The King he said to the Earl Marischal,

Tanny. The inhabitants had taken refuge on the one highland of the island, but they were already hauling salvageables from the high tide mark and the water. They cheered the arrival of the Pearl, some wading out to float the water-tight supplies in to shore. The exchange was completed in the time it took the Pearl to turn about and head back to the open sea. And that was the routine at a half-dozen smaller islands. Killashandra had had a long look at the charts and the compass; they were taking a long arcing route, her island being the farthest point of their journey to the southwest. The waters were studded with islands, large, small, and medium. All showed the devastation of the storm, and on most the polly trees were still bent over from their struggle with the hurricane: on some of the smaller islands, the trees had been uprooted. As no one made a comment on this waste, Killashandra could not ask how soon polly would reestablish itself. In answer to a faint emergency call, they eventually sailed into the harbor of a medium-size island that had lost its communications masts and had been unable to make contact with Angel. Lars and Tanny went ashore there, leaving Killashandra in conspicuous sight while Erutown and Theach remained below. Some of the urgently needed items could be supplied from the extras on board and Lars contacted Angel for the rest. As they finally lifted anchor and sailed onward, Tannys rising excitement was communicated to Killashandra. She could recognize nothing, but if they were indeed near the island of her incarceration, she had swum away from nearby help. As they approached the next landfall, she didnt need Tannys shout of relief to know they had reached her island; the huge polly tree in the center was a distinctive landmark. Not only had the tree survived but also its siblings or offspring, and the little hut she had made in their shelter. Lars had to restrain Tanny from diving into the breakers and swimming ashore in his eagerness to reassure himself. I dont see anyone! Tanny cried as the Pearl motored toward the beach. Surely she could hear the engine! Is this where you want to dump us? Erutown growled, surveying the uprooted polly, the wind-depressed trunks of more, and the storm debris on the once white sands. Oh, youll be luxuriously situated, I assure you. Lars said. Killashandra had decided that Lars and Erutown were in basic disagreement on too many counts. Lars was delighted to deposit the man out of the way for a while. Weve solar-power units for Theachs dell digital camera software equipment, all sorts of emergency camp gear, and plenty of food should you tire of the stuff the island and the sea provide. And a hatchet, a knife, and a book of instructions? Killashandra asked she was not above priming her surprise. There speaks the polly planter. Grinning, Lars flipped the toggle to release the anchor, cut off the engine, and gestured Tanny overboard. He was halfway up the heights to the shelter before the others had made the beach. Theres no one here, Lars. Ye gods, what shall we do? Theres no one here! Tanny screamed. Consternation smoothed Larss features and he set off up the slope at speed. Killashandra followed at a more leisurely pace, wondering whether she would ease their fears. One look at the terror and hopelessness of Tannys face, and a second one at the shock on Larss eroded her need for revenge. Erutown and Theach were on the beach, out of hearing. You dont know very much about crystal singers, do you, Lars He swung around, stared at her, trying to assimilate her words. Tanny reached his conclusion first and sat heavily down among the storm-strewn polly fronds, his expression incredulous. If you thought Id just sit here until it suited you to retrieve me. Chapter 14 Any discussion of that would have to be postponed. Theach and Erutown reached the height, looking about them for their fellow exile. Unable to look in Killashandras direction, Tanny shot one horrified glance at Lars as the latter smoothly invented a note that she had been removed from the island by a passing vessel. He even flourished a piece of paper from his pocket as he commented that he was glad she was safe. That tears it, Erutown said gloomily. Well all be in trouble. I doubt it. A very good friend of ours skippered that ship, Lars replied without a blink She cant go anywhere without my knowledge. Tanny made a strangled sound and Killashandra grinned, choking on her laughter. Theres nothing you could safely do without jeopardizing yourself at this point, Erutown. It isnt as if youll be out of touch, and Lars handed the man a small but powerful handset. The frequency to use for any contact is 103.4 megahertz. All right? You can listen in on any of the other channels but communicate only on the 103.4. Erutown

The crystal glass which glimseth brave and bright

designed for land use which had proved to have such astonishing accuracy that navigation on the ice-cap, as a problem, had ceased to exist for him. But, even should he be heading towards the coast, our chances of meeting him in that blizzard did not exist, and if we once passed them by we would have been lost for ever. Better by far to head for the coast, where some patrolling ship or plane might just possibly pick us upif we ever got there. Besides, I knew that both Jackstraw and Zagero felt exactly as I didunder a pointless but overpowering compulsion to follow Smallwood and Corazzini until'we dropped in our tracks. And the truth was that we couldn't have gone any other way even had we wished to. When Smallwood had dropped us off we had been fairly into the steadily deepening depression in the ice-cap that wound down to the Kangalak glacier and it was a perfect drainage channel for the katabatic wind that was pouring down off the plateau. Although powerful enough already when we had been abandoned, that wind was now blowing with the force of a full gale, and for the first time on the Greenland ice-plateaualthough we were now, admittedly, down to a level of 1500 feet -1 heard a wind where the deep ululating moaning was completely absent. It howled, instead, howled and shrieked like a hurricane in the upper works and rigging of a ship, and it carried with it a numbing bruising flying wall of snow and ice against which progress would have been utterly impossible. So we went the only way we could, with the lash of the storm ever on our bent and aching backs. And ache our backs did. Only three peopleZagero, Jackstraw and myselfwere able to carry anything more than their own weight: and we had among us three people completely unable to walk. Mahler was still unconscious, still in coma, but I didn't think we would have him with us very much longer: Zagero carried him for hour after endless hour through that white nightmare and for his self-sacrifice he paid the cruellest price of all for when, some hours later, I examined the frozen, useless appendages that had once been his hands, I knew that Johnny Zagero would never step into a boxing ring again. Marie LeGarde had lost consciousness too, and as I staggered along with her in my arms I felt it to be no more than a wasted token gesture: without shelter, and shelter soon, she would never see this night out. Helene, too, had collapsed within an hour of the tractor's disappearance, her slender strength had just given out, and Jackstraw had her camera cx6200 digital easyshare kodak over his shoulder. How all three of us, exhausted, starved, numbed almost to death as we were, managed to carry them for so long, even though with so many halts, is beyond my understanding: but Zagero had his strength, Jackstraw his superb fitness and I still the sense of responsibility that carried me on long hours after my legs and arms had given out. Behind us Senator Brewster blundered along in a blind world all of his own, stumbling often, falling occasionally but always pushing himself up and staggering gamely on. And in those few hours Hoffman Brewster, for me, ceased to be a senator and became again my earliest conception of the old Dixie Colonel, not the proud, rather overbearing aristocrat but the embodiment of a bygone southern chivalry, when courtesy and a splendid gallantry in the greatest perils and hardships were so routine as to excite no comment. Time and time again during that .bitter night be insisted, forcibly insisted, on relieving one of the three of us of our burdens and would stagger along under the load until he reached the point of collapse. Despite his age, he was a powerful man: but he had no longer the heart and the lungs and the circulation to match his muscles, and his distress, as the night wore on, became pitiful to see. The bloodshot eyes were almost closed in exhaustion, his face deep-etched in grey suffering and his breath coming in painful whooping gasps that reached me clearly even above the thin high shriek of the wind. No doubt but that Small wood and Corazzini had left us to die, but they had made one mistake: they had forgotten Balto. Balto; as always, had been running loose when they had left us, and they had either failed to see him or forgotten all about him. But Balto hadn't forgotten us, he must have known something was far wrong, for all the hours we had been prisoners on the tractor sled he had never come within a quarter-mile of us. But as soon as the tractor had dumped and left us, he had come loping in out of the driving snow and settled to the task of leading us down towards the glacier. At least, we hoped he was doing that. Jackstraw declared that he was following the crimp marks of the Citroen's caterpillars, now deep buried under the flying drift and new-fallen snow. Zagero wasn't so sure. Once, twice, a dozen times that night, I heard him muttering the same words: "I hope to hell that hound knows where it's goinV But Balto knew where he was going. Sometime during

"So now let him go," said Robin Hood;

alone, of all the men he had ever known he would have picked the lean, morose American to be his companion that night. Or maybe even including Andrea. "The finest saboteur in southern Europe" Captain Jensen had called him back in Alexandria. Miller had come a long way from Alexandria, and he had come for this alone. To-night was Miller's night. "Curfew in fifteen minutes," he said quietly. "The balloon goes up in twelve minutes. For us, another four minutes to go." Miller nodded, but said nothing. He filled his glass again from the beaker in the middle of the table, lit a cigarette. Mallory could see a nerve twitching high up in his temple and wondered dryly how many twitching nerves Miller could see in his own face. He wondered, too, how the crippled Casey Brown was getting on in the house they had just left. In many ways he had the most responsible job of alland at the critical moment he would have to leave the door unguarded, move back to the balcony. One slip up there. . . . He saw Miller look strangely at him and grinned crookedly. This had to come off, it just had to: he thought of what must surely happen if he failed, then shied away from the thought. It wasn't good to think of these things, not now, not at this time. He wondered if the other two were at their posts, unmolested; they should be, the search party had long passed through the upper part of the town; but you never knew what could go wrong, there was so much that could go wrong, and so easily. Mallory looked at his watch again: he had never seen a second hand move so slowly. He lit a last cigarette, poured a final glass of wine, listened without really hearing to the weird, keening threnody of the rembetika song in the corner. And then the song of the hashish singers died plaintively away, the glasses were empty and Mallory was on his feet. "Time bringeth all things," he murmured. "Here we go again." He sauntered easily towards the door, calling good night to the tavernaris. Just at the doorway he paused, began to search impatiently through his pockets as if he had lost something: it was a windless night, and it was raining, he saw, raining heavily, the lances of rain bouncing inches off the cobbled streetand the street itself was deserted as far as he could see in either direction. Satisfied, Mallory swung round with a curse, forehead furrowed in exasperation, started to walk back towards the table he had just left, right hand now delving into the capacious inner pocket of his jacket. He saw without dc pro digital camera accessories seeming to that Dusty Miller was pushing his chair back, rising to his feet. And then Mallory bad halted, his face clearing and his hands no longer searching. He was exactly three feet from the table where the four Germans were sitting. "Keep quite still!" He spoke in German, his voice low but as steady, as menacing, as the Navy Colt .455 balanced in his right hand. "We are desperate men. If you move we will kill you." For a full, three seconds the soldiers sat immobile, expressionless except for the shocked widening of their eyes. And then there was a quick flicker of the eyelids from the man sitting nearest the counter, a twitching of the shoulder and then a grunt of agonyas the .32 bullet smashed into his upper arm. The soft thud of Miller's silenced automatic couldn't have been heard beyond the doorway. "Sorry, boss," Miller apologised. "Mebbe be's only sufferin' from St. Vitus' Dance." He looked with interest at the pain-twisted face, the blood welling darkly be.. tween the fingers clasped tightly over the wound. "But he looks kinda cured to me." "He is cured," Mallory said grimly. He turned to the inn-keeper, a tall, melancholy man with a thin face and mandarin moustache that drooped forlornly over either corner of his mouth, spoke to him in the quick, colloquial speech of the islands. "Do these men speak Greek?" The tavernaris shook his head. Completely unruffled and unimpressed, he seemed to regard armed hold-ups in his tavern as the rule rather than the exception. "Not them!" he said contemptuously. "English a little, I thinkI am sure. But not our language. That I do know." "Good. I am a British Intelligence officer. Have you a place where I can hide these men?" "You shouldn't have done this," the tavernaris protested mildly. "I will surely die for this." "Oh, no, you Won't." Mallory had slid across the counter, his pistol boring into the man's midriff. No one could doubt that the man was being threatenedand violently threatenedno one, that is, who couldn't see the broad wink that Mallory had given the inn-keeper. "I'm going to tie you up with them. All right?" "All right. There is a trap-door at the end of the counter here. Steps lead down to the cellar." "Good enough. I'll find it by accident." Mallory gave him a vicious and all too convincing shove that sent the man staggering, vaulted back across the counter, walked over to the rembetika singers at the far corner of the