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
