Nobody around here knows who I am and they're all too far away to see anything very intimate. There's just you, and it's kind of late to begin to worry about what you see, isn't it?'
As she talked, she had been moving away from the boat and now took off towards the open sea, using a steady and unexpectedly powerful breast-stroke that looked properly economical of energy. Bond was impressed. At every turn this girl showed herself to be fine material. He followed her in the same style and found, not to his surprise, that he had to exert himself to catch up. When they were level he kept to her speed and they swam out side by side for perhaps a hundred yards. The water slid like silk along their bodies and limbs. Beneath, it was dark and dense; Bond guessed that they were already at a great depth. As they paused, he felt on his cheek a tiny breath of chilly air, a first reminder that the summer which coloured everything around them was not endless after all.
By unspoken consent, they turned and made their way back towards the boat. They had wanted to refresh and relax themselves, not take hard exercise. After a while the sea-bottom glimmered into view and Bond felt a sudden longing to dive towards it, to enter again the twilight rocky groves of the subaqueous world he loved. But not now. Another time...
Litsas helped them back on board. He ran an appraising and rather obviously expert eye over Ariadne as she stepped down to the deck.
'I know I shouldn't be looking,' he said blandly. 'Because it makes me feel very non-something. What's the word that means 'like an uncle'?'
'Avuncular?'
'That's it. Avuncular is how I'm not feeling. You're a lucky chap, James. Now, Ariadne, you must dry and dress quickly. I want to show you the Thompson again before the light has gone. These bike-lamps of Ionides' are perfectly bloody hopeless.'
Just before eight o'clock, Ariadne had finished her weapon-training (including the vital point of changing magazines by feel), Bond had again taken them carefully over his battle-plan, all three had swallowed a scratch meal of sausage, vegetables, and fruit, and Litsas had got the anchor up. With his hand on the shift lever, he caught Ariadne's eye.
'_Thee mou, voithisse mas!__' he muttered, and she bowed her head. 'Sorry about that,' he went on conversationally, slipping into gear and moving the throttle up a notch. 'A little prayer. It makes us feel better. You must forgive our superstition.'
'I don't feel like that about it,' said Bond in some discomfort, wishing dully that there was somebody or something he could appeal to at a time like this.
The operation had begun on schedule. Afterwards the whole first phase became concertinaed in Bond's memory: the move out of the dark, silent bay, the turning northward, then westward, the long eventless run under the moon past stretches of vast mountainous blackness relieved here and there by the lights of a hamlet, a tiny anchorage, a single house, the occasional passing of a small boat like their own, the monotonous vibrating hum of the little Diesel, the watery noise of the _Cynthia__'s progress and the dim whiteness spreading from her bow. Everything inevitable and apparently changeless until Litsas looked up from his seat at the tiller and said, 'I'm sorry, but I think somebody's following us. It's not easy to be sure. There. Six or seven hundred yards back.' He pointed and Bond peered along his arm. 'Somebody quite big. I don't know how long he's been there. Annoying.'
The dark shape, unlit except for its running lights, was obvious enough. There were no other craft in the offing now. The enemy, if enemy he was, had bided his time. Bond looked at his watch, then at the coast.
'Turn inshore and get all the speed you can out of this scow,' he told Litsas. 'I reckon we're about two miles from our landing-point. We'll stand a better chance ashore than afloat.'
'If we ever get there. It's a long swim.'
'He's turning with us,' said Ariadne over her shoulder. 'That proves it. Coming up fast now.'
'Take the tiller, Ariadne,' said Litsas. 'James, can I put the lights on? Good. I'm going to take the governor off this thing.' He lifted off the engine-cover and rummaged in the tool tray.
Bond gazed over the stern at their pursuer, now not much more than a furlong distant and closing rapidly. He drove his finger-nails into his palms. The prospect before them seemed virtually hopeless. The open deck gave them no cover at all and they had no cards up their sleeve. He wondered furiously how they had been identified. Perhaps Ionides had...
The sound of the engine rose abruptly to a shuddering whine and the _Cynthia__ seemed to lean forward into the water. Litsas doused the deck lights and made his way aft.
'That engine will be scrap-iron in an hour or two. But we shan't be needing it that long, I think. Well, what do we do, captain? Sell our lives dearly?'
He had taken the Lee Enfield out of its wrapping and Bond heard him open the breech, slam a clip of.303 into the magazine and thrust the bolt home. By pure reflex, Bond touched the butt of the Walther behind his hip. He had no plan, but his despair had passed.
'It's all a matter of what these people want,' he said. 'If they're just out to obliterate us then there's nothing we can do. If they want us alive we may be able to stave them off for a bit.'
Litsas grunted. 'Well, we'll soon find out which. They can- '
He broke off as, with a kind of silent explosion, everything around them leapt into hard, glaring radiance. He felt cruelly exposed and quite defenceless. The moral effect of a onemillion candle-power searchlight at under a hundred yards is tremendous, and the enemy must have known this, since the unbearable illumination continued in silence for a full quarter of a minute. Bond fought the effect for all he was worth, shutting his eyes tight, feeling for the Thompson and bringing it into the ready position. Then an amplified voice spoke in English across the water.
'Halt! Halt immediately or you will be killed!'
'Want me to put that light out, James?' said Litsas's voice.
'Save it for now and get down. You too, Ariadne. Let them decide on the next move.'
Another quarter of a minute or so went by while the _Cynthia__ strained her way towards the land. Then there was the abrupt, smacking boom of a light gun and a heavy thump from the water ahead of them.
