A Hero for Leanda

barometer. It had gone down a little. After a moment he took the small sea anchor and a warp from one of the cockpit lockers and carried them up onto the foredeck, where he was occupied for some minutes. There was nothing like being prepared for all eventualities!

    The clouds dispersed around ten, without giving any rain. The breeze continued to blow gently from the southeast, keeping the sails nicely filled. With a fair wind, it was possible at last to steer Thalia due west. Conditions could scarcely have been better—but Kastella, doing his first spell at the tiller with the wind aft, was having considerable difficulty.
    “She won’t keep on a straight course,” he complained, as he struggled to get the ship under control again after his fourth jibe. “First the head swings to the left, then it swings to the right.”
    “Well of course it does if you let it,” Conway said.
    “I can’t stop it.”
    “That’s because you’re not used to running.... You’ve got to keep a firm grip on the tiller all the time and correct each movement before it happens. Look, let me show you....” He stepped forward. Kastella snatched up the gun and covered him.
    “Sorry!” Conway said. “I forgot you were still nervous.” He waited while Kastella moved out of the way. Then he got Thalia back on course and held her steady. The muscles of his forearms stood out in knots as he gripped the tiller. “See?—she’s perfectly all right. You’ll get the knack of it in time....” He handed over again. “Anyway, I don’t think you’ll come to much harm. Do the best you can—I’m going forward to take a nap.”
    He went below and collected his straw hat. Then he climbed up into the bows and seated himself with his back to the mast, looking down at the water. Thalia’s bow wave was scarcely more than a ripple—they certainly weren’t moving very fast toward Africa and twenty thousand pounds. Still, they were moving. The sun, streaming down over his left shoulder, was hot. He pulled his straw hat over his neck and leaned back, smiling. Things weren’t going too badly. After a while, he dozed off.

    The wind remained in the southeast for the next twenty-four hours, blowing just hard enough for good sailing. Conway had his most satisfying night shift for some time. Kastella, on the other hand, continued to complain of difficulty with the tiller and seemed to be no nearer mastering it. By the end of his watch he looked quite exhausted. Progress during the twenty-four hours had been only fair. Conway put their position, at the end of the fourth day, some two hundred and sixty miles east of Mombasa .
    That evening the breeze died away and the sea took on a pale sheen like mother-of-pearl. Kastella, increasingly restive, urged Conway to use the engine again, and once more they had a noisy night motoring through a fiat calm. By morning the crosses on the track chart had taken another hundred-mile leap.
    The calm persisted, and after Conway had had a short sleep he let Kastella use the engine too. Then the water pump began to give trouble. Conway, still tired after the night and in a very bad temper, spent most of the day on his knees in the fierce heat, dismantling and cleaning the pump and fitting a new washer, while Kastella looked on and chafed and Leanda sat silent and unhelpful in the bows. By the late afternoon, when the job was done, Conway swore he had lost half a stone in sweat. But the engine was working perfectly again, and as there was still no wind Conway ran it all through another night, though at halfthrottle to conserve the much depleted fuel store. What was left, he said, they would have to keep now for their final dash to the coast—wind or no wind.
    In fact they had a measure of luck. A light breeze returned during the morning—but once again it was heading them, so that their progress was not very good. Kastella sat all day at the tiller, as Thalia slowly beat to the west. He was showing increasing signs of physical tiredness with every trick at the helm—but Conway had only to make a sudden movement to discover that his watchfulness was as great as ever.

    That evening, the sixth since their meeting with the ketch, the glass fell sharply and the head wind strengthened. The sea got up quickly, and Thalia began to pitch in a way she hadn’t done since the big storm. Kastella cut short his evening meal, took some Dramamine, and locked himself away in his cabin to get through the unpromising night as