A Hero for Leanda

place, up in the wilds of Donegal. He was very sentimental about Ireland . I can see him now, sitting in the bar with a bunch of his friends, singing passionate songs about Ireland ’s struggle in a voice choking with sobs. He was a lovely man, though—a big, tough man with a soft heart. He’d have liked me to take over the place, the way fathers do, but I was tired of the bogs and wanted to get away on my own. So he paid for me to go to Dublin , to the university, and I became an engineer.”
    “And then what?”
    “Then I went to Canada — Montreal , Quebec , all sorts of places. That’s a fine country, Canada . I was there quite a while, helping to build bridges and dams and things. The trouble was I couldn’t keep still—I’m a real maverick. I started sailing, first on the lakes and then on the sea, and I got mad about boats, and in the end I just packed up and sailed away and I’ve been sailing ever since.”
    “Are your parents still alive?”
    “No, they both died while I was in Canada —rest their souls....” He was silent for a while. “Maybe I will go back to Ireland someday—just for old times’ sake. I’d like to smell the peat again. I’d like to sail into Donegal Bay , to Killybegs, in my own ship—perhaps this ship, who knows?” He looked at Leanda and grinned. “Let’s hope they’re not keeping Kastella on a chain!”
    By the end of the tenth day, Thalia had been blown so far to the north that a change of course was essential if they weren’t to miss Heureuse by fifty miles. Leanda, whose eagerness to reach the island and get on with the rescue operation was growing steadily now they were so near, suggested they should use the engine and motor straight there. But Conway was against that. Later on, he said, they might have to rely on the engine a good deal, and as it wasn’t at all certain they’d be able to get the right sort of Diesel fuel in Heureuse they’d better husband what they’d got. Next morning early, therefore, he put Thalia about, and they started a long board on a course a little west of south. The wind had fallen light, and they had to keep going all day and all night and part of the next day before Conway was satisfied that they would make Heureuse on one more tack. Then, with the island well over the lee bow, he turned the ship again onto the eighty-five-degree course.
    There was a little excitement next morning when Conway, at the tiller, suddenly called “Sail ho!” and Leanda came rushing up from the saloon to see a three-masted schooner bearing down on them from the north. She looked a fine sight from a distance, but as she drew abreast they saw that her hull was rusted and her dirty old sails patched like a quilt. Conway thought she was probably trading between the Seychelles and Mauritius . She was soon hull down, and for the rest of the day Thalia had the sea to herself again.
    That evening Conway began studying his arrival charts. Heureuse was the largest of a group of islands and islets that rose from a shallow plateau. The plateau itself covered many hundreds of square miles, and on the west extended more than fifty miles from Heureuse. The long, deep-water crossing was almost over; soon, Thalia would have only a fathom or two under her—and the dangers of coral were very fresh in Conway ’s mind. But on the west, he was relieved to see, there appeared to be a broad, unobstructed approach through the cays and islands. Provided the chart showed all the hazards, there should be no serious difficulty.
    It was Leanda who, on the fourteenth day, suddenly announced that she could see a tree growing out of the ocean. It was the top of a coconut palm, rising from some invisible spit of sand perhaps ten miles away on the starboard bow. Soon, other trees appeared, singly and in clumps. There were islands now on both sides—most of them, according to the chart, uninhabited cays, but some with little copra-trading stations and a scattering of huts. Birds had suddenly appeared—clouds of terns that fluttered over green shallows where a rippling tide race stirred the water. There was an exciting tang of wood smoke in the air. In the late afternoon another human contact was made —a solitary boatman paddling a double-ended pirogue, apparently quite unworried by the ocean swell.
    Conway took special care with his sights that evening, getting a perfect fix from three stars just before darkness blotted out the horizon. They had now only about thirty-five