V

ON THE RUN

I HAD NO water, but I rubbed Ruth’s hands, and in a minute or two she sat up. ‘Sorry, Peter,’ she said. ‘What do we do now?’

‘The first thing is to see what we can do for Adam. He seems in a bad way.’

The old butler wasn’t sitting, but rather slumped on the path, and his head had fallen forward. I slipped my hand under his shirt, but could feel no heartbeat. His eyes were closed. Gently I lifted one of his eyelids, but there was no response. ‘I’m horribly afraid that he’s gone, too,’ I said. ‘Let’s get him lying down properly, and I’ll see if I can massage his heart.’

I took off my own shirt, folded it to make a pillow, and laid the old man’s head on it. Ruth and I then straightened his limbs. He had certainly stopped breathing. Recalling what I could of first aid courses in the Army I tried giving him the so-called ‘kiss of life’, but he did not respond. Then I tried massaging his chest and rib cage. We worked away for half an hour, but it was no good: the angry river had claimed another victim.

‘I suppose we could get him back to the boat, but without a stretcher it would be an appalling job,’ I said. ‘And it would take a long time. The best thing now is for us to go back to try to get help. Also, the body under the stones must be reported as soon as possible.’

I put on my shirt again, we laid out the old man as decently as we could, and set off back to the boat. This time I went first, carrying the acetylene lamp and one of the torches. Ruth kept very close behind me. There was no difficulty about finding the way – we had simply to follow the path, and turn through the rock opening that led to the ledge by the sea. I had a private panic that somehow we might miss this opening, but we didn’t – there was no other way to go. All the same it was with a sense of infinite relief that we found ourselves back in the great sea cave, and saw the light from the other acetylene lamp left by the boat. We ran the rest of the way to it. It was sheer heaven to be in the boat, returning to daylight and the clean sea. The Grand Duchess, lying peacefully at anchor, seemed almost too good to be true.

Captain Amos met us at the top of the boarding ladder. He could see that there was something wrong. Why was Adam not with us? I explained hurriedly, and asked if he and two of the crew would come back with us to recover Adam’s body. ‘We can rig a stretcher out of a piece of sail and two oars,’ I said.

To my bewilderment – and anger – Captain Amos flatly refused to come. ‘The river is angry after the earthquake,’ he said. ‘It is not good for anybody to go into the caves. Look what has happened to Mr Adam.’

There was nothing for it but to accept the situation, but it was a problem to know what best to do. The Grand Duchess had no radio. She did, however, have a map, and from the map it seemed that the sugar mill and offices of the Chacarima Estate were not much more than three miles from the head of the Chacarima Inlet. I asked Captain Amos if he would put me ashore there, and then take Ruth and the schooner back to Naurataka. From the sugar mill I could at least telephone the authorities at Fort James and report what had happened.

He agreed to this. Ruth wanted to come with me, but it seemed better that she should go back to Mr Caval. Also, although the map showed a track running from the inlet to the sugar mill, the whole area was thickly forested, and I had no idea what the track was like. Captain Amos let me take the map, and I had the small wrist compass that I had put on that morning – I wear it as automatically as my watch whenever I go off anywhere.

One of the sailors put me ashore, and took the boat back to the Grand Duchess. I did not wait to see her leave, but struck off into the bush.

The main stream of the Carima River apparently ran into the caves, but there was a river, about twenty yards wide, at the head of the inlet. I remembered that we had to cross a river to get from Chacarima House to the sugar mill, and I made sure of landing on the side of the river that I reckoned the mill to be on. I needed the compass. There was indeed a track of sorts, but it was much overgrown, and met various other trails – possibly drinking trails by which animals got to the river. The track climbed steeply, but although it was hard going the climb turned out to be a help, for when I got to the ridge I could see the chimney of the sugar mill, and after that there was no chance of going wrong.

On the walk I wondered what to do. The office manager would know how to get hold of the police, but how quickly they would act I didn’t know. I decided to ring the private number that the Prime Minister had given me – murder in what to him was a sensitive area of the island certainly justified the use of it.

The manager remembered me. He showed horror and shock at my story, and at once took me to a telephone. The Nuevan telephone service, at least between Chacarima and Fort James, was better than I expected, and I got through in less than five minutes. What is more, I got through to the Prime Minister himself. He let me speak without asking any questions. Then he said, ‘This may be exceedingly important. I will send out the Chief of Police, and also, I think, a small detachment of the Army straightaway. Can you wait at the Chacarima mill until they get there?’

‘Of course,’ I said.

Feeling that I’d done what I could, I then tried to telephone Caval at Naurataka. But in this I was less successful. After being asked repeatedly to hold on, a telephone voice finally told me that there was trouble on the line, and that it was unlikely that a call could be got through that day. ‘I am afraid it often happens so,’ the manager said. ‘Part of the line runs through the forest, and branches fall on it. Often it is quicker to go by road to Naurataka than to try to telephone.’ I considered asking him to send a man with a note to Caval, but it seemed pointless – Ruth would get back by sea long before anyone could get there by road.

*

The road from Fort James to the inhabited district of Chacarima was quite good, and a staff car and two jeeps turned up before I was expecting them. They seemed to be all Army, no police. An immaculate young captain got out of the car. ‘Colonel Blair?’ he asked.

‘Yes.’

‘I have orders to place you under arrest.’

I was so astonished that for a moment I could say nothing at all. Then I asked, ‘What on earth for?’

‘That, sir, is not my business. I have simply to carry out my orders. May I have your pistol?’ The young captain was very correct.

‘I haven’t got a pistol.’

‘Very good, sir. Will you please come with me now?’

‘But what about the Chacarima caves? There are two dead men there. Are you just going to leave them?’

‘Again, sir, that is not my business. I am instructed to take you in custody to Fort James. Please do not delay.’

He had a sergeant and half a dozen soldiers with him. There was nothing I could do. The sergeant opened the door of the car, and I got in. We set off at once, a jeep leading the way, and then the staff car, with the second jeep bringing up the rear. The captain sat beside me in the back seat of the car. He didn’t seem inclined for conversation, but sat looking stonily in front of him.

I tried to figure out what could have happened, but the whole proceedings seemed so lunatic that nothing I could think of made any sense at all. The order for my arrest could have come only from the Prime Minister – or had the Army taken over from the Prime Minister? What was I supposed to have done? I had reported the finding of a dead body in the Chacarima caves – was it to be suggested that I had killed him? Adam, the only Nuevan witness to the finding of the body, was dead. Ruth was a witness, but it would take some time to get hold of her, and would she be believed? Would she be regarded as my accomplice? Accomplice in what? Caval seemed to think that somebody wanted him out of the way. It had seemed wildly improbable when he talked about it, but now I wasn’t so sure. I ought at least to try to warn him and Ruth. But how could I, when I was myself in custody, and even if I could get to a telephone the line to Naurataka was apparently out of action.

The road from the sugar mill climbed steadily for the first five miles or so, winding through thickly forested country towards the central ridge of the island. Near the summit of the ridge, the leading jeep stopped. Then we stopped, too – a large branch had fallen across the road. There was plenty of manpower to move it, and the captain got out to see to it. He left his door open. Acting on the spur of the moment I got out too, and ran from the road into the bush.

It took the military party a minute or so to realise what was happening, and that gave me an invaluable start. It was wonderful country for a fugitive, rocky and densely wooded between the outcrops of rock. I began by plunging downhill, but as this was the obvious way to try to escape I doubled round a rocky spur and went uphill again. Soon I was well above the road, and I climbed into a tree. The thick tropical foliage hid me completely, but I could look out to see what was happening. A soldier fired a couple of shots in the vague direction of my jump from the road, but it was obvious that they weren’t aimed at anything. It also seemed that nobody had any thought that I might have doubled back uphill. The captain sent men rushing in all directions downhill, but no search party came above the road. The course of wisdom seemed to be to stay where I was.

They searched for an hour, and then the captain had a short conference with the sergeant, with much pointing downhill, and back the way we had come. I could see what was happening, but was too far off to hear anything of what was said. Piecing together what I could from gestures and pointing, I reckoned that they had decided that I would be trying to get back to the mill, where, presumably, I might obtain transport. Anyway, the party returned to the vehicles, and with some trouble, for the road was narrow, turned round and went back the way we’d come. I waited for them to get out of sight and then climbed down from my tree and continued making my way up the ridge.

I had the map that I’d brought ashore from the Grand Duchess, and my wrist compass. I hadn’t much confidence in the map – it had been wrong at least twice on the route from the inlet to the mill – but at least it showed the general lie of the northern part of the island. Could I get to Naurataka before anyone thought of looking for me there? As the crow flies, it wasn’t much more than eighteen miles – but I wasn’t a crow, and the country was wooded and difficult. In a way this helped, for the only road to Naurataka went an immensely long way round, going right over to the other side of the island. And difficult as the country was I could follow a more or less direct route along the ridge, not coming down until I had to make the descent to Naurataka Bay. If I could keep near the summit of the ridge the vegetation would be a trifle thinner.

I couldn’t hope to do it, though, before dark. My compass was luminous, so I could follow a compass course all right, but could I cover very rough ground in the dark without falling and breaking something? And how could I know at what point to begin the descent to Naurataka?

From the ridge I could see the sea. I had a superb view of the Chacarima Inlet, and of the wide bay beyond the headland that enclosed the inlet. Naurataka Bay was the next bay along the coast. The moon was about half-full. If the night was clear, and at that time of year it probably would be, I ought to be able to make out the sea, and the land-masses of the headlands. That should be enough to give me rough directions for beginning the descent.

The day seemed to have gone on for ever, but it had started early, and it was still only five o’clock. I could count on another hour or so of light, and half an hour of twilight. The thing was to get going at once, to make the most of the light, and after that I’d have to trust to luck.

*

It was a hellish walk, but in some ways less hard than I’d feared. The ridge was a true summit, and by keeping as nearly as I could to its crest I was on the watershed, and didn’t have to struggle with the ravines that cut up the hillside lower down. And the going could have been much worse. I wasn’t actually above the tree line, but I was above the line of the bigger tropical trees, and, more important, above the line of the fierce growth of lianas and dense bush that filled the lower slopes of the forest. I had no food, which didn’t matter much, and no water, which did, for I began to be desperately thirsty. Just before it got dark, however, I heard the sound of running water, and coming down a bit from the ridge of the watershed I found the runnel of a little stream emerging from a group of rocks. It was exquisitely clear and cold. I cupped my hands and drank as much as I could. I wished I could carry some with me, but I had nothing to carry water in. This bothered me, for I had a long night march ahead, and I knew that I should get thirsty again. The tropics, though, are kindly to primitive man – or to modern man reduced to fairly primitive lack of possessions. A few yards below the stream was a clump of vine-like plants, rather like huge vegetable marrows gone mad, which bore a crop of hard-skinned gourds. Mercifully I had my knife – a good seaman’s clasp-knife that I have carried for years. I cut one of the gourds, scooped out the pithy inside, and was left with a container that held about two pints of water. From the thick stem of one of the plants I cut a section that served quite well as a cork, and I climbed back to the ridge to continue my journey, feeling much happier.

By the time it was dark I reckoned that I’d covered about five miles. That left thirteen miles or so to go. The next hour was slow going, because the half-moon wasn’t up, and my eyes were not acclimatised to the dark. I doubt if I covered much more than a mile, but after that things got better. The moon didn’t give much light, but enough to make out the shapes of the larger rocks, and, to my relief, enough to make out the sea and the dark landmasses of the headlands. After two hours I stopped for a quarter of an hour’s rest, and drank half my water. Then I carried on, and by one o’clock in the morning I reckoned that I’d rounded – inland – the last headland before Naurataka Bay, and that it was time to descend. The descent was the roughest, and the hardest, part of the trip. I decided to follow a watercourse, which was bound to lead down to the bay, but it soon became a typical steep-sided ravine. The stream flowed at the bottom, with no path – there was water to the edge of the rock walls of the ravine. But it wasn’t deep, and I could walk in it, scrambling over rocks as I came to them. I threw away my gourd – I had no more need to carry water, and I did need both hands free. I nearly met disaster when the stream went over an edge of rock to form a waterfall, but I heard and identified the sound about a hundred yards before I got there. The fall was only about ten feet high, but in the darkness it seemed as formidable as the North face of the Eiger. I ended up soaked to the skin but still in one piece, and carried on.

The waterfall was the worst stretch of the whole journey. After the fall the stream widened, and on one bank there was a ledge that became a sort of path. By two o’clock I was on the outskirts of Naurataka village, and it was plain walking to get to Naurataka House.

I didn’t know if the Army or the police had got there ahead of me. Thinking that the place might, perhaps, be picketed I went as carefully as I could, moving from tree shadow to tree shadow, and waiting for a moment after each move to listen for any sound. But there was nothing, and when I got to the house it seemed sleeping undisturbed.

What to do now? I tried the front door, but it was locked. I didn’t want to wake up the place, so I decided to try to climb in. The problem was the verandah. It wasn’t an external verandah, with a roof, but built, as in all the older Nuevan houses, as an extension to the ground-floor rooms, so that the roof of the verandah was simply part of the floor of the rooms over it. But there were some wooden pillars making supports for latticed shutters, normally left open. Helped by the slats of one of the shutters I managed to climb a pillar, and reaching up, I could just get my fingers on the edge of a window-sill belonging to one of the bedrooms. There was a small cavity at the top of the pillar where the wood had rotted away. I got a toe in this and, with a heave and a prayer, I was up and on to the window-sill.

As on all tropical nights when it isn’t the rainy season the window was open. Whose room was it? It wasn’t mine, but it was on the same side of the house, and I took a chance on its being either Ruth’s room, or unoccupied. Coming from the outside night into the house I could see nothing at all – the room was pitch dark. I waited on the window-sill while my eyes adjusted themselves until I could just make out shapes, and then I saw that the big mosquito net which covers all Nuevan beds was down. Presumably, then, there was someone sleeping there. It wasn’t the servants’ part of the house, and I didn’t think it could be Caval, for he had a set of rooms in another wing. Unless some other guest had turned up, it must be Ruth. I went to the edge of the net and pulled it back. There was a shape of dark hair on the white pillow. Yes, it must be Ruth. I put my hand on her shoulder.

She started up with a gasp, but before she could scream I put my hand on her mouth. ‘Don’t worry,’ I said in a kind of loud stage-whisper. ‘It’s Peter – I think we’re all in trouble. Can you find a light?’

There was no electricity at Naurataka, but the bedrooms all had small battery-powered bedside lamps. Ruth knew where hers was, and switched it on. ‘Why, you’re soaking wet!’ she said. ‘Have you been in the sea?’

‘No, I’ve been in a river, but it’s a long story, and I can’t go into it now. Can you get dressed and come with me to find Caval?’

She didn’t waste time arguing or asking questions. She put on a shirt and a pair of slacks, and then went to the dressing-table and began brushing her hair. ‘Can the hair wait?’ I said.

‘Not really. I must be a frightful sight.’

‘Well, I don’t think so. And you’re nothing like the mess I am. I think we’ve got very little time, and we must talk to Caval.’

She gave a little shrug, and put down the brush. ‘Have you got a torch?’ I asked.

‘Yes.’

‘I think I know how to get to Caval’s rooms. Come on.’

I remembered the way to the Caval wing from my previous visit, but we hadn’t got there when we met Caval himself, dressed, and carrying a Mannlicher big-game rifle. He had raised it menacingly, when I shone the torch on us. ‘Friends,’ I said. ‘But I’m afraid there may be enemies not far away. Can we talk somewhere where we’re not likely to be overheard?’

‘Better go up to the room you slept in. It’s at the end of the house. But I don’t think there’s anyone else here. I heard a sound of someone moving about, and came to investigate. I think it must have been you.’

‘Probably. But we’ll go upstairs just the same.’

Throughout my walk that part of my mind which was not occupied with immediate problems like rocks and waterfalls had been busy making contingency plans. Why the Nuevan Government, or the Nuevan Army – I had no means even of guessing which – had suddenly turned hostile to me I had no idea, but obviously one or other or both of them had turned extremely hostile. The reason must relate to the caves. I had reported the finding of a shot man there – somebody in power in Nueva must have urgent reasons for not wanting this to be known. Arrested and kept in custody, I should have been safely out of the way, at least until such time as the body could be removed, or other necessary – from his or their point of view – action taken. But I had escaped. In my telephone call to the Prime Minister I had said that Ruth Caval had been with me – there was no reason why I shouldn’t. Ruth could be presumed to have told Caval. Adam was dead, and Captain Amos and his crew didn’t matter. They had not entered the caves, and if it suited officialdom to say that I must have been mistaken, or have made up the whole story, they couldn’t deny it, even if they wanted to believe me. Ruth and Caval were different. Caval would believe Ruth, he owned the caves, and he would also want to know what had happened to me.

The plan of action that seemed to me most practical was for the three of us to go on board the Grand Duchess while it was still dark, and clear out. She was too big to handle without a crew, but I was confident that I could manage her, and once at sea we could make for the U.S. Virgin Islands, or even for Florida, where we should be out of reach of the Nuevans and in touch with the U.S. authorities for Ruth, and with access to my own people in London for me.

I didn’t attempt long explanations. I said that there was something gravely wrong in the caves, that on reporting it I had been arrested, and that I was very much afraid that it could be only a matter of hours before the Army or the police came to Naurataka to pick up Ruth and Caval.

In a matter of fact way, Ruth said, ‘I know there is something wrong. I can’t be sure what it is, but Peter is right.’

Caval said, ‘Yes, I too have suspected that there is something very wrong. But can you really handle a big schooner by yourself – or with only Ruth and me?’

‘I think so. She’s in regular use, so there’s probably water on board. We’d better take some food, if you can get hold of anything quickly, papers and money – and get off at once.’

‘All my nice new clothes – that’s my second wardrobe gone inside a week. Can I take just one of my suitcases?’

‘If you can carry it. I shall have to carry food.’

‘Well, I’m going to try.’

She went off, and Caval took me to the kitchen. There was no refrigerator, but there was a huge ice-box. ‘We get ice brought by sea from Fort James,’ he said – an odd example of the human mind’s inconsequential priorities. He found a big sugar sack, in which we put two cooked fowls from the ice-box, tins of butter and bacon – you can buy these in tins in the West Indies – and a big side of salt fish, the salted cod from the Grand Banks that the French call morue, which was once the staple diet of the islands. We also found and put in the sack some bags of flour and rice, a collection of yams and other vegetables, and various other oddments that seemed likely to come in handy. When full the sack was pretty heavy, but we were going downhill, and I thought that if I could get it on my shoulders I could manage it.

‘I shall take the rifle,’ Caval said. ‘I’ll go and get some ammunition for it. I’ve also got two revolvers – we might as well have those as well.’

He went off, and I went up to my room to collect my shaving things and a change of clothes. None of this took long, and the three of us met with our various belongings at the front door. It was not quite three o’clock.

Ruth had one suitcase – it was so heavy that I suspected it contained a number of books as well as clothes. But she knew that she had to manage it. Caval had rifle, bandolier, two revolvers, and two boxes of revolver cartridges, as well as a small valise of personal kit. I relieved him of one of the revolvers, and put the cartridges in my sack. Then we set off.

Downhill as it was, we had a lot to carry, and I was thankful to get to the quay. There were no signs that anybody else was stirring in the night. The Grand Duchess was lying to a mooring about fifty yards from the quay, but the dinghy was there, secured to a ring-bolt. We got the kit in the dinghy, got in ourselves, and cast off. I didn’t want the noise of the outboard, so used the oars for the short distance to the mooring. I was worried all along that there might be someone sleeping on board the schooner, but Caval said this was unlikely, and it turned out that she was unattended.

We carried our personal things up the boarding-ladder with us, but I left the heavy sack and Ruth’s suitcase in the dinghy, while I considered what to do. The dinghy could be slung in davits from the stern, but at first I thought we’d tow her out instead of trying to get her up. There wasn’t a lot of room, though, between the mooring, the quay and the beach, and I wasn’t sure that we might not have to go about to get away from the bay. I didn’t want the complications of a tow in the darkness, so I brought the dinghy aft and got the falls from the davits to her. There was an anchor winch forward, but there was no winch aft – the schooner was designed for manpower rather than for labour-saving devices. But there was a two-part purchase on the blocks of the davits, and with Ruth to help the dinghy came up easily enough.

Now it was time for the sails. I didn’t dare to show a light by using a torch, and it was some job in the dark to work out how the sheets and halliards ran. Mercifully the sails had not been stowed, but simply furled. Remembering how Captain Amos had got off under the big staysail and a jib I thought I’d do the same, but there was less wind at night than there had been in the morning, and I was afraid of getting caught inshore without enough area of sail to get out. So I got the mainsail up as well as a jib and staysail before letting go of the mooring. With everything ready I asked Caval to stay forward to drop the mooring-line as soon as I called out. Leaving the mainsheet free I put Ruth on it, telling her to be ready to haul the moment I told her to. The sheet ran in blocks, and though it would have been too much for her in anything of a blow I thought that she could just about manage it in the light wind we had.

I let the staysail draw, the jib began to fill, and as soon as I felt the schooner start to come alive I called out to Caval to let go. He did so neatly, without any fumbling, and we were away.

My heart was in my mouth as we began to close the quay. Without the mainsail I doubt if we should have had enough power to clear it, but I got Ruth to haul on the sheet, the drive from the big sail came to the rescue, the schooner answered her helm sweetly, and we got off with about a dozen yards to spare. All I had to do now was to stand out to sea. There were no particular dangers, and I could start thinking about a course when Nueva was safely below the horizon. No one so far knew of our departure, and by the time the Grand Duchess was discovered missing we should be out of sight, with nothing on the trackless sea to suggest where we had gone. My chief need was to find out what the schooner had on board in the way of charts. I made her comfortable, and asked Ruth to take the wheel while I explored with Caval. The steering compass was an antique, with an oil-lamp for the binnacle. As the Nuevans never sailed at night if they could help it I wondered if there would be any oil in the lamp. But there was, and when I’d got it lit I told Ruth to keep going north-west.

Caval, of course, knew the schooner, though he had not been on board her much for some years. There was a chart-table and a sort of navigating corner to one side of the companionway leading to the saloon, but it did not look much used. ‘Our sailors go to sea as boys, they get to know the islands, and they navigate by instinct and tradition,’ Caval said. ‘Amos can use a sextant, but he hardly ever does. You may find one in one of those drawers, but I really don’t know.’ There was a sextant, but I couldn’t find any navigation tables. There were, however, a few charts, small-scale charts showing most of the Caribbean islands, and a large-scale chart of the approaches to Fort James. There was a fine old brass chronometer mounted as ship’s clock in the saloon. From my watch it seemed fairly accurate, but I had no means of knowing when it was last rated, or what its rating was.

The galley was a small deckhouse just forward of the mainmast. There was a jar of coffee beans in a locker and a hardwood pestle and mortar for grinding them, but not much else in the way of stores. ‘They bring fresh food for each trip,’ Caval explained. A paraffin stove was rusty and clearly unused, but there was a forty-gallon drum of paraffin, nearly full. I was glad to see this, for the schooner’s only lighting was from paraffin lamps.

Such cooking as was done on board was on an iron cooking-pot or brazier, of the traditional West Indian design. There were three of these, and they stood on a big sand-tray, about four feet square. Over the sand-tray was a chimney-opening, with a galvanised iron chimney extending about three feet above the deckhouse roof. Fuel was wood and charcoal, and a small pile of cut wood and two sacks of charcoal were stacked neatly in one corner. ‘I think I’d better take over the galley,’ Caval said. ‘I’ve often used a cooking-pot as a boy, and I think I can still get one going. I don’t know what would happen if we tried to light that stove – safer to stick to the sand-tray and the cooking-pot. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to boil a pan of water now, and make some coffee.’

The pans were there all right, but when Caval went to draw water from the pump that supplied the galley sink we got a shock for only a trickle came. ‘The tanks are below and you can get at them from the hold,’ Caval said. ‘I think I remember where they are. You fill them through a pipe covered by a brass plate on deck, and unless you do it in harbour at Fort James, where there is a water-hose from the quay, it’s a tiresome job, because you have to bring barrels alongside and pump from them. It looks as if the crew’s been slack about it – they’d just bring water in bottles for themselves on an ordinary trip. We’d better go and have a look.’

The hold could be entered from below through a narrow door in the bulkhead, secured by two strong planks of wood that dropped into iron holders, bolted through the bulkhead. It could also, of course, be entered through the hatch on deck, but I didn’t want to unbatten the hatch. I lighted two hurricane lamps to save the batteries of our only torches, and we went below. The water tanks were simple affairs of galvanised iron, but well designed and strongly fitted, one to port and one to starboard. Each had a screwcapped opening for a dipstick, and a notched wooden dipstick was clipped to the bulkhead against one of the tanks. We tried them both: one seemed virtually empty, the other had about an inch of water in it. ‘There’s enough for coffee, anyway, and if we boil it well it ought to be all right,’ Caval said philosophically. ‘We’ll just have to get some more.’

He went back to the galley to get one of the cooking-pots going, and I went aft to see how Ruth was getting on. She had had no trouble, for the schooner was on a comfortable reach with a light, steady wind, and there was no problem about holding her. It was beginning to get light, but there wasn’t quite enough light yet to see the compass plainly, so I left the binnacle-lamp burning. ‘There should be some coffee up soon,’ I said.

‘Where are we going?’ she asked.

‘Well, that’s a bit uncertain at the moment. We shall have to put in somewhere for water because we seem to have precious little on board, but where I haven’t worked out yet. It can wait till daylight – every minute is taking us farther away from Nueva, and that’s the main thing just now.’

While Caval was working in the galley I got our sack and Ruth’s suitcase out of the dinghy. I took the sack along to the galley, and found Caval standing over a cooking-pot on which a pan of water was boiling cheerfully. ‘I’ll let it boil while I pound the coffee – I couldn’t even guess when the tanks were last cleaned out,’ he said. He put the wooden mortar on the galley sole and shook in some beans from the tin. ‘I’m surprised that they’re roasted – normally we just parch what we need on a tin pan on a cooking pot. That’s why Nuevan coffee is always so good – one of the reasons, anyway. I suppose they roasted the beans to make coffee for you yesterday.’

The heavy wooden pestle made short work of pounding the coffee beans to powder. ‘Hasn’t the coffee grinder got to Nueva yet?’ I asked.

‘I daresay it has in some of the modern houses in Fort James. But why should it? There’s nothing to go wrong with a pestle and mortar, it makes a fine smooth powder, and I doubt if it’s any more work than a hand-ground coffee mill. As for electrical machinery – well, a pestle and mortar are a lot cheaper than electricity, even if you have it.’

I left him to get on with the coffee-making, and took Ruth’s suitcase below, to the cabin she’d been allotted when we changed for our swim – it seemed several lifetimes ago.

Caval appeared at the wheel with a tray and three steaming mugs almost as soon as I got back on deck. ‘I took the precaution of bringing a few bottles of rum on board,’ he said. ‘Since we haven’t got any milk, I’ve used rum instead – you may find it an improvement.’

I took the wheel from Ruth to leave her hands free for the coffee. The schooner was going so sweetly that I found no difficulty in holding her with one hand, with my mug of coffee in the other. It was a wonderful moment after the strain of the night. The rum-laced coffee was as nectar-like as anything I’d ever tasted, and it put life into all of us. The sun was coming up out of the sea, and it would soon be hot, though the God-given trade wind keeps the Atlantic edge of the Caribbean tropics pleasantly fresh. I asked Ruth to turn out the binnacle-light, and then asked Caval for his views on where we should make for.

‘There’s not an immediate water crisis – we’ve enough for a day or so if we’re careful,’ he said. ‘But we’re not really free agents until we can get more water on board. Do you think you can find the Oyster Islands? They’re about 130 miles from Nueva, and they don’t belong to Nueva. If they belong to anybody they still belong to the Dutch, but as they’re uninhabited it doesn’t matter much. They’re a group of rocks rather than islands, but some of the larger ones are about half a mile long, and I know that at least two have water on them, because I’ve been there several times when I was young enough to go for camping expeditions. They were hideouts for buccaneers in the old days, and the islets with water have coconut palms, and wild fruit trees – the descendants of trees planted by the buccaneers. We can get water there, and we could do with some coconuts and fresh fruit. But the problem will be to find them.’

‘If Ruth will take the wheel again, we’ll have a look at the chart,’ I said.

The chart showed the Oyster Bank, and a chain of cays running some twenty miles in a semi-circle roughly north-east to south-west. They looked a horrible group to get close to if you didn’t know exactly where you were. On the other hand there appeared to be deep water round the bank, and no great dangers in the approach to the group. We’d been going more or less northwest from Nueva since we started, and although the schooner didn’t have a patent log, I reckoned that we’d probably been making between four and five knots. With neither chronometer nor navigation tables I couldn’t hope to work out an exact position, but I could judge local noon by the ancient system of watching shortening and lengthening shadows on deck, and if I took a series of sextant sights each side of noon I could interpolate what would not be far-off a noon-sight, and I could get a rough idea of latitude. Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century seamen were navigating these waters long before they could work out longitude, and my sextant, even if I didn’t know the index error, was still a better instrument than the old back-staff they used.

I scaled off distances on the chart. Caval’s 130 miles was a little short – the group of islets were more like 145 miles from Nueva, or at least from Naurataka. If we could keep up five knots, that was twenty-nine hours’ sailing, of which we’d already done some three hours, more or less in the right direction. Our course should be NNW rather than north-west, and we could make a start on that straightaway. The vital thing was to start a working log, making sure that our actual compass course was entered every quarter of an hour, so that the dead-reckoning we’d have mainly to rely on should be as accurate as possible. If the weather didn’t blow up or otherwise upset my calculations, we should be safe enough making NNW for the next twenty-four hours, though it might be wise to heave-to for the last hours of darkness tomorrow morning, to avoid the consequences of any miscalculation which might bring us near the Oyster Rocks too soon.

‘Yes, I think we can make your Oyster Bank all right,’ I said to Caval.

‘Well, I’m not much good on a boat – the forest is more my line. But I can use a cooking-pot. I’ll have a meal ready for us about eleven.’

I went back to the wheel to set our new course, and to relieve Ruth. ‘Your suitcase is in the cabin where you changed for swimming,’ I said. ‘Caval’s taken on the galley, and he’s promised us a Nuevan breakfast around eleven. You’re relieved till then. You can have a wash if you like, but it will have to be in sea water. There’s a bucket with a line to it in the galley.’

She went off. I settled the sheets for our new course, and realised suddenly how tired I was. I’d been up all night on a gruelling night march, and I’d been taut with anxiety about getting the schooner to sea. I wanted desperately to go to sleep, but I couldn’t turn in yet. I wanted to try for a noon-sight, and if Ruth was going to be relief helmsman she had got to get some rest. Caval had done splendidly for a man in his late seventies, and if he was going to take on the galley I’d have to try not to use him for watch-keeping as well. The early morning sunshine and the wind on my cheek were soporific, and I nearly fell asleep at the wheel. Then I shook myself. This wouldn’t do at all. The best way to keep awake was to do some hard thinking – it certainly needed to be done.

As soon as I began to think of it, the readiness of Ruth and Caval to abandon Naurataka and to accept my suggestion of a long voyage on an under-manned schooner seemed extraordinary. What did they know that I didn’t? My mind went back to the moment when I’d uncovered the face of the dead man in the cave, and I had a sharp recollection of Ruth’s gasp – ‘Oh no, oh no, oh no.’ Shock at seeing a human face mutilated by a bullet wound in the temple? Possible. But it was also possible that the shock was the face itself – that she recognised the face. She’d recovered quickly enough, but there were a lot of things that she needed to explain.

And why was Caval up and dressed, and armed with that formidable Mannlicher? Did he normally investigate slight noises in his own house, among his own people, with the Mannlicher? Could there be anything in his idea that the earthquake which destroyed Chacarima House had really been a bomb intended to remove him? I didn’t see how it could have been a bomb – at least, it wasn’t like any explosion that I’d ever come across before. But I wasn’t an explosives expert, and short of expert examination of the ruins – if there were such experts on Nueva – there seemed no way of getting any further. Caval undoubtedly believed that someone was after him. But who? And why?