A Hero for Leanda

Maybe six, with a bit of discomfort.”
    “And we’ve seven hundred miles to go.”
    Conway stared at him. “You surely don’t imagine we can go on?”
    “Of course we must go on.”
    Conway shook his head. “It’s out of the question.”
    “But we’ve no alternative, Conway . We’ll have to make a dash for it—use the engine to get as far as possible as quickly as possible, and hope for rain to eke out our water at the end of the trip.”
    “You’re crazy,” Conway said. “We’ve fuel for two days’ steaming—say four hundred miles. That would still leave us three hundred miles out in the ocean. We’d be at the mercy of the doldrums—which could easily mean no progress and no rain. We certainly couldn’t count on rain. Remember what it was like before the storm—a blistering flat calm? In these latitudes you can spend days like that. Weeks, if you’re unlucky.”
    “We’ll have to risk that.... Leanda, you agree, don’t you —you know how important it is.”
    “You’re wasting your breath,” Conway said. “To try and cross this ocean with five gallons of water for three people would be only just short of suicide—and a damned unpleasant death it could be, too! Good God, man, I can drink two gallons a day on my own when it’s very hot— and still feel thirsty. You must be off your head.”
    Leanda said, “I read somewhere about a man who drank ordinary sea water for quite a long time, and survived...
    “He was a superman. Were not going to drink sea water. And we’re definitely not going on.”
    “Then what are we going to do?” Kastella asked. “You’re not suggesting we go back to Heureuse!”
    “I shouldn’t think that’ll be necessary,” Conway said. “Just a moment while I get these sails off—then we’ll have a look at the chart.”
    He cleared up on deck and then joined the others in the saloon. Leanda had already found the chart of the islands and spread it out on the table. Conway studied it for a while in silence, watched broodingly by Kastella.
    “Well,” he said at last, “my suggestion is that we make for Victoria .” He indicated a small island on the northwestern edge of the group. “It’s the nearest bit of land to us—I make it about two hundred and thirty miles—and there’s a copra trading station there. That means water .“
    “It also means a radio station,” Kastella said, “and an English manager who’ll know all about me, and about this ship, and who’ll have a staff to do what he tells them. Far from getting any water, we shouldn’t be allowed to leave .“
    “If we timed our arrival properly we wouldn’t be seen,” Conway said. “I’m not proposing we should sail straight up to the jetty in daylight! We’d have to go in at night, and anchor in some quiet spot off the coast, and do a bit of prospecting. With luck we might easily find a well on the edge of the settlement. Even if we only found a stream or a pond, it would do—we could always boil the stuff .“
    “What would we carry it in?” Leanda asked. “We haven’t got anything on board except buckets, and that would mean a lot of journeys. And we still wouldn’t have anywhere to store it.”
    “I dare say we’d find something ashore,” Conway said.
    “Some of these native huts have old tanks outside to catch rain water. We’d have to help ourselves.”
    “And probably rouse the whole place,” Kastella said. “We’d have to be careful.”
    Kastella slowly shook his head. “I don’t like it at all .“
    “I don’t like it myself,” Conway said. “I’ve an interest in you, too, don’t forget—quite a big one. I’m only suggesting this because I think it’s the best hope.”
    “There’s a great risk I’d be caught.”
    “There’s a risk we’d all be caught.”
    Kastella gave a thin smile. “You don’t seem to understand, Conway —for me this isn’t just a question of a few weeks in jail for a passport offense. My country’s future is at stake. If I were recaptured now, everything might be lost. The failure would have a crushing effect on our cause. It would be worse than if I’d never escaped.”
    Leanda said, “But, Alex, if there’s no alternative... Kastella looked at Conway . “Give me your honest opinion—what do you think our chances really are of getting enough water for our needs and leaving without being discovered?”
    Conway shrugged. “It’s a tough question. I don’t know what the situation will be. But I’d have