The Eye of the Tiger

I edged in towards the reef, and eased open the throttles a fraction. Dancer’s engine beat changed, but not enough to alert Daly. He lounged against the rail, bored and unshaven and probably missing his breakfast. I could distinctly hear the boom of the surf on coral now, and from below, the sounds of revelry became continuous. Daly noticed at last, frowned and told the other guard to go below and investigate. The guard, also bored, disappeared below with alacrity and never returned.

I glanced astern. My increase in speed was slowly opening the gap between Dancer and the crash boat, and steadily we edged in closer to the reef. ” I was looking ahead anxiously, trying to pick up the marks and bearings that Chubby had described to me. Gently I touched the throttles, opening them another notch. The crash boat fell a little farther astern.

Suddenly I saw the entrance to Gunfire Break a thousand yards ahead. Two pinnacles of old weathered coral marked it, and I could see the colour difference of clear sea water pouring through the gap in the coral barrier.

Below there was another screech of wild laughter, and one of the guards reeled drunkenly into the cockpit. He reached the rail only just in time and vomited copiously into the wake. Then his legs gave way and he collapsed on to the deck and lay in an abandoned huddle.

Daly let out an angry exclamation and raced down the ladder. I took the opportunity to push the throttles open another two notches.

I stared ahead, gathering myself for the effort. I must try and open the gap between Dancer and her escort a little more, every inch would help to confound her gunners.

I planned to come up level with the channel, and then commit Dancer to it under full power, risking the submerged coral fangs rather than test the aim of the gunners aboard the crash boat. It was half a mile of narrow, tortuous channel through the coral before we reached the open sea. For most of it, Dancer would be partially screened by coral outcrops, and the weaving of the channel would help to confuse the range of the threepounder. I was hoping also that the surf working through the gap would give Dancer plenty of up-and-down movement, so that she would heave and weave unpredictably like one of those little ducks in a shooting gallery.

One thing was certain: that intrepid mariner, Lieutenant Commander Suleiman Dada, would not risk pursuit through the channel, so I could give his gun layer a rapidly increasing range to contend with.

I ignored the alcoholic din from below, and I watched the mouth of the channel approach rapidly. I found myself hoping that the seamanship of the crash boat’s crew and commander was a faithful indication of their marksmanship.

Suddenly Peter Daly flew up the ladder to confront me. His face was pink with anger and his moustache tried to bristle its silky hairs. His mouth worked for a moment before he could speak.

“You gave them the liquor, Fletcher. Oh, you crafty bastard.” “Me?” I asked indigriantly. “I wouldn’t do a thing like that.”

“They’re drunk as pigs - all of them,” he shouted, then he turned and looked over the stern. The crash boat was a mile behind us, and the distance was increasing.

“You are up to something,” he shrilled at me, and groped in the side pocket of his silk jacket. At that moment we came level with the entrance to the channel.

I hit both throttles wide open, and Dancer bellowed and hurled herself forward.

Still groping in his pocket, Daly was thrown off balance. He staggered backwards, still shouting.

I spun the wheel to full right lock, and Dancer whirled like a ballet dancer. Daly changed the direction of his stagger, thrown wildly across the deck he came up hard ill against the side rail as Dancer leaned over steeply in her turn. At that moment Daly dragged a small nickelled-silver automatic from his side pocket. It looked like a .25, the type ladies carry in their handbags.

I left Dancer’s wheel for an instant. Stooping, I got my hand on Daly’s ankles and lifted sharply. “Leave us now, comrade,” I said as he went backwards over the rail, falling twelve feet, striking the lower deck rail a glancing blow and then splashing untidily into the water alongside.

I darted back to the wheel, catching Dancer’s head before she could pay off, and at the same time stamping three times on the deck.

As I lined Dancer up for the entrance I heard the shouts of conflict in the saloon below, and winced as a machinegun fired with a sound like ripping cloth. - Barrapp - and bullets exploded out through the deck behind me, leaving a jagged hole edged with white splinters. At least they were fired at the roof, and were unlikely to have hit either Angelo or Chubby.

Just before I entered the coral portals, I glanced back once more.

The crash boat still lumbered along a mile behind, while Daly’s head bobbed in the churning white wake. I wondered if they would reach him before the sharks did.

Then there was no more time for idle speculation. As Dancer dashed headlong into the channel I was appalled by the task I had set her.

I could have leant over and touched coral outcrops on each hand, and I could see the sinister shape of more coral lurking below the shallow turbulent waters ahead. The waters had expended most of their savagery on the long twisting run through the channel, but the farther in we went the wilder they would become, making Dancer’s response to the helm just that much more unpredictable.

The first bend in the channel showed ahead, and I put Dancer to it. She came around willingly, swishing her bottom, and with only a trifling yaw that pushed her outwards towards the menacing coral.

As I straightened her into the next stretch, Chubby came swarming up the ladder. He was grinning hugely. Only two things put him into that sort of mood - and one of them was a good punch up. He had skinned his right knuckle.

“All quiet below, Harry. Angelo’s looking after them.” He glanced around. “Where’s the policeman?”

“He went for a swim.” I did not take my attention from the channel. “Where is the crash boat? What are they doing?”

Chubby peered across at her. “No change. It doesn’t seem to have sunk in yet - hold on, though2 his voice changed, yes, there they go. They are manning the deck gun.$ We drove on swiftly down the channel, and I risked a quick glance backwards. At that instant I saw the long streak of white cordite smoke blow like a feather from the threepounder, and an instant later there was the sharp crack of shot passing high overhead, followed immediately by the flat report of the shot.

“Ready for it now, Harry. Left-hander coming up.”

We swept into the next turn, and the next round fell short, bursting in a shower of fragment and blue smoke on one of the coral heads fifty yards off our beam.

I coaxed Dancer smoothly into the turn, and as we went into A another shell fell in our wake, lifting a tall and graceful column, of white water high above the bridge. The following wind blew the spray over us.

We were halfway through now, and the waves that rushed to meet us were six feet high and angry with the restraint enforced upon them by the walls of coral.

The guncrew of the crash boat were making alarmingly erratic practice. A round burst five hundred yards astern, then the next went between Chubby and me, a stunning blaze of passing shot that sent me reeling in the backwash of disrupted air.

“Here’s the neck now,” Chubby called anxiously and my spirit quailed as I saw how the channel narrowed and how bridge-high buttresses of coral guarded it.

It seemed impossible that Dancer would pass through so narrow an opening.

“Here we go, Chubby, cross your fingers,” and, still under full throttle, I put Dancer at the neck. I could see him grasping the rail with both hands, and I expected the stainless steel to bend with the strength of his grip.

We were halfway through when we hit, with a jarring rending crash.

Dancer lurched and hesitated.

At the same moment another shell burst alongside. It showered the bridge with coral chips and humming steel fragments, but I hardly noticed it as I tried to ease Dancer through the gap.

I sheered off the wall, and the tearing scraping sound ran along our starboard side. For a moment we jammed solidly, then another big green wave raced down on us, lifting us free of the coral teeth and we were through the neck. Dancer lunged ahead.

“Go below, Chubby,” I shouted. “Check if we holed the hull.”

Blood was dripping from a fragment scratch on his chin, but he dived down the ladder.

With another stretch of open water ahead, I could glance back at the crash boat. She was almost obscured by an intervening block of coral, but she was still firing rapidly and wildly. She seemed to have heaved to at the entrance to the channel, probably to pick up Daly - but I knew she would not attempt to follow us now. It would take her four hours to work her way round to the main channel beyond the Old Men.

The last turn in the channel came up ahead, and again Dancer’s hull touched coral; the sound of it seemed to tear into my own soul. Then at last we burst out into the deep pool in the back of the main reef, a circular arena of deep water three hundred yards across, fenced in by coral walls and open only through the Gunfire Break to the wild surf of the Indian Ocean.

Chubby appeared at my shoulder once more. “Tight as a mouse’s ear, Harry. Not taking on a drop.” Silently I applauded my darling.

Now for the first time we were in full view of the gun crew half a mile away across the reef, and my turn into the pool presented Dancer to them broadside. As though they sensed that this was their last chance they poured shot after shot at us.

It fell about us in great leaping spouts, too close to allow me any latitude of decision. I swung Dancer again, aimed her at the narrow break, and let her race for the gap in Gunfire Reef.

I committed her and when we had passed the point of no return, I felt my belly cramp up with horror as I looked ahead through the gap to the open sea. It seemed as though the whole ocean was rearing up ahead of me, gathering itself to hurl down upon the frail little vessel like some rampaging monster.

“Chubby,” I called hollowly. “Will you look at that.”

“Harry,“he whispered, “this is a good time to pray.”

And Dancer ran out bravely to meet this Goliath of the sea.

It came up, humping monstrous shoulders as it charged, higher and higher still it rose, a green wall and I could hear it rustling - like wildfire in dry grass.

Another shot passed close overhead but I hardly noticed it, as Dancer -threw up her head and began to climb that mountainous wave.

It was turning pale green along the crest high above, beginning to curl, and Dancer went up as though she were on an elevator.

The deck canted steeply, and we clung helplessly to the rail.

“She’s going over backwards,” Chubby shouted, as she began to stand on her tail. “She’s turtling, man!”

“Go through her,” I called to Dancer. “Cut through the green!”

and as though she heard me she lunged with her sharp prow into the curl of the wave an instant before it could fall upon us and crush the hull.

It came aboard us in a roaring green horror, solid sheets of it swept Dancer from bows to stern, six feet deep, and she lurched as though to a mortal blow.

Then suddenly we burst out through the back of the wave, and below us was a gaping valley, a yawning abyss into which Dancer hurled herself, falling free, a gut-swooping drop down into the trough.

We hit with a sickening crash that seemed to stun her, and which threw Chubby and me to the deck. But as I dragged myself up again, Dancer shook herself free of the tons of water that had come aboard, and she ran on to meet the next wave.

It was smaller, and Dancer beat the curl and porpoised over her.

“That’s my darling,” I shouted to her and she picked up speed, taking the third wave like a steeplechaser. Somewhere close another threepound shell cracked the sky, but then we were out and running for the long horizon of the ocean and I never heard another shot.

The guard who had passed out in the cockpit from an excess of Scotch whisky must have been washed overboard by the giant wave, for we never saw him again. The other three we left on a small island thirty miles north of St. Mary’s where I knew there was water in a brackish well, and which would certainly be visited by fishermen from the mainland.

They had sobered by that time, and were all inflicted with nasty hangovers. They made three forlorn figures on the beach as we ran southwards into the dusk. It was dark when we crept into Grand Harbour. I picked up moorings, not tying up to the wharf at Admiralty. I did not want Dancer’s glaring injuries to become a subject of speculation around the island.

Chubby and Angelo went ashore in the dinghy - but I was too exhausted to make the effort, and dinnerless I collapsed across the double bunk in the master cabin and slept without moving until Judith woke me after nine in the morning. Angelo had sent her down with a dinner pail of fish cakes and bacon.

“Chubby and Angelo gone up to Missus Eddy’s to buy some stores they need to repair the boat,” she told me. `They’ll be down soon now.”

I wolfed the breakfast and went to shave and shower. When I returned she was still there, sitting on the edge of the bunk. She clearly had something to discuss.

She brushed away my clumsy efforts at dressing my wound, and had me sit while she worked on it.

“Mister Harry, you aren’t going to get my Angelo killed or jailed, are you?” she demanded. “If you go on like this, I’m going to make him come ashore.”

`That’s great, Judith.” I laughed at her concern. “Why don’t you send him across to Rawano for three years, while you sit here.”

“That’s not kind, Mister Harry.” “Life is not very kind, Judith,” I told her more gently. “Angelo and I are both doing the best we can. just to keep my boat afloat, I’ve got to take a few chances. Same with Angelo. He told me that he’s saved enough to buy you a nice little house up near the church. He got the money by running with me.”

She was silent while she finished the dressing, and when she would have turned to go I took her hand and drew her back. She would not look at me, until I took her chin and lifted her face. She was a lovely child, with great smoky eyes and a smoothly silken skin.

“Don’t fuss yourself, Judith. Angelo is like a kid brother to me.

I’ll look after him.”

She studied my face a long moment. “You really mean that, don’t you?” she asked.

“I really do.” “I believe you,” she said at last, and she smiled. Her teeth were very white against the golden amber skin. “I trust you.” Women are always saying that to me. “I trust you.” So much for feminine intuition.

“You name one of your kids for me, hear?”

The first one, Mister Harry.” Her smile blazed and her dark eyes flashed. That’s a promise.”

They do say that when you fall from a horse you should immediately ride him again - so as not to lose your nerve, Mister Harry.” Fred Coker sat at his desk in the, travel agency, behind him a poster of a beefeater and Big Ben - “England Swings’, it said. We had just discussed at great length our mutual concern at Inspector Peter Daly’s perfidious conduct, though I suspected that Fred Coker’s concern was considerably less than -mine. He had collected his commission in advance and nobody had put his head in a noose, nor had they almost wrecked his boat. We were now discussing the subject of whether or not our business arrangement should continue.

“They also say, Mr. Coker, that a man with his buttocks hanging out of the holes in his trousers should not be too fussy,” I said, and Coker’s spectacles glittered with satisfaction. He nodded his head.

“And that, Mister Harry, is probably the wiser of the two sayings,” he agreed.

“I’ll take anything, Mr. Coker. Body, box or sticks. just one thing, the cost of dying has gone up to ten thousand dollars a run - all in advance.”

“Even at that price, we’ll find work for you,” he promised, and I realized I had been working cheaply before.

“Soon,” I insisted.

“Very soon,” he agreed. “You are fortunate. I do not think that Inspector Daly will be returning to St. Mary’s now. You will save the commission usually payable there.”

“He owes me that at least,” I agreed.

I made three night runs in the next six weeks. Two body carries, and a box job - all below the river into Portuguese waters. The bodies were both singles, silent black men dressed in jungle fatigues, and I took them far south, deep penetrations. They waded ashore on remote beaches and I wondered briefly upon what unholy missions they travelled - how much pain and death would arise from those secret landings.

The box job involved eighteen long wooden crates with Chinese markings. We picked up from a submarine out in the channel, and dropped off in a rivermouth, unloading into pairs of dugout canoes lashed together for stability. We spoke to no one and nobody challenged us.

They were milk runs and I cleared eighteen thousand dollars - enough to carry me and my crew through the offseason in the style to which we were accustomed. More important, the intervals of quiet and rest were sufficient to heal my wounds and give me back my strength. At first I lay for hours in the hammock under the palms, reading or sleeping. Then as it came back to me, I swam and fished and sun-baked, went for oysters and crayfish - until I was hard and lean and sunbrowned again.

The wound healed into a thickened and irregular cicatrice, tribute to Macnab’s surgical skills, it curled around my chest and on to my back like an angry purple dragon. In one thing he had been correct, the massive damage to my upper left arm left it stiff and weakened. I could not lift my elbow above shoulder-level, and I lost my title in Indian wrestling to Chubby in the bar of the Lord Nelson. However, I hoped that swimming and regular exercise would strengthen it.

As my strength returned so did my curiosity and sense of adventure. I began dreaming about the canvas-wrapped package off Big Gull Island. In one dream I swam down and opened the package - it contained a tiny feminine figure, the size of a Dresden doll, a golden mermaid with Sister May’s lovely face and a truly startling bosom, the tail was the graceful sickle shape of a marlin’s. The little mermaid smiled shyly and held out her hand to me. On her palm lay a shiny silver shilling.

“Sex, money and billfish—2 I thought when I woke, “-good old uncomplicated Harry, real Freud food.” I knew then that pretty soon I would be going for Big Gull Island.

It was very late in the season before I could prevail on Fred Coker to arrange a straight fishing charter for me, and it turned sour as cheap wine. The party consisted of two overweight, flabby German industrialists with fat bejewelled wives. I worked hard for them, and put both men into fish.

The first was a good black marlin, but the party screwed down on his stardrag, freezing the reel while the fish was still green and crazy to run. It lifted the German’s huge backside out of the seat, and before I could release the stardrag for him, it had my three hundred dollar rod down on the gunwale. The fibreglass rod snapped like a matchstick.

The other member of the party, after losing two decent fish, panted and sweated three hours over a baby blue marlin. When he finally brought it to the gaff, I could hardly bring myself to put the steel in, and I was too ashamed to hang it on Admiralty. We took the photographs on board Dancer and I smuggled it ashore wrapped in a tarpaulin. Like Fred Coker I also have a reputation to preserve. The German industrialist, however, was so delighted by his prowess that he slipped an extra five hundred dollars into my avaricious little paw. I told him it was a truly magnificent fish which was a thousand-dollar lie. I always give good value. Then the wind backed into the south , the temperature of the water in the channel dropped four degrees and the fish were gone. For ten days -we hunted far north but it was over, another season was past.

we stripped and cleaned all the billfish equipment and laid it away in thick yellow grease. I pulled Dancer up on to the slip at the fuelling basin and we went, over her hull, cleaning it down, re-working the temporary patches I had put on the injuries she had received at Gunfire Reef.

Then we painted her until she glistened, sleek and lovely, before we refloated her and took her out to moorings. There we worked lackadaisically on her upper works, stripping varnish, sandpapering, re-varnishing, checking out the electrical system, re-soldering a connection here, replacing wiring there.

I was in no hurry. It would be three weeks before my next charter arrived - an expedition of marine biologists from a Canadian university.

In the meantime the days were cooler, and I was feeling the old glow of good health and bodily wellbeing again. I dined at Government House, sometimes as often as once a week, and each time I had to tell the full story of the shoots out with Guthrie and Materson. President Biddle knew the story by heart and corrected me if I omitted a single detail. It always ended with the President crying excitedly, “Show them your scar, Mister Harry,” and I had to open the starched front of my dress shirt at the dinner table.

They were good lazy days. The island life drifted placidly by.

Peter Daly never returned to St. Mary’s - and at the end of six weeks, Wally Arorews was promoted to acting Inspector and commanding officer of the police force. One of his first acts was to return to me my FN carbine.

This quiet time was spiced by the secret tingle of anticipation which I felt. I knew that one day soon I was going back to Big Gull Island and the piece of unfinished business that lay there in the shallow limpid waters - and I teased myself with the knowledge.

Then one Friday evening I was rounding out the week with my crew in the bar of the Lord Nelson. Judith was with us, having replaced the flock that had previously gathered around Angelo on Friday nights. She was good for him, he no longer drunk to the morbid stage.

Chubby and I had just begun the first duet of the evening and were keeping within a few beats of each other when Marion slipped into the seat beside-me.

I put one arm around her shoulders and held my tankard to her lips while she drank thirstily, but the distraction caused me to forge even further ahead of Chubby in the song.

Marion worked on the switchboard at the Hilton Hotel. She was a pretty little dan with a sexy pugface and long straight black hair. It was she whom Mike Guthrie had used for a punch-bag so long ago.

When Chubby and I straggled to the end of the chorus, Marion told me, “There is a lady asking for you, Mister Harry.”

“What lady?”

“At the hotel, one of the guests, she came in on this morning’s plane. She knew your name and everything. She wants to see you. I told her I would see you tonight and give you the message.”

“What is she like?” I asked Marion with interest. “She’s beautiful, Mister Harry. Such a lady too.”

“Sounds like my type,” I agreed], and ordered a pint for Marion.

“Aren’t you going to see her now? ” With you beside me, Marion, all the beautiful ladies of the world can wait until tomorrow.”

“Oh, Mister Harry, you are a real devil man,” she giggled, and snuggled a little closer.

“Harry,” said Chubby on my other side, “I’m going to tell you now what I never told you before.” He took a long swallow from his tankard, then went on with sentimental tears swimming in his eyes. “Harry, I love you, man. I love you better than my own brother.”

I went up to the Hilton a few minutes before midday. Marion came through from her cubicle behind the reception desk. She still had her earphones around her neck.

“She’s waiting for you on the terrace.” She pointed across the vast reception area with its emaz Hawaiian decor. “The blonde lady in the yellow bikini.”

She was reading a magazine, lying on her belly on one of the reclining sun couches, and she had her back to me so my first impression was of masses of blonde hair, thick and shiny, teased up like the mane of a lion, then falling in a slick golden cascade.

She heard my footsteps on the paving. She glanced around, pushed her sunglasses up on top of her head, then she stood up to face me, and I realized that she was tiny, seeming to reach not much higher than my chest. The bikini also was tiny and showed a flat smooth belly with a deep navel, firm shoulders lightly tanned, small breasts, and a trim waist. Her legs had lovely lines and her neat little feet were thrust into open sandals, the nails painted clear red to match her long fingernails. Her hands as she pushed at her hair were small and shapely.

She wore heavy make-up, but wore it with rare skill, so that her skin had a soft pearly lustre and colour glowed subtly on her cheeks and lips. Her eyes had long dark artificial lashes, and the eyelids were touched with colour and line to give them an exotic oriental cast.

“Duck, Harry!” Something deep inside me shouted a warning, and I almost obeyed. I knew this type well, there had been others like her - small and purringly feline - I had scars to prove it, scars both physical and spiritual. However, one thing nobody can say about old Harry is that he runs for cover when the knickers are down.

Courageously I stepped forward, crinkling my eyes and twisting my mouth into the naughty small boy grin that usually dynamites them.

“Hello I said, “I’m Harry Fletcher.”

She looked at me, starting at my feet and going up six feet four to the top where her gaze lingered speculatively and she pouted her lower lip.

“Hello,” she answered, her voice was husky, breathlesssounding - and carefully rehearsed. “I’m Sherry North, Jimmy North’s sister.”

We were on the veranda of the shack in the evening. It was cool and the Wspectacular sunset was a display of pyrotechnics that flamed and faded above the palms.

She was drinking a Pimms No. I filled with fruit and ice one of my seduction specials - and she wore a kaftan of light floating stuff through which her body showed in shadowy outline as she stood against the rail backlit by the sunset. I could not be certain as to whether or not she wore anything beneath the kaftan - this and the tinkle of ice in her glass distracted me from the letter I was reading. She had showed it to me as part of her credentials. It was a letter from Jimmy North written a few days before his death. I recognized the handwriting and the turn of phrase was typical of that bright and eager lad. As I read on, I forgot the sister’s presence in the memory of the past. It was a long bubbling letter, written as though to a loving friend, with veiled references to the mission and its successful outcome, the promise of a future in which there would be wealth and laughter and all good things.

I felt a pang of regret and personal loss for the boy in his lonely sea grave, for the lost dreams that, drifted with him like rotting seaweed.

Then suddenly my own name leapt from that page at me, ” - you can’t help liking him, Sherry. He’s big and tough-looking, all scarred and beat up like an old tom cat that’s been out alley-fighting every night. But under it, I swear he is really a softy. He seems to have taken a shine to me. Even gives me fatherly advice!-” There was more in the same vein that embarrassed me so that my throat closed up and I took a swallow of whisky, which made my eyes water and the words swim, while I finished the letter and refolded it.

I handed it to Sherry, and walked away to the end of the veranda.

I stood there for a while looking out over the bay.

The sun slid below the horizon and suddenly it was dark and chill.

I went back and lit the lamp, setting it up high so the glare did not fall in our eyes. She watched me in silence until I had poured another Scotch and settled in my cane, backed chair.

“Okay,” I said, “you’re” Jimmy’s sister. You’ve come to St. Mary’s to see me. Why?”

“You liked him, didn’t you?” she asked, as she left the rail and came to sit beside me.

“I like a lot of people. It’s a weakness of mine.” “Did he die - I mean, was it like they said in the newspapers?” “Yes” I said. “It was like that.”

“Did he ever tell you what they were doing out here?”

I shook my head. “They were very cagey - and I don’t ask questions.”

She was silent then, dipping long tapered fingers into her glass to pick out a slice of pineapple, nibbling at the fruit with small white teeth, dabbing at her lips with a pink pointed tongue like that of a cat.

“Because Jimmy liked and trusted you, and because I think you know more than you’ve told anyone, also because I need your help, I am going to tell you a story - okay?”

“I love stories,” I said.

“Have you heard of the “pogo, stick’T she asked. ,, it’s a child’s toy.”

“It’s also the code name for an American naval experimental vertical take-off all-weather strike aircraft.”

“Oh yes, I remember, I saw an article in Time Magazine. Questions in the Senate. I forget the details.”

“There was opposition to the fifty million development allocation.”

“Yes, I remember.”

“Two years ago, on the 16th August to be precise, a prototype “pogo stick” took off from Rawano airforce base in the Indian Ocean. it was armed with four air-to-surface “killer whale” missiles, each of them equipped with tactical nuclear warheads–-“

“That must have been a fairly lethal package.”

She nodded. “The “killer whale” is designed as an entirely new concept in missiles. It is an anti-submarine device which will seek and track surfaced or submerged naval craft. It can kill an aircraft carrier or it can change its element air for water - and go down a thousand fathoms to destroy enemy submarines.” wow I said, and took a little more whisky. We were talking heady stuff now.

“Do you recall the 16th August that year - were you here?”

“I was here, but that’s a long time ago. Refresh my memory.”

“Cyclone Cynthia,“she said.

“God, of course.” It had come roaring across the island, winds of 150 miles an hour, taking away the roof of the shack and almost swamping Dancer at her moorings in Grand Harbour. These cyclones were not uncommon in this area.

“The “Pogo stick!” took off from Rawano a few minutes before the typhoon struck. Twelve minutes later the pilot ejected and the aircraft went into the sea with her four nuclear missiles and her flight recorder still aboard. Rawano radar was blanked out by the typhoon. They were not tracking.”

it was starting to make some sort of sense at last. “How does Jimmy fit into this?”

She made an impatient gesture. “Wait,” she said, then went on.

“Do you have any idea what the value of that cargo might be in the open market?”

“I should imagine you could write your own cheque give or take a couple of million dollars.” And old bad Harry came to attention, he had been getting exercise lately and growing stronger. Sherry nodded. `The test pilot of the “pogo stick” was a Commander in the US Navy named William Bryce. The aircraft developed a fault at fifty thousand feet, just before he came out through the top of the weather. He fought her all the way down, he was a conscientious officer, but at five hundred feet he knew he wasn’t going to make it. He ejected and watched the aircraft go in.”.

She was speaking carefully, and her choice of words was odd, too technical for a woman. She had learned all this, I was certain - from Jimmy? Or from somebody else?

Listen and learn, Harry, I told myself.

“Billy Bryce was three days on a rubber raft on the ocean in a typhoon before the rescue helicopter from Rawano found him. He had time to do some thinking. One of the things he thought about was the value of that cargo - and he compared it to the salary of a Commander. His evidence at the court of inquiry omitted the fact that the “pogo sticd” had gone down within sight of land, and that Bryce had been able to take a fix on a recognizable land feature before he was blown out to sea by the typhoon.”

I could not see any weakness in her story - it looked all right - and very interesting.

“The court of inquiry gave a verdict of “pilot error” and Bryce resigned his commission. His career was destroyed by that verdict. He decided to earn his own retirement annuity and also to clear his reputation. He was going to force the US Navy to buy back its “killer whale” missiles and to accept the evidence of the flight recorder.”

I was going to ask a question, but again Sherry stopped me with a gesture. She did not want her recital interrupted. “Jimmy had done some work for the US Navy - a hull inspection of one of their carriers - and he had met Bryce at that time. They had become friends, and so Billy Bryce naturally came to Jimmy. Between them they had not sufficient capital for the expedition they needed to mount, so they had to find financial backers. It isn’t the kind of thing you can advertise in The Tftm, and they were working on it when Billy Bryce was killed in his Thunderbird on the M4 near the Heathrow turn-off.”

“There seems to be some sort of curse on this thing,” I said.

“Are you superstitious, Harry?” she asked, looking at me through those slanted tiger eyes.

“I don’t knock it,” I admitted, and she nodded, seeming to file the information away before she went on.

“After Billy was dead, Jimmy went on with the project. He found backers. He wouldn’t tell me who, but I guessed they were unsavoury. He came out here with them - and you know the rest.”

“I know the rest,” I agreed, and instinctively massaged the thickened scar tissue through the silk of my shirt. “Except of course the site of the crash.”

We stared at each other.

“Did he tell you?” I asked, and she shook her head.

“Well, it was an interesting story.” I grinned at her. “It’s a pity we can’t check out the truth of it.”

She stood up abruptly and went to the veranda rail. She hugged her arms and she was so angry that if she’d had a tail she would have switched it like a lioness.

I waited for her to recover, and the moment came when she shrugged her shoulders and turned back to me. Her smile was light.

“well, that’s that! I thought I was entitled to some of the rewards. Jimmy was my brother - and I came a long way to find you because he liked and trusted you-I thought we could work together - but I guess if you want it all, there’s not much I can do about it.”

She shook out her hair, and it rippled and shone in the lamplight. I stood up.

“I’ll take you home now,” I said, and touched her arm. She reached up with both arms, and her fingers locked in the thick curly hair at the back of my neck.

“It’s a long way home,” she whispered, and pulled my head down, standing on her tiptoes.

Her lips were very soft and moist, and her tongue was thrusting and restless. After a while she drew back and smiled up at me, her eyes were unfocused and her breath was short and fast.

“Perhaps it wasn’t a wasted journey, after all?”

I picked her up, and she was light as a child, hugging my neck, pressing her cheek to mine as I carried her into the shack. I learned long ago to eat hearty whenever there was food, because you never know when the famine is going to hit.

Even the soft light of dawn was cruel to her as she lay sprawled in sleep beneath the mosquito net on the big double bed. Her make-up had smeared and caked, and she slept with her mouth open. The mane of blonde hair was a tangled bush and it did not match the triangle of thick dark curls at the base of her belly. I felt repelled by her this morning, for I had learned during the night that Miss. Sherry was a raving sadist.

I slipped out of the bed and stood over her a few moments, searching her sleeping face in vain for a resemblance to Jimmy North. I left her, and, still naked, walked out of the shack and down to the beach.

The tide was in and I plunged into the cool clear water and swam out to the entrance to the bay. I swam fast, driving hard in an Australian crawl, and the salt water stung the deep scratches in my back.

It was one of my lucky mornings, old friends were waiting for me beyond the reef, a school of big bottle-nosed porpoise, who came flashing to meet me, their tall fins cutting the dark surface as they steeplechased over the swells. They circled me, whistling and snorting, the blow, holes in the tops of their heads gulping like tiny mouths and their own huge mouths fixed in idiotic grim of pleasure.

They teased me for ten minutes before one of the big old bulls allowed me to get a grip on his dorsal fin and gave me a tow. It was a thrilling sleigh ride that had the water creaming wildly about my chest and head. He took me half a mile offshore before the force of water tore me from his back.

It was a long swim back, with the bull dolphin circling me and giving me an occasional friendly prod in the backside, inviting me aboard for another ride. At the reef they whistled farewell and slid gracefully away, and I was happy when I waded ashore. The arm ached a little, but it was the healthy ache of healing and growing strength.

The bed was empty, and the bathroom door was locked. She was probably shaving her armpits with my razor, I thought. I felt a flare of annoyance, an, old dog like me doesn’t like his routine disturbed. I used the guest shower to sluice off the salt and my annoyance receded under the rush of hot water. Then fresh but unshaven and hungry as a python, I went through to the kitchen. I was frying gammon with pineapple and. buttering thick cuts of toast when Sherry came into the kitchen.

She was once more immaculate. She must have carried a complete cosmetic counter in the Gucci handbag, and her hair was dressed and lacquered into its mane and fall.

Her smile was brilliant. “Good morning, lover,” she said and came to kiss me lingenngly. I was now well disposed towards the world and all its creatures. I no longer felt repelled by this glittering woman. The fine mood of the dolphins had -returned and my gaiety must have been infectious. We laughed a lot over the meal and afterwards I took the coffee pot out on to the veranda.

“When are we going to find the pogo stick?” she asked suddenly, and I poured another mug of strong black coffee without answering. Sherry North had evidently decided that a night of her company had made me her slave for life. Now I may not be a connoisseur of women, but on the other hand I have had some little experience - I mean I’m not exactly a virgin - and I didn’t rate Sherry North’s charms as worth four killer whale missiles and the flight recorder of a secret strike aircraft.

“Just as soon as you show me the way,” I answered carefully. It is an old-fashioned feminine conceit that if a man pleasures them with skill and aplomb, then he must be made to pay for it. I have long believed that it should be the other way around.

She reached across and held my wrist, the tiger’s eyes were suddenly big and soulful.

“After last night,” she whispered huskily, “I know that there is a lot ahead of us, Harry. You and I, together!

I had lain awake for hours during the night and reached my decision. Whatever lay in the package was not an entire aircraft, but probably some small part of it - something that identified it clearly. It was almost certainly not either the flight recorder or one of the missiles. Jimmy North would not have had sufficient time -to remove the recorder from the fuselage, even if he had known where it was situated and had the proper tools. On the other hand the package was the wrong shape and size for a missile, it was a squat round object, not aerodynamically designed.

It was almost certainly some fairly innocuous object. If I took Sherry North with me to recover it, I would be playing only a minor card from my hand - although it would look like a major trump.

I would be giving nothing away, not the site of the crash at Gunfire Reef, nor any of the valuable objects associated with it.

On the other hand, I would be beating the tall grass for tigers.

It would be very instructive to see exactly how Mademoiselle North reacted, once she thought she knew the site of the crash.

“Harry,” she whispered again. “Please,” and she leaned closer.

“You must believe me. I have never felt like this before. From the first moment I saw you - I just knew-” I roused myself from my calculations and leaned towards her, assuming an expression of simple-minded passion and lust.

“Darling, I began but my voice choked up, and I enfolded her in a bear hug, feeling her stiffen irritably as I smeared her lipstick and ruffled the meticulously dressed hairstyle. I could sense the effort it required for her to respond with equal passion.

“Do you feel the same way?” she asked from the depths of my embrace, smothered against my chest, and for the fun of watching her play the role she had assigned herself, I picked her up again and carried her through to the frowsy rumpled bed.

“I will show you how I feel for you,” I muttered hoarsely.

“Darling,” she protested desperately, “not now.”

“Why not? “We have so much to do. There will be time later - all the time in the world! With a show of reluctance I set her down, although truthfully I was thankful for I knew that on top of a huge breakfast of gammon and three cups of coffee, it would have given me heartburn.

It was a few minutes after noon when I cleared Grand Harbour, and swung away south and east. I had told my crew to take a day ashore, I would not be fishing.

Chubby looked down at Sherry North, sprawled bikiniclad on the cockpit deck, and scowled noncommittally, but Angelo rotted his eyes expressively and asked, “Pleasure cruise?” with a certain inflection.

“You’ve got a filthy mind,” I scolded him and he laughed delightedly, as though I had paid him the nicest compliment, and the two of them walked away up the wharf.

Dancer romped down the necklace of atolls and islands until, a little after three o’clock, I ran the deep-water passage between Little Gull Island and Big Gull Island, and rounded into the shallow open water between the east shore of Big Gull and the blue water of the Mozambique.

There was enough breeze to make the day pleasantly cool, and to kick up a white flecky chop off the surface.

I manoeuvred carefully, squinting over at Big Gull as I put Dancer in position. When I hit the marks I pushed a little upwind to allow for Dancer’s fall-back. Then I cut the engines and hurried down to the foredeck to drop the hook.

Dancer came around and settled down like a wellbehavedlady.

“Is this the place?” Sherry had watched everything I did with her disconcerting feline stare.

“This is it,” and I risked overplaying my part as the besotted lover by pointing out the marks to her.

“I lined up those two Palms, the ones leaning over, with that single palm right up on the skyline, see it?”

She nodded silently, again I caught that look as though the information was being carefully filed and remembered. “Now what do we do?“she asked.

“This is where Jimmy dived,” I explained. “When he came back on board he was very excited. He spoke secretly with the others - Materson and Guthrie - and they seemed to catch his excitement. Jimmy went down again with rope and a tarpaulin. He was down a long time - and when he came up again, it started, the shooting!

“Yes,” she nodded eagerly, the reference to her brother’s death seemed to leave her unmoved. “We should go now, before someone else sees us here!

“Go?” I asked, looking at her. “I thought we were going to have a look?”

She recognized her mistake. “We should organize it properly, come back when we are prepared, when we have made arrangements to pick up and transport.”

“Lover,” I grinned, “I didn’t come all this way not to take at least one quick look.”

“I don’t think you should, Harry,” she called after me, but already I was opening the engine-room hatch.

“Let’s come back another time,” she persisted, but I went down the ladder to the rack which held the air bottles and took down a Draeger twin set. I fitted the breathing valve and tested the seal, sucking air out of the rubber mouth, piece.

Glancing quickly up at the hatch to make sure she was not watching me, I reached across and threw the concealed cut-out switch on the electrical system. Now nobody could start Dancer’s engines while I was overboard.

I swung the diving ladder over the stern and then dressed in the cockpit - short-sleeved Neoprene wet suit and hood, weight bek and knife, Nemrod wrap-around facePlate and fins.

I slung the scuba set on my back and picked up a coil of light nylon rope and hooked it on to my belt.

what happens if you don’t come back?” Sherry asked, showing apprehension for the first time. “I mean what happens to me?”

“You’ll pine to death,” I told her, and went over the side, not in a showy back flip but a simple use of the steps, more in keeping with my age and dignity.

The water was transparent as mountain air, and as I went head down I could see every detail of the bottom fifty feet below.

It was a coral landscape, lit with dappled light and wondrous colour. I drifted down to it, and the sculptured shapes of the coral were softened and blurred with sea growth and restless with the sparkling jewels of myriad tropical fish. There were deep gullies and standing towers of coral, fields of eel grass between, and open stretches of blinding white coral sand.

My marks had been remarkably accurate, considering the fact that I had been only just conscious from blood loss. I had dropped the anchor almost directly on top of the canvas package. It lay on one of the open spaces of coral sand, looking like some horrible sea monster, green and squat with the loose ropes floating about it like tentacles.

I crouched beside it, and shoals of tiny fish, zebrastriped in gold and black, gathered around me in such numbers that I had to blow bubbles at them and shoo them off, before I could get on with the job.

I unclipped the nylon rope from my belt, and lashed one end securely to the package with a series of halfhitches. Then I rose to the surface slowly paying out the line. I surfaced thirty feet astern of Dancer, swam to the ladder, and. clambered into the cockpit. I made the end of the line fast to the arm of the fighting chair.

What did you find?” Sherry demanded anxiously.

“I don’t know yet,” I told her. I had resisted the temptation to open the package on the bottom. I hoped it might be worth the sacrifice to watch her expression as I opened the canvas.

I stripped my diving gear and washed it off with fresh water before stowing it all carefully away. I wanted the tension to eat into her a little longer.

“Damn you, Harry. Let’s get it up,” she burst out at last.

I remembered the package as being as heavy as all creation, but then my strength had been almost gone. Now I braced myself against the gunwale and began recovering line. It was heavy, but not impossibly so, and I coiled the wet line as it came in with the old tunny fisherman’s wrist action.

The green canvas broke the surface alongside, sodden and gushing water. I reached over and got a purchase on the knotted rope, with a single heave I lifted it over the side and it clunked weightily on to the deck of the cockpit - metal against Wood.

“Open it,“ordered Sherry impatiently.

“Right away, madam,” I said, and drew the baitknife from the sheath on my belt. It was razor sharp, and I cut the ropes with a single stroke for each.

Sherry was leaning forward eagerly as I drew the stiff wet folds of canvas aside, and I was watching her face.

The greedy, anticipatory expression flared suddenly into triumph as she recognized the object. She recognized it before I did, and then instantly she dropped a curtain of uncertainty over her eyes and face.

It was nicely done, she was an actress of skill. Had I not been watching carefully for it, I would have missed the quick play of emotion.

I looked down at the humble object for which already so many men had been killed or mutilated, and I was torn with surprise and puzzlement - and disappointment. It was not what I had expected.

Half of it was badly eaten away as though by a sandblasting machine, the bronze was raw and shiny and deeply etched. The upper half of it was intact, but tarnished heavily with a thick skin of greenish verdigris, but the lug for the shackle was intact and the ornamentation was still clear through the corrosion - a heraldic crest - or part of it - and lettering in a flowery antique style. The lettering was fragmentary, most of it had been etched away in an irregular flowing line, leaving the bright worn metal.

It was a ship’s bell, cast in massive bronze, it must have weighed close to a hundred pounds, with a domed and lugged top and a wide flared mouth.

Curiously I rolled it over. The clapper had corroded solidly, and barnacle and other shellfish had encrusted the interior. I was intrigued by the pattern of wear and corrosion on the outside, until suddenly the solution occurred to me. I had seen other metal objects marked like this after long submersion. The bell had been half buried on the sandy bottom, the exposed portion had been subjected to the tidal rush of Gunfire Break, and the fine grains of coral sand had abrased away a quarter of an inch of the outer skin of the metal.

However, the portion that had been buried was protected, and now I examined the remaining lettering more closely.

wnl “Mere was an extended V or a broken W followed immediately by a perfect “N” - then a gap and a whole V; beyond that the lettering had been obliterated again.

The coat of arms worked into the metal on the opposite side of the barrel was an intricate design with two rampant beasts - probably lions - supporting a shield and a mailed head. It seemed vaguely familiar, and I wondered where I had seen it before.

I rocked back on my heels and looked at Sherry North. She was unable to meet my gaze.

“Funny thing,” I mused. “A jet aircraft with a bloody great brass bell hanging on its nose.”

“I don’t understand it,” she said.

“No more do I. I stood up and went to get a cheroot from the saloon. I lit it and sat back in the fighting chair. “Okay. Let’s hear your theory.”

“I don’t know, Harry. Truly I don’t.”

“Let’s try some guesses,” I suggested. “I’ll begin.” She turned away to the rail.

“The jet aircraft turned into a pumpkin,” I hazarded. “How about that one?”

She turned back to me. “Harry, I don’t feel well. I think I’m going to be sick.”

“So, what must I do?”

“Let’s go back now.”

“I was thinking of another dive - look around a bit more.” “No,” she said quickly. “Please, not now. I don’t feel up to it.

Let’s go. We can come back if we have to.”

I studied her face for evidence of her sickness: she looked like an advert for health food.

“All right,” I agreed; there was not really much point in another dive, but only I knew that. “Let’s go home and try and work it out.”

I stood up and began rewrapping the brass bell.

What are you going to do with that?” she asked anxiously.

“Redeposit it,” I told her. “I am certainly not going to take it back to St. Mary’s and display it in the market place. Like you said, we can always come back.”

“Yes,” she agreed immediately. “You are right, of course.”

I dropped the package over the side once more and went to haul the hook.

On the homeward run I found Sherry North’s presence on the bridge irritated me. There was a lot of hard thinking I had to do. I sent her down to make coffee.

“Strong,” I told her, “and with four spoons of sugar. It will be good for your seasickness.”

She reappeared on the bridge within two minutes. “The stove won’t light,“she complained.

“You have to open the main gas cylinders first.” I explained where to find the taps. “And don’t forget to close them when you finish, or you’ll turn the boat into a bomb.” She made lousy coffee.

It was late evening when I picked up moorings in Grand Harbour, and dark by the time I dropped Sherry at the entrance of the hotel. She didn’t even invite me in for a drink, but kissed me on the cheek and said, “Darling, let me be alone tonight. I am exhausted. I am going to bed now. Let me think about all this, and when I feel better we can plan more clearly.”

“I’ll pick you up here - what time?” “No,” she said. “I’ll meet you at the boat. Early. Eight o’clock. Wait for me there - we can talk in private. just the two of us, no one else - all right?”

“I’ll bring Dancer to the wharf at eight,” I promised her.

It had been a thirsty day, and on the way home I stopped off at the Lord Nelson.

Angelo and Judith were with a noisy party of their own age in one of the booths. They called me over and made room for me between two of the girls.

I brought them each a pint, and Angelo leaned over confidentially.

“Hey, skipper, are you using the pick-up tonight?” “Yes,” I said. “To get me home.” I knew what was coming, of course. Angelo acted. as though he had shares in the vehicle.

“There’s a big party down at South Point tonight, boss,” suddenly he was very free with the “boss” and “skipper’, “I thought if I run you out to Turtle Bay, then you’d let us have the truck. I’d pick you up early tomorrow, promise.”

I took a swallow at my tankard and they were all watching me with eager hopeful faces.

“It’s a big party, Mister Harry,” said Judith. “Please.”

“You pick me up seven o’clock sharp, Angelo, hear?” and there was a spontaneous burst of relieved laughter. They clubbed in to buy me another pint.

I had a disturbed night, with restless sleep interspersed with periods of wakefulness. I had the dream again, when I dived to the canvas package. Once more it contained a tiny Dresden mermaid, but this time she had Sherry North’s face and she offered me the model of a jet fighter aircraft that changed into a golden pumpkin as I reached for it. The pumpkin was etched with the letters: wnl It rained after midnight, solid sheets of water, that poured off the eaves, and the lightning silhouetted the palm fronds against the night sky.

It was still raining when I went down to the beach, and the heavy drops exploded in minute bomb bursts of spray upon my naked body. The sea was black in the bad light, and the rain squalls reached to the horizon. I swam alone, far out beyond the reef, but when I came back to the beach the excursion had not provided the usual lift to my spirits.

My body was blue and shivering with the cold, and a vague but pervading sense of trouble and depression pressed heavily upon me, I had finished breakfast when the pick-up came down the track through the palm plantation, splashing through the puddles, splattered with mud and with headlights still burning.

In the yard Angelo hooted and shouted, “You ready, Harry?” and I ran out with a souwester held over my head. Angelo smelled of beer and he was garrulous and slightly bleary of eye.

I’ll drive,” I told him, and as we crossed the island he gave me a blow-by-blow description of the great party from what he told me it seemed there might be an epidemic of births on St. Mary’s in nine months” time.

I was only half listening to him, for as we approached the town so my sense of disquiet mounted.

“Hey, Harry, the kids said to thank you for the loan of the pick-up.”

“That’s okay, Angelo!

“I sent Judith out to the boat - she’s going to tidy up, Harry, and get the coffee going for you.”

“She shouldn’t have worried,” I said.

“She wanted to do that specially - sort of thank you, you know.”

“She’s a good girl.”

“Sure is, Harry. I love that girl,” and Angelo burst into song, “Devil Woman” in the style of Mick Jagger.

When we crossed the ridge and started down into the valley I had a sudden impulse. Instead of continuing straight down Frobisher Street to the harbour, I swung left on to the circular drive above the fort and hospital and went up the avenue of banyan trees to the Hilton Hotel. I parked the pick-up under the canopy and went through to the reception lobby.

There was nobody behind the desk this early in the morning, but I leaned across the counter and peered into Marion’s cubicle. She was at her switchboard and when she saw me her face lit up in a wide grin and she lifted off her earphones.

“Hello, Mister Harry.”

“Hello, Marion, love,” I returned the grin. “Is Miss. North in her room?”

Her expression changed. “Oh no,” she said, “she left over an hour ago.”

“Left?” I stared at her.

“Yes. She went out to the airport with the hotel bus. She was catching the seven-thirty plane.” Marion glanced at the cheap Japanese watch on her wrist. “They would have taken off ten minutes ago.”

I was taken completely off-balance, of all things I had least expected this. It didn’t make sense for many seconds and then suddenly and sickeningly it did.

“Oh Jesus Christ,” I said. “Judith!” and I ran for the pickup.

Angelo saw my face as I came and he sat up straight in the seat and stopped singing.

I jumped into the driver’s seat and started the engine, thrusting the pedal down hard and swinging in a roaring two-wheeled turn.

“What is it, Harry?” Angelo demanded.

“Judith?” I asked grimly. “You sent her down to the boat, when?”

“When I left to fetch you.”

“Did she go right away?”

“No, she’d have to bath and dress first.” He was telling it straight, not hiding the fact they had slept together. He sensed the urgency of the situation. “Then she’d have to walk down the valley from the farm.” Angelo had lodgings with a peasant family up near the spring, it was a threemile walk.

“God, let us be in time,” I whispered. The truck was bellowing down the avenue, and I hit the gears in a racing change as we went out through the gates in a screaming broadside, and I slammed down hard again on the accelerator, pulling her out of the skid by main strength.

“What the hell is it, Harry?” he demanded once again. “We’ve got to stop her going aboard Dancer,” I told him grimly as we roared down the circular drive above the town. Past the fort a vista of Grand Harbour opened beneath us. He did not waste time with inane questions. We had worked together too long for that and if I said so then he accepted it as so.

Dancer was still at her moorings amongst the other island craft, and halfway out to her from the wharf Judith was rowing the dinghy. Even at this distance I could make out the tiny feminine figure on the thwart, and recognize the short businesslike oar-strokes. She was an island girl, and rowed like a man.

“We aren’t going to make it,” said Angelo. “She’ll get there before we reach Admiralty.”

At the top of Frobisher Street I put the heel of my left hand on the horn ring, and blowing a continuous blast I tried to clear the road. But it was a Saturday morning, market day, and already the streets were filling. The country folk had come to town in their bullocks, carts and ancient jalopies. Cursing with a terrible frustration, I hooted and forced my way through them.

It took us three minutes to cover the half mile from the top of the street down to Admiralty Wharf

“Oh God,” I said, leaning forward in the seat as I shot through the mesh gates, and crossed the railway tracks.

The dinghy was tied up alongside Wave Dancer, and Judith was climbing over the side. She wore an emerald green shirt and short denim pants. Her hair was in a long braid down her back.

I skidded the truck to a halt beside the pineapple sheds, and both Angelo and I hit the wharf at a run.

“Judith!” I yelled, but my voice did not carry out across the harbour.

Without looking back, Judith disappeared into the saloon. Angelo and I raced down to the end of the jetty. Both of us were screaming wildly, but the wind was in our faces and Dancer was five hundred yards out across the water.

“There’s a dinghy!” Angelo caught my arm. It was an ancient clinker-built mackerel boat, but it was chained to a ring in the stone wharf.

We jumped into it, leaping the eight foot drop and falling in a heap together over the thwart. I scrambled to the mooring chain. It had quarter-inch galvanized steel links, and a heavy brass padlock secured it to the ring.

I took two twists of chain around my wrist, braced one foot against the wharf and heaved. The padlock exploded, and I fell backwards into the bottom of the dinghy.

Angelo already had the oars in the rowtocks. “Row,” I shouted at’him. “Row like a mad bastard.”

I was in the bows cupping my hands to my mouth as I hailed Judith, trying to make my voice carry above the wind.

Angelo was rowing in a dedicated frenzy, swinging the oar blades flat and low on the back reach and then throwing his weight upon them when they bit. His breathing exploded in a harsh grunt at each stroke.

Halfway out to Dancer another rain squall enveloped us, shrouding the whole of Grand Harbour in eddying sheets of grey water. It stung my face, so I had to screw up my eyes.

Dancer’s outline was blurred by grey rain, but we were coming close now. I was beginning to hope that Judith would sweep and tidy the cabins before she struck a match to the gas ring in the galley. I was also beginning to hope that I was wrong - that Sherry North had not left a farewell present for me.

Yet still I could hear my own voice speaking to Sherry North the previous day. “You have to open the main gas cylinders first - and don’t forget to close them when you finish, or youtil turn the boat into a bomb.” Closer still we came to Dancer and she seemed to hang on tendrils of rain, ghostly white and insubstantial in the swirling mist.

“Judith,” I shouted, she must hear me now - we were that close.

There were two fifty-pound cylinders of Butane gas on board, enough to destroy a large brick-built house. The gas was heavier than air, once it escaped it would slump down, filling Dancer’s hull with a murderously explosive mixture of gas and air. It needed just one spark from battery or match.

I prayed that I was wrong and yelled again. Then suddenly Dancer blew.

It was dash explosion, a fearsome blue light that shot through her. It split her hull with a mighty hammer stroke, and blew her superstructure open, lifting it like a lid.

Dancer reared to the mortal blow, and the blast hit us like a storm wind. Immediately I smelled the electric stench of the blast, acrid as an air-sizzling strike of lightning against iron-stone.

Dancer died as I watched, a terrible violent death, and then her torn and lifeless hull fell back and the cold grey waters rushed into her. The heavy engines pulled her swiftly down, and she was gone into the grey waters of Grand Harbour.

Angelo and I were frozen with horror, crouching in the violently rocking dinghy, staring at the agitated water that was strewn with loose wreckage - all that remained of a beautiful boat and a lovely young girl. I felt a vast desolation descend upon me, I wanted to cry aloud in my anguish, but I was paralysed.

Angelo moved first. He leapt upright with a sound in his throat like a wounded beast. He tried to throw himself over the side, but I caught and held him.

“Leave me,“he screamed. “I must go to her.”

“No.” I fought with him in the crazily rocking dinghy. “It’s no good, Angelo.”

Even if he could get down through the forty feet of water in which Dancer’s torn hull now lay, what he would find might drive him mad. Judith had stood at the centre of that blast, and she would have been subjected to all the terrible trauma of massive flash explosion at close range.

“Leave me, damn you.” Angelo got one arm free and hit me in the face, but I saw it coming and rolled my head. It grazed the skin from my cheek, and I knew I had to get him quieted down.

The dinghy was on the point of capsizing. Though he was forty pounds lighter than me, Angelo fought with maniac strength. He was calling her name now..

“Judith, Judith,” an an hysterical rising inflection. I released my grip on his shoulder with my right hand, and swung him slightly away from me, lining him up carefully. I hit him with a right chop, my fist moving not more than four inches. I hit him cleanly on the point below his left ear, and he dropped instantly, gone cold. I lowered him to the floorboards and laid him outcomfortably. I rowed back to the wharf without looking back. I felt completely numbed and drained.

I carried Angelo down the wharf and I hardly felt his weight in my arms. I drove him up to the hospital and Macnab was on duty.

“Give him something to keep him muzzy and in bed for the next twenty-four hours,” I told Macnab, and he began to argue.

“Listen, you broken-down old whisky vat,” I told him quietly, “I’d love an excuse to beat your head in.”

He paled until the broken veins in his nose and cheeks stood out boldly.

“Now listen - Harry old man,” he began. I took a step towards him, and he sent the duty sister to the drug cupboard.

I found Chubby at breakfast and it took only a minute to explain what had happened. We went up to the fort in the pick-up, and Wally Andrews responded quickly. He waived the filing of statements and other police procedure and instead we piled the police diving equipment into the truck and by the time we reached the harbour, half of St. Mary’s had formed a silent worried crowd along the wharf. Some had seen it and all of them had heard the explosion.

An occasional voice called condolences to me as we carried the diving equipment to the mackerel boat. “Somebody find Fred Coker,” I told them. “Tell him to get down here with a bag and basket,” and there was a buzz of comment.

“Hey, Mister Harry, was there somebody aboard?”

“Just get Fred Coker,” I told them, and we rowed out to Dancer’s moorings.

While Wally kept the dinghy on station above us, Chubby and I went down through the murky harbour water. Dancer lay on her back in forty-five feet, she must have rolled as she sank - but there was no need to worry about access to her interior, for her hull had been torn open along the keel. She was far past any hope of refloating.

Chubby waited at the hole in the hull while I went in. What remained of the galley was filled with swirling excited shoals of fish. They were in a feeding frenzy and I choked and gagged into the mouthpiece of my scuba when I saw what they were feeding upon.

The only way I knew it was Judith was the tatters of green cloth clinging to the fragments of flesh. We got her out in three main pieces, and placed her in the canvas bag that Fred Coker provided.

I dived again immediately, and worked my way through the shattered hull to the compartment below the galley where the two long iron gas cylinders were still bolted to their beds. Both taps were wide open, and somebody had disconnected the hoses to allow the gas to escape freely.

I have never experienced anger so intense as I felt then. It was that strong for it fed upon my loss. Dancer was gone - and Dancer had been half my life. I closed the taps and reconnected the gas hose. It was a private thing - I would deal with it personally.

When I walked back along the wharf to the pick-up, all that gave me comfort was the knowledge that Dancer had been insured. There would be another boat - not as beautiful or as well beloved as Dancer - but a boat nevertheless.

In the crowd I noticed the shiny black face of Harnbone Williams - the harbour ferryman. For forty years he had plied his old dinghy back and forth at threepence a hire.

“Hambone,” I called him over. “Did you take anybody out to Dancer last night?”

“No, sit, Mister Harry.”

“Nobody at all?”

“Only your party. She left her watch in the cabin. I took her out to fetch it.”

“The lady?”

“Yes, the lady with the yellow hair.”

“What time, Hambone?”

“About nine o’clock - did I do wrong, Mister Harry?”

“No, it’s all right. just forget it.”

We buried Judith next day before noon. I managed to get the plot beside her mother and father for her. Angelo liked that. He said he did not want her to be lonely up there on the hill. Angelo was still half doped, and he was quiet and dreamy eyed at the graveside.

The next morning the three of us began salvage work on Dancer. We worked hard for ten days and we stripped her completely of anything that had a possible value - from the big-game fishing reels and the FN carbine to the twin bronze propellers. The hull and superstructure were so badly broken up as to be of no value.

At the end of that time Wave Dancer had become a memory only. I have had many women, and now they are just a pleasant thought when I hear a certain song or smell a particular perfume. Like them, already Dancer was beginning to recede into the past.

the tenth day I went up to see Fred Coker - and the moment I entered his office I knew there was something very wrong. He was shiny with nervous sweat, his eyes moved shiftily behind the glittering spectacles and his hands scampered about like frightened mice - running over his blotter or leaping up to adjust the knot of his necktie or smooth down the thin strands of hair on his polished cranium. He knew I’d come to talk insurance.

“Now don’t get excited please, Mister Harry,” he advised me.

Whenever people tell me that, I become very excited indeed.

“What is it, Coker? Come on! Come on!” I slammed one fist on the desk top, and he leapt in his chair so the goldrimmed spectacles slid down his nose.

“Mister Harry, please-“

“Come on! You miserable little grave worm—2 “Mister Harry - it’s about the premiums on Dancer.” I stared at him.

“You see - you have never made a claim before - it seemed such a waste to-” I found words. “You pocketed the premiums,” I whispered, my voice failing me suddenly. “You didn’t pay them over to the company.”

“You understand,” Fred Coker nodded. “I knew you’d understand.”

I tried to go over the desk to save time, but I tripped and fell-Fred Coker leapt from his chair, slipping through my outstretched groping fingers. He ran through the back door, slamming it behind him.

I ran straight through the door, tearing off the lock, and leaving it hanging on broken hinges.

Fred Coker ran-as though all the dark angels pursued him, which would have been better for him. I caught him at the big doors into the alley and lifted him by the throat, holding him with one hand, pressing his back against a pile of cheap pine coffins.

He had lost his spectacles, and he was weeping with fright, big slow tears welling out of the helpless shorts sighted eyes.

“You know I’m going to kill you I whispered, and he moaned, his feet dancing six inches above the floor.

I Pulled back my right fist and braced myself solidly on the balls of my feet. It would have taken his head off. I couldn’t do it - but I had to hit something. I drove my fist into the coffin beside his right ear. The panelling shattered, stove in along its full length. Fred Coker shrieked like an hysterical girl at a POP festival, and I let him drop. His legs could not hold him and he sank to the concrete floor.

I left him lying there moaning and blubbering with terror and I walked out into the street as near to bankrupt as I’d been in the last ten years.

Mister Harry transformed in a single stroke into Fletcher, wharf rat and land-bound bum. It was a classic case of reversion to type - before I reached the Lord Nelson I was thinking the same way I had ten years before. Already I was calculating the percentages, seeking the main chance once more.

Chubby and Angelo were the only customers in the public bar so early in the afternoon. I told them, and they were quiet. There wasn’t anything to say.

We drank the first one in silence, then I asked Chubby, “What will you do now?“and he shrugged “I’ve still got the old whaleboat– It was a twenty-footer, admiralty design, open-decked, but sea-kindly. “I’ll go for stump again, I reckon.” Stump were the big reef crayfish. There was good money in the frozen tails.

it was how Chubby had earned his bread before Dancer and I came to St. Mary’s.

“You’ll need new engines, those old Sea Gulls of yours are shot.”

We drank another pint, while I worked out my finances - what the hell, a couple of thousand dollars was not going to make much difference to me. “I’ll buy two new twenty horse Evinnides for the boat, Chubby,” I volunteered.

“Won’t let you do it, Harry.” He frowned indignantly, and shook his head. “I got enough saved up working for you,” and he was adamant.

“What about you, Angelo?” I asked.

“Guess I’ll go sell my soul on a Rawano contract.”

“No,” Chubby scowled at the thought. “I’ll need crew for the stump-boat.”

They were all settled then. I was relieved, for I felt responsible for them both. I was particularly glad that Chubby would be there to care for Angelo. The boy had taken Judith’s death very badly. He was quiet and withdrawn, no longer the flashing Romeo. I had kept him working hard on the salvage of Dancer, that alone seemed to have given him the time he needed to recover from the wound.

Nevertheless he began drinking hard now, chasing tots of cheap brandy with pints of bitter. This is the most destroying way to take in alcohol, short of drinking meths, that I know of.

Chubby and I took it nice and slow, lingering over our tankards, yet under our jocularity was a knowledge that we had reached a crossroads and from tomorrow we would no longer be travelling together. It gave the evening the fine poignancy of impending loss.

There was a South African trawler in harbour that night that had come in for bunkers and repairs. When at last Angelo passed out cold, Chubby and I began our singing. Six of the trawler’s beefy crew members voiced their disapproval in the most slanderous terms. chubby and I could not allow insults of that nature to pass unchallenged. We all went out to discuss it in the backyard.

It was a glorious discussion, and when Wally Andrews arrived with the riot squad he arrested all of us, even those who had fallen in the fray.

“My own flesh and blood, Chubby kept repeating as he and I staggered arm and arm into the cells. “He turned on me. My own sister’s son.” Wally was human enough to send one of his constables down to the Lord Nelson for Something to make our durance less vile. Chubby and I became very friendly with the trawlermen in the next cell, passing the bottle back and forth between the bars.

When we were released next morning, Wally Andrews declining to press charges, I drove out to Turtle Bay to begin closing up the shack. I made sure the crockery was clean, threw a few handfuls of mothballs in the cupboards and did not bother to lock the doors. There is no such thing as burglary on St. Mary’s.

For the last time I swam out beyond the reef, and for half an hour hoped that the dolphins might come. They did not and I swam back, showered and changed, picked up my old canvas and leather campaign bag from the bed and went out to where the pick-up was parked in the yard. I didn’t look back as I drove up through the palm plantation, but I made myself a promise that I’d be coming this way again.

I parked in the front lot of the hotel and lit a cheroot. When Marion finished her shift at noon she came out the front entrance and set off down the drive with her cheeky little bottom swinging under the mini skirt. I whistled and she saw me. She slipped into the passenger’s seat beside me.

“Mister Harry, I’m so sorry about your boat. We talked for a few minutes until I could ask the question.

- “Miss. North, while she was staying at the hotel, did she make any phone calls or send a cable?”

“I don’t remember, Mister Harry, but I could check for you.

“Now?”

“Sure,” she agreed.

“one other thing, could you also check with Dicky if he got a shot of her?” Dicky was the roving hotel Photographer, it was a good chance that he had a print of Sherry North in his file.

Marion was gone for nearly three-quarters of an hour, but she returned with a triumphant smile.

“She sent a cable on. the night before she left-” Marion handed me a flimw copy. “You can keep this copy,” she told me as I read the message.

it was addressed to: “MANSON FLAT 5 CURZON STREE7 97 LONDON w. j and the message read: “CONTRACT SIGNED RETURNING HEATHROW BOAC FLIGHT 316 SATURDAY.“There was no signature.

“Dicky had to go through all his files - but he found one.” She handed me a six-by-four glossy print. It was of Sherry North reclining on a sun couch on the hotel terrace. She wore her bikini and sunglasses, but it was a good likeness.

“Thanks, Marion.” I gave her a five-pound note.

“Gee, Mister Harry,” she grinned at me as she tucked it into the front of her bra. “For that price you can take what you fancy.”

“I’ve got a plane to catch, love.” I kissed her on the little snub nose, and slapped her bottom as she climbed out of the cab.

Chubby and Angelo came out to the airport. Chubby was to take care of the pick-up for me. We were all subdued, and shook hands awkwardly at the departure gate. There wasn’t much to say, we had said it all the night before.

As the pistonengined aircraft took off for the mainland, I glimpsed the two of them standing together at the perimeter fence.

I stopped over three hours at Nairobi before catching the BOAC flight on to London. I did not sleep during the long night flight. It was many years since I had returned to my native land - and I was coming back now on a grim mission of vengeance. I wanted very much to talk to Sherry North.

When you are flat broke, that is the time to buy a new car and a hundred-guinea suit. Look brave prosperous, and people will believe you are.

I shaved and changed at the airport and instead of a Hillman I hired a Chrysler from the Hertz Depot at Heathrow, slung my bag in the boot and drove to the nearest Courage pub.

I had a double portion of ham and egg pie, washed down with a pint of Courage while I studied the road map. It was all so long ago that I was unsure of my directions. The lush and cultivated English countryside was too tame and green after Malaya and Africa, and the autumn sunshine was pale gold when I was used to a brighter fiercer sun - but it was a pleasant drive over the downs and into Brighton.

I parked the Chrysler on the promenade opposite the Grand Hotel and dived into the warren of The Lanes. They were filled with tourists even this late in the season.

Pavilion Arcade was the address I had read so long ago on Jimmy North’s underwater sledge, and it took me nearly an hour to find it. it was tucked away at the back of a cobbled yard, and most of the windows and doors were shuttered and closed.

“North’s Underwater World” had a ten-foot frontage on to the lane.

It was also closed, and a blind was drawn across the single window. I tried without success to peer round the edge of the blind, but the interior was darkened, so I hammered on the door. There was no sound from within, and I was about to turn away when I noticed a square piece of cardboard that had once been stuck on to the bottom of the window but had fallen to the floor inside. By twisting my head acrobatically, I could read the handwritten message which had fortunately fallen face up. Enquiries to Seaview, Downers Lane, Falmer, Sussex. I went back to the car and took the road map out of the glove compartment.

It began to rain as I pushed the Chrysler through narrow lanes.

The windscreen wipers flogged sullenly at the I spattering drops and I peered into the premature gloom of early evening.

Twice I lost my way but finally I pulled up outside a gate in a thick hedge. The sign nailed to the gate read: NORTH SEAVIEW, and I believed that it might be possible to look southwards on a clear day and see the Atlantic.

I drove down between hedges, and came into the paved yard of an old double-storeyed red-brick farmhouse, with oak beams set into the walls and green moss growing on the wood-shingle roof. There was a light burning downstairs.

I Parked the Chrysler and crossed the yard to the kitchen door, turning up my collar against the wind and rain. I beat on the door, and heard somebody moving around inside. The bolts were shot back and the top half of the stable door opened on a chain. A girl looked out at me.

I was not immediately impressed by her for she wore a baggy blue fisherman’s jersey and she was a tall girl with a swimmer’s shoulders. I thought her plain - in a striking manner.

Her brow was pale and broad, her nose was large but not bony or beaked, and below it her mouth was wide and friendly. She wore no make-up at all, so her lips were pale Pink and there was a peppering of fine freckles on her nose and cheeks.

Her hair was drawn back severely from her face into a thick braid behind her neck. Her hair was black, shimmering iridescent black in the lamplight, and her eyebrows were black also, black and boldly arched over eyes that seemed also to be black until the light caught them and I realized they were the same dark haunted blue as the Mozambique current when the noon sun strikes directly into it.

Despite the pallor of her skin, there was an aura of good and glowing health about her. The pale skin had a lustre and plasticity to it, a quality that was somehow luminous so that when you studied her closely - as I was now doing - it seemed that you could see down through the surface to the flush of clean blood rising warmly to her cheeks and neck. She touched the tendril of silky dark hair that escaped the braid and floated lightly on her temple. It was an appealing gesture, that betrayed her nervousness and belied the serene expression in the dark blue eyes.

Suddenly I realized that she was an unusually handsome woman, for, although she was only in her mid-twenties, I knew she was no longer girl - but full woman. There was a strength and maturity about her, a deep sense of calm that I found intriguing.

Usually the women I choose are more obvious, I do not like to tie up too much of my energy in the pursuit. This was something beyond my experience and for the first time in years I felt unsure of myself.

We had been staring at each other for many seconds, neither of us speaking or moving.

“You’re Harry Fletcher,” she said at last, and her voice was low and gently modulated, a cultivated and educated voice. I gaped at her.

“How the hell did you know that? I demanded.

“Come in.” She slipped the chain and opened the bottom of the stable door, and I obeyed. The kitchen was warm and welcoming and filled with the smell of good food cooking.

“How did you know my name?” I asked again.

“Your picture was in the newspaper - with Jimmy’s,” she explained.

We were silent again, once more studying each other.

She was taller even than I had thought at first, reaching to my shoulder, with long legs clad in dark blue pants and the tops thrust into black leather boots. Now I could see the narrow waist and the Promise of good breasts beneath the thick jersey.

At first I had thought her plain, ten seconds later I had reckoned her handsome, now I doubted I had ever seen a more beautiful woman. It took time for the full effect to sink in.

“You have me at a disadvantage,” I said at last. “I don’t know your name.”

“I’m Sherry North,” she answered, and I stared at her for a moment before I recovered from the shock. She was a very different person from the other Sherry North I had known.

“Did you know that there is a whole tribe of you? I asked at last.

“I don’t understand.” She frowned at me. Her eyes were enchantingly blue under the lowered lashes.

“It’s a long story , , .

“I’m sorry.” For the first time she seemed to become aware that we were standing facing each other in the centre of the kitchen. “Won’t you sit down. Can I get you a beer?”

Sherry took a couple of cans of Carlsberg lager from the cupboard and sat opposite me across the kitchen table.

“You were going to tell me a long story.” She popped the tabs on the cans, and slid one across to me, then looked at me expectantly.

I began to tell her the carefully edited version of my experiences since Jimmy North arrived at St. Mary’s. She was very easy to talk to, like being with an old and interested friend. suddenly I wanted to tell her everything, the entire unblemished truth. It was important that from the very beginning it should be right, with no reservations.

She was a complete stranger, and yet I was placing trust in her beyond any person I had ever known. I told her everything exactly as it had happened.

She fed me after dark had fallen, a savoury casserole out of an earthenware pot which we ate with home-made bread and farm butter. I was still talking but no longer about the recent events on St. Mary’s, and she listened quietly. At last I had found another human being with whom I could talk without reserve.

I went back in my life, in a complete catharsis I told her of the early days, even of the dubious manner in which I had earned the money to buy Wave Dancer, and how my good resolutions since then had wavered.

It was after midnight when at last she said: “I can hardly believe all you’ve told me. You don’t look like that - you look so,” she seemed to search for the word, “wholesome.” But you could see it was not the word she wanted.

“I work hard at being that. But sometimes my halo falls over my eyes. You see, appearances are deceptive,” I said, and she nodded.

“Yes, they are,” and there was a. significance in the way she said it, a warning perhaps. “Why have you told me all this? It is not really very wise, you know.”

“it was just time that somebody knew about me, I suppose. Sorry, you were elected.” She smiled. “You can sleep in. Jimmy’s room tonight,” she said.

“I can’t risk you rushing out and telling anybody else.”

I hadn’t slept the night before and suddenly I was exhausted. I felt as though I did not have the strength to climb the stairs to the bedroom - but I had one question still to ask.

“Why did Jimmy come to St. Marys! What was he looking for?” I asked. “Do you know who he was working with, who they were?”

“I don’t know.” She shook her head, and I knew it was the truth.

She wouldn’t lie to me now, not after I had placed such trust in her.

“Will you help me find out? Will you help me find them?”

“Yes, I’ll help you,” she said, and stood up from the table.

“We’ll talk again in the morning.”

Jimmy’s room was under the eaves, the pitch of the roof giving it an irregular shape. The walls were lined with photographs and packed bookshelves, silver sporting trophies and the treasured brica-brac of boyhood.

“Me bed was high and the mattress soft.

I went to fetch my bag from the Chrysler while Sherry put clean sheets upon the bed. Then she showed me the bathroom and left me.

I lay and listened to the rain on the roof for only a few minutes before I slept. I woke in the night and heard the soft whisper of her voice somewhere in the quiet house.

Barefooted and in my underpants I opened the bedroom door and crept silently down the passage to the stairs. I looked down into the hall. There was a light burning and Sherry North stood at the wall-hung telephone. She was speaking so quietly into the receiver, cupping her hands to her mouth, that I could not catch the words. The light was behind her. She wore. a flimsy nightdress, and her body showed through the thin stuff as though she was naked.

I found myself staring like a peeping Tom. The lamps light glowed on the ivory sheen of her skin, and there were intriguing secret hollows and shadows beneath the transparent cloth.

With an effort I pulled my eyes off her and went back to my bed.

I thought about Sherry’s telephone call and felt a vague disquiet, but soon sleep overtook me once more.

In the morning the rain had stopped but the ground was slushy and the grass heavy and wet when I went out for a breath of cold morning air.

I expected to feel awkward with Sherry after the previous night’s outpourings of the soul, but it was not so. We talked easily at breakfast, and afterwards she said, “I promised I’d help you; what can I do?”

“Answer a few questions.”

“All right, ask me.”

Jimmy North had been very secretive, she did not know he was going to St. Mary’s. He had told her he had a contract to install some electronic underwater equipment at the Cabora-Bossa. Dam in Portuguese Mozambique. She had taken him up to the airport with all his equipment. As far as she knew he was travelling alone. The police had come to the shop in Brighton to tell her of his murder. She had read the newspaper reports, and that was all.

“No letters from Jimmy?”

“No, nothing.” I nodded, the wolf pack must have intercepted his mail. The letter I had been shown by Sherry’s impostor was certainly genuine.

“I don’t understand anything about this. Am I being stupid?”

No.” I took out a cheroot, and almost lit it before I stopped myself. Okay if I smoke one of these?”

“It doesn’t bother me,” she said, and I was glad, for it would have been hell giving them up. I lit it and drew in the fragrant smoke.

“It looks as though Jimmy stumbled on something big. He needed backing and he went to the wrong people. As soon as they thought they knew where it was, they killed him and tried to kill me. When that didn’t work they sent out someone impersonating you. When she thought she knew the location of this object, she set a trap for me and went home. Their next move will be a return to the area off Big Gull Island, where they are due for another disappointment.”

She refilled the coffee cups, and I noticed that she had applied make-up this morning - but so lightly that the freckles still showed. I reconsidered the previous night’s judgement - and confirmed that she was one of the most beautiful women I had ever met, even in the early morning.

She was frowning thoughtfully, staring into her coffee cup and I wanted to touch one of her slim strong-looking hands that lay on the tablecloth near my own.

“What were they after, Harry? And who are these people who killed him? she asked at Last.

“Two excellent questions. I have leads to both - but we will tackle the questions in the order you asked them. Firstly, what was Jimmy after? When we know that we can go after his murderers.”

“I have no idea at all what it could be.” She looked up at me.

The blue of, her eyes was lighter than it had been last night, it was the colour of a good sapphire. “What clues have you?”

“The ship’s bell. The design upon it.”

“What does it signify?”

“I don’t know, but it shouldn’t be too hard to find out. I could no longer resist the temptation. I placed my hand over hers. It felt as firm and strong as it looked and her flesh was warm “But first I should like to - check the shop in Brighton and Jimmy’s room here. There might, be something we can use.”

She had not withdrawn her hand. “All right, shall we go to the shop first! The police have already been through it all, but they might have overlooked something. “Fine. I’ll buy you lunch.” I squeezed her hand, and she turned it in my grasp and squeezed back.

I’ll take you up on that,” she said. and I was too astonished by my own reaction to her grip to find a light reply. My throat was dry and my pulse beat as though I’d run a mile. Gently she removed her hand and stood up.

“Let’s do the breakfast dishes.”

If the girls of St. Mary’s could only have seen Mister Harry drying dishes, my reputation would have shattered into a thousand pieces.

She let us into the shop the back way, through a tiny enclosed yard which was almost filled with unusual objects, all of them associated with diving and the underwater world - discarded air bottles and a portable compressor, brass portholes and other salvage from wrecked ships, even the jawbone of a killer whale with all its teeth intact.

“I haven’t been in for a long time,” Sherry apologized as she unlocked the back door of the shop. “Without Jimmy-” she shrugged and then went on, ” - I must really get down to selling up all this junk and closing the shop down. I could re-sell the lease, I suppose.”

“I’m going to look round, okay?”

“Fine, I’ll get the kettle going.”

I started in the yard, searching quickly but thoroughly through the piles of junk. There was nothing that had significance as far as I could see. I went into the shop and poked around amongst the seashells and sharks” teeth on the shelves and in the display case. Finally I saw a desk in the corner and began going through the drawers.

Sherry brought me a cup of tea and perched on the corner of the desk while I piled old invoices, rubber bands and paper clips on the top. I read every scrap of paper and even rifled through the ready reckoner.

Nothing?” Sherry asked.

Nothing,” I agreed and glanced at my watch. “Lunchtime,” I told her.

She locked up the shop and by good fortune we stumbled on English’s restaurant. They gave us a secluded table in the back room and I ordered a bottle of Pouilly Fuisse to go with the lobster. Once I recovered from the shock of the price, we laughed a lot during the meal, and it wasn’t just the wine. The feeling between us was good and growing stronger.

After lunch we drove back to Seaview and we went up to Jimmy’s room.

“This is our best bet,” I guessed. “If he was keeping secrets, this is where they would be.” But I knew I had a long job ahead of me. There were hundreds of books and piles of magazines - mostly American Argosy, Trident, The Diver and other diving publications. There was also a complete shelf of springback files at the foot of the bed.

“I’ll leave you to it,” Sherry said, and went.

I took down the contents of a shelf, sat at the reading table and began to skim through the publications. immediately I saw it was an even bigger task than I had thought. Jimmy had been one of those people who read with a pencil in one hand. There were notes pencilled in the margin, comments, queries and exclamation marks, and anything that interested him was underlined.

I read doggedly, looking for something that could remotely be linked to St. Mary’s.

Around eight o’clock I began on the shelf that held the springback files. The first two were filled with newspaper clippings on shipwrecks or other marine phenomena. The third of them had an un-labelled, black imitation leather cover. It held a thin sheaf of papers, and I saw immediately that they were out of the ordinary.

They were a series of letters filed with their envelopes and stamps still attached. There were sixteen of them in all, addressed to Messrs Parker and Wilton in Fenchurch Street.

Every letter was in a different hand, but all were executed in the elegant penmanship of the last century.

The envelopes were sent from different parts of the old Empire - Canada, South Africa, India - and the nineteenth century postage stamps alone must have been of considerable value.

After I had read the first two letters, it was clear that Messrs Parker and Wilton were agents and factors, and they had acted for a number of distinguished clients in the service of Queen Victoria. The letters were instructions to deal with estates, moneys and securities.

All the letters were dated during the period from August 1857 to July 1858 and must have been offered by a dealer or an antique auctioneer as a lot.

I glanced through them quickly, but the contents were really very dull. However, something on the single page of the tenth letter caught my eye and I felt my nerves jump.

Two words had been underlined in pencil and in the margin was a notation in Jimmy North’s handwriting.

B. Muse.6914(8).”

However, it was the words themselves that held me. “Dawn Light.”

I had heard those words before. I wasn’t sure when, but they were significant.

Quickly I began at the top of the page. The sender’s address was Ia laconic

“Bombay’, and it was dated 16th Sept.

1857.

My Dear Wilton, I charge you most strictly with the proper care and safe storage of five pieces of luggage consigned in my name to your London address aboard the Han. Company’s ship Daurn Light. Due out of this port before the 25th instant and bound for the Company’s wharf in the Port of London.

Please acknowledge safe receipt of same with all despatch.

I remain yours faithfully, Colonel Sir Roger Goodchild. Officer Commanding 101st Regiment Queens Own India Rifles.

Delivery by kind favour of Captain commanding Her Majesty’s Frigate Pandier.

The paper rustled and I realized that my hand was shaking with excitement. I knew I was on to it now. This was the key. I laid the letter carefully on the reading table and Placed a silver paper-knife upon it to weight it down.

I began to read it again slowly, but there was a distraction. I heard the engine noise of an automobile coming down the lane from the gate. Headlights flashed across the window and then rounded the corner of the house.

I sat up straight, listening. The engine noise died, and car doors slammed shut.

There was a long silence then before I heard the murmur and growl of voices - men’s voices. I began to stand up from the table.

Then sherry screamed. it rang clearly through the old house, and cut into my brain like a lance. It aroused in me a protective instinct so fierce that I was down the stairs and into the hall before I realized I had moved.

The door to the kitchen was open and I paused in the doorway.

There were two men with Sherry. The heavier and elder of the two wore a beige camelliair topcoat and a tweed cap. He had a greyish, heavy lined face and deepsunk eyes. His lips were thin and colourless.

He had Sherry’s left hand twisted up between her shoulder-blades, and was holding her jammed against the wall beside the gas stove.

The other man was Younger, and he was slim and pale, bare-headed with long straw-yellow hair falling to the shoulders of his leather jacket. He was grinning gleefully as he held Sherry’s other hand over the blue flames of the gas ring, bringing it down slowly.

She was struggling desperately, but they held her and her hair had come loose as she fought.

“Slowly, lad,” the man in the cap spoke in a thick strangled voice. “Give her time to think about it.”

Sherry screamed again as her fingers were forced down remorselessly towards the hissing blue flames.

“Go ahead, luv, shout your head off,” laughed the blond. “There isn’t anybody to hear you.” “Only me,” I said, and they spun to face me, with expressions of comical amazement.

“Who,” asked the blond, releasing Sherry’s arm and reaching quickly for his back pocket.

I hit him twice, left in the body and right in the head, and although neither shot pleased me particularly - there was not the right solidness at impact - the man went down, falling heavily over a chair and crashing into the cupboard. I had no more time for him, and I went for the one in the cloth cap.

He was still holding Sherry in front of him, and as I started forward he hurled her at me. It took me off-balance and I was forced to grab her, to save both of us from falling.

The man turned and darted out of the door behind him. It took me a few seconds to disentangle myself from Sherry and cross the kitchen. As I barged out into the yard he was halfway to an elderly Triumph sports car, and he glanced over his shoulder.

I could almost see him make the calculation. He wasn’t going to be able to get into the car and turn it to face the lane before I caught him. He swerved to the - left and sprinted into the dark mouth of the lane with the skirts of the camel-hair coat billowing behind him. I raced after him.

The surface was greasy with wet clay, and he was making heavy going of it. He slid and almost fell, and I was right behind him, coming up swiftly when he turned and I heard the snap of the knife and saw the flash of the blade as it jumped out. He dropped into a crouch with the knife extended and I ran straight in without a check.

He didn’t expect that, the glint of steel will stop most men dead.

He went for my belly, a low underhand stroke, but he was shaky and breathless and it lacked fire. I blocked on the wrist and at the same time hit the pressure point in his forearm. The knife dropped out of his hand and I threw him over my hip. He fell heavily on his back, and although the mud softened the impact I dropped on one knee into his belly. it had two hundred and ten pounds of body weight behind it and it drove the air out of his lungs in a loud whoosh. He doubled up like a foetus in the womb, wheezing for breath, and I flipped him over on to his face. The cloth cap fell off his head and I found that he had a thick shock of dark hair shot through with strands of silver. I took a good handful of it sat on his shoulders and pushed his face deep into the Yellow mud.

“I don’t like little boys who bully girls I told him conversationally, and behind me the engine of the Triumph roared into life. The headlights blazed out and then swung in a wide arc until they burned directly up the narrow lane.

I knew I hadn’t taken the blond out properly, it had been a hurried botchy job. I left the man in the mud and ran back down the lane. The wheels of the Triumph spun On “the Paving of the barnyard and, with its headlights blazing dazzlingly into my eyes, it jumped forward, slewing and skidding as it left the Paving and entered the muddy lane. The driver met the skid and came straight at me.

I fell flat and rolled into the cold ooze of a narrow open drain that carried run-off water through the tall hedge.

The Triumph hit the side a glancing blow and the hedge pushed it slightly off its line. The “nearside wheels spun viciously on the edge of the stone coping of the drain inches from my face, and mud and a shower of twigs fell on me. Then it was past.

it checked as it came level with the man in the muddy camel-hair coat. He was kneeling on the verge of the road and now he dragged himself into the Passenger seat of the Triumph. Just as I crawled out of the drain and ran up behind the sports car it pulled away again, mud spraying from the spinning rear wheels. In vain I raced after it, but it gathered speed and tore away up the slope. I gave up, turned and ran back down the lane, groping for the keys of the Chrysler in my sodden trouser pockets, and realized I had left them on the table in Jimmy’s room.

Sherry was leaning in the open doorway of the kitchen. She held her burned hand to her chest and her hair was in tangled disarray. The sleeve of her jersey was torn loose from the shoulder.

“I couldn’t stop him, Harry,“she gasped. “I tried.” “How bad -is it?” I asked her, abandoning all thought of chasing the sports car when I saw her distress.

“Slightly singed.”

“I’ll take you to a doctor.”

“No. It doesn’t need it,” but her smile was lopsided with pain.

I went up to Jimmy’s room and from my travelling medicine kit I took a Doloxene for the pain and Mogadon to let her sleep.

“I don’t need it, she protested.

“Do I have to hold your now and force them down?” I asked, and she grinned, shook her head and swallowed them. “You’d better take a bath,” she said, “you are soaked,” and suddenly I realized I was sodden and cold. When I came back to the kitchen, glowing from the bath, she was already whoozy with the pills, but she had made coffee for us and strengthened it with a tot of whisky. We drank it sitting opposite each other.

“What did they want? I asked. “What did they say? “They thought I knew why Jimmy had gone to St. Mary’s. They wanted to know.” I thought about that. Something didn’t make sense, it worried me.

“I think-” Sherry’s voice was unsteady and she staggered slightly as she tried to stand. “Wow! What did you give me?” I picked her up and she protested weakly, but I carried her up to her room. It was chintzy and girlish, with rosepatterned wallpaper. I laid her on the bed, pulled off her shoes and covered her with the quilt.

She sighed and closed her eyes. “I think I’ll keep you around,“she whispered. “You’re very useful. Thus encouraged, I sat on the edge of the bed and gentled her to sleep, smoothing her hair off her temples and Stroking the broad forehead; her skin felt like warm velvet. She was asleep within a minute. I switched off the light, and was about to leave when I thought better of it.

I slipped Off MY own shoes and crept in under the quilt. In her sleep she rolled quite naturally into my arms, and I held her close.

It was a good feeling and soon I slept also. I woke in the ”

dawn. Her face was pressed into my neck, one leg and arm thrown over me and her hair was soft arid tickling against my cheek.

Without waking her, I gently disengaged myself, kissed , her forehead, Picked up my shoes and went back to my own , room. It was the first time I had spent an entire night with a beautiful woman in my arms, and done nothing but sleep. I Puffed up with virtue.

The letter lay upon the reading table in Jimmy’s room where I had left it and I read it through again before I went to the bathroom. The pencilled note in the margin B Muse. 6914(8)” puzzled me and I fretted over it while I shaved.

The rain had stopped and the clouds were breaking up when I went down into the yard to examine the scene of the previous night’s encounter. The knife lay in the mud and I picked it up and tossed it over the hedge. I went into the kitchen, stamping my feet and rubbing my hands in the cold.

Sherry had started breakfast. “How’s the hand?” “Sore,” she admitted.

“We’ll find a doctor on the way up to London.”

“What makes you think I’m going to London?“she asked carefully, as she buttered toast.

“Two things. You can’t stay here. The wolf pack will be back.”

She looked up at me quickly but was silent. “The other is that you promised to help me - and the trail leads to London.”

She was unconvinced, so while we ate I showed her the letter I had found in Jimmy’s file.

“I don’t see the connection,” she said at last, and I admitted frankly, “It’s not clear to me even.” I lit my first cheroot of the day as I spoke, and the effect was almost magical. “But as soon as I saw the words Dawn light something went click-” I stopped. “My God!” I breathed. “That’s it. The Dawn light” I remembered the scraps of conversation carried to the bridge of Wave Dancer through the ventilator from the cabin below.

“To get the dawn light then we will have to—2 Jimmy’s voice, clear and tight with anticipation. “If the dawn light is where-Again the words repeated had puzzled me at the time. They had stuck like burrs in my memory.

I began to explain to Sherry, but I was so excited that it came tumbling out in a rush of words. She laughed, catching my excitement but not understanding the explanations.

“Hey!” she protested. “You are not making sense I began again, but halfway through I stopped and stared at her silently.

“Now what is it?” She was half amused, half exasperated. “This is driving me crazy, also.”

I snatched up my fork. “The bell. You remember the bell I told you about. The one Jimmy pulled up at Gunfire Reev.”

“Yes, of course.”

“I told you it had lettering on it, half eaten away by sand.

“Yes, go on.”

With the fork I scratched on the butter, using it as a slate.

“- w N L-.” I drew in - the lettering that had been chased into the bronze.

“That was it,” I said. “It didn’t mean anything then - but now-“Quickly I completed the letters, “DAwn LIGHT’, And she stared at it, nodding slowly as it fitted together. “We have to find out about this ship, the Dawn Light

“How?”

“It should be easy. We know she was an East Indiaman there must be records - Lloyd’s - the Board of Trade? She took the letter from my hand and read it again. “The gallant colonel’s luggage probably contained dirty socks and old shirts-“She pulled a face and handed it back to me.

“I’m short of socks,” I said, Cherry packed a case, and I was relieved to see that she had the rare virtue of being able to travel light. She went down to speak to the tenant farmer while I packed the bags into the Chrysler. He would keep an eye on the cottage during her absence, and when she came back she merely locked the kitchen door and climbed into the Chrysler beside me.

“Funny,” she said. “This feels like the beginning of a long journey.”

“I have my plans,” I warned and leered at her.

“Once I thought you looked wholesome,” she said sorrowfully, “but when you do that—2 “Sexy, isn’t it?” I agreed, and took the Chrysler up the lane.

I found a doctor in Haywards Heath. Sherry’s hand had now blistered badly, fat white bags of fluid hung from her fingers like sickly grapes. He drained them, and rebandaged the hand.

“Feels worse now,” she murmured as we drove on northwards, and she was pale and silent with the pain of it. I respected her silence, until we were into the suburbs of the city.

We had better find some place to stay,” I suggested. “Something comfortable and central.”

She looked across at me quizzically.

“It would probably be a lot more comfortable and cheaper if we got a double room somewhere, wouldn’t it?”

I felt something turn over in my belly, something warm and exciting. “Funny you should say that, I was just about to suggest the same.”

“I know you were,” she laughed for the first time in two hours.

“I saved you the trouble.” She shook her head, still laughing. “I’ll stay with my uncle. He’s got a spare room in his apartment in Pimlico, and there is a little pub around the corner. It’s friendly and clean - you could do worse.”

“I am crazy about your sense of humour,” I muttered.

She Phoned the uncle from a call box, while I waited in the car.

“It’s fixed up,” she told me, as she climbed into the passenger seat. “He’s at home.”

It was a ground-floor apartment in a quiet street near the river.

I carried Sherry’s bag for her as she led the way, -and rang the doorbell.

The man that Opened the door was small and lightly built. He was sixtyish and he wore a grey cardigan, darned at the elbows. His feet were thrust into carpet slippers. The homely attire was somehow incongruous, for his iron-grey hair was neatly cropped as was the short stiff moustache. His skin was clear and ruddy, but it was the fierce predatory glint of the eye and the military set of the shoulders that warned me. This man was aware.

“My uncle, Dan Wheeler.” Sherry stood aside to introduce us.

“Uncle Dan this is Harry Fletcher.”

The Young man you were telling me about,” he nodded abruptly. His hand was bony and dry and his gaze stung like nettles. “Come in. Come in, both of you.) “I won’t bother you, sir-” it was quite natural to call him that, an echo of my military training from so long ago, “I want to find digs myself. Uncle Dan and Sherry exchanged glances and I thought she shook her head almost imperceptibly, but I was looking beyond them into the apartment. It was monastic, completely masculine in the severity and economy of furniture and Ornaments-Somehow that room seemed to confirm my first impressions of the man. I wanted as little to do with him as I could arrange while seeing as much of Sherry as I possibly could.

“I’ll pick you up in an hour for lunch, Sherry,” and when she agreed I left them and returned to the Chrysler. The pub that Sherry recommended was the Windsor Arms, and when I mentioned the uncle’s name as she suggested, they put me in a quiet back room with a fine view of sky and television aerials. I lay on the bed clothed, and considered the North family and its relatives while I waited for the hour to run by. Of one thing only was I certain that Sherry North the Second was not going to pass me silently in the night. I was going to keep pretty close station upon her, and yet there was much about her that still puzzled me. I suspected that she was a more complicated person than her serene and lovely face suggested. It was going to be interesting finding out. I put the thought aside, sat up and reached for the telephone. I made three phone calls in the next twenty minutes. One to Lloyd’s Register of Shipping in Fenchurch Street, another to the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich and the last to the India Office Library in Blackfriars Road. I left the Chrysler in the private parking lot behind the pub, a car is more trouble than it is worth in London, and I walked back to the uncle’s apartment. Sherry answered the door herself, and she was ready to leave. I liked that about her, she was punctual.

“You didn’t like Uncle Dan, did you?” she challenged me over the lunch table and I ducked.

“I made some phone calls. The place that we are looking for is in Blackfriars Road. It’s in Westminster. The India Office Library. We will go down there after we’ve eaten.”

“He really is very sweet when you get to know him.”

“Look, darling girl, he’s your uncle. You keep him.”

“But why, Harry? It interests me.”

“What does he do for a living - army, navy?” She stared at me.

“How did you know that?”

“I can pick them out of a crowd.”

“He’s army, but retired - why should that make a difference?”

“What are you going to try ” I waved the menu at her. “If You take the roast beef, I’ll go for the duck,” and she accepted the decoy, and concentrated on the food.

The India Office Archives were housed in one of those square modern blocks of greenish glass and airforcenue steel panels, Sherry and I armed ourselves with visitor’s passes and signed the book. We made out way first to the Catalogue Room and thence to the marine section of the archives. These were Presided over by a neatly dressed but stern, faced lady with greying hair and steel-rimmed spectacles.

I handed her a requisition slip for the dossier which would include material on the Honourable Companys ship Dawn Light and she disappeared amongst the laden ceilings high tiers of steel shelving.

It was twenty minutes before she returned and placed a bulky dossier on the counter top before me.

“You’ll have to sign here,” she told me, indicating a column on the stiff cardboard folder. “Funny!” she remarked. “You are the second one who has asked for this file in less than a year.”

I stared at the signature J.A. Nard, in the last space. We were following closely in Jimmy’s footsteps, I thought, as I signed’RICHARD SMITH, below his name.

“You can use the desks over there, dear.” She pointed across the room. “Please try and keep the file tidy, won’t you, then.”

Sherry and I sat down at the desk shoulder to shoulder, and I untied the tape that secured the file.

The Dawn light was of the type known as the Black’wall frigate, characteristically built at the Blackwall yards in the early nineteenth century. The type was very similar to the naval frigates of that period.

She had been built at Sunderland for the Honourable English East India Company, and she was of 1330 net register tons. At the waterline her dimensions were 226 feet with a beam of twenty-six feet. Such a narrow beam would have made her very fast but uncomfortable in a stiff blow.

She had been launched in 1832, just the year before the Company lost its China monopoly, and this stroke of illfortune seemed to have dogged her whole career.

Also in the file were a whole series of reports of the proceedings of various courts of inquiry. Her first master gloried in the name of Hogge and on her maiden voyage he piled the Dawn Light on to the bank at Diamond Harbour in Hooghly River. He was found by the court of inquiry to be under the influence of strong drink at the time and stripped of his command.

“Made a pig of himself,” I observed to Sherry, and she groaned softly and roled her eyes at my wit.

The trail of misfortune continued. In 1840 while making passage in the South Atlantic the elderly mate who had the dog watch let her come up, and away went her masts. Wallowing helpless with her top hamper dragging alongside, she was found -by a Dutchman. They cut away the wreckage and she was dragged into Table Bay. The Salvage Court made an award of 12,000 pounds.

In 1846 while half her crew were ashore on the wild coast of New Guinea they were set upon by the cannibals and slaughtered to a man. Sixty-three of her crew died.

Then on the 23rd September, 1857, she sailed from Bombay, outward bound for St. Mary’s the Cape of Good Hope, St. Helena and the Pool of London.

“The date.” I placed my finger on the line. “This is the voyage that Goodchild talks of in the letter.”

Sherry nodded without reply, I had learned in the last few minutes that she read faster than I did. I had to restrain her from turning each page when I was only three-quarters finished. Now her eyes darted across each line, her colour was up, a soft flush upon her pale cheeks, and she was biting her underlip.

“Come on,” she urged me. “Hurry up!”. and I had to hold her wrist.

The Dawn Light never reached St. Mary’s - she disappeared. Three months later, she was considered lost at sea with all hands and the underwriters were ordered by Lloyd’s to make good their assurances to the owners and shippers.

The manifest of her cargo was impressive for such a small ship for she had loaded out of China and India a cargo that consisted of.

364 chests of tea 494 halfchests of tea 101 chests of tea 618 halfchests of tea 577 bales of silk 26 boxes various spices 72 tons on behalf of Messrs Dunbar and Green.

65 tons on behalf of Messrs Simpson, Wyllie & Livingstone.

82 tons on behalf of Messrs Elder and Company.

4 tons on behalf of Col. Sir Roger Goodchild.

6 tons on behalf of Major John Cotton.

2 tons on behalf of Lord Elton.

2 tons on behalf of Messrs Paulson and Company.

Wordlessly I laid my finger on the fourth item of the manifest, and again Sherry nodded, with her eyes shining like sapphires. The claim had been settled and the matter appeared closed until, four months later in April, 1858 the East Indianian Walmer Castle arrived in England, carrying -aboard the survivors from the Dawn Light.

There were six of them. The first mate, Andrew Barlow, boatswain’s mate, and three topmast men. There was also young woman of twenty-two years, a Miss. Charlotte Cotton, who had been a passenger making the homeward passage with her father, a Major in the 40th Foot.

The mate, Andrew Barlow, gave his evidence to the Court of Inquiry, and beneath the dry narrative and the ponderous questions and guarded replies lay an exciting and romantic story of the sea, an epic of shipwreck and survival.

As we read I saw the meagre scraps of knowledge I had scraped together fit neatly into the story.

Fourteen days out from Bombay, the Dawn Light was set upon by a furious storm out of the south-east. For seven days the savagery of the storm raged unabated, driving the ship before her. I could imagine it clearly, one of those great cyclones that had torn the roof from my own shack at Turtle Bay.

Once again Dawn Light was dismasted, no spars were left standing except the fore lower mast, mizzen lower mast, and bowsprit. The rest had carried away on the tempest and there was no opportunity to set up a jury mainmast or send yards aloft in the mountainous seas.

Thus when land was sighted to leeward, there was no chance that the ship might avoid her fate. A conspiracy of wind and current hurled her down into the throat of a funnel-shaped reef upon which the storm surf burst like the thunder of the heavens.

The ship struck and held, and Andrew Barlow was able with the help of twelve members of his crew to launch one of the boats. Four passengers including Miss. Charlotte Cotton left the stricken ship with them, and Barlow, with an unlikely combination of good fortune and seamanship, was able to find a passage through the wild sea and murderous reefs into the quieter waters of the inshore channel.

Finally they ran the boat ashore on the spindrift smothered beach of an island. Here the survivors huddled for four days while the cyclone blew itself out.

Barlow alone climbed to the summit of the southernmost of the treble peaks of the island. The description was completely clear. It was the Old Men and Gunfire Reef. There was no doubt of it. This then was how Jimmy North had known what he was looking for - the island with three peaks and a barrier of coral reef.

Barlow took bearings off the sea-battered hull of the Dawn Light as she lay in the jaws of the reef, swept by each successive wave. On the second day the ships hull began to break up, and while Barlow watched from the peak, the front half of her was carried up over the reef to disappear into a dark gaping hole in the coral. The stern fell back into the sea and was smashed to matchwood.

When at last the skies cleared and the wind dropped, Andrew Barlow discovered that his small party were all that survived from a ship’s company of 149 souls. The others had perished in the wild sea.

To the west, low against the horizon, he described a low land mass which he hoped was the African mainland. He embarked his party in the ship’s boat once more and they made the crossing of the inshore channel. His hopes were fulfilled, it was Africa - but as always she was hostile and cruel.

The seventeen lost beings began a long and dangerous journey southwards, and three months later only Barlow, four seamen and. Miss. Charlotte Cotton reached the island port of Zanzibar. Fever, wild animals, wild men and misfortune had whittled away their numbers - and even those who survived were starved to gaunt living skeletons, yellowed with fever and riddled with dysentery from foul water.

The court of inquiry had highly commended Andrew Barlow, and the Han. Company had made him an award of E500 for meritorious service.

When I finished reading, I looked up at Sherry. She was watching me.

“Wow!” she said, and I also felt drained by the magnitude of the old drama.

“It all fits, Sherry,” I said. “It’s all there.” “Yes,” she said.

“We must see if they have the drawings here.”

the Prints and Drawings Room was on the third floor and a quick search by an earnest assistant soon revealed the Dawn light in all her splendour.

She was a graceful three-masted ship with a long low profile. She had no crossjack or mizzen course. Instead she carried a large spanker and a full set of studding sails. The long poop gave space for several passenger cabins, and she carried her boats on top of her deckhouse aft.

She was heavily armed, with thirteen black-painted gunports a side, from which she could run out her long eighteen-pounder cannon to defend herself, in those hostile seas east of the Cape of Good Hope across which she plied to China and India.

“I need a drink,” I said, and picked up the drawings of the Dawn Light. “I’ll get them to make copies of these for us. “What for?” Sherry wanted to know.

-The assistant emerged from her lair amongst the piled trays of old prints and sucked in her cheeks at my request for copies.

“I’ll have to charge you seventy-five pence,” she tried to discourage me.

That’s reasonable I said.

“And we won’t have them ready until next week,” she added inexorably.

“Oh dear,” said I, and gave her the smile. “I did need them tomorrow afternoon.”

The smile crushed her, she lost the air of purpose and tried to tuck her straying wisps of hair into the side frames of her glasses.

“Well, I’ll see what I can do then,” she relented.

That’s very sweet of you, really it is and we left her looking confused, but pleased.

My sense of direction was returning and I found my way to El Vino’s without trouble. The evemning flood of journalists from Fleet Street had not yet swamped it and we found a table at the back. I ordered two Vermouths and we saluted each other over the glasses.

“You know, Harry, Jimmy had a hundred schemes. His whole life was one great treasure hunt. Every week he had found, almost found, the location of a treasure ship from the Armada or a sunken Aztec city, a buccaneer wreck—? she shrugged. “I have a built-in resistance to believing any of it. But this one-” She sipped the wine.

“Let’s go over what we have,” I suggested. We know that Goodchild was very concerned that his agent receive five cases of luggage and put it into safe keeping. We know that he was going to ship it aboard Dawn Light and he sent advance notice, probably through a personal friend, the captain of the naval frigate Pandker.”

“Good,“she agreed.

“We know that those cases were listed on the ship’s manifest.

That the ship was lost, presumably with them still on board. We know the exact location of the wreck. We have had it confirmed by the ship’s bell.”

“Still good.”

“We only do not know what those cases contained.”

“Dirty socks,“she said.

“Four tons of dirty socks?” I asked, and her expression changed.

The weight of the cargo had not meant anything to her.

“Ah,” I grinned at her, “it went over your head. I thought so.

You read so fast you only take in half of it She pulled a face at me.

“Four tons, my darling girl, is a great deal of something whatever it is.”

“All right,“she agreed. “Figures don’t mean much to me, I admit.

But it sounds a lot.”

“Say the same weight as a new Rolls-Royce - to put it in terms you might understand,” and her eyes widened and turned a darker blue.

“That is a lot.”

“Jimmy obviously knew what it was, and had proof sufficient to convince some very hard-headed backers. They took it seriously.”

“Seriously enough to, and she stopped herself. For an instant I saw the old grief for Jimmy’s death in her eyes. I was embarrassed by it, and I looked away, making a show of taking the letter out of my inner pocket.

Carefully I spread it on the table top between us. When I looked at her, she had recovered her composure once more.

The pencilled note in the margin engaged my attention again.

“B. Muse.6914(8).” I read it aloud. “Any ideas?”

“Bachelor of Music.”

“Oh, that’s great,” I applauded.

“You do better,” she challenged, and I folded the letter away with dignity and ordered two more drinks.

“Well, that was a good run on that scent,” I said when I had paid the waiter. “We have an idea what it was all about. Now, we can go on my other lead.”

She sat forward and encouraged me silently.

“I told you about your impostor, the blonde Sherry North?” and she nodded. “On the night before she left the island she sent a cable to London.” I produced the flimsy from my wallet and handed it to Sherry. While she read it, I went on: “This was clearly an okay to her principal, Manson. He must be the big man behind this. I am going to start moving in on him now.” I finished my Vermouth. “I’ll drop you back with your martial uncle, and contact you again tomorrow.”

Her lips set in a line of stubbornness which I had not seen before and there was a glint in her eyes like the blue of gun-metal.

“Harry Fletcher, if You think you are going to ditch me just when things start livening up, you must be off your tiny head. The cab dropped us in Berkeley Square and I led her into Curzon Street.

“Take my arm quickly,” I muttered, glancing over my shoulder in a secretive manner. Instantly she obeyed, and we had gone fifty yards before she whispered, why? “Because I like the feel of it,” I grinned at her and spoke in a natural voice.

“Oh, you!” She made as if to pull away, but I held her and she capitulated. We sauntered up the street towards Shepherd Market, stopping now and then to window-shop like a pair of tourists.

No. 97 Curzon Street was one of those astronomically expensive apartment blocks, six storeys of brick facing, and an ornate street door of bronze and glass beyond which was a marbled foyer guarded by a uniformed doorman. We went on past it, up as far as the White Elephant Club and there we crossed the street and wandered back on the opposite pavement.

“I could go and ask the doorman if Mr. Manson occupied Flat No.

5,” Sherry volunteered.

“Great,” I said. “Then he says “yes”, what do you do then? Tell him Harry Fletcher says hello?”

“You are really very droll,” she said, and once more she tried to take her hand away.

“There is a restaurant diagonally opposite No. 97.” I prevented her withdrawal. “Let’s get a table in the front window, drink some coffee and watch for a while.”

It was a little past three o’clock when we settled at the window seat with a good view across the street, and the next hour passed pleasantly. I found it not a difficult task to keep Sherry amused, we shared a similar sense of humour and I liked to hear her laugh.

I was in the middle of a long, complicated story when I was interrupted by the arrival outside No. 97 of a Silver Wraith Rolls-Royce. It pulled to the kerb and a chauffeur in a smart dove-grey uniform left the car and entered the foyer. He and the doorman fell into conversation, and I resumed my story.

Ten minutes later, there was sudden activity opposite. The elevator began a series of rapid ascents and descents, each time discharging a load of matching crocodileskin luggage. This was carried out by the doorman and chauffeur and packed into the Rolls. It seemed endless, and Sherry remarked, “Somebody is off on a long holiday.” She sighed wistfully.

“How do you fancy a tropical island with blue water and white sands, a thatched shack amongst the Palms—” “Stop it,” she said. “On an autumn day in old London, I just can’t bear the thought.”

I was about to move into a stronger position when the footman and chauffeur stood to attention and once more the glass doors of the lift opened and a man and woman stepped out of it.

The woman wore a full-length honey mink and her blonde hair was piled high on her head in an elaborate lacquered Grecian style. Anger struck me like a fist in the guts as I recognized her.

It was Sherry North, the First. The nice lady who had blown Judith and wave Dancer to the bottom of Grand Harbour.

With her was a man of medium height with soft brown hair fashionably long and curly over his ears. He had a light tan, Probably from a sun lamp, and he was dressed too well. Very expensively, but as flamboyantly as an entertainment personality.

He had a heavy jaw and a long fleshy nose with soft gazelle eyes, but his mouth was pinched and hungry. A greedy mouth that I remembered so well.

“Manson!” I said. “Jesus! Manson Resnick - Manny Resnick.” He would be-just the one Jimmy North would find his way to with his outrageous proposition. In exactly the same way that so long ago I had gone to him with my plans for the gold heist at Rome Airport. Manny was an underworld entrepreneur, and he had clearly climbed a long way up the ladder since our last meeting.

He was keeping great style now, I thought, as he crossed the pavement and entered the back seat of the Rolls, settling down next to the mink-clad blonde.

“Wait here,” I told Sherry urgently, as the Rolls pulled away towards Park Lane.

I ran out on to the pavement and searched wildly for a cab to follow them. There were none and I ran after the Rolls praying desperately for the sight of a big black cab with its top light burning, but ahead of me the Rolls swung right into South Audley Street and accelerated smoothly away.

I stopped at the corner and it was already far ahead, infiltrating the traffic towards Grosvenor Square.

I turned and ambled disappointedly back to where Sherry waited. I knew that Sherry had been correct. Manny and the blonde were off on a long journey. There was no point in hanging around No. 97 Curzon Street any longer.

Sherry was waiting for me outside the restaurant.

“What was that all about?” she demanded and I took her arm. As we walked back towards Berkeley Square, I told her.

“That man is probably the one who ordered Jimmy murdered, who was responsible for having half my chest shot away, who had them to roast your lovely pinkies, - in short, the big man.”

“You know him?”

“I did business with him a long time ago.” Nice friends you have.”

“I’m trying for a better class lately,” I said, and squeezed her arm. She ignored my gallantry.

“And the woman. Is she the one from St. Mary’s, the one who blew up your boat and the young girl?”

I experienced a violent return of the anger which had gripped me a few minutes earlier when I had seen that sleek, meticulously polished predator dressed in mink.

Beside me Sherry gasped, “Harry, you are hurting me!”

“Sorry.” I relaxed my grip on her arm.

“I guess that answers my question,” she muttered ruefully, and massaged her upper arm.

The private bar of the Windsor Arms was all dark oak panels and antique mirrors. It was crowded by the time Sherry and I returned. Outside darkness had fallen and there was an icy wind stirring the fallen leaves in the gutters.

The warmth of the pub was welcome. We found seats in a corner, but the crowd pushed us together, forcing me to place an arm around Sherry’s shoulders, and our heads were close so we could hold a very private conversation in this public place.

“I can guess where Manny Resnick and his friend are headed,” I said.

“Big Gull Island?” Sherry asked, and when I nodded she went on, “He’ll need a boat and divers.”

“Don’t worry, Manny will get them “And what will we do?” “We?” I asked.

“A form of speech,” she corrected herself primly. “What will you do?”

“I have a choice. I can forget about it all - or I can go back to Gunfire Reef and try to find out what the hell was in Colonel Goodchild’s five cases.”

“You’ll need equipment.”

“It might not be as elaborate as Manny Resnick’s will be, but I could get enough together.”

“How are you for money, or is that a rude question?”

“The answer is the same. I could get enough together.” “Blue water and white sand,“she murmured dreamily. ” - and the palm fronds clattering in the trade winds.”

“Stop it, Harry.”

“Fat crayfish grilling on the coals, and me beside you singing in the wilderness,” I went on remorselessly.

“Pig,” she said.

“If you stay here, you’ll never know if it was dirty socks I pressed her.

“You’d write and tell me,” she pleaded. “No, I wouldn’t.”

“I’ll have to come with you,“she said at last. “Good girl.” I squeezed her shoulder.

“But I insist on paying my own way, I refuse to become a kept woman.” She had guessed how hard pressed I was financially.

“I should hate to erode your principles,” I told her happily, and my wallet sighed with relief. It was going to be a near-run thing to mount an expedition to Gunfire Reef on what I had left.

There was much we had to discuss now that the decision had been made. It seemed only minutes later that the landlord was calling, “Time, gentlemen.”

“The streets are dangerous at night,” I warned Sherry. “I don’t think we should chance it. Upstairs I have a very comfortable room with a fine view—_2 “Come on, Fletcher.” Sherry stood up. “You had better walk me home, or I shall set my uncle on to you.”

As we walked the half block to her uncle’s apartment, we agreed to meet for lunch next day. I had a list of errands to perform in the morning including making the airline reservations, while Sherry had to have her passport renewed and pick up the photostat drawings of the Dawn Light.

At the door of the apartment we faced each other, suddenly both of us were shy. It was so terribly corny that I almost laughed. We were like a pair of old-fashioned teenagers at the end of our first date - but sometimes corny feels good.

“Good night, Harry,” she said, and with the age-old artistry of womankind she showed me in some indefinable manner that she was ready for kissing.

Her lips were soft and warm, and the kiss went on for a long time.

“My goodness,” she whispered throatily, and drew away at last.

“Are you sure you won’t change your mind - it is a beautiful room, hot and cold water, carpets on the floor, TV__2 She laughed shakily and pushed me gently backwards. “Goodnight, dear Harry,” she repeated, and left me.

I went out into the street and strolled back towards my pub. The wind had dropped but I could smell the damp emanating from the river close by. The street was deserted but the kerb was lined with parked vehicles, bumper to bumper they reached to the corner.

I sauntered along the pavement, in no hurry for bed, even toying with the idea of a stroll down the Embankment first. My hands were thrust deep into the pockets of my car coat, and I was feeling relaxed and happy as I thought about this woman.

There was a lot to think about Sherry North, much that was unclear or not yet explained, but mainly I cherished the thought that perhaps here at last was something that might last longer than a night, a week, or a month something that was already strong and that would not be like the others, diminishing with the passage of time, but instead would grow ever stronger.

Suddenly a voice beside me said, “Harry!” It was a man’s voice, a strange voice, and I turned instinctively towards it. As I did so I knew that it was a mistake.

The speaker was sitting in the back seat of one of the parked cars. It was a black Rover. The window was open and his face was merely a pale blob in the darkness of the interior.

Desperately I tried to pull my hands out of my pockets and turn to face the direction from which I knew the attack would come. As I turned I ducked and twisted, and something whiffed past my ear and struck my shoulder a numbing blow.

I struck backwards with both elbows, connecting solidly and hearing the gasp of pain. Then my hands were clear and I was around, moving fast, weaving, for I knew they would use the cosh again.

They were just midnight shapes, menacing and huge, dressed in dark clothing. It seemed there were a legion of them, but there were only four - and one in the car. They were all big men, and the one had the cosh up to strike again. I hit him under the chin with the palm of my hand, snapping his head backwards and I thought I might have broken his neck, for he went down hard on the pavement.

A knee drove for my groin, but I turned and caught it on the thigh, using the impetus of the turn to counterpunch. It was a good one, jolting me to the shoulder, and the man took it in the chest, and was thrown backwards, but immediately one of them was hugging the arm, smothering it and a fist caught me in the cheek under the eye. I felt the skin tear open.

Another one was on my back, an arm around my throat throttling me, but I heaved and pushed. In a tight knot, locked together, we surged around the pavement.

“Hold him still,” another voice called, low and urgent. “Let me get a shot at him.”

“What the bloody hell do you think we are trying to do?” panted another, and we fell against the side of the Rover. I was pinned there, and I saw the one with the cosh was on his feet. He swung again, and I tried to roll my head, but it caught me in the temple. It did not put me out completely, but it knocked all the fight out of me. I was instantly weak as a child, hardly able to support my own weight.

“That’s it, get him into the back.” They hustled me into the centre seat of the back of the Rover and one of them crowded in on each side of me. The doors slammed, the engine whirred and caught and we pulled away swiftly.

My brain cleared, but the side of my head was numb and felt like a balloon. There were three of them in the front seat, one on each side of me in the back. All of them were breathing heavily, and the one next to the driver was massaging his neck and jaw tenderly. The one on my right had been eating garlic, and he panted heavily as he searched me for weapons.

“I think you should know that something died in your mouth a long time ago, and it’s still there,” I told him, with a thickened tongue and an ache in my head, but the effort was not worth it. He showed no sign of having heard, but continued doggedly with this task. At last he was satisfied and I readjusted my clothing.

We drove in silence for five minutes, following the river towards Hammersmith, before they had all recovered their breath and tended their wounds, then the driver spoke.

“Listen, Manny wants to talk to you, but he said it’s no big thing. He was merely curious. He said also that if you gave us a hard time, not to go to no trouble, just to sign you off and toss you in the river.” “Charming chap, Manny,” I said.

“Shut up!” said the driver. “So you see, it’s up to you. Behave yourself and you get to live a little longer. I heard you used to be a sharp operator, Harry. We been expecting you to show up, ever since Lorna missed you on the island - but sure as hell we didn’t expect you to parade up and down Curzon Street like a brass band. Manny couldn’t believe it. He said, “That can’t be Harry. He must have gone soft.” It made him sad. “How are the mighty fallen. Tell it not in the streets of Ashkelon,” he said.”

“That’s Shakespeare,“said the one with the garlic breath. “Shut up,” said the driver and then went on. “Manny was sad but not that sad that he cried or anything, you understand.”

“I understand,” I mumbled.

“Shut up,” said the driver. “Manny said, “Dont do it here. Just follow him to a nice quiet place and pick him up. If he comes quietly you bring him to talk to me - if he cuts up rough then toss him in the river.”

“That sounds like my boy, Manny. He always was a softhearted little devil.” “Shut up,” said the driver.

“I look forward to seeing him again.”

“You just stay good and quiet and you might get lucky.”

I stayed that way through the night as we picked up the M4 and rushed westwards. It was two in the morning when we entered Bristol, skirting the city centre as we followed the A4 down to Avonmouth.

Amongst the other craft in the yacht basin was a big motor yacht.

She was moored to the wharf and she had her gangplank down. Her name painted on the stern and bows was Mandrake. She was an ocean-goer, steel-hulled painted blue and white, with pleasing lines. I judged her fast and sea-kindly, probably with sufficient range to take her anywhere in the world. A rich man’s toy. There were figures on her bridge, lights burning in most of her portholes, and she seemed ready for sea.

They crowded me as we crossed the narrow space to the gangplank.

The Rover backed and turned and drove away as we climbed to the Mandrake’s deck.

The saloon was too tastefully fitted out for Manny Resnick’s style, it had either been done by the previous owners or a professional decorator. There were forest-green wall-to-wall carpets and matching velvet curtains, the furniture was dark teak and polished leather and the pictures were choice oils toned to the general decor.

This was half a million pounds worth Of vessel, and I guessed it was a charter. Manny had probably taken her for six months and put in his own crew - for Manny Resnick had never struck me as a blue-water man.

As we waited in the centre of the wall-to-wall carpeting, a grimly silent group, I heard the unmistakable sounds of the gangplank being taken in, and the moorings cast off. The tremble of her engines become a steady beat, and the harbour lights slid past the saloon portholes as we left the entrance and thrust out into the tidal waters of the River Severn.

I recognized the lighthouses at Portishead Point and Red Cliff Bay as Mandrake came around for the run down-river past Weston-super-Mare and Berry for the open sea.

Manny came at last, he wore a blue silk gown and his face was still crumpled from sleep, but his curls were neatly combed and his smile was white and hungry.

“Harry,” he said, “I told you that you would be back.”

“Hello, Manny. I can’t say it’s any great pleasure.”

He laughed lightly and turned to the woman as she followed him into the saloon. She was carefully made up and every hair of the elaborate hairstyle was in its place. She wore a long white house-gown with lace at throat and cuffs.

“You have met Lorna, I believe, Lorna Page.”

“Next time you send somebody to hustle me, Manny, try for a little better class. I’m getting fussy in my old age.”

Her eyes slanted wickedly, but she smiled. “How’s your boat, Harry? Your lovely boat?”

“It makes a lousy coffin.” I turned back to Manny. “What’s it going to be, Manny, can we work out a deal?”

He shook his head sorrowfully. “I don’t think so, Harry. I would like to - truly I would, if just for old times” sake. But I can’t see it. Firstly, you haven’t anything to trade and that makes for a lousy deal. Secondly, I know you are too sentimental. You’d louse up any deal we did make for purely emotional reasons. I couldn’t trust you, Harry, all the time you’d be thinking about Jimmy North and your boat, you’d be thinking about the little island girl that got in the way, and about Jimmy North’s sister who we had to get rid of-” I took a mild pleasure in the fact that Manny had obviously not heard what had happened to the goon squad he had sent to take care of Sherry North, and that she was still very much alive. I tried to make my voice sincere and my manner convincing.

“Listen, Manny, I’m a survivor. I can forget anything, if I have to.”

He laughed again. “If I didn’t know you better, I’d believe you, Harry.” He shook his head again. “Sorry, Harry, no deal.”

“Why did you go to all the trouble to bring me down here, then?”

“I sent others to do the job twice before, Harry. Both times they missed you. This time I want to make sure. We will be cruising over some deep water on the way to Cape Town, and I’m going to hang some really heavy weights on to you.” “Cape Town?” I asked. “So you are going after the Dawn Light in person. What is so fascinating about that old wreckr

“Come on, Harry. If you didn’t know, you wouldn’t be giving me such a hard time.” He laughed, and I thought it best not to let them know my ignorance.

“You think you can find your way back?” I asked the blonde.

“It’s a big sea and a lot of islands look the same. I think you should keep me as insurance,” I insisted.

“Sorry, Harry.” Manny crossed to the teak and brass bar.

“Drink?” he asked.

“Scotch,” I said, and he half filled a glass with the liquor and brought it to me.

“To be entirely truthful with you, part of this is for Lorna’s benefit. You made the girl bitter, Harry, I don’t know why - but she wanted especially to be there when we say goodbye. She enjoys that sort of thing, don’t you, darling, it turns her on.”

I drained the glass. “She needs turning on - as you and I both know, she’s a lousy lay without it,” I observed, and Manny hit me in the mouth, crushing my lips and the whisky stung the raw flesh.

“Lock him up,” he said softly. As they hustled me out of the saloon, and along the deck towards the bows, I took pleasure in knowing that Lorna would have painful questions to answer. On either hand the shore lights moved steadily past us in the night, and the river was black and wide.

orward of the bridge there was a low deckhouse above the forecastle, and a louvred companionway opened on to a deck ladder that descended to a small lobby. This was obviously the crew’s quarters, doors opened off the lobby into cabins and a communal mess.

In the bows was a steel door and a stencilled sign upon it read “FORECASTLE STORE’. They shoved me through the doorway and slammed the heavy door. The lock turned and I was alone in a steel cubicle probably six by four. Both bulkheads were lined with storage lockers, and the air was damp and musty.

My first concern was to find some sort of weapon. The cupboards were all of them locked and I saw that the planking was inch-thick oak. I would need an axe to hack them open, nevertheless I tried. I attempted to break in the doors using my shoulder as a ram, but the space was too confined and I could not work up sufficient momentum.

However, the noise attracted attention. The door swung open and one of the crew stood well back with a big ugly .41 Rueger Magnum in his hand.

“Cut it out,” he said. “There ain’t anything in there,” and he gestured to the pile of old lifejackets against the far wall. “You just sit there nice and quiet or I’ll call some of the boys to help me work you over.” He slammed the door and I sank down on to the lifejackets.

There was clearly a guard posted at the door full-time. The others would be within easy call. I hadn’t expected him to open the door and I had been off-balance. I had to get him to do it again - but this time I would have a go. It was a poor chance, I realized. All he had to do was point that cannon into the storeroom and pull the trigger. He could hardly miss.

I looked down at the pile of lifejackets, and stood again to pull them aside. Beneath them was a small wooden fruit box, it contained discarded cleaning materials. A nylon floorbrush, cleaning rags, a tin of Brasso, half a cake of yellow soap, and a brandy bottle half filled with clear fluid. I unscrewed the cap and sniffed it. It was benzine.

I sat down again and reassessed my position, trying to find a percentage in it without much success.

The light switch was outside the doorway and the light overhead was in a thick glass cover. I stood up and climbed halfway up the lockers, wedging myself there while I unscrewed the light cover and examined the bulb. It gave me a little hope.

I climbed down again and selected one of the heavy canvas lifejackets. The clasp of the steel strap on my wristwatch made a blunt blade and I sawed and hacked at the canvas, tearing a hole large enough to get my forefinger in. I ripped the canvas open and pulled out handfuls of the white kapok stuffing. I piled it on the floor, tearing open more lifejackets until I had a considerable heap.

I soaked the cotton waste with benzine from the bottle and took a handful of it with me when I climbed again to the light fitting. I removed the bulb and was plunged instantly into darkness. Working by sense of touch alone, I pressed the benzine-soaked stuffing close to the electricity terminals. I had nothing to use as insulation so I held the steel strap of my wristwatch in my bare hands and used it to dead-short the terminals.

There was a sizzling blue flash, the benzine ignited instantly and 180 volts hit me like a charge of buckshot, knocking me off my perch. I fell in a heap on to the deck with a ball of flaming kapok in my hands.

Outside I heard faint shouts of annoyance and anger. I had succeeded in shorting the entire lighting system of the forecastle. Quickly I tossed the burning kapok on to the prepared pile, and it burned up fiercely. I brushed the sparks from my, hands, wrapped the handkerchief around my mouth and nose, snatched up one of the undamaged lifebelts and went to stand against the steel door.

In seconds the benzine burned away and the cotton began to smolder, fiercely pouring out thick black smoke that smelled vile. It filled the store, and my eyes began to stream with tears. I tried to breathe shallowly but the smoke tore my lungs and I coughed violently.

There was another shout beyond the door.

“Something is burning.” And it was answered, “For Chrissake, get those lights on.”

It was my cue, I began beating on the steel door and screaming at the top of my voice. “Fire! The ship is on fire!” It was not all acting. The smoke in my prison was thick and solid, and more boiled off the burning cotton kapok. I realized that if nobody opened that door within the next sixty seconds I would suffocate and my screams must have carried conviction. The guard swung the door open, he carried the big Rueger revolver and shone a flashlight into the storeroom.

I had time only to notice those details and to see that the ship’s lights were still dead, shadowy figures milled about in the gloom, some with flashlights - then a solid black cloud of smoke boiled out of the storeroom.

I came out with the smoke like a fighting bull from its pen, desperate for clean air and terrified at how close I had come to suffocating. It gave strength to my efforts.

The guard went sprawling under my rush and the Rueger fired as he went down. The muzzle flame was bright as a flashbulb, lighting the whole area and allowing me to get my bearings on the companion ladder to the deck.

The blast of the shot was so deafening in the confined space that it seemed to paralyse the other shadowy figures. I was halfway to the ladder before one of them leaped to intercept me. I drove my shoulder into his chest and heard the wind go out of him like a punctured football. _ There were shouts of concern now, and another big dark figure blocked the foot of the ladder. I had gathered speed across the lobby and I put that and all my weight into a kick that slogged into his belly, doubling him over and dropping him to his knees. As he went over a flashlight lit his face and I saw it was my friend with the garlicky breath. It gave me a lift of pleasure to light me on my way, and I put one foot on his shoulder and used it as a springboard to leap halfway up the ladder.

Hands clutched at my ankle but I kicked them away, and dragged myself to the deck level. I had only one foot on the rungs, and I was clinging with one hand to the lifejacket and with the other to the brass handrail. In that helpless moment, the doorway to the deck was blocked by yet another dark figure - and the lights went on. A sudden blinding blaze of light.

The man above me was the lad with the cosh, and I saw his savage delight as he raised it over my helpless head. The only way to avoid it was to let go the handrail and drop back into the forecastle, which was filled with surging angry goons.

I looked back and was actually opening my grip when behind me, the gunman with the Rueger Magnum sat up groggily, lifted the weapon, tried to brace himself against the ship’s movement and fired at me. The heavy bullet cracked past my ear, almost splitting my ear drum and it hit the coshman in the centre of his chest. It picked him up and hurled him backwards across the deck. He hung in the rigging of the foremast with his arms spread like those of a derelict scarecrow, and with a desperate hinge I followed him out on to the deck and rolled to my feet still clutching the lifejacket.

Behind me the Rueger roared again and I heard the bullet splinter the coping of the hatch. Three running strides carried me to the rail and I dived over the side in a gut-swooping drop until I hit the black water flat, but I was dragged deep as the boil of the propellers caught me and swirled me under.

The water was shockingly cold, it seemed to drive in the walls of my lungs and probe with icy lances into the marrow of my bones.

The lifejacket helped pull me to the surface at last and I looked wildly about me. The lights of the coast seemed clear and very bright, twinkling whitely across the black water. Out here in the seaway there was a chop and swell to the surface, alternately lifting and dropping me.

Mandrake slid steadily onwards towards the black void of the open sea. With all her lights blazing she looked as festive as a cruise ship as she sailed away from me.

Awkwardly I rid myself of my shoes and jacket, then I managed to get my arms into the sleeves of the lifejacket. When I looked again Mandrake was a mile away, but suddenly she began to turn and from her bridge the long white beam of a spotlight leaped out and began to probe lightly and dance across the surface of the dark sea.

Quickly I looked again towards the land, seeking and finding the riding lights of the buoy at English Ground and relating it to the lighthouse on Flatholm. Within seconds the relative bearing of the two lights had altered slightly, the tide was ebbing and the current was setting westerly. I turned with it and began to swim.

The Mandrake had slowed and was creeping back towards me. The spotlight turned and flared, swept and searched, and steadily it came down towards me.

I pushed with the current, using a long side stroke so as not to break the surface and show white water, restraining myself from going into an overarm stroke as the brightly lit ship crept closer. The beam of the spotlight was searching the open water on the far side of Mandrake as she drew level with me.

The current had pushed me out of her track, and the Mandrake was as close as she would come on this leg about one hundred and fifty yards off - but I could see the men on her bridge. Manny Resnick’s blue silk gown glowed like a butterfly’s wing in the bridge lights and I could hear his voice raised angrily, but could not make out the words.

The beam reached towards me like the long cold white finger of an accuser. It quartered the sea in a tight search pattern, back and across, back. and across, the next pass must catch me. It reached the end of its traverse, swung out and came back. I lay full in the path of the swinging beam, but at the instant it swept over me, a chance push of the sea lifted a swell of dark water and I dropped into the trough. The light washed over me, diffused by the crest of the swell, and it did not check. It swept onwards in the relentless search pattern.

They had missed me. They were going on, back towards the mouth of the Severn. I lay in the harsh embrace of the canvas lifejacket and watched them bear away and I-felt sick and nauseated with relief and the reaction from violence. But I was free. All I had to worry about now was how long it would take to freeze to death.

began swimming again, watching Mandrake’s lights dwindle and lose themselves against the spangled backdrop of the shore.

I had left my wristwatch in the forecastle so I did not know how long it was before I lost all sense of feeling in my arms and legs. I tried to keep swimming but I was not sure if my limbs were responding.

I began to feel a wonderful floating sense of release. The lights of the land faded out, and I seemed -to be wrapped in warmth and soft white clouds. I thought that if this was dying it wasn’t as bad as its propaganda, and I giggled, lying sodden and helpless in the lifejacket.

I wondered with interest why my vision had gone, it wasn’t the way I had heard it told. Then suddenly I realized that the sea fog had come down in the dawn, and it was this that had blinded me. However, the morning light was growing in strength, I could see clearly twenty feet into the eddying fog banks.

I closed my eyes and fell asleep; my last thought was that this was probably my last thought. It made me giggle again as darkness swept over me.

Voices woke me, voices very clear and close in the fog, the rich and lovely Welsh accents roused me. I tried to shout, and with a sense of great achievement it came out like the squawk of a gull.

Out of the fog loomed the dark ungainly shape of an ancient lobster boat. It was on the drift, setting pots, and two men hung over the side, intent on their labours.

I squawked again and one of the men looked up. I had an impression of pale blue eyes in a weathered and heavily lined ruddy face, cloth cap and an-old briar pipe gripped in broken yellow teeth.

“Good morning,” I croaked.

“Jesus!“said the lobster man around the stern of his pipe.

I sat in the tiny wheelhouse wrapped in a filthy old blanket, and drank steaming unsweetened tea from a chipped enamel mug - shivering so violently that the mug leaped and twitched in my cupped hands.

My whole body was a lovely shade of blue, and returning circulation was excruciating agony in my joints. My two rescuers were taciturn men, with a marvellous sense of other people’s privacy, probably bred into them by a long line of buccaneers and smugglers.

By the time they had set their pots and cleared for the homeward run it was after noon and I had thawed out. My clothes had dried over the stove in the miniature galley and I had a belly full of brown bread and smoked mackerel sandwiches.

We went into Port Talbot, and when I tried to pay them with my rumpled fivers for their help, the older of the two lobster men turned a blue and frosty eye upon me.

“Any time I win a man back from the sea, I’m paid in full, mister.

Keep your money.”

The journey back to London was a nightmare of country buses and night trains. When I stumbled out of Paddington Station at ten o’clock the next morning I understood why a pair of bobbies paused in their majestic pacing to study my face. I must have looked like an escaped convict.

The cabby ran a world-weary eye over my two days” growth of dark stiff beard, the swollen lip and the bruised eye. “Did her husband come home early, mate?” he asked, and I groaned weakly. , Sherry North opened the door to her uncle’s apartment and stared at me with huge startled blue eyes.

“Oh my God, Harry! What on earth happened to you? You look terrible.” “Thanks,” I said. “That really cheers me up.”

She caught my arm and drew me into the apartment. “I’ve been going out of my mind. Two days. I’ve even called the police, the hospitals - everywhere I could think of.”

The uncle was hovering in the background and his presence set my nerves on edge. I refused the offer of a bath and clean clothes - and instead I took Sherry back with me to the Windsor Arms.

I left the door to the bathroom open while I shaved and bathed so that we could talk, and although she kept out of direct line of sight while I was in the tub, I thought it was developing a useful sense of intimacy between us.

I told her in detail of my abduction by Manny Resnick’s trained gorillas, and of my escape - making no attempt to play down my own heroic role - and she listened in a silence that I could only believe was fascinated admiration.

I emerged from the bath with a towel wound round my waist and sat on the bed to finish the tale while Sherry doctored my cuts and abrasions.

“You’ll have to go. to the police now, Harry,” she said at last.

“They tried to murder you.”

“Sherry, my darling girl, please don’t keep talking about the police. You make me nervous.”

“But, Harry-“

“Forget about the police, and order some food for us. I haven’t eaten since I can remember.”

The hotel kitchen sent up a fine grilling of bacon and tomatoes, fried eggs, toast and tea. While I ate, I tried to relate the recent rapid turn of events to our previous knowledge, and alter our plans to fit in.

“By the way, you were on the list of expendables. They didn’t intend merely holding a barbecue with your fingers. Manny Resnick was convinced that his boys had killed you-2 and a queasy expression passed over her lovely face.

“They were apparently getting rid of anyone who knew anything at all about the Dawn Light.”

I took another mouthful of egg and bacon and chewed in silence.

“At least we have a timetable now. Manny’s charter which is incidentally called Mandrake - looks very fast and powerful, but it’s still going to take him three or four weeks to get out to the islands. It gives us time.”

She poured tea for me, milk last the way I like it. “Thanks, Sherry, you are an angel of mercy.” She stuck out her tongue at me, and I went on. “Whatever it is we are looking for, it just has to be something extraordinary. That motor yacht Manny has hired himself looks like the Royal Yacht. He must be laying out close to a hundred thousand pounds on this little lark. God, I wish we knew what those five cases contain. I tried to sound Manny out - but he laughed at me. Told me I knew or I wouldn’t be taking so much trouble.

“Oh, Harry.” Sherry’s face lit up. “You’ve given us the bad news - now stand by for the good.”

“I could stand a little.”

“You know Jimmy’s note on the letter - B. Mus?” I nodded.

“Bachelor of Music?”

“No, idiot - British Museum.”

“I’m afraid you just lost me.”

“I was discussing it with Uncle Dan. He recognized it immediately. It’s reference to a work in the library of the British Museum. He holds a reader’s card. He’s researching a book, and works there often.”

“Could we get in there?”

“We’ll give it a college try.”

I waited almost two hours beneath the vast golden and blue dome of the Reading Room at the British Museum, and the craving for a cheroot was like a vice around my chest.

I did not know what to expect - I had simply filled in the withdrawals form with Jimmy North’s reference number - so when at last the attendant laid a thick volume before me, I seized it eagerly.

It was a Secker and Warburg edition, first published in 1963. The author was a Doctor P.A. Ready and the title was printed in gold on the spine: LEGENDARY AND LOST TREASURES OF THE WORLD.

I lingered over the closed book, teasing myself a little, and I wondered what chain of coincidence and luck had allowed Jimmy North to follow this paperchase of ancient clues. Had he read this book first in his burning obsession with wrecks and sea treasure and had he then stumbled on the batch of old letters? I would never know.

There were forty-nine chapters, each listing a separate item. I read carefully down the list.

There were Aztec treasures of gold, the plate and bullion of Panama, buccaneer hoards, a lost goldmine in the Rockies of North America, a valley of diamonds in South Africa, treasure ships of the Armada, the Lutim bullion ship from which the famous Lutim Bell at Lloyd’s had been recovered, Alexandra the Great’s chariot of gold, more treasure ships - both ancient and modern - from the Second World War to the sack of Troy, treasures of Mussolini, Prester John, Darius, Roman generals, privateers and pirates of Barbary and Coromandel. It was a vast profusion of fact and fancy, history and conjecture. The treasures of lost cities and forgotten civilizations, from Atlantis to the fabulous golden city of the Kalahari Desert - there was so much of it, and I did not know where to look.

With a sigh I turned to the first page, ducking the introduction and preface. I began to read.

By five o’clock I had skimmed through sixteen chapters which could not possibly relate to the Dawn Light and had read five others in depth and by this time I understood how Jimmy North could have been bitten by the romance and excitement of the treasure hunter. It was making me itchy also - these stories of great riches, abandoned, waiting merely to be gathered up by someone with the luck and fortitude to ferret them out.

I glanced at the new Japanese watch with which I’d replaced my Omega, and hurried out of the massive stone portals of the museum and crossed Great Russell Street to my rendezvous with Sherry. She was waiting in the crowded saloon bar of the Running Stag.

“Sorry, , I said, “I forgot the time.”

“Come on.” She grabbed my arm. “I’m dying of thirst and curiosity.”

I gave her a pint of bitter for her thirst, but could only inflame her curiosity with the title of the book. She wanted to send me back to the library, before I had finished my supper of ham and turkey from the carvery behind the bar, but I held out and managed to smoke half a cheroot before she drove me out into the cold.

I gave her the key to my room at the Windsor Arms, placed her in a cab and told her to wait for me there. Then I hurried back to the Reading Room.

The next chapter of the book was entitled “THE GREAT MOGUL AND THE TIGER THRONE OF INDIA.”

It began with a brief historical introduction describing how Babur, descendant of Timur and Genghis Khan, the two infamous scourges of the ancient world, crossed the mountains into northern India and established the Mogul Empire. I recognized immediately that this fell within the area of my interest, the Dawn Light had been outward bound from that ancient continent.

The history covered the period of Babur’s illustrious successors, Muslim rulers who rose to great power and influence, who built mighty cities and left behind such monuments to man’s sense of beauty as the Taj Mahal. Finally it described the decline of the dynasty, and its destruction in the first year of the Indian mutiny when the avenging British forces stormed and sacked the ancient citadel and fortress of Delhi - shooting the Mogul princes out of hand and throwing the old emperor Bahadur Shah into captivity.

Then abruptly the author switched his attention from the vast sweep of history.

In 1665 Jean Baptiste Tavernier, a French traveller and jeweller, visited the court of the Mogul Emperor Aurangzeb. Five years later he published in Paris his celebrated Travek in the Orient. He seems to have won special favour from the Muslim Emperor, for he was allowed to enter the fabled treasure chambers of the citadel and to catalogue various items of special interest. Amongst these was a diamond which he named the

“Great Mogul. “ravernier weighed this stone and listed its bulk at 280 carats. He described this paragon as possessing extraordinary fire and a colour as clear and white “as the great North Star of the heavens’.

Tavernier’s host informed him that the stone had been recovered from the famed Golconda Mines in about 1650-and that the rough stone had been a monstrous 787 carats.

The cut of the stone was a distinctive rounded rose, but was not symmetrical - being proud on the one side. The stone has been unrecorded since that time and many believe that Tavernier actually saw the Koh-moor or the Orloff. However, it is highly improbable that such a trained observer and craftsman as Tavernier could have erred so widely in his weights and descriptions. The Koh-i-noor before it was recut in London weighed a mere 191 carats, and was certainly not a rose cut. The Orloff, although rose cut, was and is a symmetrical gem stone and weighs 199 carats. The descriptions simply cannot be mated with that of Tavernier, and all the evidence points to the existence of a huge white diamond that has dropped out of the known world.

In 1739 when Nadir Shah of Persia entered India and captured Delhi, he made no attempt to hold his conquest, but contented himself with vast booty, which included the Koh-i-noor diamond and the peacock throne of Shah Jehan. It seems probable that the Great Mogul diamond was overlooked by the rapacious Persian and that after his withdrawal, Mohammed Shah the incumbent Mogul Emperor, deprived of his traditional throne, ordered the construction of a substitute. However, the existence of this new treasure was veiled in secrecy and although there are references to its existence in the native accounts, only one European reference can be cited.

The journal of the English Ambassador to the Court of Delhi during the year of 1747, Sir Thomas Jenning, describes an audience granted by the Mogul Emperor at which he was “clad in precious silks and bedecked with flowers and jewels, seated upon a great throne of gold. The shape of the throne was as of a fierce tiger, with gaping jaws and a single glittering cyclopean eye. The body of the tiger was amazingly worked with all manner of precious stones. His majesty was gracious enough to allow me to approach the throne closely and to examine the eye of the tiger which he assured me was a great diamond descended from the reign of his ancestor Aurangzeb’.

Was this Tavernier’s “Great Mogul” now incorporated into the “Tiger Throne of India’? If it was, then credence is given to a strange set of circumstances which must end our study of this lost treasure.

In 1857 on the 16th September, desperate street fighting filled the streets of Delhi with heaps of dead and wounded, and the outcome of the struggle hung in the balance as the British forces and loyal native troops fought to clear the city of the mutinous sepoys and seize the ancient fortress that dominated the city.

While the fighting raged within, a force of loyal native troops from 101st regiment under two European officers was ordered to cross the river and encircle the walls to seize the road to the north. This was in order to prevent members of the Mogul royal family or rebel leaders from escaping the doomed city.

The two European officers were Captain Matthew Long and Colonel Sir Roger Goodchildthe name leapt out of the page at me not only because someone had underlined it in pencil. In the margin, also in pencil, was one of Jimmy North’s characteristic exclamation marks. Master James’s disrespect for books included those belonging to such a venerable institution as the British Museum. I found I was shaking again, and my cheeks felt hot with excitement. This was the last fragment missing from the puzzle. It was all here now and my eyes raced on across the page.

No one will ever know what happened on that night on a lonely road through the Indian jungle - but six months later, Captain Long and the Indian Subahdar, Ram Panat, gave evidence at the court martial of Colonel Goodchild.

They described how they had intercepted a party of Indian nobles fleeing the burning city. The party included three Muslim priests and two princes of the royal blood. In the presence of Captain Long one of the princes attempted to buy their freedom by offering to lead the British officers to a great treasure, a golden throne shaped like a tiger and with a single diamond eye.

The officers agreed, and the princes led them into the forest to a jungle mosque. In the courtyard of the mosque were six bullock carts. The drivers had deserted, and when the British officers dismounted and examined the contents of these vehicles they proved indeed to contain a golden throne statue of a tiger. The throne had been broken down into four separate parts to facilitate transportation - hindquarters, trunk, forequarters and head. in the light of the lanterns these fragments nestled in beds of straw, blazing with gold and encrusted with precious and semi-precious stones.

Colonel Roger Goodchild then ordered that the princes and priests should be executed out of hand. They were lined up against the outer wall of the mosque and despatched with a volley of musketry. The Colonel himself walked amongst the fallen noblemen administering the coup-degrace with his service revolver. The corpses were afterwards thrown into a well outside the walls of the mosque.

The two officers now separated, Captain Long with most of the native troops returning to the patrol of the city walls, while the Colonel, Subahdar Ram Panat and fifteen sepoys rode off with the bullock carts.

The Indian Subahdar’s evidence at the court martial described how they had taken the precious cargo westwards passing through the British lines by the Colonel’s authority. They camped three days at a small native village. Here the local carpenter. and his two sons laboured under the Colonel’s direction to manufacture four sturdy wooden crates to hold the four parts of the throne. The Colonel in the meantime set about removing from the statue the stones and jewels that were set into the metal. The position of each was carefully noted on a diagram prepared by Goodchild and the stones were numbered and packed into an iron chest of the type used by army paymasters for the safekeeping of coin and specie in the field.

Once the throne and the stones had been packed into the four crates and iron chest, they were loaded once more on to the bullock carts and the journey towards the railhead at Allahabad was continued.

The luckless carpenter and his sons were obliged to join the convoy. The Subabdar recalled that when the road entered an area of dense forest, the Colonel dismounted and led -the three craftsmen amongst the trees. Six pistol shots rang out and the Colonel returned alone.

I broke off my reading for a few moments to reflect on the character of the gallant Colonel. I should have liked to introduce him to Manny Resnick, they would have had much in common. I grinned at the thought and read on.

The convoy reached Allahabad on the sixth day and the Colonel claimed military priority to place his five crates upon a troop train returning to Bombay. Having done this he and his small command rejoined the regiment at Delhi.

Six months later, Captain Long supported by the Indian Perty Officer, Ram Panat, brought charges against the commanding officer. We can believe that thieves had fallen out, Colonel Goodchild had perhaps decided that one share was better than three. Be that as it may, nothing has since given a clue to the whereabouts of the treasure.

The trial conducted in Bombay was a cause c&lyre and was widely reported in India and at home. However, the weakness of the prosecution’s case was that there was no booty to show, and dead men tell no tales.

The Colonel was found not guilty. However, the pressure of the scandal left him no choice but to resign his commission and return to London. If he managed somehow to take with him the Great Mogul diamond and the golden tiger throne, his subsequent career gave no evidence of his possessing great wealth. In partnership with a notorious lady of the town he opened a gaming house in the Bayswater Road which soon acquired an unsavoury reputation. Colonel Sir Roger Goodchild died in 187 1, probably from tertiary syphilis contracted during his remarkable career in India. His death revived stories of the fabulous throne, but these soon subsided for lack of hard facts and the secret passed on with that sporting gentleman.

Perhaps we should have headed this chapter - “The Treasure That Never Was’.

“Not on, cock,” I thought happily. “It was - and is.” And I began once more at the beginning of the story, but this time I made careful notes for Sherry’s benefit.

She was waiting for me when I returned, sitting wakefully in the armchair by the window, and she flew at me when I entered.

“Where have you been?“she demanded, “I’ve been sitting here all evening eating my heart out with curiosity.”

“You are not going to believe it,” I told her, and I thought she might do me a violence.

“Harry Fletcher, you’ve got ten seconds to cut out the introductory speeches and give me the goodies - after that I scratch your eyes out.”

We talked until long after midnight, and by then we had the floor strewn with papers over which we pored on knees and elbows. There was an Admiralty Chart of the St. Mary’s Archipelago, the copies of the drawings of the Dawn Light, the notes I had made of the mate’s description of the wreck, and those I had made in the Reading Room of the British Museum.

I had out my silver travelling flask and we drank Chivas Regal from the plastic tooth mug as we argued and schemed - trying to guess in what section of the Dawn Light’s hull the five crates had been stowed, guessing also how she had broken up on the reef, what part of her had been washed into the break and what part had fallen to the seaward side.

I had made sketches of a dozen eventualities, and I had opened a running list of my minimum equipment requirements for an expedition, to which I added, as various items came to mind, or as Sherry made intelligent suggestions.

I had forgotten that she must be a first rate scuba diver, but I was reminded of this as we talked. I was aware now that she would not be a passenger on this expedition, my feelings towards her were becoming tinged with professional respect, and the mood of exhilaration mixed with camaraderie was building to a crescendo of physical tension.

Sherry’s pale smooth cheeks were flushed with excitement, and we were shoulder to shoulder as we knelt on the carpeted floor. She turned to say something, she was chuckling and the blue lights in her eyes were teasing and inviting, only inches from mine.

Suddenly all the golden thrones and legendary diamonds in this world must wait their turn. We both recognized the moment, and we turned to each other with unashamed eagerness. We were in a consuming fever of urgency, and we became lovers without rising from the floor, right on top of the drawings of the Dawn Light - which was probably the happiest thing that had ever happened to that ill-starred vessel.

When at last I lifted her to the bed and we twined our bodies together beneath the quilt, I knew that all the brief amorous acrobatics that had preceded my meeting with this woman were meaningless. What I had just experienced transcended the flesh and became a thing of the spirit - and if it was not loving, then it was the nearest thing to it that I would ever know.

My voice was husky and unsteady with wonder as I tried to explain it to her. She lay quietly against my chest, listening to the words I had never spoken to another woman, and she squeezed me when I stopped talking which was clearly a command to continue. I think I was still talking when we both fell asleep.

from the air, St. Mary’s has the shape of one of those strange fish from the ocean’s abysmal depths, a squat misshapen body with stubby body fins and tailfins in unusual places, and a huge mouth many sizes too big for the rest of it.

The mouth was Grand Harbour and the town nestled in the hinge of the jaws. The iron roofs flash like signal mirrors from the dark green cloak of vegetation. The aircraft circled the island, treating the passengers to a vista of snowy white beaches and water so clear that each detail of the reefs and deeps were whorled and smeared below the surface like some vast surrealistic painting.

Sherry pressed her face to the round Perspex window and exclaimed with delight as the Fokker Friendship sank down over the pineapple fields where the women paused in their labours to look up at us. We touched down and taxied to the single tiny airport building on which a billboard announced “St. Mary’s Island - Pearl of the Indian Ocean” and below the sign stood two other pearls of great price.

I had cabled Chubby and he had brought Angelo with him to welcome us. Angelo rushed to the barrier to embrace me and grab my bag, and I introduced him to Sherry.

Angelo’s whole manner underwent a profound change. On the island there is one mark-of beauty that is esteemed above all else. A girl might have buck teeth and a squint, but if she possessed a “clear” complexion she would have suitors forming squadrons around her. A clear complexion did not mean that she was free of acne, it was rather a gauge of the colour of the skin - and Sherry must have had one of the clearest complexions ever to land on the island.

Angelo stared at her in a semi-catatonic state as she shook his hand. Then he roused himself, handed me back my bag and instead took hers from her hand. He then fell in a few paces behind her, like a faithful hound, staring at her solemnly and only breaking into his flashing smile whenever she glanced in his direction. He was her slave from the first moment.

Chubby trundled forward to meet us with more dignity, as big and timeless as a cliff of dark granite, and his face was contorted in a frown of even greater ferocity than usual as he took my hand in a huge horny fist and muttered something to the effect that it was good to see me back. He stared at Sherry and she quailed a little beneath the ferocity of his gaze, but then something happened that I had never seen before. Chubby lifted his battered old sea cap from his head, exposing the gleaming polished brown dome of his pate in an unheard-of display of gallantry, and he smiled so widely that we could see the pink plastic gums of his artificial teeth. He pushed Angelo aside when Sherry’s bags were brought out of the hold, picked up one in each hand and led her to the pick-up. Angelo followed her devotedly and I struggled along in the rear under the weight of my own luggage. It was fairly obvious that my crew approved of my choice, for once.

We sat in the kitchen of Chubby’s house and Mrs. Chubby fed us on banana cake and coffee while Chubby and I worked out a business deal. For a hard-bargained fee, he would charter his stump boat with its two spanking new Evinrude motors for an indefinite period. He and Angelo would crew it at the old wages, and there would be a large “billfish bonus” at the end of the charter, if it were successful. I went into no detail as to the object of the expedition, but merely let them know that we would be camping on the outer islands of the group and that Sherry and I would be working underwater.

By the time we had agreed and slapped hands on the bargain, the traditional island rite of agreement, it was midafternoon and the island fever had already started to reassert its hold on my constitution. Island fever prevents the sufferer from doing today what can -reasonably be put off until the morrow, so we left Chubby and Angelo to begin their preparations while Sherry and I stopped only briefly at Missus Eddy’s for provisions before pushing the pick-up over the ridge and down through the Palms to Turtle Bay.

“It’s a story book,” murmured Sherry, as she stood under the thatch on the wide veranda of the shack. “It’s make-believe! She shook her head at the sway-holed palm trees and the aching white sands beyond.

I went to stand behind her, placing my arms around her middle and drawing her to me. She leaned back against me, crossing her own arms over mine and squeezing my hands.

“Oh, Harry, I didn’t think it would be like this.” There was a change taking place within her, I could sense it clearly. She was like a winter plant, too long denied the sun, but there were reserves in her that I could not fathom and they troubled me. She was not a simple person, nor easily understood. There were barriers, conflicts within her that showed only as dark shadows in the depths of her ocean-blue eyes, shadows like those of killer sharks swimming deep. More than once when she believed herself unobserved I had caught her looking at me in a manner which seemed at once calculating and hostile - as though she hated me.

That had been before we came to the island, and now it seemed that, like the winter plant, she was blooming in the sun; as though here she could cast aside some restraint of the soul which had curbed her spirit before.

She kicked off her -shoes, and barefooted turned within my encircling arms to stand upon tiptoe to kiss me. “Thank you, Harry. Thank you for bringing me here.”

Mrs. Chubby had swept the floors and aired the linen, placed flowers in the jars and charged the refrigerator. We walked through the shack hand in hand - and though Sherry murmured admiration for the utilitarian decor and solid masculine furnishings, yet I thought I detected that gleam in her eye which a woman gets just before she starts pushing the furniture around and throwing out the lovingly accumulated but humble treasures of a man’s lifetime.

As she paused to rearrange the bowl of flowers that Mrs. Chubby had placed upon the broad camphor-wood refectory table, I knew we were going to see some changes at Turtle Bay - but strangely the thought did not perturb me. I realized suddenly that I was sick to death of being my own cook and housekeeper.

We changed into swimsuits in the main bedroom - for I had found in the very few hours since we had become lovers that Sherry had an overdeveloped sense of personal modesty, and I knew it would take time before I could wean her to the standard casual Turtle Bay swimming attire. However, it was some compensation for my temporary overdress to see Sherry North in a bikini.

It was the first time I had really had an opportunity to look at her openly. The most striking single thing about her was the texture and lustre of her skin. She was tall, and if her shoulders were too wide and her hips a little too narrow, her waist was tiny and her belly was flat with a small delicately chiselled navel. I have always thought that the Turks were right in considering the navel as a highly erotic portion of a woman’s anatomy - Sherry’s would have launched a thousand ships.

She didn’t like me staring at it. “Oh, Grandma - what big eyes you’ve got,” she said, and wrapped a towel around her waist like a sarong. But she walked barefooted through the sand with an unconscious push and sway of buttock and breast that I watched with uninhibited pleasure.

We left our towels above the high water mark and ran down over the hard wet sand to the edge of the clear warm sea. She swam with a deceptively slow and easy stroke, that drove her through the water so swiftly that I had to reach out myself and drive hard to catch and hold her.