Chilled to the bone by the night wind and the long hours of inactivity, Jake swept the horizon back and forth as the light strengthened, and only when he knew that it was empty of any trace of the warship did he close the telescope, climb stiffly from the crows-nest and begin the long slow journey down the rigging to the deck below.
Papadopoulos greeted him like a brother, reaching up to hug him and breathe garlic in his face, and Vicky had the chop-box open and the primus stove hissing. She brought him an enamel mug of steaming black coffee and looked at him with a new respect tinged with admiration.
Gareth opened the hatch of the turret from which during the whole night he had commanded the crew with a loaded Vickers machine gun and came to fetch the other mug of coffee from Vicky and gave Jake a cheroot as they moved to the rail together.
"I keep underestimating you," he grinned, as he cupped his hands around the flaring match he offered Jake. "Just because you are big I keep thinking you are stupid."
"You'll get over it, "Jake promised him. Instinctively they both glanced across the deck at where Vicky was breaking eggs into the pan and they understood each other very clearly.
She shook them both awake a little before noon. They were sprawled on their blankets in the shade under one of the cars trying to catch up on the sleep they had missed that night. However, they followed Vicky without protest to the bows and the three of them peered ahead at the low lioncoloured coast line, upon which the surf creamed softly and over which the hard aching blue shield of the sky blazed with an intensity that hurt the eyes.
There was no clear dividing line between earth and sky.
It was blurred by the low mist of dust and heat that wavered and rippled like the yellow mane of the lion. Vicky wondered whether she had ever seen such an uninviting scene, and decided she had not. She began to compose the words with which she would describe it to her tens of thousands of readers.
Gregorius came up to join the group. He had discarded the western dress and donned instead the traditional sham ma and tight breeches.
He had become the man of Africa once again, and the smooth chocolate-brown face, with its halo of dark thick curls, was lit by the passion of the returning exile.
"You cannot see the mountains the haze is too thick," he explained.
"But sometimes in the dawn when the air is cooler-" and he stared into the west, with his longing expressed clearly in the liquid flashing eyes and upon the full sculptured lips.
The schooner crept inshore, gliding over the shallows where the water was like that of a mountain stream, so clear that they could make out every detail of the reef thirty feet down and watch the shoals of coral fish below like bejewelled clouds through the crystal waters.
Papadopoulos turned the HirondeUe to approach the shore at an oblique angle so that the details of the coast resolved themselves gradually and they saw the golden red beaches broken by headlands and points of jagged rock, and beyond it the land rose gradually, barren and awful, speckled only with the low scrubby spino Cristi and car riel grass.
For an hour they ran parallel with the shore, a thousand yards off, and the group by the rail stood and stared at it with fascination.
Only Jake had left the group and was making the preparations to begin unloading, but he also came back to the rail when abruptly a deep bay opened ahead of them.
"The Bay of Chains," said Gregorius, and it was clear how it had got its name, for, huddled under the cliffs of one headland and protected from the prevailing winds and the run of the surf by the horn of land, were the ruins of the ancient slave city of Month.
Gregorius pointed it out to them, for it did not look like a city.
It was merely an area of broken rock and stone blocks running down to the water's edge. They were close enough now to make out the roughly geometrical layout of smothered streets and roofless buildings.
Hirondeue dropped anchor and snubbed up gently. Jake finished his final preparations for unloading and crossed to where Gareth stood by the rail.
"One of us will have to swim a line ashore."
"Spin you for it," suggested Gareth, and before Jake could protest he had the coin in his hand.
"Heads!" jake looked resigned.
"Bad luck, old son. Give the sharks my love." Gareth smiled and stroked his mustache.
Jake balanced on the clumsy pontoon raft as it was lifted by the donkey engine and lowered over the side, dangling on the heavy lines. and floated alongside as It settled on to the surface un-gracefully as a pregnant hippo.
Jake grinned up at Vicky who was leaning over the rail, watching with interest.
"Unless you want to be blinded with splendour, you'd better close your eyes." For a moment she did not understand, but then as he started to strip off his shirt and unbutton his pants, she turned modestly away.
With the end of a coil of light line tied about his waist Jake plunged naked into the sea and struck out for the shore. Vicky's curiosity got the better of her at this stage, and she glanced slyly overboard. There was something so childlike and defenceless about a man with his trousers off, she thought, as she considered Jake's bobbing white buttocks. She might develop that as a theme in one of her columns, she thought, and then realized that Gareth Swales was watching her with one mockingly raised eyebrow, as he paid out the coil of line that snaked after Jake. She blushed pinkly under her tan and hurried away to make sure her typewriter and personal duffel bag were packed away into Miss Wobbly.
Jake touched bottom and waded ashore to secure the line to one of the stone blocks, and already the first car was on on its wooden blocks, and, with the winch clattering, was being lifted over the side.
With each man performing his own task skilfully, one at a time the cars were lowered on to the bobbing raft. There its wheels were hastily lashed and it was hauled carefully towards the beach by the land line.
As soon as the raft ran aground on the sloping yellow sand, Jake started the engine while Gregorius clamped the footboards into place.
Then with the engine revving noisily and the raft swaying dangerously, it rolled over the footboards and up the slope to park well above the high-water mark. Then the raft was hauled back alongside the schooner for its next load.
Although they worked as swiftly as safety would allow, the hours sped away just as swiftly, and it was late afternoon when the last load of fuel drums and wooden cases, with Vicky Camberwell sitting on top of the precarious load, made the short crossing to the beach.
Almost the instant it left the ship's side, the diesel thumped into life, the anchor chain rattled in over the bows and Papadopoulos gave the order to cast off the line of the raft.
By the time Vicky jumped down on the crunchy sand, the Hirondelle was moving steadily out between the horns of the bay, and spreading her wings of white canvas to the evening breeze. The four of them stood upon the beach in the lowering dusk and watched her go. None of them waved, and yet they all felt a loss at her going. Stinking slaver, with a crew of pirates, yet she had been their link with the outer world. HirondeUe cleared the cliffs and caught the full drive of the wind, heeled eagerly and went away, with her wake leaving a long oily slick across the surface long after she had disappeared into the Gulf.
Jake broke the spell of silence and loneliness that held them.
"All right, my children. Let's make camp." They had landed on the open beach between the ruined city and the headland, and now the evening wind was sweeping dust and grit across their exposed position.
Jake selected a sheltered hollow under the lee of the ruins, and they moved the cars up and parked them in the protective hollow square of the laager.