A Hero for Leanda

between us. He still had a sneaking fear I might try to get the gun, so he let me do all the night watches and kept well out of the way after dark. That was perfect. All I had to do was wait till you’d both retired and then turn the ship round. That first night, when I was supposed to be beating to windward, I actually ran nearly sixty miles the other way. The ports in Kastella’s cabin were so salted up he couldn’t see the stars, so there was no danger there. Of course, if he’d had the slightest feeling for a ship he’d have known we weren’t beating, but fortunately he hadn’t.”
    “I didn’t realize it, either,” Leanda said.
    “You’re still quite a novice, too. Besides, all you could think of was how to get the gun and how much you hated us both. As far as the running of the ship was concerned, you were practically sleepwalking.”
    “That’s true.”
    “Anyhow, no one noticed anything, and that first night went off splendidly. Just before dawn I turned the ship round again. Then Kastella took over and sailed her all day, but he was so new to it that we only made a few miles —so that was all right. All the same, I could see a pretty big snag looming up . .
    “The log!” Leanda said.
    “Exactly! That was one thing he was very interested in —the number of miles we were covering. I realized he’d be bound to get suspicious if he found me regularly clocking up fifty miles or more on what was supposed to be a hard night’s beat, when the best he could do was ten miles in a day—and anyway, there was another difficulty. Each time I took sights, I had to tell him we were roughly as many miles west of center as in fact we were east of it, so that when I finally made a landfall in Heureuse he’d be all ready for it in Africa . I saw it was going to be quite impossible to square the phony positions with the actual log readings. So I had to get rid of the log!”
    “What did you do to it?”
    Conway grinned. “As a matter of fact, I didn’t do anything to it to start with. I said it wasn’t working and took it off to mend it. When I got it into the saloon I hit it with a hammer. Kastella was so scared about coming close, he couldn’t see what I was doing. Next day I botched the soldering job, and the thing came unstuck, and that was that.”
    “And he probably thought I was responsible all the time!”
    “Probably—you were most useful as a whipping girl.... Well, that was the major headache disposed of, and I motored a hundred miles to the east that night without giving anything away. But using the engine raised another problem—Kastella naturally wanted to use it too. I let him, for a short time—remember?—and then I threw a fit of temper and said I couldn’t sleep. So he pretty well wasted his day shift.”
    “Mike—it must have been terrifically exciting.”
    “It was a bit of a tightrope act—I wasn’t at all sure it was going to work out. But things went pretty well. I had another good night, running east when I should have been beating to the west. Then, just before I handed over to Kastella, I sabotaged what should have been a good day’s run for him.”
    “How ... ? I don’t remember anything.”
    “Don’t you remember he kept complaining about the steering?”
    “Oh—yes.”
    “Well, he certainly had reason to! I’d streamed the small sea anchor from the bows on a very short rope. It’s weighted, of course, so it went down under the ship, holding her back and spoiling the steering. Kastella had a fair wind and the sails were full and he should have been eating up the miles, but actually he was getting nowhere fast —especially with the east-going current against him all the time. It makes me blush now to think of the tripe I talked about the difficulties of steering before the wind!”
    “But, Mike, suppose he’d discovered! The top of the rope must have been visible from the foredeck.”
    “Of course, but he never had the chance to see it. I streamed the thing in the dark each time, before he took over at the tiller. Then I went and sat beside it for most of the day, ready to cast off if he came up to the foredeck. But he didn’t—he had his job to do and he stayed in the cockpit. And you didn’t, either, because you were giving me the cold shoulder. In the evening, when you were both safely below, I hauled the sea anchor in for the night. It was a bit of a risk, of course, but it came off.... After that the wind dropped, and I had to organize the