Chapter 6

THE BLACK NOTEBOOK

THE REST OF that day went more like a holiday cruise than the attempt of three fugitives to escape. Caval turned out a remarkably good breakfast of rice and salt fish, garnished with fried bananas. I reckoned that my watch was right within a minute or two, and when it said a quarter to twelve I started taking sun-sights. I wedged a belaying-pin as vertically as I could in a patch of clear sunshine on deck, and watched its shadow closely. It didn’t shorten as noticeably as I could have wished, but it did shorten gradually, and I got Ruth to keep an eye on it while I took sights. I went on taking sights until my watch said that it was a quarter past twelve, and Ruth agreed that the shadow was definitely lengthening. I took the mean of my series of sights, and got a latitude which seemed at least not wildly improbable.

The Grand Duchess didn’t seem to have a log – Captain Amos presumably knew his sea so well that he had no need of such refinements. I made a makeshift log with a plank and a measured length of line, and we’d been heaving it at intervals. It gave us speeds varying between four and a half and five and a half knots, so an average around five knots seemed reasonably likely. I guessed a longitude from our course and presumed speed, and marked a position on the chart. I had no confidence in its accuracy, and my dead reckoning was likely to be very rough indeed because I had no knowledge of tidal streams or currents, and no experience of the leeway that the schooner normally made. However, even a roughly guessed position was better than none, and I could hope for a check on our latitude if I could get a sight of Polaris at night.

I’d temporarily forgotten that Ruth was a mathematician, and was mildly surprised at the interest she took in my calculations until I remembered it. ‘My sort of navigation is by guess and by God,’ I said. ‘Maybe you can do some really elegant work with spherical trigonometry from first principles.’

She laughed. ‘Maybe we can pick up a second-hand computer on the Oyster Rocks! As for finding the rocks – well, I think we’ll have to leave it to your guesswork and such Divine aid as we can get.’

I wasn’t greatly worried about finding the rocks, though I was a bit bothered about the possibility of coming on them in the dark. The chart showed the Oyster Bank extending over some twenty miles, and several of the rocks or rocky islets rose to over 300 feet, so they should be visible for a considerable distance. Nothing could happen during the rest of the day, at any rate. I asked Ruth if she thought she could carry on till six p.m., and she said she could. ‘If there’s any change in the wind, or the sails seem uncomfortable, call me at once,’ I said. ‘Try to keep her heading about 330 degrees. If she falls off more than a couple of degrees each side of 330, make a note of the time and the duration of the change.’

I wanted to ask her a lot of questions, but I was too tired. I couldn’t do anything about the answers, anyway, and I might be able to think straighter after a few hours’ sleep.

As I lay down on my bunk I felt something bulky in my pocket, and pulled out the black notebook that I’d picked up in the cave. It had no name. About half the pages were still blank, and the rest were filled with figures and mathematical symbols. I could make neither head nor tail of any of it. I put it in my holdall with my shaving things, and went to sleep.

I had four hours of really refreshing sleep, and woke just after five. I felt tousled, and went on deck for a bucket of sea water. Ruth seemed quite happy at the helm. ‘There’s been very little change in anything,’ she said. ‘She wanted to go a bit north – about 340 degrees – for nearly an hour between three and four o’clock, but I wrote down the time, and then she was all right again at 330.’

‘Fine. I’m going to have a wash, and then I’ll relieve you.’

I not only washed, but managed a shave as well. I don’t pretend that shaving in cold sea water is either pleasant or efficient, but if you have a sharp razorblade it can be done. I’ve contrived to do it in the North Sea, and the tropical Atlantic provided kindlier sea water than the North Sea. I felt much better for the removal of a day and a half’s growth of stubble, and went on deck mentally and physically better equipped for my next spell on watch. As it happened, I didn’t relieve Ruth at once, for Caval appeared with a bottle of rum and three glasses.

‘We can have a civilised drink before it gets dark,’ he said. ‘I’ve made some supper. I’m afraid it’s rice again, but I’ve roasted some yams to go with it. Let’s have a drink first, and then we can have supper before dark.’

‘We can be more civilised than that,’ I said. ‘We’ve a fair supply of paraffin, and I don’t see why you and Ruth shouldn’t sit down properly in the saloon. I can eat at the wheel all right. I’m all for a drink now, and I’ll get the saloon lamp and the navigation lights going before I relieve Ruth. Then I’ll carry on till midnight.’

‘I can probably manage to steer,’ Caval said. ‘We can break up the night between the three of us.’

‘No. It’s far better to have a cook who’s not mixed up with watch-keeping. Ruth and I can manage the watches, for the time being, anyway, and if you can rustle up some coffee around dawn it’ll be much more valuable than taking a watch.’ I was concerned for the old man, and to relieve the cook of watch-keeping is good sea practice in any case.

I enjoyed Caval’s rum, and then made my round of the lamps. The saloon lamp was trimmed and three-parts full of oil, but the navigation lights obviously had not been used for ages. However, they only needed oil and a bit of cleaning, and by sunset I could report, ‘Lights burning brightly, and all well.’

‘You’ve done splendidly,’ I said to Ruth. ‘How are you feeling?’

‘A bit stiff. But I’ve got much more used to the wheel, and I rather enjoy steering. I don’t know what I’d do, though, if the wind suddenly went round and the sails were taken aback.’

‘Let the schooner do what she wants, and scream for me,’ I said. ‘It’s not very likely to happen with this wind – it’s more likely just to fall off for a bit, and then she’ll roll and the sails slat. I’d notice any change like that, though, even if I were asleep, and I’d probably be on deck almost as soon as you could call out. Can you take over again at midnight?’

‘Yes. But I’m not so sure about waking up.’

‘Don’t worry. There’s a handy lashing for the wheel, and I’ll call you when the time comes. You’ll get more rest if you can go to sleep without feeling that you’ve got to force yourself to wake up.’

Caval called up from the saloon that supper was ready, and Ruth went below. They left the saloon door open, and the soft glow of lamplight from the companionway was homely and comforting. Ruth was back in a minute or two with a bowl of Caval’s rice mixture for me, and I was ready enough for it. When she offered me a second helping, I was ready for that, too. Then she turned in. Caval tidied up his galley, and wished me a goodnight.

I was not sorry to be alone on deck. I shut the saloon door so that the light would not interfere with the binnacle, and settled down for my night watch. The schooner almost steered herself – she needed only a finger-touch on the wheel to stay on course. I could have added to her speed by setting another jib, and she seemed to have provision for a topsail, though we hadn’t carried one on the trip to the Chacarima Inlet, and I hadn’t worked out precisely how to set it – I didn’t even know if there was such a sail on board. But I didn’t want more sail. The schooner was comfortable and going well, and I had no intention of racing for the Oyster Rocks.

About halfway through my watch I got a good sight of Polaris, and felt reasonably confident about our north-south position. Our position east and west was another matter, but I was no worse off than any old-time mariner running down his latitude to try to get where he wanted. I was, in fact, a good deal better off, for I had at any rate some Admiralty charts of the area, and knew what to look out for. I decided to try to stop thinking about Chacarima caves for the moment, and to concentrate on finding Caval’s islet with water on it in the Oyster group. When we’d filled up with water I should have to work out what to do, but the immediate task was to get water.

It was blissfully peaceful to be alone at the schooner’s wheel in the clear tropical night. The wind remained steady, but had fallen off a bit with the coming of night, and I doubted if we were making more than about four knots. I had contemplated heaving to for the last hours of darkness in case we came too quickly to the Oyster Bank, but at our present speed we couldn’t possibly make it, and the few miles extra northing we had made during Ruth’s watch had also to be made up. So I decided to keep on sailing through the night.

Midnight came, but I didn’t call Ruth. After my good sleep in the afternoon I wasn’t feeling particularly tired, and I thought that she probably needed rest more than I did. So I let her sleep on until two o’clock, leaving her a relatively short watch until dawn. She was rather cross when I did call her, saying that I wasn’t playing fair, but the fact that she needed to be woken up suggested that I was right in my feeling that she needed sleep.

I went below soon after two a.m. but I didn’t turn in at once. I wanted to transfer my Polaris sight to the chart, and thought I might as well work up the notes on course and estimated speed that I’d made in my pocket diary, which served as our working log. In the diary was the note that Ruth had given me about our divergence in the afternoon from my set course of 330 degrees to around 340 degrees. It was a page torn from a little loose-leaf notebook, and I’d slipped it in the diary to work up later. I’d not seen her writing before, but as I looked at her neat, clear figures they seemed vaguely familiar, particularly an exceptionally neat 3, with a straight top-stroke like that of a printed 3. Suddenly I remembered where I’d seen that 3 recently. I got the black notebook from my holdall, and there it was. I put Ruth’s navigational note against a page of the notebook from the Chacarima cave. The notebook was almost all figures and so was Ruth’s navigational note, the figures of degrees and times. The handwritings were astonishingly similar, if not identical. What the hell could that mean?

My first thought was to take the black notebook to Ruth at once, and tackle her about it. But then I thought, No – we’ve got to get to the Oyster Bank for water, and Ruth is an essential member of the crew. I must wait until we’ve anchored safely and got water on board. There’s got to be straight talking with both Ruth and Caval, but there’s nothing to be gained by trying to do it now. Patience, as Cervantes observed somewhere – Patience, and shuffle the cards.

It wasn’t easy to be patient, but I forced patience on myself. I tidied up the chart, and went to my bunk, taking the black notebook and Ruth’s navigational note with me.

I had a hurricane lamp in my cabin, and its light was good enough to read by. I compared the figures on the note and in the notebook again, and was more than ever sure that they were in the same hand. There were twenty-three pages of figures in the notebook, a few of them crossed out as if they were false starts at proving something, the rest line after line of numbers, algebraical letters, and mathematical signs. There were some sets of what looked liked complex equations, but what any of them meant was beyond me. I pored over them for an hour and then gave up, turned out the lamp and tried to go to sleep. I couldn’t get to sleep properly, but dozed off and on until half-past five. I’d left some sea water in a jug, so I got up, and had a quick wash, and went on deck.

It wasn’t dawn yet, but the eastern sky was lightening. There was a steersman’s bench behind the wheel, to allow the man at the helm to take the weight off his feet, but Ruth wasn’t sitting on it. She was standing most responsibly at the wheel, silhouetted against the lightening sky. I thought what an attractive figure she made, and was at once cross with myself – she’d been up to some very funny business, and it was my job to find out what it was. That she happened to be an attractive woman was entirely irrelevant.

She was glad to see me, and called out gaily, ‘Morning, Peter. It’s really rather lovely up here at night, and my watch has gone pretty quickly.’

‘Course still all right?’ I asked.

‘Yes, I think so. I’ve been down to about 327 and up to about 333. I jotted them down for you, with the times, but you’ll see that they just about cancel out, and the average course must by very close to 330.’

‘Good. Steering a sailing boat is not like steering a liner, and you are doing well if you can hold a course within five degrees or so. This wonderful trade wind helps, but even so you’ll soon promote yourself from deckhand to AB – that’s Able-Bodied Seaman, in case you don’t know.’

‘D.Phil., AB – sounds good.’

‘Don’t swank. Do you know what an Able Seaman has to be competent to do?’

‘Not exactly.’

‘Well, he has to be able to hand and reef a sail, to box the compass, and to steer.’

‘I can do the compass, and you said my steering was OK.’

‘On a clear night in an easy wind. What happens if I send you up the mast to reef a topsail?’

‘I just do my best, I suppose.’

I couldn’t help liking her, whatever she was up to.

‘You’d better learn the Law of the Sea.’ I quoted the old Shipmaster’s Rule.

Six days shalt thou labour, and do all that thou art able,
On the seventh, holystone the deck and scrape the cable.

‘Pah. I’m going to join the Seaman’s Union. They can deal with brutal blue-nosed skippers like you.’

A few minutes after six Caval appeared with coffee. ‘I’ve found a tin of dried milk,’ he said, ‘so you can have milk this morning, if you want it. For myself, I shall stick to rum. There’s a ration of two bananas apiece – that’s the last of the bananas I put in our sack. If you can find Oyster Island there should be some wild ones growing there. When do you think we’re likely to hit the island?’

‘Hit it? Never, I hope. But we ought to be there soon after midday, and see it some time this morning. I’d like to get a bit more sail up. There’s a yard on the foremast that looks as if it’s meant for a square topsail. Do you know if there’s such a sail on board?’

‘I don’t. But you’re right, these schooners do carry a topsail sometimes. If the Grand Duchess has one, I expect it will be on board – there’s really nowhere else to keep it. What sort of state it will be in is another matter.’

‘We can find out. I’ll go and hunt in the sail locker.’

The sail locker was forward, reached through a hatch in the foredeck just abaft the forecastle. It was light now, and the open hatch let in plenty of light. The locker was really a small hold. There were several sails on racks, but they were not tidily stowed – clearly the Grand Duchess kept her working suit furled and ready for use, and did not often carry more canvas. But I liked the look of the yard, and wanted to experiment with it. I also thought I’d get up another jib.

There was a spare mainsail, old and much patched, and I hunted through the rest of the considerably mixed bunch. I found a high-cut jib of the sort old sailors used to call a ‘Yankee’, and after much pushing and pulling I dragged out what looked like a squaresail. All the sails were of heavy canvas, and it was a job to get my two sails up the hatch. With some help from Caval I managed it, and I opened the sails on deck. I could set the Yankee easily enough, but I didn’t know my way about the squaresail.

Everything about the Grand Duchess was heavy and built to last, and there were strong tarred ratlines leading up both masts. I went up the foremast to have a look at the yard. It was a fine spar, but heavy, and I felt the need of a crew. However, I studied the blocks, worked out how they ran, and climbed down again to release the halliards. Then I lowered the yard and bent the topsail to it. I wasn’t at all sure how the sheets went, but I devised a rig that worked, though I don’t know even now if it was what the original rigger intended.

I had no experience of trimming square rig, but by a process of trial and error I got the sail setting fairly comfortably. It was a fine sight, and a grand powerful sail, with real drive in it. Trimmed as well as I could fix it, and sheeted home, I reckoned that it added at least half a knot to our speed. Then I got up the Yankee. That was a good sail, too, and suited the schooner. With the Yankee and the topsail up I heaved the log, and was delighted to find that we were doing between six and seven knots. The wind might have picked up a bit with dawn, but not much: our new speed was almost all due to the extra area of sail.

It made the schooner slightly more difficult to control, and Ruth was having a rather anxious time at the wheel when I relieved her. ‘I don’t like that big square thing,’ she said, pointing to the topsail.

‘You’ll soon get used to it. It’s a fine sail, and I’m sure the old schooner hands swore by it. But it does really want a crew, and I won’t leave it up at night. For the moment it’s doing well, helping to get us to our fresh water and bananas. Now you go and get some sleep. By the Nuevan breakfast time we ought to be in sight of our island.’

All landfalls, even if you’ve only crossed the Channel from Dover to Calais, have a touch of miracle about them: it seems superhuman to have found your way across the pathless sea to the place to which you actually wanted to go. The best of modern navigational aids do not make the event less miraculous. What mariners of the ancient world must have felt when they made Tyre, or Carthage, or Corinth, I don’t know – I suspect that they had the same sense of mingled triumph, humility, and gratitude to providence that I have whenever a buoy, or rock or headland comes up roughly where I have expected it to be. To make the Oyster Bank from Nueva was not really very difficult: I had compass and chart, a well-rigged schooner and a reliable wind. Even so, when one of the steep northern outliers of the Bank turned indisputably from cloud into landmass I felt an enormous relief. We were a bit north of the point I’d been aiming for – roughly the middle of the bank – but I was no more than a few miles out, and it didn’t matter, because with the wind steady from the north-east we could make southing without difficulty.

When the rock was unmistakable, and the line of other islets was beginning to appear, I called Caval from the galley. ‘There are your Oyster Islands,’ I said. ‘Can you tell me anything about the look of the one you used to go to?’

He peered ahead. ‘Your eyes are younger and better than mine,’ he said. ‘But yes, I can make out the islands. I’m afraid it is many years since I have been there. Let me think – they’re a coral formation, and we anchored off a beach in a half-moon-shaped lagoon. The island rose quite steeply, and was well-wooded – only two or three of the group have trees, the rest are just bare rock. That would help to identify it. I remember rocks and islets stretching away on both sides, so it would be somewhere towards the middle of the group, I suppose.’

‘We ought to be able to find it. Can you take the wheel for a moment while I go below for the chart?’

I had the chart pretty well in my mind, but I wanted to make sure of the approach. The scale of the chart was too small to show much of individual islets, but the general picture was clear enough. The Bank was steep-to and there seemed no great hazards in the way. We could stand in safely to a mile or so offshore and then cruise gently along the group until we found a well-wooded island rising from a lagoon. If it had trees it would have water – it wouldn’t much matter if it wasn’t the actual camping island of Caval’s youth.

Instead of being pleased at coming to the islands, Caval seemed profoundly unhappy. ‘I can’t help thinking about Adam,’ he said. ‘He and I were about the same age, and we grew up together. Of course he was one of the servants and I was the young master, but that didn’t make any difference. I don’t really think it ever did. It was a feudal relationship, I suppose, but it was a happy one for both of us. And I sent him to his death.’

‘You didn’t,’ I said sharply. ‘You sent him to accompany your guests on what should have been a perfectly ordinary picnic. You couldn’t know what we were going to find in the cave, nor how it was going to affect him.’

‘I should have known that – fear of the caves is deeply rooted in all our people . . . But you are right, and I must not be morbid. I can’t help feeling horribly responsible, though . . . Well, the psychologists talk of work as therapy – I’ll get on with cooking the breakfast.’

Going south, we made a spanking pace through the water, and it wasn’t long before we were coasting the line of rocks and islets. They were an enchanting picture – azure sea, white coral beaches at the foot of the rocks. All the northerly ones seemed bare of vegetation, but as we passed one big and rather forbidding fellow that stood out a bit from the rest I could see the green of trees.

We were carrying too much sail for inshore navigation – the drive of the big topsail was an embarrassment now. I put the schooner into the wind and trusted her to look after herself while I hurriedly took down the topsail and got in the Yankee jib. The clatter woke Ruth, and as I was getting back on course under the more handleable working rig she came on deck. ‘Oh, how beautiful!’ she said.

I was glad to have her, for I wanted to go up the foremast to have a look at things, and to try to work out pilotage. We were safely past the big rock, but we had drifted inshore while I was handling the sails, and were now only about half a mile from the wooded island. From the crosstrees on the mast I could see a lagoon plainly. The northern arm of the enclosing beach terminated in a reef, but the reef didn’t go the whole way across and there was an entrance a good couple of cables in width. Coming down from the mast I dropped the mainsail, and left Ruth at the helm to steer for the entrance under staysail and jib, while I went forward to see to the anchor. There was no problem about letting it go, but I was nervous about the manpower available for the antique winch when it came to getting the anchor up. However, we’d tackle that problem when we came to it.

Leaving the anchor ready to let go, I went back aft to Ruth. I told her to carry on as she was until I raised my arm, which meant that she was to turn into the wind. Then I went forward to the anchor.

We glided through the entrance, and I decided to make for the reef-end of the lagoon, where the shoreline cliffs and the reef itself offered considerable protection from the prevailing wind. The water was glass-clear, and I could see right to the bottom. There were a few coral heads on the sand, with rainbow-coloured fish darting among them, but none of the corals came near enough to the surface to be dangerous.

I raised my arm. Ruth put the wheel hard over, the schooner came on the wind and lost way quickly. Just before we began to go astern I let go the anchor. It bit quickly, and we came to rest gently in about six fathoms.

We had our breakfast-lunch – rice, salt fish and a few peppers – on deck before going ashore. There was a certain sameness about Caval’s cooking, but his readiness to take over the galley was a godsend, and he was sadly limited in raw materials. It was a magical anchorage. The sky-blue water of the lagoon curled away to the reef at one end, and to a low, palm-fringed promontory at the other. Ashore, the white coral beach rose to a green hill, the dark tropical green broken here and there by patches of vivid primary colours from some flowering tree or shrub.

‘Yes, I think this must be the island,’ Caval said. ‘If I’m right a little river flows into the lagoon at the far end – you can’t see it from here because of that clump of coconut trees. A few yards up the river there’s a small waterfall. We used to have fresh water baths in the pool below it, and of course the water from the fall is pure spring water, uncontaminated by the tide, or anything. Above the fall are the remains of an old plantation, where we should find some bananas and things.’

‘The problem is going to be to get the water on board,’ I said. ‘We don’t seem to have much in the way of containers. There’s an old barrel in the galley – it probably leaks, but I daresay it will take up when the wood gets wet. I wonder if we could fix up one of the pumps to pump water from the barrel in the dinghy into the tanks. I’ll have a go, anyway.’

There was a pump to get water from the tanks to the galley sink. The two tanks in the hold were connected by a pipe. I managed to undo this at one end, and to attach the hose normally used for filling the schooner’s tanks from a stand-pipe on a quay. Fortunately there was a fair length of hose, and if I could get this to the barrel we could pump water to the galley tap. With the dinghy brought alongside amidships, there was enough hose and to spare. If we cut it, there would be sufficient hose to run from the galley tap to the water-point on deck provided for piping water to the tanks. Having worked out that all this could be done, I decided not to cut the hose until we’d got a barrel of water alongside. The next job was to investigate the stream.

I launched the dinghy from the davits, and got the barrel down to her by a sling attached to the main halliard. As we could find only one four-gallon can of petrol for the outboard I decided not to use the motor, but to row ashore. The three of us got into the dinghy with the empty barrel and a variety of jugs with which to fill the barrel, and set off.

We found the stream, just as Caval remembered it, and got the dinghy to within half a dozen yards of the waterfall. Filling the barrel with our jugs was an excessively tiresome job. The barrel held around forty gallons, and our biggest jug held about half a gallon. It wasn’t practicable to get the dinghy right up to the fall, so every jugful meant a trip ashore. After a dozen such trips, using three jugs, we had about ten gallons of water in the barrel.

Then I had an idea: why not use the cut end of the hose? It would reach from the dinghy to the fall, and with luck would just pipe water into the barrel. Leaving Caval and Ruth I rowed back to the schooner, cut off a length of hose, and rowed back. It worked splendidly, and we had the barrel full in a few minutes.

A gallon of water weighs ten pounds, so the full barrel added some 400 pounds to the dinghy’s weight. There seemed no point in carrying passengers as well, and as I thought I could manage the pumping on my own Caval and Ruth went off to explore the old plantation while I ferried the barrel back to the schooner.

My pumping system was a bit tiresome at first, because of air in the hose, but at last I got the pump to suck, and after that it was plain sailing: the pump brought water to the galley tap, and a hose from the tap to the water-point on deck sent it below to the tanks. They were sixty-gallon tanks, and three barrel loads would fill them.

It wasn’t quick work because of all the ferrying, and each round trip took about an hour. But it got done, and when I’d emptied the third barrel I slung the barrel back on board and went back for a cargo of Ruth and Caval’s foraging. They’d done remarkably well. They got four huge bunches of bananas, several dozen oranges and a nice pile of limes. Caval had hoped for yams or sweet potatoes, but there didn’t seem to be any. There were, however, masses of coconuts. On Caval’s advice we ignored those that had fallen, and picked the ripest fresh from the palms. Caval showed me how to climb a coconut palm by making a loop of a rope end, putting it round my ankles, and going up the trunk on the grip of the rope: you put your arms round the trunk, lifted your feet in the rope, gripped the trunk with the rope, and then did it again. It was just like going upstairs.

We ferried two dinghy-loads of fruit and coconuts out to the schooner, and with this substantial addition to our stores we felt well enough provisioned for anything. By this time it was late in the afternoon, and there seemed no point in setting sail again forthwith. By staying in our anchorage we could also get a full night’s sleep, and depart in the morning, with the light of a whole day instead of an approaching night ahead of us. Caval was rather tired, but insisted that he would look after our supper. Leaving him to get on with this in his own time, Ruth and I went back to the beach for a walk ashore.

Instead of going to the river-end of the beach we walked straight up it, first on sand, then through a fringe of coconut palm, and then, as the ground rose and became more soil than sand, we met much denser bush. There was no sort of path, but by sticking to the edge of the bush and walking under the coconuts where the going wasn’t too bad we got to the foot of a rocky slope that led up to the highest point of the island. Here there was less vegetation, and by scrambling round and over the rocks we reached the summit.

It wasn’t in any sense a mountaineering feat; the walk took about ten minutes, and I doubt if the crest was more than 350 feet or so above sea level. But it was our peak, and we could see over the whole island, perhaps half a mile across at its widest part and about three-quarters of a mile long. The Grand Duchess looked like a schooner on a picture postcard, peacefully at anchor in her blue lagoon, and nicely sheltered by the enclosing reef. Waves were breaking on the outer edge of the reef, but the lagoon itself was still, with only miniature wavelets coming to the beach. The faithful dinghy drawn up on the sand had the homely look of a friendly dog.

There was about an hour of daylight left, and as the descent would take only a few minutes there was no need to hurry back. We sat on a rock, enjoying the view and the sense of unbroken peace only to be found, perhaps, on an uninhabited island.

‘By the way,’ I said, ‘I think I’ve got something of yours.’ I took the black notebook from my pocket and gave it to her.