A Hero for Leanda

spot of bother over the water pump.”
    “You mean that was sabotage, too!”
    “Indeed it was. I put a bit of cloth in the filter just before I handed over. I knew Kastella would want to go on using the engine, as it was a flat calm, and I didn’t want to seem to stop him a second time. But I had to, somehow—we were only about a hundred and sixty miles from Heureuse by then, and if he’d done a hundred miles to the west it would have ruined everything. So I put the engine out of action and spent all day fooling with it.”
    “I’d never have guessed. You seemed to be working terribly hard.”
    “I was—I took a lot of things to pieces that I didn’t need to ... ! Anyway, that was about the end of my worries— except for the final dash. There was a tricky problem of timing, there—if we went in too close during daylight, Kastella would see the outlying islands and know we were in the wrong place. If we didn’t get close enough, we wouldn’t reach Heureuse before dawn. Actually, we were just about right. I had some anxious moments getting through the islands with that compass, and I was terrified I wouldn’t be able to find the gap in the reef again.... But we made it!”
    “And my only contribution,” Leanda said in a tone of disgust, “was practically to get myself killed.”
    “Since you didn’t succeed, I’m prepared to admit now that it was a jolly fine effort. It helped to maintain the right atmosphere.”
    “Well,” Leanda said after a moment, “it all seems too incredibly wonderful to be true. To me, at any rate... What about you, Mike? Do you still think you won’t get the money?”
    “I think Metaxas would be pretty crazy to pay. But perhaps he’ll let me keep Thalia. I hope so.”
    “I hope so, too.... It’ll still have been an awfully big sacrifice.”
    Conway grinned. “I reckon I’ve had value for it.”
    “How?”
    “I’ve settled my score with Kastella—and it was a pretty-long one. First he tried to push me around. Then there was the ketch. Then there was the way he threatened you.
    Quite simply, I hated his guts. Losing the money was a small price to pay for the pleasure of putting him back on Heureuse right under the bungalow we took him from. In fact, it was a self -indulgence!”
    “Oh, Mike!”
    “Anyway, it’s been worth it, just to have you looking at me as though I’m a human being again.”
    “Does that matter so much?”
    “Indeed it does.”
    Leanda said, “You know, I don’t think you’ll ever make much of a living as a mercenary!”
    The ship glided slowly on through the cays. The sky grew lighter. The sun rose in a magnificent array of color. Everything looked incredibly peaceful. Leanda, gazing around, gave a deep, contented sigh.
    “It’s like the journey out,” she said. “Just the two of us again—and everything so lovely and quiet.” She smiled. “ ‘The great out-of-doors . .
    Conway nodded. For a moment he was silent. Then he said, “Oddly enough, I remember the end of that quotation now.”
    “Quotation? Oh, the one about living out of doors ?“
    “That’s right.”
    “Well—tell me.”
    Conway said, “ ‘To live out of doors with the woman a man loves is of all lives the most complete and free.’ ” Leanda looked up at him. Tears suddenly glistened in her eyes. “Well, darling, we’re going to have at least a thousand miles of it, aren’t we?”
    “At least!” he said.