A Hero for Leanda

owner—though it’s not in my name, of course—of a small yacht lying now in Mombasa harbor. My associate there picked it out for me when I first became interested in the possibility of an expedition. Its name is Thalia. Would you care to see the plans ?“
    “Indeed I would.”
    Metaxas fetched some papers from a bureau and spread them out on the table. There were drawings and photographs and specifications. Conway studied them all carefully. The examination took him quite a time.
    “Well,” he said at last, “she certainly seems like a nice little ship.”
    “She would be yours at the end of the mission,” Metaxas told him. “I would throw her in—as an extra.”
    Conway smiled grimly. “You make it all sound so attractive, so tempting. But I can tell you one thing right away. This ship would be quite unsuitable.”
    Metaxas looked startled. “Why do you say that?”
    “She’d be hopeless as a singlehander,” Conway said. “My own ship, Tara , was a Bermudian yawl, rather old-fashioned, with a deep forefoot and a long straight keel. She’d sail herself on pretty well any point of the wind. This ship is a sloop, and by the lines of her I’d say she’d need someone at the tiller practically all the time. Look at her cutaway bow—she’d never sail herself with the wind aft. I’d have to be constantly heaving to to get any sleep— and I doubt if she’d lie very comfortably hove to, either. The trip might take weeks. In fact, I simply wouldn’t undertake an ocean voyage in her singlehanded—not as she is now.”
    “Couldn’t she be altered?” Metaxas asked anxiously.
    “She could, I dare say—she could have a mizzen stepped, for one thing. But in Mombasa the job would probably take months—the adapting, and the trials, and the re-adapting. It’s a long job, getting a boat just right for ocean sailing.... Maybe there’s another boat in some other convenient port—one that wouldn’t need so much altering .“
    “There may well be,” Metaxas said, “but finding it could also take months, and there’s no time to lose....” He looked thoughtfully at Conway . “Perhaps the best way out would be for you to take someone else with you.”
    Conway gave a dubious shrug. “It would get over the sailing problem, of course, but I’ve always preferred being alone at sea. Quarters are pretty cramped in a small yacht, and I’m not the easiest man to get on with.... Besides, could you find anyone else?”
    “Would your companion have to be a skilled yachtsman, too?”
    “Not necessarily. It would help if he knew the difference between land and water, but it might be better if he wasn’t too knowledgeable—there’d be less chance of a squabble! He’d have to be able to steer the boat when I was asleep, that’s all, and be generally useful and cheerful around the place. He’d soon pick up all he needed to know if he was the right type.”
    “In that case,” Metaxas said, “I think I may be able to produce someone suitable. I shall certainly do my best.... What I suggest, Mr. Conway, is that you go back now to your hotel. Don’t attempt to get in touch with me tomorrow— it’s better that we should appear to have no contact with each other. Tomorrow evening at—let me see —seven o’clock exactly, be in the open-air bar outside the Superbe. At that hour, with any luck, my candidate will call on you to be interviewed. The name, by the way, is Sophoulis.”
    “Very well,” Conway said. “I hope you understand, though, that I’m not committing myself in any way about the enterprise. I owe you something for that five hundred pounds and I’ll certainly have a look at your man, but frankly I think the whole thing’s quite crazy and I can’t see myself undertaking it.”
    “It’s possible,” Metaxas said with a smile, “that the idea may grow on you.”

    Conway spent most of the next day sitting out on the end of the great breakwater, quietly weighing the pros and cons of Metaxas’ proposition. It still seemed fairly crazy, looked at as a whole, but there were aspects that appealed to him. He had been very much taken by the sloop Thalia. He had never sailed across that part of the Indian Ocean . He would enjoy visiting Heureuse. He had nothing against giving the British lion’s tail an additional tweak. If it proved impracticable to take Kastella off, he would still be two thousand pounds to the good—and success would give him all the money he could ever use. That was