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  Aden, blockade for slavers."

  "Where is she?" Gareth's expression changed swiftly and he strode to

  the rail.

  "She's coming fast masthead watching her. She'll be over the horizon

  pretty damn quick." Papadopoulos turned from Gareth and roared a

  series of orders at his crew.

  Immediately they swarmed down on to the main deck and gathered about

  the first car it was Priscilla the Pig swaying gently on her suspension

  as the schooner plunged ahead.

  "I say," Gareth exclaimed. "What are you up to?"

  "They catch me with arms aboard, big trouble," Papadopoulos explained.

  "No arms, no trouble," and he watched his men fall on the lines that

  secured the big white-painted vehicle. "We do same trick with slaves,

  they go down pretty damn fast with the chains."

  "Now, just hold on a shake. I paid you a fortune to transport this

  cargo."

  "Where that fortune now,

  Major?" Papadopoulos shouted down at him derisively. "I got nothing

  in my pants how about you?" and the Captain turned away to urge his

  men on.

  The turret of Priscilla the Pig opened suddenly and from it emerged the

  head and shoulders of Jake Barton with his hair blowing in the wind and

  a Vickers machine gun in his arms. He braced himself in the turret

  with the thick water jacketed barrel of the Vickers across the crook of

  his left arm, and the pistol grip firmly enclosed in his other hand.

  Across his shoulder was draped a heavy necklace of belted ammunition.

  He fired a roaring clattering burst, the tracer streaking in fiery

  white balls of flame a mere twelve inches over the Captain's head.

  The

  Greek threw himself flat on his deck, howling with terror, and his crew

  scattered like a flock of startled hens, while Jake looked down on them

  benignly from his post in the turret.

  "I think we should understand each other, Captain.

  Nobody is going to touch these machines. The only way you are going to

  save your ship is by out sailing the Englishman, Jake called mildly.

  "She can make thirty knots," protested the Captain, still face down on

  the deck.

  "The longer you talk the less time you have," Jake told him.

  "It'll be dark in twenty minutes. Turn away, and make a stern chase of

  it until it is dark Papadopoulos rose uncertainly to his feet, and

  stood blinking his one eye rapidly and miserably wringing his hands.

  "Kindly move your arse," said Jake affably, and fired another burst of

  machine-gun bullets over his head.

  The Captain dropped once again to the deck, howling the orders to bring

  the HirondelLe around on a course directly away from the closing

  British warship.

  As the schooner came around on to her new course, Jake called

  Gareth across to him, and handed him the machine gun. "I want this

  bunch of bastards covered while I work with the Greek. You, Vicky

  and

  Greg can batten down the hatches on the cars in the meantime."

  "Where did you get that gun?" Gareth asked. "I thought they were all

  cased."

  "I like to keep a little insurance at all times, "Jake grinned, and

  Gareth selected two cheroots from his case, lit them both, and passed

  one up to Jake.

  "Compliments of the management" he said. "I'm beginning to know why I

  picked you as a partner." Jake stuck the cheroot in the side of his

  mouth, exhaled a long blue feather of smoke and grinned jauntily.

  "If you've got any pull with your Royal Navy, lad, then get ready to

  use it." Jake stood in the deep canvas crows-nest at the cross trees

  of the main mast, and swayed with a gut-swooping rhythm through the arc

  of the swinging mast as he tried to keep the grey silhouette that

  closed them rapidly in the field of the telescope.

  Although the warship was only ten miles off, already her shape was

  fading into the deepening dusk, for the sea breeze had chopped the

  surface to a wave-flecked immensity and the sun behind Jake was

  touching the watery horizon and throwing the east into mysterious blue

  shade.

  Suddenly a bright prick of light began winking rapidly from the hazy

  shape of the warship , and Jake read the urgent p query.

  "What ship?" and Jake grinned and tried to judge how conspicuous the

  schooner, with her mass of canvas, was to the destroyer, and to decide

  the moment when he would trade speed for invisibility.

  The destroyer was signalling again.

  "Heave to or I will fire upon you."

  "Bloody pirates," Jake growled indignantly, and cupped his hand to

  bellow down at the bridge.

  "Get the canvas off her." On the deck far below, he saw the

  Greek's face, pale in the dusk looking up at him, then heard his orders

  repeated and watched the motley crew climb swiftly aloft.

  Jake glanced back towards the tiny dark shape of the destroyer on the

  limitless dark sea and saw the angry red flash of her forward gun bloom

  in the dark. He remembered that flash so well and his skin crawled

  with the insects of fear as he waited out the long seconds while the

  shell climbed high into the sombre sky and then fell towards the

  schooner.

  He heard it come, passing overhead in a rising shriek, before it

  pitched into the sea half a mile ahead of Hirondelle.

  A swift, blooming pillar of spray gleamed in the last rays of the sun

  like pink Carrara marble and then was blown swiftly away on the wind.

  The crewmen froze in the rigging, petrified by the howling passage of

  the shot, and then suddenly they were galvanized into frantic babbling

  activity and the gleaming white canvas disappeared as swiftly as a wild

  goose furls its wings when it settles on the lake surface.

  Jake looked back at the destroyer and searched for seconds before he

  found her. He wondered what they would make of the disappearance of

  the sails. They might believe the Hirondelle had obeyed the order to

  heave to, not guessing that she was under propeller power as well.

  Certainly she would have disappeared from their view, her low dark hull

  no longer beaconed by the towering white pyramid of canvas. He waited

  impatiently for the last few minutes until the warship itself was no

  longer visible from the masthead before bellowing down to the Greek the

  orders that sent Hirondelle swinging away into the wind and pounding

  back into the head sea along her original track, side-stepping the

  headlong charge of the destroyer.

  Jake held that course while the tropical night fell over the Gulf like

  a warm thick blanket, pricked only by the cold white stars. He

  strained his eyes into the impenetrable blackness, chilled by "the fear

  that the destroyer Captain might have double-guessed him and

  anticipated his turn. At any moment, he expected to see the towering

  steel hull emerge at close range from the night and flood the schooner

  with the brilliant white beams of her battle lights and hear the

  squawking peremptory challenge of her bull horn.

  Then suddenly, with a violent lift of relief, he saw the cold white

  fingers of the lights far behind at least six miles away at the spot

&
nbsp; where the destroyer had seen him taking in sail. The Captain had

  bought the dummy, believing that Hirondelle had heaved to and waited

  for him to come up.

  Jake threw back his head and laughed with relief before he caught

  himself and began shouting new orders down to the deck, swinging the

  schooner once again across the wind on the reciprocal of the warship's

  course, and beginning the long delicate contest of skill in which the

  Hirondelle ducked and weaved on to her old course, while the warship

  plunged blindly back and forth across the darkened Gulf, searching

  desperately with the mile-long beams of the battle lights for the dark

  and stinking hull of the slaver or switching them off and running under

  full power with all her ports darkened in the hope of taking

  HirondeUe unawares.

  Once the destroyer Captain almost succeeded, but Jake caught the

  flashing phosphorescence of her bow-wave a mile off. Desperately he

  yelled at the Greek to heave to and they lay silent and unseen while

  the low greyhound-wasted warship slid swiftly across their bows, her

  engines beating like a gigantic pulse, and was swallowed once again by

  the night. The nervous sweat that bathed Jake's shirt dried icy cold

  in the night wind as he put HirondeUe cautiously on course again.

  Two hours later he saw the lights of the destroyer again, a glow of

  white light far astern, that pulsed like summer sheet lightning as the

  arc lamps traversed back and forth.

  Then there was only the stars and many hours later the first steely

  light of dawn growing steadily and expanding the circle of the dark sea

  around the schooner.

  Chilled to the bone by the night wind and the long hours of inactivity,

  Jake swept the horizon back and forth as the light strengthened, and

  only when he knew that it was empty of any trace of the warship did he

  close the telescope, climb stiffly from the crows-nest and begin the

  long slow journey down the rigging to the deck below.

  Papadopoulos greeted him like a brother, reaching up to hug him and

  breathe garlic in his face, and Vicky had the chop-box open and the

  primus stove hissing. She brought him an enamel mug of steaming black

  coffee and looked at him with a new respect tinged with admiration.

  Gareth opened the hatch of the turret from which during the whole night

  he had commanded the crew with a loaded Vickers machine gun and came to

  fetch the other mug of coffee from Vicky and gave Jake a cheroot as

  they moved to the rail together.

  "I keep underestimating you," he grinned, as he cupped his hands around

  the flaring match he offered Jake. "Just because you are big I keep

  thinking you are stupid."

  "You'll get over it, "Jake promised him. Instinctively they both

  glanced across the deck at where Vicky was breaking eggs into the pan

  and they understood each other very clearly.

  She shook them both awake a little before noon. They were sprawled on

  their blankets in the shade under one of the cars trying to catch up on

  the sleep they had missed that night. However, they followed Vicky

  without protest to the bows and the three of them peered ahead at the

  low lioncoloured coast line, upon which the surf creamed softly and

  over which the hard aching blue shield of the sky blazed with an

  intensity that hurt the eyes.

  There was no clear dividing line between earth and sky.

  It was blurred by the low mist of dust and heat that wavered and

  rippled like the yellow mane of the lion. Vicky wondered whether she

  had ever seen such an uninviting scene, and decided she had not. She

  began to compose the words with which she would describe it to her tens

  of thousands of readers.

  Gregorius came up to join the group. He had discarded the western

  dress and donned instead the traditional sham ma and tight breeches.

  He had become the man of Africa once again, and the smooth

  chocolate-brown face, with its halo of dark thick curls, was lit by the

  passion of the returning exile.

  "You cannot see the mountains the haze is too thick," he explained.

  "But sometimes in the dawn when the air is cooler-" and he stared into

  the west, with his longing expressed clearly in the liquid flashing

  eyes and upon the full sculptured lips.

  The schooner crept inshore, gliding over the shallows where the water

  was like that of a mountain stream, so clear that they could make out

  every detail of the reef thirty feet down and watch the shoals of coral

  fish below like bejewelled clouds through the crystal waters.

  Papadopoulos turned the HirondeUe to approach the shore at an oblique

  angle so that the details of the coast resolved themselves gradually

  and they saw the golden red beaches broken by headlands and points of

  jagged rock, and beyond it the land rose gradually, barren and awful,

  speckled only with the low scrubby spino Cristi and car riel grass.

  For an hour they ran parallel with the shore, a thousand yards off, and

  the group by the rail stood and stared at it with fascination.

  Only Jake had left the group and was making the preparations to begin

  unloading, but he also came back to the rail when abruptly a deep bay

  opened ahead of them.

  "The Bay of Chains," said Gregorius, and it was clear how it had got

  its name, for, huddled under the cliffs of one headland and protected

  from the prevailing winds and the run of the surf by the horn of land,

  were the ruins of the ancient slave city of Month.

  Gregorius pointed it out to them, for it did not look like a city.

  It was merely an area of broken rock and stone blocks running down to

  the water's edge. They were close enough now to make out the roughly

  geometrical layout of smothered streets and roofless buildings.

  Hirondeue dropped anchor and snubbed up gently. Jake finished his

  final preparations for unloading and crossed to where Gareth stood by

  the rail.

  "One of us will have to swim a line ashore."

  "Spin you for it,"

  suggested Gareth, and before Jake could protest he had the coin in his

  hand.

  "Heads!" jake looked resigned.

  "Bad luck, old son. Give the sharks my love." Gareth smiled and

  stroked his mustache.

  Jake balanced on the clumsy pontoon raft as it was lifted by the donkey

  engine and lowered over the side, dangling on the heavy lines. and

  floated alongside as It settled on to the surface un-gracefully as a

  pregnant hippo.

  Jake grinned up at Vicky who was leaning over the rail, watching with

  interest.

  "Unless you want to be blinded with splendour, you'd better close your

  eyes." For a moment she did not understand, but then as he started to

  strip off his shirt and unbutton his pants, she turned modestly away.

  With the end of a coil of light line tied about his waist Jake plunged

  naked into the sea and struck out for the shore. Vicky's curiosity got

  the better of her at this stage, and she glanced slyly overboard. There

  was something so childlike and defenceless about a man with his

  trousers off, she thought, as she considered Jake's bobbing white
/>   buttocks. She might develop that as a theme in one of her columns, she

  thought, and then realized that Gareth Swales was watching her with one

  mockingly raised eyebrow, as he paid out the coil of line that snaked

  after Jake. She blushed pinkly under her tan and hurried away to make

  sure her typewriter and personal duffel bag were packed away into Miss

  Wobbly.

  Jake touched bottom and waded ashore to secure the line to one of the

  stone blocks, and already the first car was on on its wooden blocks,

  and, with the winch clattering, was being lifted over the side.

  With each man performing his own task skilfully, one at a time the cars

  were lowered on to the bobbing raft. There its wheels were hastily

  lashed and it was hauled carefully towards the beach by the land

  line.

  As soon as the raft ran aground on the sloping yellow sand, Jake

  started the engine while Gregorius clamped the footboards into place.

  Then with the engine revving noisily and the raft swaying dangerously,

  it rolled over the footboards and up the slope to park well above the

  high-water mark. Then the raft was hauled back alongside the schooner

  for its next load.

  Although they worked as swiftly as safety would allow, the hours sped

  away just as swiftly, and it was late afternoon when the last load of

  fuel drums and wooden cases, with Vicky Camberwell sitting on top of

  the precarious load, made the short crossing to the beach.

  Almost the instant it left the ship's side, the diesel thumped into

  life, the anchor chain rattled in over the bows and Papadopoulos gave

  the order to cast off the line of the raft.

  By the time Vicky jumped down on the crunchy sand, the Hirondelle was

  moving steadily out between the horns of the bay, and spreading her

  wings of white canvas to the evening breeze. The four of them stood

  upon the beach in the lowering dusk and watched her go. None of them

  waved, and yet they all felt a loss at her going. Stinking slaver,

  with a crew of pirates, yet she had been their link with the outer

  world. HirondeUe cleared the cliffs and caught the full drive of the

  wind, heeled eagerly and went away, with her wake leaving a long oily

  slick across the surface long after she had disappeared into the

  Gulf.

  Jake broke the spell of silence and loneliness that held them.

  "All right, my children. Let's make camp." They had landed on the