the answers to many other mysteries that surrounded her. That time would soon come.
There was a paling of the sky at last, dawn’s first pearling light spread across from the east and softened the harsh dark plain of the ocean. I rose stiffly from my seat amongst the rocks, and picked my way around the peak into the wicked eye of the west wind. I stood there on the exposed face above the camp with the wind raising a rash of goose bumps along my arms and ruffling my hair.
I looked down into the sheltering arms of the lagoon, and in the feeble glimmer of dawn, the darkened ship that was creeping stealthily into the open arms of the bay looked like some pale phantom.
Even as I stared I saw the splash at her bows as she let go her anchor, and she rounded up into the wind showing her full silhouette so that I could not doubt that she was the Mandrake.
Before I had recovered my wits, she had dropped a boat which sped in swiftly towards the beach.
I started to run.
fell once on the path, but the force of my headlong descent from the peak carried me on and with a single roll I was on my feet again, still running.
I was panting wildly as I burst into Chubby’s cave, and I shouted, “Move, man, move! They are on the beach already.”
The two of them tumbled from their sleeping bags. Angelo was tousle-haired and blank-eyed from sleep, but Chubby was quick and alert.
“Chubby,” I snapped, “go get that piece out of the ground. jump, man, they’ll be coming up through the grove in a few minutes.” He had changed while I spoke, Pulling on a shirt and belting his denim breeches. He grunted an acknowledgement. “I’ll follow you in a minute,” I called as he ran out into the feeble light of dawn.
“Angelo, snap out of it!” I grabbed his shoulder and shook him.
“I want you to look after Miss. Sherry, hear?”
He was dressed now and he nodded owlishly at me. “Come on.” I half dragged him as we ran across to my cave. I dragged her out of bed and while she dressed I told her.
“Angelo will go with you. I want you to take a can of drinking water and the two of you get the hell down to the south of the island, cross the saddle first though and keep out of sight. Climb the peak and hide out in the chimney where we found the inscription. You know where I mean.”
“Yes, Harry,“she nodded.
“Stay there. Don’t go out or show yourself under any circumstances. Understand?”
She nodded as she tucked the tail of her shirt into her breeches.
“Remember, these people are killers. The time for games is over, this is a pack of wolves that we are dealing with.”
“Yes, Harry, I know.”
“Okay then,” I embraced and kissed her quickly. “Off you go then.” And they went out of the cave, Angelo lugging a fivegallon can of drinking water, and they trotted away into the palm grove.
Quickly I threw a few items into a light haversack, a box of cheroots, matches, binoculars, water bottle and a heavy jersey, a tin of “chocolate and of survival rations, a torch and I buckled my belt around my waist with the heavy baitknife in the sheath. Slinging the strap of the haversack over my shoulder, I also ran from the cave and followed Chubby down into the palm grove towards the beach.
I had run fifty yards when there was the thud, thudding of small-arms fire, a shout and another burst of firing. It was directly ahead of me and very close.
I paused and slipped behind the hole of the palm tree while I peered into the lightening shades of the grove. I saw movement, a figure running towards me and I loosened the baivknife in its sheath and waited until I was sure, before I called softly, “Chubby?” The running figure swerved towards me. He was carrying the IN rifle and the canvas bandolier with spare magazines of ammunition, and he was breathing quickly but lightly as he saw me.
They spotted me,” he grunted. “There are hundreds of the bastards.”
At that moment I saw more movement amongst the trees.
“Here they come,” I said. “Let’s go.”
I wanted to give Sherry a clear run, so I did not take the path across the saddle, but turned directly southwards to lead the pursuit off her scent. We headed for the swamps at the southern end of the island.
They saw us as we ran obliquely across their front. I heard a shout, answered immediately by others, and then there were five scattered shots and I saw the muzzle flashes bloom amongst the dark trees. A bullet struck a palm trunk high above our head, a woody thunk, but we were going fast and within minutes the shouts of pursuit were fading behind us.
I reached the edge of the salt marsh, and swung away inland to avoid the stinking mudflats. On the first gentle slope of the hills I halted to listen and to regain our breath. The light was strengthening swiftly now. Within a short while it would be sunrise and I wanted to be under cover before then.
Suddenly there were distant cries of dismay from the direction of the swamps and I guessed that the pursuit had blundered into. the glutinous mud. That would discourage them fairly persuasively, I thought, and grinned.
“Okay, Chubby, let’s get on,” I whispered, and as we stood there was a new sound from a different direction.
The sound was muted by distance and by the intervening heights of the ridge, for it came from the seaward side of the island, but it was the unmistakable ripping sound of automatic gunfire.
Chubby and I froze into listerung attitudes and the sound was repeated, another long tearing burst of machinegun fire-. Then there was silence, though we listened for three or four minutes.
“Come on,” I said quietly, we could. delay no longer and we ran on up the slope towards the southernmost peak.
We climbed quickly in the fast-growing morning light, and I was too preoccupied to feel any qualms as we negotiated the narrow ledge and stepped at last into the deep rock crack where I had arranged to meet Sherry.
The shelter was silent and deserted but I called without hope, “Sherry! Are you there, love?”
There was no reply from the shadows, and I turned back to Chubby.
“They had a good lead on us. They should have been here,” and only then did that burst of machinegun fire we had heard earlier take on new meaning.
I removed the binoculars from the haversack and then thrust it away into a crack in the rock.
“They’ve run into trouble, Chubby,” I told him. “Come on. Let’s go and find out what happened.”
Once we were off the ledge we struck out through the jumble of broken rock towards the seaward side of the island, but even in my haste and dreadful anxiety for Sherry’s safety, I moved with stealth and we were careful not to show ourselves to a watcher in the groves or on the beaches below us.
As we crossed the divide of the ridge a new vista opened before us, the curve of the beach and the jagged black sweep of Gunfire Reef. I halted instantly and pulled Chubby down beside me, as we crouched into cover.
Anchored in a position to command the mouth of the channel through Gunfire Reef was the armed crash boat from Zinballa Bay, flagship of my old friend Suleiman Dada. Returning to it from the beach was a small motorboat, crowded with tiny figures.
“God damn it,” I muttered, “they really had it planned. Manny Resnick has teamed up with Suleiman Dada. That’s what took him so long to get here. while Manny hit the beach, Dada was covering the channel, so we couldn’t make a bolt for it like we did before.”
“And he had men on the beach - that was the machinegun fire.
Manny Resnick sailed Mandrake into the bay to flush us, and Dada had the back door covered.”
What about Miss. Sherry and Angelo? Do you think they got away?
Did Dada’s men catch them when they crossed the saddle?”
“Oh Godv I groaned, and cursed myself for not having stayed with her. I stood up and focused the binoculars on the motorboat as it crawled across the clear waters of the outer lagoon to the anchored crash boat.
“I can’t see them.” Even with the aid of the binoculars, the occupants of the dinghy were merely a dark mass, for the morning sun was rising beyond them and the glare off the water dazzled me. I could not make out separate figures, let alone recognize individuals.
“They may have them in the boat - but I can’t see.” In my agitation I had left the cover of the rocks, and was seeking a better vantage point, moving about on the skyline. Out in the open I must have been highlit by the same sun rays that were blinding me.
