Hammond Innes - Levkas man

"In the North Atlantic, yes. But with a large vessel it's much more remote."

She checked the wheel as a breaking wave rolled under us, biting her lip with concentration, and the jib emptied and filled with a bang to the roll. The green had gone from the sky ahead. Ragged wisps of cloud showed an edge of flame and right on the horizon an island of molten lava seemed to blaze up out of the sea.

"How old is your father?" she asked.

"I don't know," I said. "Sixty-ish, I suppose."

She glanced at me then, "You're worried about him, aren't you?"

"Yes, I suppose so."

"Then why didn't you fly out?"

I had no answer to that, but fortunately she took my silence as a rebuke. "I'm sorry, I ask too many questions, don't I?" She gave a little laugh, low and strangely musical, and then she was looking up at me, her lips slightly parted, her dark eyes gentle.

We were alone, the two of us in a wild dawn, and I put my hand on her shoulder and the next moment she was in my arms, her mouth soft, her body clumsy in her heavy weather clothing. She stayed like that for a moment, and then the ship yawed and she pushed away from me and took the wheel again. She was smiling, a quiet, secret smile. "You're lonely, aren't you?"

"And you?" I asked.

"I'm not lonely. It's just the sea. It excites me." And she added, "Now go to bed. You've been up half the night."

"I'm not tired." I hesitated, conscious of a need, but no way of satisfying it.

"Of course not. You're too tensed-up to feel the tiredness."

"Perhaps."

She was looking at me, those large, dark eyes of hers suddenly offering sympathy. "Those two days in Malta-nothing but work, and you hardly left the ship. Even Bert noticed it. And now-at sea, ." She shook her head. "I don't know what

the trouble is, and I'm not asking, but bottling it all up inside you-that's not good." She checked the wheel, staring ahead. "Try to relax, why don't you?"

"Was that why you kissed me?"

She smiled. "It helps-sometimes."

I nodded, and we stood in silence, watching as the sun's upper rim lipped blood-red over the horizon. Then I checked the log reading and entered up the course and mileage covered during my watch. When I turned again she was a squat, almost square figure, in silhouette against the sudden flare of light that had turned the steel grey heaving surface of the sea to a shimmer of orange. She was braced against the wheel, hands holding the ship, her whole being concentrated on the lift and swoop of the movement. The sun rose clear of the horizon, a flaming ball, and the whole empty world of sea and sky was lit by blinding light, the cloud wisps swept away like a veil and the sky a brazen blue.

My limbs felt slack and I was suddenly tired as I turned without a word and went below to my cabin. But sleep came slowly. There was something of the peasant about her and I was deeply stirred, furious that my vulnerability had been so obvious.

She called me for breakfast at nine-thirty. Bert was at the wheel and we were alone. But she was cool and distant, efficiently feminine in blue slacks and white shirt. The movement was less, and by midday the wind had died away and we were under engine. We had drinks in the wheelhouse and the three of us lunched together with the automatic pilot doing the work. It was like that for the rest of the voyage, and the third day out, at dawn, Florrie and I watched the outline of Sapienza Island emerge as a dark silhouette against the sunrise straight over the bows.

"Your navigation is very exact." The way she said it, I thought there was envy as well as admiration, for by then I had discovered that there was a basis of fear in the excitement she felt for the sea. Bert was easy-going, almost slapdash, in everything not connected with machinery. "Last year our first

sight of Greece was Cape Matapan. Bert was navigating on dead reckoning and he was miles out-we had to make our entry at Kalamata instead of Pylos." She was laughing, her teeth white against the dark of her skin, which was already tanned by the sun and salt air. "You don't speak Greek, do you?"

"No."

"Well, don't forget-if you want to telephone about your father, I can do it for you."

I stayed with her in the wheelhouse until we had closed the coast and I had identified the gap in the cliffs that marked the entrance to Navarino Bay. Then I called Bert and went into the galley to make some coffee. When I got back to the wheelhouse, we were close in, our bows headed towards a jagged stack with a hole in the middle. Just beyond it, the sea swell died and the water was glass-calm, the great expanse of the bay shimmering like a mirror in the warm sunlight. Ashore the hills were green and bright with flowers. It was suddenly spring.

"This was where Admiral Codrington caught and destroyed the Turkish fleet," Bert said. "There are eighty-three vessels lying sunk under the waters here." He was grinning, an eager glint in his eyes. Bronze and copper are worth a lot of money and he had never dived in Navarino Bay. "All I've ever found in the Aegean, apart from amphorae and sherds and bits of Roman glass, is one-just one-bronze figurine, rather battered. Plenty of marble, of course, column drums and carved seats and a couple of massive statues. But nothing that was worth the trouble of bringing up,"

I asked him what had happened to the figurine, thinking he might have sold it to Borg. But he said it was ashore with friends in Malta. "Daren't have it on board. The Greeks are very hot on underwater looting."

We were opening up the port now and a massive Turkish castle slung a great rampart wall over the protecting peninsula. Behind us, on hills that stood like a crater rim along the seaward side of the bay, the ruined remains of another castle perched precariously.

We dropped anchor off the end of the quay and hauled ourselves in, stem-on to the blue and yellow diagonals that marked the area reserved for visiting boats. The Port Captain came on board almost immediately, a young, very alert, very charming man, who spoke reasonably good English. Customs and police followed, also the doctor. We took them down to the saloon, offered them Scotch, which they accepted out of politeness, but barely touched, and after half an hour they left, taking our passports for stamping and the ship's certificate of registration from which the Port Captain's office would prepare the transit log. "You may go ashore now," the Port Captain said. And when Bert offered to collect the papers, he gave a little shrug. "It is not necessary. We will find you." And he added, laughing, "Pylos is not too big a place."

Ten minutes later we were having our first retsina in the little tree-shaded square, where Codrington's statue stood guarded by bronze cannon. All around the square small dark men in dark clothes sat over their coffee, whilst women in black went about their shopping. And over the shops the names unreadable in the Greek alphabet.

We had just finished our first bottle of the dry resined Achaian wine, and I had ordered another, when the Port Captain came hurrying towards us, accompanied by a tough-looking Greek in light khaki uniform. "This is Kapetan Kondylakes of the Police." He smiled disarmingly, his manner as charming and friendly as when he had visited us on the boat. The police officer also smiled, a flash of gold teeth in a pockmarked face.

My muscles were suddenly tense. This wasn't part of the routine passport check. This man looked like the senior police officer in Pylos.

"May we sit down with you, please?" the Port Captain asked. "For one minute when we make some questions?"

They pulled up two chairs and Bert offered them a drink. More smiles and a sharp clap of the hands to summon the waiter. Extra glasses were brought, the wine poured, and I sat there, watching them and wondering what the hell I was do-