to do with it.”

Johnny was silent, watching him warily. “Explain,” he invited.

“I’ve taken over the loan from Larsen,” Benedict told him. “I’m not interested in extending.”

“Larsen wouldn’t have negotiated without warning me.” Johnny was stricken, his disclaimer was wrung from him in pain.

“Shapiro?” Benedict turned to Michael Shapiro for confirmation.

“Sorry, Johnny. It’s true. I’ve seen the documents.”

“Thanks, Michael.” Johnny’s voice was bitter with accusations. “Thanks for letting me know.”

“He showed me a few minutes before the meeting, Johnny. I swear I didn’t know.” Michael’s expression was distressed.

“Right.” Benedict straightened up in his chair, his voice was brisk. “Let’s get down to first principles. You’ve ruined my father’s

Company, Lance - but, thank God, I may be able to retrieve the situation. all it sentiment or what you like, but I want your shares and yours.” He turned to Tracey and nodded at her.

“No,” said Tracey sharply.

“Right.” Benedict smiled at her. “Then I’m going to hammer Johnny

Lance for his full obligations. That way I get the Company anyway, but

I’ll make damn sure he remains an unrehabilitated bankrupt for the rest of his life.” Tracey lifted her hand to her throat, and turned her eyes to Johnny. Waiting for him to set a lead. There was a long stark silence, then Johnny Lance dropped his eyes.

“I’ve still got three days.” His voice was gruff and tired.

“Three days you have.” Benedict grinned coldly. “And you’re welcome to them.” Johnny picked up his papers and put them under one arm; he took his jacket off the back of the chair and swung it over his shoulder.

“Wait,” ordered Benedict.

“What for?” Johnny’s grin was twisted. “You’ve had your fun.”

Benedict lifted the receiver of the telephone on the table and dialled swiftly.

“Come through, please, darling.” He spoke into the mouthpiece and smiled at Johnny as he hung up. Then as the door opened he went to meet Ruby Lance, and kissed her on the mouth. The two of them stood, arm in arm, and looked at Johnny.

“The Company is not the only thing I’ve taken from you, , Benedict said softly.

“I want a divorce.” Ruby looked steadily into Johnny’s face.

“Benedict and I are going to get married.” They were all watching

Johnny, and they saw him flinch.

He looked from one face to the other, then his mouth tightened and his forehead furrowed.

Tracey saw his anger mounting, and her eyes flicked to Benedict’s face. He was leaning forward expectantly, his lips quivering with expectation, his eyes alight with triumph.

Tracey wanted to scream out a warning to Johnny, stop him falling into the trap that Benedict had set so carefully.

Johnny took a pace forward, coming up on to the balls of his feet.

He was about to make his defeat total and ineradicable. Then Benedict spoiled it for himself, he goaded once more.

“Game, set and match, Johnny Lance,” he crowed.

The effort of will that Johnny made to recover his reason was not shown on his face, he made the step forward seem natural and he continued towards the door.

“The house is in your name, of course, Ruby, so would you please send my things down to the Tulbagh Hotel,” he asked quietly.

He stopped in front of the couple and spoke to Ruby.

“You’ll want to protect your reputation, of course, so I’ll not sue for adultery. We’ll call it desertion.”

“You’re eating your guts out,” jeered Benedict. “Lance can’t keep his woman. Van der Byl took her away from him.

Go on, sue for adultery - let the world hear it.”

“As you wish,“Johnny agreed.

And he walked out of the Board Room to the elevators.

Johnny flopped on to the bed fully dressed, and rubbed his closed eyes with his fingertips. He felt confused and off-balance, the edge of his mind which usually slashed quickly and incisively through a problem was dulled.

This problem was so multiplied and tangled that he felt like a man in a thicket of African ebony trying to cut his way out with a blunt machete.

Without opening his eyes he groped for the telephone, and the girl on the hotel switchboard downstairs answered.

He gave her a number in Kimberley.

“Person to person, Mr. Ralph Ellison.”

“Fifteen minutes delay, Mr. Lance” the girl told him.

“Okay,“Johnny replied. “Ask room service to send me up a Chivas

Regal and soda.” He suddenly needed liquor, something to dull the pain.

“Make that a double, honey no, make it two doubles.” He had drained both glasses by the time his Kimberley call came through.

“Ralph?“Johnny spoke into the receiver.

“Johnny, how nice of you to call.” There was an echo like distant laughter beneath those cool ambassadorial tones in Ralph Ellison’s voice and Johnny knew instantly that the word was out. Damn it, he was slow - of course Benedict would have blocked him.

“Are you still interested in a deal on the Thunderbolt and Suicide

Concession?” Johnny loosed a despairing longrange shot.

((“Of course, you know we are always interested,” Ralph replied.

“The price is two million.” Johnny lost interest and lay back on the bed, closing his eyes again. He knew Ralph was having his revenge - you didn’t take this boy to court and win without sowing yourself a minefield to retreat over.

“Two million,” Ralph murmured. “Now that’s a little high for a field that’s yielding 200 carats of small industrial diamonds per

10,000 loads, that’s definitely on the high side. Of course we wouldn’t want that battleship of yours either - we are not starting our own navy.” Ralph chuckled juicily. “We could talk around fifty to a hundred grand - no more than that, Johnny.”

“Okay, Ralph.” Johnny spoke wearily. “Thanks all the same. We’ll have a drink together sometime.”

“Any time, Johnny,” Ralph agreed. “Any time at all. You call me.”

Johnny dropped the receiver back on its hook and looked at the ceiling.

He had heard that a gunshot wound was numb at first - he felt numb now. All that energy had seeped out of him, he had lost direction.

The telephone shrilled and he picked it up. The girl on the switchboard asked politely: “Are you finished, Mr. Lance?” “Yes,” said

Johnny. “You might say that.”

“Is there anything else you require?”

The girl sounded puzzled.

“Yes, honey, send up the hemlock.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Two more big fat whiskies, please.” He drank them in the bath, and while he dried himself the doorbell tinkled. He wound the bath towel round his waist and went through to open the door.

Tracey stepped into the bedroom and closed the door behind her.

They stood looking at each other for a long moment. Her eyes were big and dark, reflecting his agony faithfully.

“Johnny-” Her voice was husky, and she reached out and laid the palm of her hand on his cheek. His shoulders sagged, and he moved close to her, his forehead sinking on to her shoulder. He sighed, a ragged broken exhalation of breath.

“Come,” she said, and led him to the bed. Leaving him there she went to the windows and closed the curtains.

It was warm and safe in the half dark of the curtained room, and they held each other as they had done long years before. Clinging together, so their breathing mingled, and it was not necessary to speak.

When they became lovers it seemed that they had waited all their lives for that moment.

Afterwards he lay in her arms and he felt strength flowing back into him, drawing it from her. When he sat up in the bed the bemused, almost dazed expression had gone.

His Jaw was out and his eyes were bright.

“We’ve still got three days, he said.

“Yes.” She sat up beside him. “Go, Johnny. Go quickly, don’t waste another moment.”

“I’ll pull Kingfisher out of the main gully. I’ll find those diamonds. They are there. I know they are there. I’ll take her right down into the jaws of Thunderbolt and Suicide, I’ll find those bloody diamonds - damned if I won’t.” He swung his legs off the bed, reached for his clothes, glancing at his wrist watch as he did so.

“Four o’clock. I can get to Cartridge Bay a few minutes after dark.

Will you call the communications office, ask them to radio Cartridge

Bay and have a flare path set for me, and Wild Goose standing by to run me out?”

“I’ll phone them from here. Then I’ll take a bath - you go on. Don’t waste time.” Tracey nodded eagerly, and Johnny let his eyes drop down over her body. He reached out and touched one big white breast almost diffidently.

“You are beautiful - I hate to go.”

“It will all be here, waiting for you, when you get back.”

“It wasn’t the way I’d planned it. It wasn’t good the way I’d dreamed about it.” Benedict paced angrily over the floor of the Old Man’s study, swinging towards the windows and pausing to stare out at the mountain across the valley.

“You hurt him. You crushed him.” Ruby moved restlessly in her chair across the room from him, curling her long golden legs defensively under her, sitting like a cat in the big chair. She was worried, and it showed in the tiny crows” feet at the corners of her eyes and the way she held her lips pursed. She should have anticipated this reaction from him, she should have known-that this moment of triumph could never match his anticipation of it - and that revenge must always be followed by sour distaste and a feeling of disappointment. She realized that her safest course was to leave him alone now, she should never have returned with him to the old house on

Wynberg Hill. She stood up.

“Darling.” She crossed to him. “I’m going home now. I want to pack his clothes and get rid of them. I want to wipe out every memory of him. From now on it’s you and I together.” She stretched up to kiss him, but Benedict turned his face away.

“Oh! So you’re going, are you?” His expression was petulant, his lips pouting spitefully.

“We’re both tired, darling. Let us both rest a while - and I’ll come back later this evening.”

“So now you’re giving the orders, are you?” He laughed nastily.

“Darling-“

“And cut out all the darlings. We pulled a deal and it didn’t work out. You were meant to be a club to break his skull - and do you know something? He didn’t give a damn.

I was watching him, he was pleased - yes! He was bloody well delighted to get rid of you.”

“Benedict,” She stepped back.

“Listen.” He stepped close to her, and pushed his face towards hers. “If you’re so bloody anxious to go, why don’t you bloody well go - and keep going. If he doesn’t want you then I sure as hell don’t want you either.”

“Benedict,” she whispered. The colour faded from her face, leaving it washed white as beach sand. She stared at him in horror, as her dreams began to fall into ruins around her. “You don’t mean that.”

“I don’t? Is that so?” He threw back his head and laughed again. “Listen, you got some nice diamonds and a mink coat.

You got a big house in Bishopscourt - now, that’s pretty good pay for a whore.”

“Benedict-” She gasped at the insult, but he wasn’t listening.

“I proved I could have you, didn’t I?” I proved I could take you away from him - and that’s what it was all about. Now, why don’t you go on home like a good girl.”

“The machine. I know about that thing in

Kingfisher.” It was a mistake. Until then she still had a chance. His face changed shape and the blood flooded into it. His voice when he spoke was unsteady, thick with rage for his lips seemed to have swollen.

“Try it,” he whispered back at her. “Go on, try it. They’ll give you fifteen years in a woman’s prison, my beauty. And think about this also-” He showed her his hand, holding it like a blade before her eyes.

“I’ll kill you. I swear before God, I’ll kill you with my bare hands.

You know I’ll do it you know enough about me now.” She backed away from him, and he followed her still holding his hand at her throat.

“You’ve been paid. Now get out.” A few seconds longer she stood before him, and he was not too far gone in rage to see the fear in her eyes mingle with something else that made her eyes slit and drew her lips back to show the little white teeth.

“All right,” she said. “I’ll go.” And she walked from the room, stepping daintily, the long yellow hair swinging against her shoulders.

Ruby drove slowly for her vision was blurred with her tears. Twice other drivers hooted at her but she kept both hands clenched on the wheel and stared ahead, following the De Wool Drive around the lower slopes of the mountain. Before she reached the University she swung off the road and drove up through the pine forests until she reached the car park behind the Cecil Rhodes Memorial. She left the car and walked down on to the wide paved terrace below the Greek columns and stone steps where the mounted statue eternally searched the horizon with one hand lifted to shade his eyes.

She went to the parapet and looked across to the far blue mountains of the Helderherg. She hugged herself about the shoulders for the wind through her silk summer dress was as cold as her misery.

Now the tears broke over her lids and slid down her cheeks to fall unheeded on to the silken front of her dress.

They were tears of self-pity, but also the tears of an anger as searing cold as dry ice.

“The swine she whispered through lips that trembled.

Near her two young students sitting on the parapet, kicking their legs over the drop beneath them and hugging each other in the abandon of first love, turned to glance at her.

The boy whispered to the girl, and she giggled in unthinking cruelty - but looked away as Ruby directed a long venomous glare at her. Then in embarrassment the couple scrambled off the parapet and moved away, leaving her alone.

Never for one moment did she consider standing aside.

Benedict’s threats meant nothing - her only concern was to take the action which would injure him most severely. The consequences to herself were not part of her calculations.

She wanted only to select the swiftest and most terrible vehicle of retribution. As the dark clouds that fogged her reason slowly cleared, the means came to her readily.

Johnny was staying at the Tulbagh Hotel.

She turned and ran back to her car, the long yellow W banner of her hair floating behind her like the pennant at the tip of a cavalry lance. She drove fast until she hit the downtown rush-hour crowds.

The tears dried on her face as she crawled, fuming with impatience, along the slow river of traffic.

It was after five when she parked in a loading zone outside the entrance to the Tulbagh and ran into the lobby.

“What room is Mr. Lance in?” she demanded of the girl at the desk.

“Mr. Lance checked out an hour ago.” Curiously the girl examined

Ruby’s ruined make-up.

“Did he say where he was going?” Ruby snapped at her, feeling the sickening slide of disappointment within her.

“No, Madam.” The girl shook her head. “But he was in a hurry.”

“Damn! Damn!” Ruby swore bitterly. She turned from the desk undecided where next to look. Perhaps Johnny had gone back to the office.

Across the lobby the elevator doors slid open and Tracey Hartford stepped out. Even in her impatience Ruby recognized in the glow that seemed to emanate from her that Tracey was a girl freshly risen from the bed of the man she loved. There was not a vestige of doubt in

Ruby’s mind as to the identity of that man.

The shock of it paralysed her for a moment. Then she felt the urge to cross the floor and claw that smug smile from Tracey’s face.

She fought it down, and instead she stepped into her path as Tracey started for the glass outer doors.

“Where is Johnny?” she demanded, and Tracey came up short. Her little gasp of guilt confirmed Ruby’s suspicion.

“Where is he, damn you!” Ruby’s voice was pitched low but brittle with emotion.

“He’s not here.” Tracey recovered herself, quickly masking her expression.

“Where has he gone? I must see him.”

“He’s flown up to Cartridge

Bay.”

“When did he leave? It’s important - terribly important.”

“An hour ago. He’ll be airborne already.”

“Can you get a message to him?”

In her impatience Ruby caught Tracey’s wrist, holding her in a grip that marked the skin.

“I can radio him,-” Tracey pulled her hand free.

“No,” Ruby cut in quickly. She could not have her message shouted across the ether for all to hear. “Can you follow him - charter plane?” Tracey shook her head. “They won’t fly to an unscheduled airfield after dark.”

“Then you must follow him - by car. You must drive up there.”

“Why?” Tracey stared at her, puzzled by this strange insistence, noticing the dried tears and the wild look in Ruby’s eyes.

“It’s an eight-hour drive.”

“I’ll tell you. Can we use Johnny’s room?”

Tracey hesitated, remembering the unmade bed. Then the hotel manager came into the lobby and Tracey turned to him with relief. The Beechcraft bucked suddenly and dropped a wing, instinctively Johnny corrected the lunge with stick Al and rudder then glanced quickly at his instrument panel for an explanation. There was none to be found there, so he looked over the wing and for the first time noticed the dust on the great plains below him; it was moving low against the earth in long streamers like mist, and the setting sun turned it to motive and old gold. With a prickle of alarm he scanned the horizon ahead, and saw it coming down from the north like a great moving range of blue mountains.

Even as he watched it, it rolled across the low sun, turning it into a sullen red orb. The light in the cockpit changed to a weird glow as though the door to a furnace had been thrown open.

Again the Beechcraft crabbed awkwardly as another gust of high wind hit her, and at the same moment the radio crackled and came alive.

“Zulu Sugar Peter Tango Baker this is Alexandra Bay Control, come in please.” The voice of the controller was almost unintelligible with storm static. Johnny reached for the transmit switch of the radio, then stopped his hand. He thought quickly. He could guess they were trying to reach him to cancel his flight approval. That was a big northern boiling down out of the desert. They would abort his flight, and divert him out of the path of the storm.

He checked his wrist watch. Twenty minutes” flying time to

Cartridge Bay. No - he was flying full into the eye of the wind, say twenty-five or thirty minutes. Quickly he searched the coast on his port side and saw the long white lines of surf stretched ahead into the thickening purple gloom. The coast was still clear, it might stay that way for another thirty minutes.

“Zulu Sugar Peter Tango Baker this is Alexandra Bay. I say again - come in. Come in. Zulu Sugar Peter Tango Baker.” The agitation in the controller’s voice came through over the static.

There was a fair chance of getting in to Cartridge Bay, racing the storm and winning. He could edge out to the westward and come in from the sea, pick up Kingfisher’s riding lights as a beacon and sneak in under the leading edge of the dust clouds. If he missed he could turn and run with the wind for home. The radio was hissing and crackling angrily now, the controller’s voice sometimes lost in the interference, sometimes coming through strongly.

Cancelled. I say again: your flight approval is cancelled. Do you read me, Zulu Sugar Peter Tango Baker.

Come in, please. - Beaufort force seven. - visibility in the storm area - I say again, there is nil visibility. ” The norther would roar for days now and with it would blow away his last chance of working the gap at Thunderbolt and Suicide.

Johnny switched off the radio, cut off contact with Control and immediately it was strangely quiet in the cockpit. He settled himself down into the bucket seat, and eased open the throttles, watching the needles creep up around the dials of the rev counters.

Now he was down to an altitude of three hundred feet and the

Beechcraft was leaping about like a hooked marlin.

He was flying her on instruments for outside the cockpit it was completely dark. He could not see his own wingtips, but above him the stars still showed. He was riding the vanguard of the storm, and the dust clouds were ahead, racing to meet him and blanket the flare path at Cartridge Bay.

Every few seconds he darted a quick glance ahead, hoping to pick up the lights, then his eyes flew back to the instrument panel.

“Now,” he thought grimly. “It should be now. I should be over the grounds. Thirty seconds more and I’ll know I’ve missed her.” He looked up again, and there was Kingfisher dead ahead.

All her lights were ablaze, a burning beacon of hope in the darkness. She appeared to be riding easily, for the wind had not yet had time to thrash the sea into a frenzy.

He flashed over her, seeming to graze her superstructure in passing, and now he was searching anxiously for the glow of the flare path on the land beyond.

It came up as a path of lesser darkness in the absolute blackness of the night. He steadied on course towards it, watching it change to a long double line of oil-burning flares that smoked and fluttered in the wind.

He flew her in fast, high above the stall and the shock of touchdown threatened to tear the undercarriage off her.

Then he was jolting and trundling down the earthen runway with the flares flashing past his wingtips.

“Lance, old man,” he murmured thankfully, “that was a very shaky do!”

The wind hum against the body of the car, and the snarl of rubber on tarmac as the Mercedes snaked through the bends of the twisting mountain road were sounds to match the racing of Tracey’s blood and the hammer of her heart.

She drove with an inspired abandon, watching the bends leap out at her out of the darkness, sensing the massive crags and cliffs that hung over the road and blotted out half the night sky.

The silver sheet of Clanwilliam Lake reflected the stars, and then was left behind. Down from the mountains she went an dover the

Olifants River to make a brief fuel stop at Vanrynsdorp and scan the road map anxiously in the light of the gasoline pumps. She read with a sinking feeling the mileage figures printed along the little red ribbon of the road, and knew that for her each mile would be multiplied by her own urgency.

Then once more behind the wheel she faced the vast emptiness of

Namaqualand - and sent the Mercedes flying across it.

There is some type of machine, I don’t know how it works, but it filters out the diamonds. Benedict had it installed at Las Palmas-“

The headlights were puny little white shafts, and the road a long blue smear that went on endlessly. Tracey lit a cigarette with one hand, hearing Ruby’s voice again in her ears.

“ - There is one diamond amongst them. He called it

“The Big

Blue”. Benedict says it’s worth a million,-” Tracey was not sure she believed it. It was the enormity of the treachery and deceit that she could not accept.

“- The Italian, the Captain, be careful of him. He works for

Benedict. The other one also - Hugo - they are all in it.

Warn Johnny.” Benedict! Weak, spoiled Benedict, the playboy, the spendthrift. Could he have planned and carried this through?

A gust of wind hit the car from the side, taking her unawares, pushing the Mercedes off the tar on to the gravel.

Tracey fought to hold the skid. Dust and gravel roared out in a cloud from under the wheels. Then she was back on the road, hurtling northwards.

“Warn Johnny! Warn Johnny!” Benedict van der Byl sat in his father’s chair, in his father’s house, and he was alone. His loneliness ate deep into the fibres of his whole being. Before him on the stinkwood desk stood a crystal glass and a decanter.

The brandy was no comfort, its warmth in his throat and belly seemed only to accentuate the icy cold of his loneliness. His fantasy showed him as a hollow man. He thought of himself as a husk, filled only with the cold of melancholia.

He looked about the room with its dark panelled woodwork and he smelled the musty dead smell. He wondered how many times his father had sat in this chair alone and lonely. Lonely and afraid as the cancer ate him alive.

He stood up and moved listlessly about the room, touching the furniture as if he were trying to communicate with the man who had lived and died here. He moved across and stood in front of the curtained windows. The rug was new. It replaced the other that they had been unable to clean.

“The Old Man had the right idea.” He spoke aloud, his voice sounding strange in his own ears.

Then on an impulse he crossed quickly to the cupboard that flanked the massive stone fireplace, and tried the door.

It was locked.

Without passion he stood back and kicked in the panel.

The wood splintered and he kicked again, smashing the door from its hinges.

The oblong leather case was on the top shelf, and he took it down and carried it to the desk. He sprang the catches and laid back the lid.

He lifted out the blue metalled double barrels of the Purdy Royal, and the gun oil was greasy on his hands.

“Jacobus Isaac van der Byu He read aloud the name in gold inlay set into the steel among the engraved pheasants and gundogs.

He smiled then.

“The old devil.” He shook his head smiling as though at some private joke, and began slowly to assemble the shotgun. He weighed it in his hands, feeling the sweet pure balance of the weapon.

“The old bastard made his own decisions.” And still smiling he carried the gun across to the new carpet. He placed it butt down between his feet with the barrels pointed at the ceiling and leaning slowly forward he opened his mouth and placed the muzzles between his lips, then reaching farther down he placed a thumb on each trigger and pushed them simultaneously.

Click! Click!

The firing pins fell on the empty chambers, and Benedict straightened up and wiped the taste of gun oil from his lips.

He grinned again.

“That’s the way he did it. Both barrels in the back of the throat. What a cure for tonsilitis!” he chuckled, and glanced across at the shattered cupboard door. The square packets of cartridges were on the second shelf.

He tucked the gun under his arm and went to the cupboard again, moving more purposefully now. He snatched down a packet of SSG and broke it open. Suddenly his hands were shaking and the fat red cartridges spilled on to the floor. He stooped and picked up two of them.

With mounting excitement and dread he broke open the shotgun and slipped the cartridges into the blank eyes of the breeches. They slid home against the seating with a solid double thunk, and he hurried back to the spot in front of the window.

His eyes were bright and his breathing quick as he pushed the safety catch on to “Fire” and placed the butt between his feet once more.

He took the muzzles in his mouth again, in an obscene Soul kiss and reached down for the triggers. They were cold and oily. He caressed them lightly, feeling the fine grooving in the curves Of metal, thrilling to the touch and feel of them as he had never thrilled to the feel of a woman’s body.

Then abruptly he stood up again. He was gasping for breath.

Unsteadily he carried the weapon back to the desk and laid it on the dark polished wood.

As he poured brandy into the crystal glass his eyes were fastened with perverse fascination on the beautiful glistening weapon.

The steam had fogged the mirrored walls of the bathroom, so her image was dewed and misty. Ruby Lance dried herself slowly with one of the thick fluffy towels. She was in no hurry; she wanted Tracey to have a start of at least four hours on her journey to Cartridge Bay.

With a deep narcissistic pleasure she noticed in the mirrors how her whole body glowed with soft pink highlights from the hot waters of the bath.

Wrapping herself in the towel she went through into the dressing-room and picking up one of the silver-backed brushes began stroking it through her hair, moving across to the open wardrobe to select a dress for the occasion. It must be something special, perhaps the unworn full-length Louis Feraud of daffodil satin.

Still undecided she went back to seat herself at the dressing-table and began the complicated ritual of applying her make-up. She worked with meticulous care until at last she smiled at her reflection with satisfaction.

She dropped the towel, went back to the wardrobe, and stood slim and naked before it. Pouting slightly with concentration she decided against the Feraud. Then suddenly she smiled, and reached for

Benedict’s mink.

She wrapped herself in the pale cloud of fur, fluffing up the collar to frame her face. It was perfect. just the fur and a pair of golden slippers, pale gold, a perfect match for her hair.

Now suddenly she was eager to go. She ran from the house to where her car was parked in the driveway.

She switched off the headlights as she turned into the driveway that curved up to where the old house crouched on the top of Wynberg

Hill. The whisper of the engine was unobtrusive and blended with the whimper of the night breeze in the chestnut trees that flanked the driveway.

She parked in the courtyard, and saw that Benedict’s Rolls was still in the garage and a light burned in the window of the study, a yellow oblong behind the curtains.

The front door was open. Her skippered feet made no sound along the gloomy passages, and when she tried the door to the study it swung open readily. She stepped into the room, and closed the door behind her. She stood with her back to the dark panelled wood. A single shaded lamp lit the room dimly.

Benedict sat behind the desk. The room was heavy with the smell of cigar smoke and brandy fumes. He had been drinking. His face was flushed, and the top button of his shirt was undone. On the desk in front of him lay a shotgun.

Ruby was surprised at the presence of the weapon, it disconcerted her and the words she had prepared were forgotten.

Benedict looked up at her. His eyes were slightly unfocused and he blinked slowly. Then he grinned; it twisted his mouth and his voice when he spoke was slurred.

“So you’ve come back.” Instantly her hatred returned in full flood. But she kept her face impassive. “Yes,” she agreed. “I’ve come back.”

“Come here.” He swivelled his chair to the side of the desk. Ruby did not move, she leaned back against the door.

“Come here.” Benedict’s voice was stronger now, and suddenly Ruby smiled and obeyed.

She stood in front of him, huddled in the fur.

“Kneel down,” commanded Benedict, and she hesitated.

“Down!” his voice crackled. “Down, damn you!” Ruby sank to her knees in front of him, and he straightened up in the chair. She knelt in front of him in the attitude of submission, with her head forward so the golden hair hung like a curtain over her face.

“Say it,” he gloated. “Ask me to forgive you.” Slowly she lifted her face and looked up at him. She spoke softly.

“Tracey left for Cartridge Bay at five-thirty this evening, Benedict’s expression changed.

“She has a start of four hours - she is half-way there already.”

He stared at her with his lips parting, soft and red and slack.

“She is going to Johnny,” Ruby went on. “She knows about the thing in Kingfisher. She knows about the big blue diamond.” He began to shake his head in disbelief.

“By dawn tomorrow Johnny will know also. So you see, my darling, you have lost again - haven’t you? You can never beat him, can you, Benedict? Can you, my darling?” Her voice was rising, ringing with triumph.

“You?“he croaked. “You?” And she laughed, nodding her head in agreement, unable to speak through her laughter.

Benedict lunged clumsily out of the chair, his hands going for her throat. She went over backwards with him on top of her. Her laughter died gurgling in her throat.

They rolled together on the floor. Benedict’s hands locked on her neck, his voice rising in a scream of fury and despair. Her long legs kicking and thrashing, clawing at his face and hands, she fought him with the strength of a cornered animal.

They rolled back suddenly and Benedict’s head struck the solid leg of the desk with a crack that jarred his whole body. His grip on her throat loosened and she tore herself free with fresh breath hissing into her open mouth. She rolled away from him and in one fluid movement gained her feet, reeling back from him with the front of the mink torn open and her hair tangled across her face.

Benedict dragged himself up the desk on to his knees.

He was still screaming, a high keening note without form or coherence, as Ruby spun away from him and stumbled to the door.

Blinded by her own hair, fighting for strangled breath, she fumbled for the door handle with her back turned to him.

Benedict reached up and lifted the shotgun off the desk.

Still kneeling beside the desk he held the weapon across his hip.

The recoil was a liquid pulsing jolt in his hands and the muzzle blast was thunderous in the confines of the room. the long yellow flame lighting the scene like a photographer’s flash-bulb.

The heavy charge caught Ruby in the small of her back.

At that range there was-no spread of shot and it went through spine and pelvis in a solid shattering ball. It tore out through the front of her belly, spinning her sideways along the wall. She slid down into a sitting position, facing him with the mink flared open about her.

On his knees Benedict swung the gun to follow her fall and he fired the second barrel; again the brief thunder and flame of the muzzle blast flashed across the room.

At even closer range than the first charge it struck her full in her beautiful golden face.

Benedict stood in the garage with his forehead pressed against the cold metal of the Rolls-Royce. The shotgun was still in his hands, and his pockets were full with cartridges that he had picked up from the floor before leaving the study.

He was shivering violently, like a man in high fever.

“No!” he moaned to himself, repeating the single negative over an dover again, leaning against the big car.

Abruptly he gagged, remembering the carnage he had created. Then he retched, still leaning against the Rolls, bringing up the brandy mingled with his horror.

It left him pale and weak, but steadier. Through the open window he threw the gun on to the back seat of the Rolls, and climbed shakily into the driver’s seat.

He sat there bowed over the steering wheel, and now his instinct of self-preservation took hold of him.

It seemed to him there was but one avenue of escape still open to him. Wild Goose had the range to take him across an ocean - South

America perhaps, and there was money in Switzerland.

He started the Rolls and reversed out of the garage, the spin of tyres against concrete burning blue smoke into the beams of the headlights.

The Mercedes crawled through the thick sand, the headlights probing ineffectually into the bright orange fog of dust that whipped endlessly over the track ahead. The hot gritty wind buffeted the car, rocking it on its suspension.

Tracey sat forward in the driver’s seat peering ahead through eyes that felt raw and swollen with fatigue and mica dust.

From the main road to the coast this jeep track was the only land access to Cartridge Bay. It was a hundred miles of tortuous trail, made up of deep sandy ruts and broken stone where it crossed one of the many rocky ridges.

The radiator of the Mercedes was boiling furiously, overheating in the searing wind and the slogging low-gear grind through thick sand.

In places Tracey followed the track only by driving through gaps in the stunted knee-high growth of desert bush. Every few minutes a tumbleweed, driven by the wind, would bowl across the track like a frightened furry animal.

At times she was sure she had missed a turning and was now grinding aimlessly out into the desert, then reassuringly the twin ruts would show up in the lights ahead of her.

Once she did drive off the road, and immediately the Mercedes came to a gentle standstill with its rear wheels spinning helplessly in the soft sand. She had to climb out of the cab and, with her bare hands, scoop away the sand from behind the wheels and stuff bundles of turnbieweed into the depressions to give the wheels purchase. She almost wept with relief when the Mercedes pulled back sluggishly on to the trail again.

The slow dawn broke through the dust clouds and Tracey switched off the headlights and drove on until suddenly, and quite unexpectedly, she reached Cartridge Bay. The depot buildings loomed suddenly before her, and she left the Mercedes and ran to the living quarters. The foreman opened the door to her insistent hammering, and stared at her in astonishment before ushering her in. Tracey cut off his questions with her own.

“Where is Wild Goose?”

“She took Mr. Lance out to Kinesher, but she’s back now lying at the jetty.”

“Hugo Kramer - the Captain?”

“He’s aboard, holed up in his cabin.”

“Thanks.” Tracey left him, pushed the door open against the wind and ran out into the storm.

Wild Goose lay at her moorings, secured by heavy lines to the bollards, but fidgeting and fretting at the push of the wind. There was a gangplank laid to her deck, and lights showed at her portholes. Tracey went aboard.

Hugo Kramer came to the doorway of his cabin in a suit of rumpled striped pyjamas. Tracey pushed past him.

“You took Lance out to Kingfisher?” she accused him, her voice sharp and anxious.

“Yes.”

“You idiot, didn’t you realize there was something up?

Good God, why otherwise would he fly in through this weather?”

Hugo stared at her, and instinctively she knew that what Ruby had told her was true.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,“he blurted.

“You’ll know all right when we are all sitting behind bars we’ll have fifteen long years to think about it. Lance has tumbled to it, you fool, I’ve got to stop him. Take me out to Kingfisher.” He was confused - and afraid.

“I know nothing about-” Hugo started again.

“You’re wasting time.” Brusquely Tracey brushed his protests aside. “Take me out to Kingfisher.”

“Your brother - where is he? Why didn’t he came?” Tracey had anticipated the question. “Lance beat him up badly. He’s in hospital. He sent me.” Suddenly Hugo was convinced.

“Gatt!” he swore. “What are we going to do? This storm I may be able to get you out there, but I won’t be able to leave Wild Goose. My crew can’t handle her in this sea.

What can you do on your own?” “Get me out there,” said Tracey.

“Get me aboard Kingfisher and you can come back. The Italian, Caporetti, he and I will take care of Lance. In this storm a man can be washed overboard very easily.”

“ja.” Hugo’s face lit with relief.

“That’s it. The Italian!” And he reached for his oilskins hanging on the bulkhead.

As he pulled them on over his pyjamas he looked at Tracey with new respect.

“You,” he said. “I didn’t know you were in it.”

“Did you think my brother and I would stand by and let a stranger take our birthright from us?” Hugo grinned. “You’re a cool one, I’ll say that for you.

You had me fooled.” And he went out on to the bridge.

Johnny Lance and Sergio Caporetti stood shoulder to shoulder on

Kingfisher’s bridge. The ship was taking the big green seas over her bows, solid walls of water, and the wind whipped spray that spattered the armoured glass windows of the bridge house.

Kingfisher had slipped her moorings the previous evening, leaving the big yellow buoys floating on their anchor cables and she was

working free of her fetters. She was on computer navigation, holding her position over the ground against the swells and the wind by use of her engine and rudder.

“She is no good.” Sergio spoke morosely. “We come too close to the rocks. I get sick in my heart looking at them.” The dust clouds did not carry this far out to sea despite the vicious screeching of the wind. The visibility was a mile or more, quite enough to show the brooding twin hulks of Thunderbolt and Suicide. The storm-crazed swells burst against them, throwing white spray two hundred feet into the gloomy sky, then surging back to expose the gleaming white rock.

“Hold her,” growled Johnny. Twice during the night they had changed position, each time edging down closer on the gap between the two islands. Kingfisher was battling gamely to hold her ground against the insidious sucking current that added its pull to that of the swell and the wind.

Johnny was not attempting to work any one of the gullies extensively, he wanted only to sample as much of the field as possible in the time that was left to him. The storm would not stop him - for Kingfisher was constructed to work in worse weather than this. Her compensating hose section was keeping the dredge head on the bottom despite the lift and fall of her pull.

“Calm down, Sergio.” Johnny relented a little. “The computer is foolproof.”

“The god damned computer she no got eyes to see those rocks.

Me, I got eyes - and it gives me a sick heart.” Twice during the night

Johnny had gone down into the control room and ordered the computer to report its recovery of diamonds. Each time the reply had been consistent - not a single stone over four carats, and a very precious few of any others.

“I’m going through to the plot. Watch her,” Johnny told Sergio, and staggering against the pitch and roll he went through the door behind the bridge.

He paused behind the repeater screen of the computer, and at a glance saw that Kingfisher was holding her primary operation and all departments were running normally. He passed the screen and leaned over the chart table.

The large-scale chart of the South West African coast between

Luderitz and Walvis Bay was pinned down on the board. The Wild Goose soundings were pencilled in, and the pattern of Kingfisher’s sweeps were carefully plotted around the islands of Thunderbolt and Suicide.

Johnny picked up a pair of dividers and stared moodily at the chart. Suddenly a surge of anger rose in him against those two names.

They had promised so much and delivered so little.

He stared at the names Thunderbolt and Suicide printed in italics among the maze of soundings, and his anger turned to blind red hatred.

With the points of the dividers he slashed at the chart, ripping the thick linen paper once, and twice, in a ragged cross-shaped tear.

This small act of violence dissipated his anger. He felt embarrassed, it had been a petty childish gesture. He tried to smooth the edges of the tear, and through the gap he felt another loose scrap of paper which someone had slipped under the chart. He probed a finger through the tear in the chart and wormed the scrap out. He glanced at the scribbled title and the lines of figures and numbers that followed.

The sheet was headed: KAMINIKOTO SECONDARY RECOVERY PROGRAMME.

He studied it, puzzled by the title but recognizing the numbers as a computer programme. The writing was in Sergio Caporetti’s pointed continental style. The easiest way to resolve the mystery was to ask

Sergio. Johnny started back for the bridge.

“Boss,” Sergio called anxiously, as Johnny stepped through the door. “Look!” He was pointing ahead into the eye of the wind. Johnny hurried to his side, the paper crumpled and forgotten in his hand.

“Wild Goose.” Sergio-identified the small craft that was staggering and plunging towards them out of the gloom.

“What the hell is he doing here?” Johnny wondered aloud. Wild

Goose was lost for long seconds behind the walls of green sea, then again she was lifted high into unnatural prominence, showing the red lead of her bottom as she rode the crests; water poured from her scuppers, before she shot down the steep slope of the next wave to bury her nose deep in frothing water. She came down swiftly on the wind, rounding to and beginning to edge in under Kingfisher’s counter.

“What the hell is he playing at?” Johnny protested, and then in disbelief he saw a slim figure dart from Wild Goose’s wheelhouse and run to the side nearest Kingfisher.

“It’s Tracey,” shouted Johnny.

She reached the rail just as another swell burst over the bows and smothered her. Johnny expected to see her washed away, but she was still there clinging to the rail.

Thrusting the page of paper into his pocket, Johnny went out through the wing of the bridge and swarmed down the steel ladder to the deck, jumping the last ten feet and running the instant he landed.

He reached the side and looked down on the drowned-kitten figure of

Tracey.

“Go back,” he yelled. “Go back. Don’t try it.” She shouted something that was lost in the next smother of spray, and when it cleared he saw her poising herself to jump the gap of surging water between the two vessels.

He flung himself over Kingfisher’s side and climbed swiftly down the steel rungs.

He was still ten feet above her as she gathered herself for the leap.

“Go back,” he shouted desperately.

She jumped, missed her hold and fell into the murderous stretch of water between the hulls. Her head bobbed below Johnny, and he was aware of the next swell bearing down on them. It would throw Wild

Goose against the steel cliff of Kingfisher, crushing Tracey between them.

Johnny went down those last ten feet and hanging outwards by one arm he got his other arm around her, and with a heave that crackled in his muscles and joints he plucked her from the water just as the two vessels dashed together with a crunching impact that tore splinters from Wild Goose’s planking, and left a smear of alien paint on

Kingfisher’s steel plating.

Wild Goose swung away, and with her diesels bellowing went bucking off into the wind.

With puddles of sea water forming around her feet from her sodden clothing, Tracey stood in the Tcentre of Kingfisher’s guest cabin. Her dark hair was plastered down her face and neck, and she was shivering so violently from shock and the icy water that she could not talk. Her teeth chattered together, and her lips were blue with cold.

Desperately she was trying to form words, her eyes never leaving

Johnny’s face.

Quickly he stripped off her clothing and throwing one towel round her shoulders he began roughly to chafe warmth back into her with another.

“You little idiot,” he berated her. “Are you stark staring bloody mad?”

“Johnny,” she gasped through her chattering teeth.

“Christ - that was so close,” he snarled at her as he knelt to rub her legs.

“Johnny, listen.”

“Shut up and dry your hair.” Humbly she obeyed him, her shivers became controllable as he crossed to the locker and found a thick jersey which he pulled over her head. It hung almost to her knees.

“Now,” he said, taking her roughly by the shoulders.

“What the hell is this all about?” And she told him in a rush of words that poured out like water from a broken dam. Then she burst into tears and stood there forlornly in the voluminous jersey with her damp hair dangling about her shoulders, sobbing as though her heart was breaking.

Johnny took her in his arms.

For a long minute Tracey revelled in his warmth and strength, but she was the first to pull away.

“Do something, Johnny,” she implored him, her voice still thick with tears. “Stop them. You mustn’t let them get away with it.” He went back to the locker, and while he ransacked it for clothing that might fit her, Johnny’s mind was racing over the story she had told him.

He watched her pull on a pair of blue serge trousers and tie them at the waist with a length of cord. She folded back the cuffs and tucked them into thick woollen socks, before thrusting her feet into a pair of sea-boots that were only a few sizes too large for her.

“Where do we start?” she asked, and he remembered the sheet of paper. He fished it out of his pocket and flattened it on the table beside the blink. Quickly he ran his eyes over the columns of figures.

His first guess was right - it was a computer programme.

“Stay here,” he ordered Tracey.

“No.” Her response was immediate, and he grinned.

“Listen, I’m just going up on to the bridge to keep them busy there. I’ll come back for you, I promise. You won’t miss anything.”

How is she, boss?” Sergio Caporetti’s concern was genuine. Johnny realized that he must be worrying himself into a frenzy trying to guess the reason for Tracey’s arrival.

“She is pretty shaken up,“Johnny answered.

“What she want - that was big chance she takes. Nearly fish food.” “I don’t know,” Johnny said. “I want you to take over up here.

Keep Kingfisher working. I’m going to get her to bed - I’ll let you know what it’s all about as soon as I find out.”

“Okay, boss.”

“Oh, and

Sergio - keep an eye on those rocks. Don’t let her drift down any closer.” Johnny chose a powerful incentive to keep Sergio up on the bridge.

Johnny left him and went below, stopping only at the guest cabin.

“Come on.” Tracey followed him, lurching unsteadily with

Kingfisher’s antics in the high sea.

Two decks down they reached the computer control room and Johnny unlocked the heavy steel door, then locked it again behind them.

Tracey wedged herself against the bulkhead and watched as Johnny seated himself at the console and clipped the rumpled sheet into the board.

Reading from the sheet he typed the first line of figures on the keyboard. Immediately the computer registered a protest.

“Operator error,” it typed back. Johnny ignored its denial and typed the second line. This time it was more emphatic.

“No procedure. Operator error.” And Johnny typed the next line of figures. He guessed that whoever had stored this programme in the computer’s memory would have placed a series of blocks to prevent accidental discovery. Again the denial flashed back at him.

“Operator error.” And Johnny muttered, “Thrice before the cock crows,” striking an incongruously biblical note in the tense atmosphere of the control room.

He typed the last line of figures and the denial faded from the screen. The console clicked like a monstrous crab, then suddenly it started to print again.

KAMINIKOTO SECONDARY RECOVERY PROGRAMME.

INSTALLED OCTOBER 1969. AT LAS PALMAS BY HIDEKI KAMINIKOTO.

DOCTOR OF SCIENCE.

TOKYO UNIVERSITY.” The little Japanese had been unable to resist autographing his masterpiece. Tracey and Johnny crouched over the screen, staring at it with awful fascination as the computer began spelling out its report. It began with the number of hours worked, and the weight of gravel processed during that time. Next it reported the weight of concentrates recovered from the cyclone and finally, in a series of columns, it printed out the weights and sizes of all the diamonds won from the sea. The big Blue showed up in the place of honour, and wordlessly Tracey touched the figure 320 with a forefinger.

Johnny nodded grimly.

The computer ended by giving the grand total of carats recovered, and Johnny spoke for the first time.

“It’s true,” he said softly. “It doesn’t seem possible - but it is.” The click and hum of the computer ceased, and the screen went blank.

Johnny straightened up in the chair.

“Where would they put it?” he asked himself, as he ran quickly over the line of recovery. He stood up from the chair and peered through the leaded glass peephole into the X-ray room. “It must be this side of the cyclone, this side of the drier - ” He was speaking aloud. Between the drier and the X-ray room.” Then there bobbed to the surface of memory the modification in design which he had meant to query, but which he had forgotten.

“The inspection plate on the conveyor tunnel!” He punched his fist into his palm. “They moved the inspection plate! That’s it! It’s in the conveyor tunnel.” His hands were frantic with haste as he unlocked the steel door of the control room.

sergio, Caporetti paced his bridge like a captive bear, puffing so furiously on his cheroot that sparks flew from its tip. The wind howled hungrily around the wheelhouse, and the swells still marched in from the north.

Suddenly he reached a decision and turned to the helmsman.

“Watch those goddamn rocks - watch them good.” The helmsman nodded and Sergio shambled through the chartroom to his own cabin. He locked the door behind him, and crossed to his desk. Fumbling with his keys he opened the bottom drawer of his desk and reaching under the pile of cheroot packets he brought out the canvas bag.

Weighing it thoughtfully in his hand, he looked about the cabin for a more secure hiding place. Through the canvas he could feel the nutty irregular shape of the stones.

“That Johnny, he a clever bastard,” he muttered. “It better be good place.” Then he reached a decision. “Best place where I can watch them all a time.” He opened his jacket and stuffed the bag into his inside pocket. He buttoned the jacket and patted the bulge over his heart.

“Fine!” he said. “Good!” And stood up from the desk. He hurried back, unlocking the door into the chartroom, and headed for the bridge.

He stopped in the middle of the chartroom, and his head swung towards the repeater screen of the computer. The buzzer was going like a rattlesnake, and the red bulb that warned of a new procedure was blinking softly.

Fearfully Sergio approached the screen and stooped over it. A

single glance was enough, and he rushed from it to the chart table. He saw the cross-shaped tear in the chart.

“Mary Mother!” He ripped back the thick crackling paper and searched under it. He stepped back from the table and hit himself across the chest.

“Fool!” he said. “Idiot!” He spent ten seconds in selfcastigation, then he looked about for a weapon. The locking handle of the cabin was a twelve-inch steel bar with a heavy head. He pulled out the pin and worked it loose. He slipped it into the waistband of his trousers.

“I’m going below,” he told the helmsman curtly, and clambered down the companionway. Swiftly he moved through the ship, balancing easily to her roll and pitch.

When he reached the lowest deck he became more stealthy, creeping silently forward. Now he carried the steel bar in his right hand.

Every few paces he stopped to listen, but Kingfisher’s hull was groaning and popping as she worked in the swells.

He could hear no other sound. He crept up to the door of the control room and cautiously peered through the small armoured glass window. The control room was empty. He tried the handle, and found it locked.

Then he heard voices - from the open doorway of the conveyor room behind him. Quickly he crossed to it and flattened himself against the jamb.

Johnny’s voice came muffled and indistinct: “There’s another hatch in here. Get me a half-inch spanner from the tool cupboard.”

“What’s a half-inch spanner look like?”

“It’s a big one. The size is stamped on it.” Sergio glanced one-eyed around the door jamb. The cover was off the inspection hatch in the conveyor tunnel, and Tracey’s head was thrust into the opening.

It was clear that Johnny Lance was in there, and that he had found the secret compartment.

Tracey drew her head out of the hatch, and Sergio ducked back and looked down the passageway. The tool cupboard was bolted to the bulkhead under the stairs from the deck above. He turned and darted around the corner of the passageway. Tracey came out of the conveyor room, and went to the cupboard. She opened the doors on the glittering array of tools, each clipped securely to its rack.

While she stood before the cupboard, completely absorbed in her search for a half-inch spanner, Sergio came from around the corner and crept up silently behind her.

He lifted the steel bar over his shoulder and came up on his toes, poised to strike.

Tracey was muttering softly to herself, head bowed slightly, handling the spanners - and Sergio knew the blow would crush her skull.

He closed his mind to the thought, and aimed carefully at the base of her skull. He started the blow, and then checked it. For a second that seemed to last for a long time he remained frozen. He couldn’t do it.

With an exclamation of satisfaction Tracey found what she was searching for. As she turned away from the cupboard Sergio shrank back behind the angle of the bulkhead, and Tracey shuffled back into the conveyor room.

“I’ve got it, Johnny,” she shouted into the hatch.

“Bring it to me. Hurry, Tracey. Sergio will be getting suspicious,” he shouted back, and Tracey hitched up her voluminous trousers and wriggled into the hatch.

On hands and knees she crawled up beside him. It was cramped and hot in the narrow tunnel. He took the spanner from her.

“Hold the flashlight.” She took it from him, holding the beam on the panel while he unscrewed the retaining bolts and lifted off the cover.

Lying on his side he peered into the opening.

“There’s a container of sorts,” he grunted, and reached in.

For a minute he struggled with the clamps, then slowly he lifted out the stainless steel cup.

At that moment Kingfisher reared and plunged to a freak wave and the cup slipped from Johnny’s fingers, and from it spilled the diamonds. They cascaded over both of them, a glittering shower of stones of all sizes and colours. Some lodged in Tracey’s damp hair, the rest rolled and bounced and scattered about them, catching the light from the torch and throwing it back in splinters of sunshine.

“Yipes!” gasped Tracey and laughed at Johnny’s whoop of triumph.

Lying side by side they scrabbled and snatched at the treasure scattered around them.

“Look at this one,” exulted Tracey.

“And this.” They were crazy with excitement, hands filled with diamonds. They hugged each other and kissed ecstatically, laughing into each other’s mouths.

Johnny sobered first, “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”

“What about the diamonds?”

“Leave them. There’ll be plenty of time later.”

They crawled backwards down the tunnel, still laughing and exclaiming, and one after the other emerged into the conveyor room. While they straightened their Clothing, and regained their breath, Tracey asked, “What now?”

“First thing is to get young Sergio safely under lock and key, his crew also.” Johnny’s face hardened. “The bloody bastards,“he added angrily.

“Then?” Tracey asked.

“Then we’ll pull up the hose, and sail Kingfisher back into

Cartridge Bay. Then we’ll call up the police on the radio.

There’s going to be an accounting with the whole gang of the bastards - your darling brother included.” Johnny started for the door, asking as he crossed the deck: “Why did you close the door, Tracey?” i didn’t,” she replied as she hurried after him, and Johnny’s expression changed. He ran to the heavy steel door and threw his weight on it.

It did not move, and he swung round to face the door that led into the cyclone room.

It was closed also. He charged across the room and grabbed the handle, heaving at it with all his strength.

He stood back at last, and looked wildly about the long narrow cabin. There was no other opening, no hatch or porthole - nothing except the tiny square peephole in the centre of the steel door that led into the cyclone room beyond. The peephole was covered with three-inch armoured glass that was as strong as the steel that surrounded it. He looked through it.

The tall cyclone reached from floor to roof, dominating the room.

Beyond it the steel pipe that carried the gravel from the sea bed pierced the roof from the deck above, but the cyclone room was deserted.

Johnny turned slowly back to Tracey and put an arm around her shoulders.

“We’ve got problems,“he said.

After closing and locking both the doors that led into the conveyor room, Sergio climbed quickly back to his bridge. The helmsman looked at him curiously.

“How’s the lady?”

“Fine,” Sergio snapped at him. “She’s safe.”

And then with unnecessary violence, “Why you no mind your own business, hey? You think you Captain for this ship?” Startled, the helmsman quickly transferred his attention back to the storm which still raged lustily about them.

Sergio began to pace up and down the bridge, balancing easily and instinctively to her exaggerated motion. His smooth baby face was crumpled into a massive scowl, and he puffed on one of his cheroots.

With all his soul Sergio Caporetti was lamenting his involvement in this business.

He wished that he had never heard of Kingfisher. He would have traded his hopes of a life hereafter to be sitting on the seaftont at

Ostia, sipping grappa and watching the girls go by.

Impulsively he pulled open the storm doors at the angle of the bridge and went out on to the exposed wing. The wind buffeted him and set his soft hair dancing and flickering.

From inside his jacket he pulled the canvas bag.

“This is the trouble,” he muttered, looking at the bag in his hand. “Bloody little stones.” He threw back his arm like a baseball

Pitcher, set to hurl the bag out into that hissing green sea below him, but again he could not make the gesture. Swearing quietly to himself, he stuffed the stones back into his jacket, and went back into the wheelhouse.

“Call the radio operator,” he ordered, and the helmsman reached quickly for the voice tube.

The radio operator reached the bridge still owl-eyed with sleep and buttoning his clothing.

“Get on to Wild Goose,” Sergio told him.

“I won’t be able to raise her in this,” the man protested, glancing out at the storm.

“Call her.” Sergio stepped towards him threateningly.

“Keep calling until you get her.” Wild Goose staggered and wallowed through the entrance to Cartridge Bay, then way into the sanctuary of the channel.

Hugo relaxed perceptibly. It had been a long hard run back from

Thunderbolt and Suicide. Yet there was an uneasy feeling that still persisted. He hoped that the girl was able to handle Lance. He was a tough cookie that Lance, he wished that he had been able to go along with her and make sure of the business. Fifteen years was one hell of a long time - he would be almost fifty years old at the end of it.

Hugo followed the channel markers that appeared like milestones out of the dust clouds, until ahead he made out the loom of the jetty and the depot buildings.

There was a figure on the jetty, crouched beside the mountain of dieseline drums. With a prickle of alarm, Hugo strained his eyes in the bad visibility.

“Who the hell is it?” he puzzled aloud. The figure straightened and came forward to stand on the edge of the jetty. Bareheaded, dressed in rumpled dark business suit, the man carried a shotgun in one hand - and it was another few seconds before Hugo recognized him.

“Christ! It’s the boss!” Hugo felt alarm flare in his stomach and chest, it tightened his breathing.

Benedict van der Byl jumped down on to the deck of Wild Goose at the moment she touched the jetty.

“What’s happened?” Benedict demanded as he barged into the wheelhouse.

“I thought you were in hospital,” Hugo countered.

“Who told you that?”

“Your sister.”

“You’ve seen her? Where is she?”

“I took her out to Kingfisher. Like you said. She went out to deal with Lance.”

“Deal with Lance! She’s with him, you idiot, she’s not with us. She knows the whole deal. Everything!”

“She told me-” Hugo was appalled. But Benedict cut him short.

“The whole thing’s blown up. We’ve got to clear out.

Get your crew to load those drums of dieseline into the hold. How are your water tanks?”

“Full.”

“Food?”

“We are stocked up.”

“For how long?”

“Three weeks - at a push, four.”

“Thank God for that.” Benedict looked relieved. “This storm will blow another three days - we’ll have that much start. They’ll never find us in this. By the time it clears we’ll be well on our way.”

“Where to - Angola?”

“God, no! We have to get well clear. South America.”

“South America!”

“Yes - we can do it, carrying extra fuel.” Hugo was silent a moment, becoming accustomed to the idea.

“We can do it,” Benedict repeated.

“Yes.” Hugo nodded. “We can do it,” he agreed thoughtfully. For the first time he examined Benedict closely. He saw that he was in an emotional and physical mess, his bloodshot eyes were sunk into deep plum-coloured hollows, dark new heard covered his jowls, and there was a gaunt hunted look to him - like some fugitive animal.

He was filthy with dust, and there was a streak of something that could have been dried vomit down the front of his jacket.

“But what do we do when we get there?” For the first time since he had known Benedict he felt in control. This was the time to deal, to make bargains.

“We’ll get ashore on some deserted spot, and then we split up and disappear.”

“What about money?” Hugo spoke carefully. He glanced down at the shotgun. Benedict’s hands were fidgety and restless on the weapon.

“I’ve got money.” “How much?” Hugo asked.

“Enough.” Benedict blinked cautiously.

“For me also?” Hugo prodded him, and Benedict nodded.

“How much for me?“Hugo went on.

“Ten thousand.”

“Pounds?”

“pounds,” Benedict agreed.

“That’s not enough.” Hugo shook his head. “I’ll need more than that.”

“Twenty.” Benedict increased his bid, but he knew he was playing from weakness into strength. Ruby was lying mutilated in his study, the net was probably being spread for him already.

“Fifty,” said Hugo decisively.

“I haven’t that much.”

“Who are you kidding, Buster!” Hugo snorted. “You’ve been stacking it away for years.” Benedict let the barrels of the shotgun swing towards Hugo’s belly suggestively.

“Go ahead,” Hugo grinned at him, screwing up his pale albino eyes.

“That’ll leave you to paddle this canoe - you want to try it? You’d pile her up on the bar at the entrance that’s how far you’d get.”

Benedict swung the barrels aside.

“Fifty,” he agreed.

“Right!” Hugo spoke briskly. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

Wild Goose was clear of the land, and of the towering blinding dust clouds. The following seas came sweeping up under her stern urging her on her westward flight, while the high-pitched shriek of the wind in her rigging cried to her to hasten.

“Why don’t you get down below and grab some sleep?” Hugo said. He found Benedict’s restless haunting presence in the crowded wheelhouse disconcerting.

Benedict ignored the suggestion. “Switch on the radio,” he said.

“What for? You’ll get nothing on the set.”

“We are out of the dust, Benedict replied. “We might pick up a police message.” The image of Ruby was so clear in his mind. He wanted to know if they’d found her yet. He felt his gorge rising again. That head - oh God - that head! He crossed quickly to the radio set and switched it on.

“They won’t be on to us yet,” said Hugo, but Benedict was manipulating the dials - searching the tortured radio waves. The static wailed and gibbered and shrieked like a maniac.

“Turn it off,” snapped Hugo, and at that moment a voice cut in on them.

“ - Wild Goose,” said the voice from the loudspeaker quite clearly. Benedict crouched eagerly over the set, his hands busy on the dials, and Hugo came up beside him.

Come in, Wild Goose. This is Kingfisher. I repeat, come in Wild

Goose-” Benedict and Hugo looked at each other. “Don’t answer,” said

Hugo, but he made no move to intervene as Benedict lifted the microphone off its hook.

“Kingfisher, this is Wild Goose.”

“Stand by, Wild Goose. “The answer came back immediately. “Stand by for Captain Caporetti.”

“Wild Goose standing by.” Hugo caught Benedict’s shoulder and his voice was angrily uncertain.

“Leave it, don’t be a fool.” Benedict shrugged off the hand, and

Sergio’s voice boomed out of the speaker.

“This is Caporetti - who that?”

“No names,” Benedict cautioned him.

“Where are your guests?”

“They safe - battened down nicely.”

“Safe?

Are you certain? Both of them safe?”

“Si. I have them safe and sure.”

“Stand by.” Benedict crouched over the set, and his mind was racing. Johnny Lance was in his power. This was the last chance he would ever have. Plans began to form, gelling quickly in his mind.

“The diamonds. Caporetti has the diamonds. That big Blue is worth a million on its own,” said Hugo. “If Caporetti has taken care of the others - it would be worth the risk.”

“Yes.” Benedict turned to him, he had been puzzling how he could make Hugo turn back. He had forgotten the diamonds. “It would be worth it,“he agreed.

“Just a quick pass alongside Kingfisher - pick up Caporetti with the diamonds and we’d be on our way

“I have to go aboard.” Benedict qualified the suggestion.

“Why?” Hugo asked.

“Wipe out the reel on the computer that carries the programme -

it’s got the Jap’s name on it. They could trace him. I paid him on my

Swiss bank. They’ll find the account.” Hugo hesitated. “No killing -

or anything like that.

We’ve got enough trouble without that.”

“You think I’m crazy?” Benedict demanded.

“Okay, then,” Hugo agreed.

“Kingfisher,” Benedict spoke into the microphone. “We are coming to you. I’ll be coming on board to finalize matters.”

“Fine.” Through the static they could hear the relief in Sergio’s voice. “I’ll be standing by.” It took nearly two hours for Wild Goose to slug her way back to where Kingfisher lay beneath the ghostly white shapes of

Thunderbolt and Suicide, and it was after midday before Hugo began manoeuvring Wild Goose into the big ship’s lee.

“Don’t waste time,” Hugo cautioned Benedict. “The sooner we get on our way - the better for all of us.”

“I’ll be about half an hour,” Benedict answered. “You lay off and wait for us.”

“Are you taking that bloody shotgun?” Benedict nodded.

“What for?” But Benedict did not reply, he looked up at the sky.

The sun was merely a luminous patch of silver light through the ceiling of sea-fret and wind-driven mist, and still the storm hunted hungrily across the sea.

“It will slow you up on the ladder.” Hugo harped on the shotgun.

He wanted very much to part Benedict from it, he wanted it over the side - for its presence aboard would prejudice the plans that Hugo had been forming during the last few hours - plans that took into account the ready market for diamonds in South America, and the undesirability of sharing the proceeds with two partners.

“I’ll take it.” Benedict tightened his grip on the stock of the weapon. Without it he would feel naked and vulnerable - and it was part of his own private plans for the future.

Benedict’s brain had also been busy during the last two hours.

“Suit yourself.” Hugo resigned himself to Benedict’s refusal; there would be an Opportunity later, during the long passage across the

Southern Atlantic. “You better get up for and.” This time Hugo’s approach was neatly executed; in a lull between the colossal swells he touched Wild Goose’s bows to the steel side of the factory ship.

Benedict stepped across the gap and was up the landing ladder and standing at Kingfisher’s rail before the next wave came marching down on them.

He waved Hugo off, then hanging on to the rail, made his way aft to Kingfisher’s bridge works.

“Where is Lance?” he demanded of Sergio the moment he stepped on to the bridge, but Sergio glanced significantly at the inquisitively listening helmsman and led Benedict through into his cabin.

“Where is Lance?” Benedict repeated the moment the door was locked.

“He and your sister they are in the conveyor room.” The conveyor room?” Benedict was incredulous.

“Si. They find out about Kammy’s machine. They open the hatch and go inside. I close both doors. Lock them good.” They are in there now?” Benedict asked to gain time to reconstruct his plans.

“Si. Still there.”

“All right.” Benedict reached his decision.

“Now listen, Caporetti, this is what we are going to do. The whole thing has blown up on us. We are going to wipe out as much of the evidence against us as possible, then we are clearing out. We are going to run for South America in Wild Goose.

You have got the diamonds - haven’t you?”

“Si.” Sergio patted the breast of his jacket.

“Give them to me.” Benedict held out his hand, and Sergio grinned.

“I tink I look after them. They keep my heart warm.” A frown of annoyance narrowed Benedict’s eyes, but he let the moment pass.

“All right.” His tone was still friendly. “Now, what you have to do is get down to the control room and wipe out Kaminikoto’s programme.

Get his name off that reel. He showed you how to do that?”

“Si.”

Sergio nodded.

“How long will it take?”

“Half an hour, not longer,“Sergio answered, and Benedict checked his wrist watch, sure that this would give him time enough to do what he had to do.

“Good! Get cracking.”

“Boss.” Sergio hesitated at the cabin door.

“What about my boys, my crew? They good boys, no trouble for them?”

They’re clean,” Benedict pointed out irritably. “I’ll get them together now, and explain that you have to go ashore.

They can keep Kingfisher hove to waiting for you to come back.

After the storm blows out they are bound to radio base and find out we have disappeared. They’ll be all right.” Sergio nodded his satisfaction.

“I’ll call them all to the bridge now. You talk to them.”

“The five crew members were gathered on Kingfisher’s bridge, and Sergio had disappeared down below.

“Any of you speak English?” Benedict demanded, and two of them affirmed that they did.

“Right,” Benedict addressed them. “You will have been wondering about all the coming and going in this weather.

I want you all to be ready to leave the ship. I want you to get all your valuables - now!” Quickly they translated to the others, who looked apprehensively at Benedict. He was a strange wild-eyed figu with the shotgun tucked under his arm. A “Right - let’s go.” And there was no dissent from any of them as they trooped to the companionway.

Benedict followed them along the passageway towards the crew quarters, and glanced quickly at his wrist watch.

Seven minutes had elapsed. He looked at the men ahead of him.

The backs of their heads formed a solid target. He had shot guineafowl like that in Namaqualand when they were on the ground running away from him in a thick file, down on one knee and aim for the thicket of heads, knocking down half the flock with both barrels.

He knew he could take all five of these men with two shots. just let them get a little further ahead so the shot could spread. But he remembered Ruby and his stomach heaved. The other way was just as sure.

“Stop!” he commanded as the five men came level with the paint store. They obeyed and turned back to face him.

Now he held the shotgun so that there was no mistaking its menace.

They stared at the gun fearfully.

“Open that door.” He pointed at the paint store. Nobody moved.

“You.” Benedict picked on one of those who spoke English. Like a man in a trance he went to the steel door and spun the locking handle.

He pulled the door open.

“In!” Eloquently Benedict gestured with the shotgun.

Reluctantly the five of them filed into the small windowless cubicle, and Benedict slammed the door on them. He spun the lock, throwing all his weight on the handle to set it.

Now he had a clear field, and his wrist watch gave him another twenty minutes. He hurried for-and, he wanted to keep well clear of the control room and Sergio Capotetti.

Using the forward companionway he dropped down to the working deck, fumbling out his duplicate set of keys.

WARNING. EXPLOSIVES. NO UNAUTHORIZED ENTRY.

He unlocked the door, and laying the shotgun flat on the deck he lifted a twenty-five pound drum of plastique down from its rack.

In his haste he tore a fingernail on the lid of the drum, but hardly felt the pain. He uncoiled a six-foot length of the soft dark toffee-coloured material and slung it around his neck. Next he selected a cardboard box of pencil time fuses. He read the label.

“Fourteen-minute delay. That’s about right.” Blood from his torn nail left brown blotches on the cardboard as he took four of the pencils from the box, picked up the shotgun and hurried aft. The jet engine whine of the cyclone mounted deafeningly as he came closer to it.

Tracey was curled on the bare steel plating of the deck with

Johnny’s jacket folded under her head.

She was in a fatigue-drugged sleep, so deep as to be almost deathlike.

Every few minutes Johnny interrupted his restless patrol of the conveyor room to stand over her and look down on her unconscious form.

His worried expression softened a little each time he studied her pale lovely face. Once he stooped over her and tenderly lifted a strand of dark hair from her cheek, before resuming his pacing up and down the narrow cabin.

Each time he reached the door of the conveyor room he glanced through the tiny window. The glass had resisted his attempts to smash it with one of the spanners. He had wanted to open the window to call for help, but his efforts had not marked the thick armoured glass.

There was no way out of the cabin. Johnny had tried every possible outlet. The apertures for the conveyor system were guarded at one end by the furnace, and at the other by moving machinery which would ferociously chew to tatters anyone who became entangled in it.

They were caged securely, and Johnny paced his cage.

Again he stopped before the peephole, but this time he flung himself at the door with clenched fists. The steel plate smeared the skin from his knuckles as he hammered on it and the pain sobered him.

He pressed his face to the glass and through it watched Benedict van der Byl enter the conveyor room and, without glancing at the window, cross to the cyclone.

Benedict laid aside the shotgun he carried and for a moment stood looking up at the thick steel pipe that carried the gravel down from the deck pumps above. As he lifted the thick rope of plastique from around his neck, Johnny knew exactly what he was going to do.

He watched in fascination as Benedict mounted the steel ladder up the side of the cyclone. Hanging with one hand to the ladder, Benedict reached out with the other and clumsily tied the rope of plastique around the gravel pipe. It hung there like a necklace about the throat of some obscene prehistoric monster.

“You bastard! You murdering bloody swine!” Johnny shouted, and again he beat on the steel door with his fists.

But the thickness of the door and the whine of the cyclone drowned his voice. Benedict showed no sign of hearing him - but Tracey sat up and looked about her blearily. Then she came to her feet and staggering to the roll and pitch of the ship she went to Johnny and pressed her face to the window beside her.

Benedict was sticking the time pencils into the soft dark explosive. He used all four fuses, taking no chances on a misfire.

“What’s he doing?” Tracey asked after she had recovered from the surprise of recognizing her brother.

“He’s going to cut the pipe, and let Kingfisher pump herself full of gravel.”

“Sink her?“Tracey’s voice was sharp with alarm.

“She’ll pump water -and gravel into herself at pressures that will tear away all the inner bulkheads.”

“This one?” Tracey patted the steel plate.

“It’ll pop like a paper bag. God, you have no idea of the power in those pumps.”

“No.” Tracey shook her head. “He’s my brother. He won’t do it, Johnny. He couldn’t murder us.”

“By the time he’s finished - ” Johnny contradicted her grimly, Kingfisher will be lying in 200 feet of water. Her hull will be packed so tightly with gravel that it will be like a block of cement. We, and everything in her, including his little machine, will be so flattened as to be unrecognizable.

It would cost millions to salvage Kingfisher - and no one will care that much.”

“No, not Benedict.” Tracey was almost pleading. “He’s not that bad.” Johnny her brusquely. “He could get away with it.

It’s a good try - his best chance. Encase all the evidence against him in concrete, and bury it deep.”

“No, Benedict.” Tracey was watching her brother as he climbed down the cyclone ladder and picked up the shotgun. “Please, Benedict, don’t do it.” Almost as if he had heard her, Benedict turned suddenly and saw the two faces at the window. The shock of guilt held him rigid for a moment as he stared at them -

Tracey’s pale lips forming words he could not hear, Johnny’s eyes burning with accusation.

Benedict dropped his eyes, he made a gesture that was indecisive, almost pathetic. He looked up at the fused and charged rope of explosive - and then he grinned. A sardonic twitching of the lips, and he stumbled out of the cyclone room and was gone.

“He’ll come back” whispered Tracey. “He won’t let it happen.” “I wouldn’t bet on that - if I were you,” said Johnny.

Benedict reached Kingfisher’s rail and clung to it. He looked out to where Wild Goose bobbed and hung on the swells. He saw Hugo’s face as a white blob behind the wheelhouse window, but as the little trawler began closing in for the pick-up Benedict waved it away. He glanced at his watch again, then looked back anxiously at the bridge.

The long minutes dragged by. Where the hell was the Italian?

Benedict could not leave him - not while he still had that diamond; not while he could stop the dredge pumps and release the prisoners locked below.

Again Benedict checked his watch, twelve minutes since he had set the time pencils. He must go back and find Caporetti. He started back along the rail, and at that moment Sergio appeared on the wing of the bridge. He shouted a question at Benedict that was lost in the wind.

“Come on!” Frantically Benedict beckoned to him. “Come on!

Hurry!” With another last look about the bridge, Sergio ran to the ladder and climbed down to deck level.

“Where my boys?” he shouted at Benedict. “Why nobody at the con?

What you do with them?”

“They are all right,” Benedict assured him. He had turned to the rail and was signalling Wild Goose to come alongside.

“Where they?” Sergio demanded. “Where my boys?”

“I sent them to-“

Benedict’s reply was cut off as Kingfisher’s deck jarred under their feet. The explosion was a dull concussion in her belly, and Sergio’s jaw hung open.

Benedict backed away from him along the rail.

“Filth!” Sergio’s jaw snapped closed, his whole body appeared to swell with anger.

“You kill them, dirty pig. You kill my boys. You kill Johnny -

the girl.”

“Keep away from me.” Benedict braced himself against the rail, leaving both hands free to use the gun.

Not even Sergio would advance into the deadly blank eyes of those muzzles. He paused uncertainly.

“I’ll blow your guts all over the deck,” Benedict warned him, and his forefinger was hooked around the trigger.

They stared at each other, and the wind fluttered their hair and tore at their clothing.

“Give me those diamonds,” Benedict commanded, and when Sergio stood unmoving, he went on urgently, “Don’t be a hero, Caporetti. I

can gun you down and take them anyway. Give them to me - and our deal is still on. You’ll come with us. I’ll get you out of here. I swear it.” Sergio’s expression of outrage faded. A moment longer he hesitated.

“Come on, Caporetti. We haven’t got much time.” It may have been his imagination, but to Benedict it seemed that Kingfisher’s action in the water had altered, she was sluggish to meet the swells and her roll was more pronounced.

“Okay,” said Sergio, and began unbuttoning his jacket.

“You win. I give you.” Benedict relaxed with relief, and Sergio thrust his hand into his jacket and stepped towards him. He grasped the canvas bag by its neck, and brought it out held like a cosh.

Sergio was close to him, too close for Benedict to swing the shotgun on to him. Sergio’s expression became savage, his intentions blazed in his dark eyes as he lifted the canvas bag and poised himself to deliver a blow at Benedict’s head, but he had not reckoned with the extraordinary reflexes of the natural athlete he was facing.

As Sergio launched the blow, Benedict rolled his shoulders and head away from it, lifting the butt of the shotgun as a guard.

Sergio’s wrist struck the seasoned walnut, and he grunted with the pain. His fingers opened nervelessly and the canvas bag flew from his grip, glanced off Benedict’s temple and flew on down the deck, sliding to stop against one of the compressed air tanks thirty feet away.

Benedict danced back, dropping the barrels of the shotgun until

Sergio looked into the muzzles.

“Hold it, you bastard, Benedict snarled at him. “You’ve made your choice. Now let’s see what your guts look like.” Sergio was hugging his injured wrist to his belly, crouching over it. Benedict was backing away to where the bag lay against the tank. His face was flushed and hectic with anger, but he kept darting side glances at the canvas bag.

At that moment Kingfisher took another wave over her bows, and the water came swooshin down the deck, picking up the bag and washing it towards the scuppers.

“Look out!” Sergio shouted. “The bag! It’s going.” Benedict lunged for it, sprawling full length. With his free hand he grabbed the sodden canvas as it was disappearing over the side. But he was thirty feet away from Sergio, and he still held the shotgun in his other fist. Sergio could not hope to reach him without getting both charges of buckshot in his belly.

Instead Sergio spun round and sprinted back along the deck towards the bridge.

Benedict was on his knees frantically stuffing the bag of diamonds into the side pocket of his jacket and shouting after Sergio.

“Stop! Stop or I’ll shoot!”

“ Sergio did not look back nor check his run, and Benedict had the bag in his pocket and now both hands were free.

He lifted the shotgun, and tried to balance himself against

Kingfisher’s wallowing motion as he aimed.

At the shot, Sergio stumbled slightly but kept on running. He reached the ladder and went up it.

Again Benedict aimed, and the shotgun clapped dully in the wind.

This time a spasm of pain shuddered through Sergio’s big body, and he froze on the ladder.

Benedict fumbled in his pocket for fresh shells, but before he could reload Sergio had begun climbing again. Benedict broke the gun and thrust the shells into the breech. He snapped the gun closed and looked up just as Sergio disappeared through the storm doors - and the two shots that Benedict loosed after him merely pockmarked the paintwork and starred the glass of the wheelhouse.

The stupid bastard.” Hugo watched from the wheelhouse of Wild

Goose. “He’s gone berserk.” Hugo had heard the explosion and seen the shooting.

“Fifteen years is enough - but not the rope as well.” He swung the wheel and Wild Goose sheered in towards Kingfisher’s side. Peering through the spray and salt, smattered windows, he saw Benedict drag himself to his feet and start after Sergio along the deck.

Hugo snatched the electric loudhailer from its bracket and pulled open the side window of the wheelhouse, holding the hailer to his lips.

“Hey! You stupid bastard, have you gone mad? What the hell you doing?” Benedict glanced down at the trawler, then ignored it to give all his attention to reloading the gun. He kept going back along the deck, following Sergio to finish him off.

“You’ll get us all strung up, you fool,” Hugo called through the loudhailer. “Leave him. Let’s get out of here.” Benedict kept scrambling and slipping towards Kingfisher’s bridge.

“I’m leaving - now! Do you hear me? You can stew in your own pot. I’m getting out.” Benedict checked and looked down at the trawler. He shouted and pointed at the bridge. Hugo caught one word:

“Diamonds.”

“All right, friend! Do what you like - I’ll see you around,” Hugo hailed, and hit the trawler’s throttle wide open. The roar of the diesels and the churning of her propeller convinced

Benedict.

“Hugo! Wait! Wait for me, I’m coming.” He scampered back to the ladder and started down it.

Hugo throttled back and brought Wild Goose in neatly under the ladder.

Jump!” he shouted through the hailer, and obediently Benedict jumped to hit the foredeck heavily. The shotgun flew from his hands to fall into the water alongside. Benedict cast one longing glance after the gun, then crawled to his feet and limped back to the wheelhouse.

Already Wild Goose was plunging away into the wind, but as

Benedict entered the wheelhouse Hugo turned on him with his pink albino face set in a snarl of rage.

“What the hell have you done, you bastard? You lied to me. What was that explosion?”

“Explosion - I don’t know. What explosion?” Hugo hit him a stinging open-handed blow across the cheek.

“We agreed no killing - and you put us all on the spot.” Hugo’s attention was focused completely on Benedict who had backed into the furthest corner of the wheelhouse. He massaged the dark red finger marks that stained his cheek.

“You set scuttling charges in Kingfisher - didn’t you, you dirty son of a bitch. God, I hate to think what you’ve done with Lance and the girl.” Outside the storm was nearing its climax. A rain squall swept down on Wild Goose - a sure sign that the wind must soon drop.

Automatically Hugo switched on the rotating wipers to clear the rain from the screen, as he continued to harangue Benedict.

“I saw you trying to murder the Italian. Christ! What for?

He’s one of us! Am I next on Your list?”

“He had the diamonds,” mumbled Benedict. “I was trying to get them from him.” And Hugo’s expression changed; he turned away from the wheel and stared at

Benedict.

“You haven’t got the diamonds? Is that what you’re saying?” His tone was almost hurt.

“I tried - he wouldn’t-” And Hugo left the wheel and was across the wheelhouse like a white leopard. He grabbed the front of

Benedict’s coat, and screamed into his face.

“You left the diamonds! You stick my head in a noose and I get nothing out of it.” He was trembling with rage and his pale eyes bulged from their sockets.

Looking into those eyes Benedict realized his own danger. In the time it had taken him to leave Kingfisher’s deck and reach the wheelhouse of the trawler he had decided to let Hugo think that Sergio still had the diamonds. Squeamish as Hugo appeared to be about drowning Johnny and Tracey, despite his repeated demands for

“No killing’, Benedict knew intuitively that Hugo had no intention of splitting a million pounds” worth of diamonds with him.

Once Hugo was certain that Benedict had the stones on board, Benedict knew there was no chance that he would reach South America alive.

The crossing might take weeks, the crew of the trawler were in

Hugo’s pay and loyal only to him. Benedict must sleep, and they would take him in the night.

On the other hand, of course, Benedict had no intention of splitting a million pounds” worth of diamonds with Hugo Kramer. He let his voice whine as he cringed in Hugo’s grip.

“I tried. Sergio had them. He wouldn’t - that’s why I shot him.”

Hugo drew back his hand to slap Benedict again.

Benedict twisted slightly, and drove his knee into Hugo’s crutch, sending him staggering back across the wheelhouse, clutching himself between the legs and whimpering with the pain.

“Right, Kramer,” Benedict spoke softly. “That’s a little lesson for you. Behave yourself, and you’ll get your fifty grand on the other side of the Atlantic.” They stared at each other. Hugo Kramer weak and pale with agony, Benedict standing tall and arrogant again.

“Treat me gently, Kramer. I’m your meal-ticket. Remember it.”

Hugo gaped at him. The positions had reversed so swiftly.

He pulled himself upright and his voice was thick with agony, but humble.

“I’m sorry, Mr. van der Byl, I lost my temper. It’s been a hell of a-“

“Skipper! Ahead!” The warning was shouted by the coloured crewman, Hansie.

Hugo stumbled to the untended wheel, and peered out into t he storm.

Wild Goose was shooting down another slope of green water, and just ahead of her bows Hugo saw one of the huge yellow buoys that

Kingfisher had laid down and then abandoned. It was held captive in the trough of the swells by the anchor cable. The cable was drawn as tight as a rod of steel across the trawler’s bows, lifted just above the surface of the water; shivering drops of water flew from it under the tension of the buoy’s drag.

“Oh God!” Hugo spun the wheel and threw Wild Goose’s engine into reverse but she was racing down the swell, and her speed was unchecked as the cable scraped harshly along her keel.

Then came the harsh banging and clattering of the drive shaft as the cable fouled the propeller - followed by a crack as the shaft snapped. Wild Goose’s engine screamed into overrev as the load was lifted from it.

Hugo shut the throttle, and there was silence in the wheelhouse.

Wild Goose swung beam on to the seas which came boiling in over her deck. Without her propeller she was transformed from a husky little sea creature to a piece of driftwood at the mercy of each current and the whim of the wind.

Hugo’s head swung slowly until he was looking downwind to where the massive shapes of Thunderbolt and Suicide just showed through the rain squall.

Cover your ears - tight!” Johnny Lance pressed Tracey against the bulkhead as far from the cyclone room as they could get. “There are twenty-five pounds of plastique in there - it will blow like a volcano.

He will have used short fuse, fourteen minutes.“We won’t have long to wait.” Johnny set Tracey’s shoulders squarely against the steel plating and crouched over her - trying to shield her with his own body.

They stared into each other’s eyes, teeth clenched, the heels of their palms jammed hard over their ears and they cowered away from the blast that must come.

The minutes passed, the longest minutes of Tracey’s life.

She could not have borne them without screaming hysteria except for that big hard body covering her. - even with it she felt her fear mounting steadily during the molasses drip of time.

Suddenly the air lunged at her, driving the breath from her lungs.

Johnny was thrown heavily against her. The blast sucked at her eardrums, and burst in her head so that bright lights flashed across her vision and she felt the steel plates heave under her shoulders.

Then her head cleared, and although her eardrums buzzed and sang, she found with a leaping relief that she was still alive.

She reached out for Johnny, but he was gone. In panic she groped, then opened her eyes. He was lurching down the long conveyor room, and when he reached the locked door at the far end he pressed his face to the peephole.

The fumes of the explosion still filled the cyclone room, a swirling bluish fog, but through them Johnny could make out the shambles that was the aftermath.

The huge cyclone had been torn from its mountings, and now sagged against the far bulkhead - crushed. It was worth only a single glance before Johnny froze into rigidity at the true horror.

The gravel pipe had been severed cleanly just below its juncture with the upper deck. It protruded for six feet, but now the force of the jet through it was flicking and whipping it about as though it were not steel but a rubber garden hose.

The jet was a solid eighteen-inch column, a pillar of brown mud and yellow gravel and sea water that beat against the steel plates of the hull with a hollow drumming roar.

In the few seconds since the explosion the cyclone room was already half-filled with a slimy shifting porridge that rushed from wall to wall with the movement of the ship. It was like some monstrous jelly fish which each second gathered weight and strength.

Tracey reached Johnny’s side and he placed his arm around her shoulders. She looked through the armoured glass and he felt her body stiffen.

At that moment the yellow monster spread over the window, obscuring it completely. Johnny felt the first straining of the steel plates under his hands. They fluttered and bulged, then began to protest aloud at the intolerable pressure. A seam started, and a fine jet of filthy water hissed from the gap and soaked icily through

Johnny’s jersey.

“Get back.“Johnny dragged Tracey away from the squeaking, groaning bulkhead. Back along the narrow conveyor room they stumbled, moving with difficulty for the deck beneath their feet was slanting as Kingfisher began to lean under the increasing weight in her belly.

Still holding Tracey, he reached the locked door and resisted the futile desire to attack it with his bare hands.

Instead he forced his brain to work, tried to anticipate the sequence of events that would lead to the final destruction of

Kingfisher - and all those aboard her.

Benedict had left the other entrance to the cyclone room wide open. Already that viscous mass of mud and water must be spreading rapidly through the lower levels of the hull, following always the avenue of least resistance finding the weak spots and bursting through them.

If the walls of the conveyor room held against the pressure, the rest of the hull would be filled and they would be enfolded in the tentacles of that great yellow monster a small bubble of air trapped within it and taken down with it when it returned to the depths from which it had come.

Would the bulkheads of the conveyor room hold? The answer came almost immediately in the squeal of metal against metal, and the crackle of springing rivets.

The monster had found the weak spot, the aperture through the drying furnace into the conveyor, ripping away the fragile baffles, bursting through the furnace in a cloud of Steam, it gushed into the conveyor room bringing with it the sewage stench of deep-sea mud.

Kingfisher made another sluggish roll, so different from her usual spry action, and the mud came racing down the tunnel in a solid knee-high wall.

It slammed both of them back against the steel door with a shocking strength, and the feel of it was cold and loathsome as something long dead and putrefied.

Kingfisher rolled back and the mud slithered away, bunched itself against the far bulkhead then charged at them again.

Waist-deep it struck them, and tried to suck them back with the next roll.

Tracey was screaming now, nerves and muscles reaching their breaking-point. She was clinging to Johnny, coated to the waist in stinking ooze, her eyes and mouth wide open in terror as she watched the mud building up for its next assault.

Johnny groped for some hold to anchor them. They must keep on their feet to survive that next rush of mud. He found the locking handle of the door and braced himself against it, holding Tracey with all his strength.

The mud came again, silently, murderously. It burst over their heads and punched them with stunning force against the plating.

Then it sucked back once more, and left them down on their knees, anchored only by Johnny’s grip on the locking handle.

Tracey was vomiting the foul mud and it filled her ears and eyes and nostrils, clogging them so that it bubbled at her breathing.

Johnny could feel her weakening in his arms, her struggles becoming more feeble as she tried to regain her feet.

His own strength was going. It needed his last reserve to drag them both upright.

The locking handle turned in his fingers, spinning open.

The steel door against which he was braced fell away, so that he staggered backwards without support but still clutching Tracey.

There was just a moment to recognize the big, reassuring bulk of

Sergio Caporetti beside him and feel an arm like the trunk of a pine tree steady him before the rush of mud down the conveyor room hit them and knocked all three of them down, sending them swirling and rolling end over end before its strength dissipated in the new space beyond the conveyor room door.

Johnny pulled himself up the bulkhead. He had lost Tracey. Dazed but desperate he looked for her, mumbling her name.

He found her swilling aimlessly in the waist-deep mud, floating on her face. He took a handful of muddy hair and lifted her face out, but the mud had hold of his legs, pulling him off balance as it surged back and forth.

“Sergio. Helpp he croaked. “For God’s sake, Sergio.” And Sergio was there, lifting her like a child in his arms and wading to the ladder that led to the deck above. The mud knocked Johnny down again, and when he surfaced Sergio was climbing steadily up the ladder.

Despite the mud and water that blurred Johnny’s eyesight, he could see that Sergio’s wide back, from shoulders to hips, was speckled with dozens of punctures as though he had been stabbed repeatedly with a knitting needle. From each tiny wound oozed droplets of blood that spread like brown ink on the blotting-paper of his sodden jacket.

At the head of the companionway Sergio turned, still holding

Tracey in his arms; he stood like a C colossus looking down at Johnny wallowing and slipping in the mud below.

“Hey, Lance - go switch off your bloody machine. She drown my ship. I sail her myself now - the right way. No bloody fancy machine.” Johnny steadied himself against the bulkhead and called up at him: “Sergio, what happened to Benedict van der Byl, where is he?”

“I think he go with Wild Goose - but first he shoot the hell out of me, not half. Fix your machine, no time for talk.” And he was gone, still carrying Tracey.

Another rush of mud carried Johnny down the flooded passage and threw him against the door to the control room.

Already his body seemed to be one aching bruise, and still the battering continued as he tried to unlock and open the control room door.

At last, using the suck of the mud to help him, he yanked it open and went in with a burst of yellow slime following him and flooding the compartment shoulder deep.

Clinging to the console of the computer he reached up and punched the master control buttons.

“Dredge Stop.”

“Dredge engines Stop.”

“Main engines manual.”

“Navigation system manual.”

“All programmes abort.” Instantly the roar from the severed dredge pipe, which had echoed through the ship during all their strivings, dwindled as though some vast waterfall had dried.

Then there was silence. Though only comparative silence, for the hull still groaned and squeaked at the heart-breaking burden it now carried and the mud slopped and thudded against the plating.

Weak and sick, Johnny clung to the console. He was shivering with cold, and every muscle in his body felt bruised and strained.

Suddenly the ship changed her motion, heaving under his feet like a harpooned whale as she swung broadside to the storm. Johnny roused himself with alarm.

The journey back through the flooded passages to the companionway was an agony of mind and body - for Kingfisher was now behaving in a strange and unnatural way.

The scene that awaited Johnny as he dragged himself on to the bridge chilled his soul as the icy mud had chilled his body.

Thunderbolt and Suicide lay less than a furlong off Kingfisher’s starboard quarters Both islands were wreathed in sheets of spray that fumed from the surf that was breaking like cannon-fire on the cliffs.

The maniacal flute of the wind joined with the drum of the surf to produce a symphony fit for the halls of Hell, but above this devil’s music Sergio Caporetti bellowed, “We got no power on port main engine.”

Johnny turned to him. Sergio was hunched over the wheel, and Tracey lay on the deck at his feet like a discarded doll.

“The water, she kill port main.” Sergio was pumping the engine telegraph. Then abandoning the effort, he looked over the side.

The reeking white cliffs were closer now, much closer as though you could reach out a hand to them. The ship was drifting down rapidly on the wind.

Sergio spun the wheel to full port lock, trying to bring

Kingfisher’s head round to meet the sea and the wind. She was rolling as no ship was ever meant to roll, hanging over at the limit of each swing, so that the wheelhouse windows seemed but a few feet from the crests of the green waves.

She hung like that as though she meant never to come upright again. Then sluggishly, reluctantly, she swung back, speeding up as she reached the perpendicular and the great mass of mud and water in her hull shifted and slammed her over on her other side, pinning her like that for eternal seconds before she could struggle upright again for the cycle to be repeated.

Sergio held the wheel at full lock, but still Kinesher wallowed down towards the cliffs of Thunderbolt and Suicide. The wind had her the way a dog carries a bone in its teeth. Under half power and with her decks awash Kingfisher could not break that grip.

Johnny was a helpless spectator, held awe-bound so he could not break away even to succour Tracey who was still lying on the deck. He saw everything with a supernatural clarity - from the dribbling little shot holes in Sergio’s back, to the ponderous irresistible rush of the white water up the cliffs that loomed so close alongside.

“She no answer helm. She too sick.” Sergio spoke now in conversational tones which carried with surprising clarity through the uproar of the elements. “All right then. We go the other way. We take the gap.” For a moment Johnny did not understand, then he saw it.

Kingfisher’s bows were coming up to the narrow opening between the two islands.

A passage less than a hundred yards wide at its narrowest point, where the vicious cross-currents met head-on and leapt fifty feet into the air as they collided. Here the surface was obscured by a thick froth of spindrift that heaved and humped up as though the ocean were fighting for breath under the thick cream-coloured blanket.

“No.” Johnny shook his head, staring at that hideous passage. “We won’t make it, Sergio. We won’t do it.” But already Sergio was spinning the wheel from lock to lock, and unbelievably Kingfisher was responding. Helped now by the wind she came around slowly, seeming to brush her bows across the white cliff of Thunderbolt, and she steadied her swing and aimed at the gap. It was then Johnny saw it for the first time.

“Christ, there’s a boat dead ahead!” The steep swells had hidden it up to that moment, but now she bobbed up on a crest. It was a tiny trawler, flying a dirty scrap of canvas as a staysail at her stubby mast, and struggling piteously in the granite jaws of Thunderbolt and

Suicide.

“Wild Goose!” roared Sergio, and he reached for the handle of the foghorn that hung above his head.

“Now we have some fun.” And he yanked the handle.

The croaking bellow of the foghorn echoed off the cliffs that were closing on either side of them.

“Kill my boys - hey? Shoot me - hey? Trick me - hey?

Now I trick you - but good!” Sergio punctuated his triumphant yells with blasts on the foghorn.

“Christ, no! You can’t do it!” Johnny caught urgently at the big

Italian’s shoulder, but Sergio struck his hand away and steered directly for the trawler as it lay full in the narrow passage.

“I give him plenty warning.” Sergio sent another blast echoing off the cliffs. “He no give me warning when he shoot me - the bastard.”

There was a group of men on the trawler’s foredeck.

Johnny could see that they were manhandling an inflatable escape raft, a thick mattress of black rubber, towards the nearest side of the trawler. But now they were frozen by the bellow of Kingfisher’s foghorn. They stood looking up at the tall cliff of steel that bore down on them. Their faces were pale blobs in the gloom.

“Sergio. It’s murder. Turn away, damn you, you can miss them.

Turn away!” Again Johnny lunged across the wheelhouse and grabbed at the wheel.

Sergio swung a backhanded blow that cracked against Johnny’s temple and sent him reeling back half-stunned against the storm doors.

“Who Captain for this bloody ship!” There was blood on Sergio’s lips, the shout had torn something inside him.

Kingfisher’s bows were lifting and swinging down like an executioner’s axe over the trawler. They were close enough now for

Johnny to recognize the men on the trawler’s deck but only one of them held his full attention.

Benedict van der Byl cowered against the trawler’s rail, gripping it with both hands. His hair fluttered, soft and dark, in the wind.

His eyes were big dark holes like those of a skull in the bone-white face, and his lips a pink circle of terror.

Then suddenly the trawler disappeared under Kingfisher’s massive bows, and immediately after that came the splintering crunching sound of her timbers shattering. Kingfisher bore on down the passage between the cliffs without a check in her speed.

Johnny fumbled with the catch of the storm doors, and the wind tore it open. He staggered out on to the exposed wing of the bridge and reached the rail.

He stood there with the storm clawing at his clothing and looked down at the wreckage that dragged slowly along Kingfisher’s hull, and then was left behind.

There were human heads bobbing among the wreckage, and the wash from Kingfisher’s propeller pushed them towards the cliffs of Suicide.

A wave picked up one of the men and carried him swiftly on to the cliff, sweeping him high and then swirling back to leave the body stranded on that smooth white slope of granite.

The man was still alive, Johnny saw him clawing at the smooth rock with his bare fingers, trying to drag himself above the reach of the sea.

It was Hugo Kramer; even through the fog of spray there was no mistaking that head of pale hair and the lithe twisted body.

The next wave reached up and dragged him back over the rock, tearing the nails from his hooked fingers as he tried to find a hold.

He was swirled and flung about in the turbulence below the cliff before another wave lifted him and hurled him on to the granite. One of his legs was broken at the knee by the force of the impact and the lower part of the leg spun loosely like the blade of a windmill as the water tugged at it.

Once again Hugo was left stranded but now he made no movement.

His arms were flung wide, and his leg stuck out at a grossly unnatural angle from the knee.

Then from among these mighty waves there rose up a mass of green water which dwarfed all the others.

It reared up with slow majesty and hung poised over the granite cliff before it landed on Hugo’s broken body with a boom that seemed to shake the very rock.