A Hero for Leanda

during the day, which would give them time for sleeping, and two-hour stints during the night. Leanda had insisted that there should be no “weaker vessel” stuff while conditions were easy, and Conway was ready enough to agree. But actually, on this first day, he was around all the time, busying himself with little jobs but keeping an eye on her.
    So far he had scarcely had to touch the sheets. The wind remained true and steady. A few clouds gathered toward evening but there was no sign of any appreciable change in the weather. As the sun plunged into the sea, leaving a glorious sky behind it, Leanda said, “This is a very gentle baptism for me, isn’t it?”
    Conway smiled and nodded.
    “Rather different,” she said, “from that dreadful picture of sailing you drew for me at St.-Jean-de-Luz.”
    “It’s a chance for you to get your sea legs,” he told her. “The thing is, the southeast trades are about the most reliable winds in the world, but we’re at the extreme northern edge of them here and at this season of the year they’re moving south. They should carry us to Heureuse, with luck, but on the way back we’ll be in the doldrum belt, and that’s a very different kettle of fish. There’ll be storms and calms —both pretty unpleasant.”
    “Oh, well,” Leanda said, “sufficient unto the day. It’s heavenly now.”
    As the quick tropical darkness fell, Conway lit the navigation lamps and the cabin lamps, and took a last look round the deck. Then, in the snug saloon, Leanda made up the bunks and prepared a light supper and they ate their separate meals.
    There was a sharp warm shower around eleven, when Conway was at the helm, but it soon passed. At midnight Leanda took over again, slightly apprehensive in the empty darkness but determined not to show it. The ship, with its slight heel and its hissing wake, gave an illusion of speed, of rushing furiously through the night, and she kept a sharper lookout than was necessary. But the nervousness soon passed. The luminous compass card glowed comfortingly, the navigation lights threw cheerful pools of red and green on the heaving water. Conway , resting in the dim saloon, appeared to have full confidence in her. She certainly had confidence in him. He looked as cheerful and relaxed, out here on the ocean, as anyone she had ever seen.
    Conway , in his bunk, knew from the sound and motion of the ship that all was well, but he watched Leanda through most of her two hours. Without raising his head he could just see her face—small, intense, concentrated, in the compass glow. He found it a companionable sight.
    When he relieved her at two, he took a mug of tea out for her. “Anything to report?” he said, with a glance at the sail.
    “Not a thing.”
    “How did you like your first night watch?”
    “It was all right,” she said. She suppressed a yawn. “It seemed rather a long time.”
    He laughed. “I once sat at Tara ’s tiller for twenty-eight consecutive hours, in a storm.”
    “I don’t believe it!”
    “It’s true. I was so tired at the end I was breathing from memory! Okay, you’d better get a cat nap—four o’clock will be round in no time.”

    In a day or two they had settled into a regular, though by no means wearisome, routine. Leanda did the domestic chores and most of the cooking—which she soon found was one of the toughest jobs aboard. The first time she tried to fry anything, a sudden lurch of the ship sent the pan of hot fat flying across the saloon, burning her arm slightly and making a terrible mess. Apart from the hazards, she never quite got used to the smell of cooking in the confined space. But she pretended that she found it a pleasant change from being a secretary-conspirator, and Conway believed her. She produced nothing fancy, which suited him well. Her one real experiment was when she cooked, at his suggestion, some of the flying fish that crashed against the sail every night and were found in the morning on the scale-slippery deck. According to Conway , flying fish were a delicacy, but those she served up were dry and full of bones, and she didn’t try again. Apart from cooking, she swabbed down the decks every day, heaving buckets of crystal water up over the starboard rail with a strength that seemed out of proportion to her size. She also attended to the simple but repetitive job of filtering the day’s supply of sea water through the rubber bags of the patent device and adding the little cubes of