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She turned and met Julian’s blue, enigmatic gaze before answering flippantly, “Maybe I ain’t no seafaring man, either. I certainly don’t intend to make the test in front of a lot of jeering hoboes like you. Count me out.”

Julian grinned but withheld comment. Drew said that he’d seen the Novada plantation and that if Mr. Caswell was going, he himself had better stay here. Swiftly Phil again looked at Julian. His nostrils twitched at her as if he were aware of the names she was silently hurling at him.

In the morning Gordon ran an expert eye over the boat, ordered a few tons of ballast to be stowed and gave the native hands a couple of days ashore. It had been decided that he, Clin, Roger and Julian would set sail straight after lunch and spend a couple of nights at the Novada. The morning after tomorrow they would return, getting in about mid-day.

Phil and Daphne were on the waterfront to watch the line cast loose and the
Blue Ray
move slowly in a breeze that gently filled the sails as they were hoisted. The engine churned up a soapy wake as it pushed south-east, between Valeira and the mainland.

Daphne seemed relieved to be without men for a period.

She read and tinkled at the piano, showed interest in Phil’s wardrobe and tried to fashion some of the little clay figures Which to Phil’s fingers came easy. They bathed twice a day and canoed round the lagoon. Daphne, who was highly superstitious, bought lucky shells and coins in the market and added a few pieces of palm-fibre basketwork to the heap of junk which she intended carrying away as mementoes of Valeira.

“I have a feeling,” she said in thankful tones, “that once I get back to England I shall never leave there again. Of course, this holiday has been one I shall treasure—even apart from Gordon—but I’m so essentially a Londoner that I positively pine for cold nights and smelly fogs, the theatre and a cabaret once in a while. You’re an awful fool to hang on, Phil. We’d fix you up in London and help you to make friends.”

“Some day I’ll happen along and surprise you.”

“If one of these men doesn’t chain you to the island. Roger’s time is up first. As a husband he’s the safest bet.”

“Can you imagine me settling down in a small north-country town?”

“You wouldn’t have to. He’d go wherever you wished. Look at Gordon and me.”

Phil laughed. Young brides were notoriously matchmakers.

The time passed quickly. The second evening Matt and Drew were induced to dine with them and play whist.

In the middle of that night a wind freshened from the north-west and dry white lightning flashed through the slats of Phil’s bedroom window. She got up and peered out at the walls of cloud which appeared static on the horizon. Overhead it was clear and starry, but the palms threshed and the waves roared ominously with an evil echo. Some time soon the calm weather would break, but this might be only a warning.

Back in her bed she listened, and breathed a generous sigh when the wind lowered to a whisper. Nothing to worry about after all.

But by daylight the sky was brassy and there was no mist. Low on the sealine a jagged wall of cloud seemed suspended, awaiting reinforcement.

Daphne was happy. “Let’s make a snorting West African curry for the men,” she said, “and work out something special in the way of a salad. We’ll make them declare a half-holiday, and this afternoon we’ll bathe and take a picnic tea. Won’t it be great to have them back?”

Phil agreed. She felt absurdly lighthearted as she set out alone to bargain for a chicken at the market. She chose a pair of squawking cockerels and walked on to buy a basket of tiny tomatoes and some olives while they were killed and dressed.

The chickens were put to broil, onions, rice and seasoning prepared and half a dozen eggs hard-boiled ready for the casserole. A huge glass bowl of chopped pawpaw, precious oranges, bananas, raisins and nuts flavoured with sherry, was covered with butter muslin and stowed away in a dark comer of the larder.

At this stage Daphne wilted and Phil was left to mix the baking-powder bread and push the loaves into the oven of the paraffin stove. She was washing the flour from her hands at the iron pedestal under the kitchen window when a sudden roar rushed in from the sea; a tornado that rocked the walls and tore branches from the trees, and brought Daphne screaming into the kitchen.

It lasted twenty minutes, grim herald of the deafening storm that followed. Half-demented, Daphne pressed her face into her pillow and sweated and sobbed. Between her incoherent wailing Phil gathered that if Gordon got back alive it was ten chances to one against his finding his wife all in one piece.

“The men won’t have left the Novada harbour,” Phil told her. “They’ll have seen the storm coming and waited.”

“We didn’t see it coming,” wept Daphne. “The sudden wind would tip over the
Blue Ray.
We always heeled in a normal strong wind. Oh, God, I wish we’d never come to Valeira!”

In the early afternoon the thunder receded and ceased. Lightning still played about the mountain and rain continued to stream against the house. Daphne, weary and heavy-eyed, paced restlessly from window to window, but Phil, rasped by the hours of inaction, put on oilskins and waded down to the deserted waterfront.

Marooned in his store, Matt sat in his ancient swivel chair, his feet on a bag of maize and an accounts book across his knees. When Phil came in he tenderly scratched his chest.

“Have a good swim?” he asked conversationally.

She perched on an up-ended roll of cotton. “Deuce of a storm,” she answered with gloom. “Daphne’s frantic over Gordon being away in the boat.”

“You’re a bit white about the mouth yourself. Have a drink?”

“No, thanks. Matt, d’you think they’d have sailed this morning?”

“I don’t. They’re four grown men, lovey, with plenty of common sense between them.”

“Couldn’t we send a freighter round—just in case?”

“Julian would be mad as hell.”

“I’d risk that—to be sure they’re all right.” She paused miserably. “The horrible part is not knowing.”

“Now you understand how we felt when you disappeared into the jungle—only it was worse for us; you weren’t four strong men. Stop fretting. They’ll come tomorrow.”

"Tomorrow! What am I going to do with Daphne?”

“Send her to bed early with sleeping tablets, and be thankful you’re not a newly-wed.”

When Phil reached home she was drenched in perspiration beneath the oilskin and her hair had gone as lank as Daphne’s.

They drank tea and coffee, but neither could face a meal. In the early darkness they sent Manoela to the shore with a note to the harbour official, begging him to let them know by messenger as soon as the
Blue Ray
was sighted. Phil attempted to sew, but Daphne began to cry again.

“I should have gone with them,” she declared through quivering lips. “They wouldn’t have taken chances with a woman aboard.”

“How do we know they’ve taken chances?” Phil argued. “Matt thinks they’re still snug in harbour.”

“Gordon would try to get back—he knows how I stew over storms. Phil, if anything has happened to him I shall die”

And much more in similar vein, till Phil went silent from nervous exhaustion.

It was towards eight-thirty when the messenger came. The
Blue Ray
was anchoring off-shore and a motor-boat had been sent out. Phil gulped hard and warm blood raced in her veins. She was first on the track, running as she had never run before, happiness welling up in her like an agony.

She saw them against a background of cascading black rollers. Four figures, the tallest Julian’s. Shyness caught at her throat and she slowed.

“Darling!” Daphne was crying, and the next moment she had flung herself into Gordon’s arms.

“Unclinch, there’s a pet,” he said. “We have an audience.”

“I don’t care,” she said wildly. “I’ve been terrified.”

The other three came on ahead, and Phil saw that they were half-clothed, wet and tired. But Clin Dakers, his hair rough and curly, looked into her face and winked.

“Here’s another little girl who’s been terrified. Which one of us are the tears for, Phil?”

She turned and walked between him and Julian. ‘Tell me what happened.”

Again it was Clin who spoke. “Nothing much. We saw the storm coming and waited till it finished before casting-off. Big seas and the rain account for our dishevelment.”

They took the rest of the slope without talking, and where the track divided Julian halted.

“It’s me for a bath and a bottle of rum,” said Clin. “Good night.”

Sulkily, Roger added: “Me too. I need my bed.”

Phil called after them: “Good night, Clin. Good night, Roger.”

And then she was alone at Julian’s side, looking up at him with a liquid brightness in her eyes and a tremulous smile on her lips.

“Well?” he said.

She made a funny sound and pressed her eyes against his khaki sleeve, leaving two little smudges. The hard lines of his face relaxed and she felt a second’s pressure on her shoulder.

“Shame on you,” he said softly, derisively.

Then he twisted and strode through the bush path which led up to the plantation.

ON a fair morning, with a light south-easter billowing the sails and a pennant flying, the
Blue Ray
arrowed away from Valeira. The Fosters had spent three weeks and four days on the island, and left behind them pleasant associations and, in the breast of Roger Crawford, a nostalgia for England.

At first Roger’s yearning was so acute that he sought an interview with Julian and asked if it were possible to break his contract.

“Is it worth it?” remarked Julian. ‘Twenty-two months will soon pass. You’ve a good salary piling up and the bonus percentage is improving every half-year. In any case, your contract calls for three months’ notice, in which to replace you, and in that time you’ll have settled again. Foster himself would have given a good deal to remain here in a job like yours.”

Roger’s tongue edged along his lips and he averted his head. “He wouldn’t give up his wife for it, though.”

“He hasn’t had her long enough for that,” returned Julian coolly. “You attach too much importance to women. I thought you had more sense than to harp on the impossible.”

“You don’t understand how I feel.”

“I understand perfectly,” Julian sharply took him up, “You’re tired of living with Drew, and Philippa Crane is too young to be made love to.”

“She’s eighteen.”

Julian paused. “Is she? Then what’s stopping you?”

“It takes two. She likes me, but not that way.” His fair skin flushed and his jaw was crooked as he went on: “My nerve isn’t as good as yours, sir. I sleep badly and get depressed. I . . . I’m afraid of going under.”

Julian let a minute pass before answering dispassionately: “Look here, Crawford, your position is no more extraordinary than that of any other white man here. You convince yourself that the reason you sleep badly is because you need a woman to share your bed, but the fact is the temperature keeps you awake and you’re not strong enough to control your mind. As for depression—we all get it. That’s another of the taxes you have to pay for living here. I’m not belittling what you’re enduring, but I did believe you had the guts to get on top of it. It’s not so long since you had special leave in Lagos.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

Roger came away no happier and wishing to heaven that he had tendered his resignation without explanation. It was all very well for Caswell to hand out censure. He was the cold, merciless sort, as intolerant of weakness in himself as in others. Seeing Gordon and Daphne together would cause him no pangs; neither was he tom in two by the mere silhouette of Phil framed in her lamplit window.

Clin Dakers hung on and on. Matt Bryson hinted that the forestry man had been sacked and he was planning a trip south, but Clin’s behaviour did not support the hint, and he mentioned next month and the month after as if he might still be at Valeira, lazing within his rotting bungalow and monopolizing Phil. That was the part that hurt—monopolizing Phil.

She, of course, ridiculed his notions. The trouble with Phil was that you could never get close to her, never know what she was thinking, or whether what she said came from the heart. For one so honest and sensitive she could be exasperatingly reticent.

When he told her that Julian had dissuaded him from rescinding his contract, she smiled rather gravely.

“Julian’s concern is with the plantation, not with individuals. Naturally he doesn’t want a new man on his hands just as his work is beginning to show results. His attitude is that if you crack up now it will be just too bad—for him. Your side of it doesn’t bother him.”

“What makes you say that? I thought you liked him.”

“I do, but not blindly. Julian has cut personal feelings out of his life—we just happen to be the handful of people he has to get along with. So if it goes deep with you—this wish to return to England—don’t let him put you off.” Roger shrugged his dissatisfaction. “The way he spoke I’d feel a rat if I got out now.”

"That s his cleverness. No one else would blame you ” said Phil.

Two days later she heard from Clin that he was leaving Valeira for good. He had followed her down to the lagoon and bathed with her, raced her back to the beach and slipped full length beside her to regain his breath.

Presently he lit a cigarette and looked her way. “This would be an ideal mode of existence in a better climate,” he said. Only fools work away the best years of their lives.”

She laughed. “Aren’t you tired of holiday-making yet?”

“I thrive on it. But I’m fed up with Valeira and the men here. I’m leaving, Phil.”

“Oh. Permanently?”

He nodded. “I’m making south. Will you hate to see me go?”

“A little. With you and the Fosters gone it’ll be dull.”

“Don’t you envy me the South Sea Islands?”

“Naturally. Everyone hankers to visit them, but I shouldn’t care to go alone.”