“Larry, don’t be disgusting,” said Margo. “I couldn’t possibly eat a human being.”
“Damned bad form,” said Donald, “Only wogs eat each other.”
“It’s surprising, though, what you can do when you have to,” said Theodore. “I think it was in Bosnia where several villages were snowed up for an unprecedented number of months and, er..., quite a few of the villagers took to cannibalism.”
“Now, will you all stop talking about cannibalism,” said Mother. “You’ll only make matters worse.”
“Well, you still haven’t answered my question,” said Larry. “What are our supplies at the moment?”
“Watermelons,” said Mother, “three green peppers and two loaves of bread. Taki is trying to catch some fish but he says it isn’t a very good bay for fish.”
“But surely there were a couple of legs of lamb left,” said Larry.
“Yes, dear,” said Mother, “but the ice has melted now to such an extent that they’ve gone off and so I had to bury them.”
“Dear God,” said Larry, “it’ll have to be cannibalism.”
The day passed and still no boat appeared. That evening we had very dried-up bread, slightly shrivelled green peppers and watermelon.
Taki and Spiro took up their watch in the bows of the benzina and we all went to bed feeling extremely hungry.
The following morning no boat had been sighted during the night. Our situation, from being slightly comic, was now becoming quite serious. We were all aboard the benzina holding a council of war. My suggestion that we could exist for another couple of days by eating limpets was immediately crushed underfoot.
“My specimens, you know, are deteriorating quite fast,” said Theodore in a worried tone of voice.
“Oh, damn your bloody specimens,” said Larry. “If only you’d collect something more substantial than microscopic life it would help keep us alive now.”
“I really don’t know what we’re going to do,” said Mother.
We had one minute portion of bread each for breakfast and that was the end of our supplies.
“I suppose we’ll all just die here,” she went on, “and it’s not the sort of place that I would choose to be buried in.”
“Muzzer vill not die,” said Max affectionately. “If necessary, I vill commit suicide and you can eat me.”
Mother was rather taken aback by this lavish offer.
“It’s awfully kind of you, Max,” she said, “but I do hope that won’t be necessary.”
Just at that precise moment Spiro, who had been standing in the bows of the boat, uttered one of his bull roars that made the cliffs echo and bounce.
“Here! Here!”
He was shouting and waving his arms and we saw a small boat with a tiny, rather decrepit engine attached to it passing across the mouth of the bay.
“Here! Here!” shouted Spiro again in Greek. “Come here!” So rich and deep was Spiro’s voice and such tremendous lung power lay in his stocky frame that, aided by the echo chamber of the cliffs that surrounded us, the man in the boat actually heard him and turned and looked in our direction. We all rushed to the bows of the boat and made wild gestures beckoning him to come to us. He switched off his engine and Spiro bellowed once more,
“Come here! Come here!”
“Who, me?” said the man in the fishing boat.
“But of course YOU,” said Spiro, “who else?”
“You want me to come to you?” asked the man in the boat, getting things quite clear in his mind.
Spiro called upon Saint Spiridion and several other local saints.
“But of course you!” he roared. “Who else is there?”
The man looked around him carefully. “Nobody,” he called back.
“Well, it’s YOU that I want then,” shouted Spiro.
“What do you want?” inquired the man interestedly.
“If you come closer I can tell you,” yelled Spiro, muttering to himself, “idiot!”
“Alright,” said the man.
He switched on his engine and came zig-zagging towards us.
“Thank God,” said Mother in a trembling voice, “oh, thank God.”
I must say that at that juncture we all shared her feelings.
The little boat, some twelve feet long, came nosing up to us and the man switched his engine off and bumped gently against our side. He was as brown as a hazel nut, with enormous bluey-black eyes and a curly mop of hair, and it was quite obvious from the very beginning that if he wasn’t an idiot he was very close to being one.
He grinned up at the assembled company ingratiatingly.
“Kalimera,” he said.
With infinite relief in our voices we all said kalimera back.
“Now, listen,” said Spiro, taking charge of the situation, “we have...”
“You are Greek?” asked the fisherman, looking at Spiro with interest.
“Of course I’m Greek,” shouted Spiro, “but the thing is that...”
“Are all of you Greek?” inquired the fisherman.
“No, no,” said Spiro impatiently, “they’re foreigners. But the point is that...”
“Oh, foreigners,” said the fisherman, “I like foreigners.”
He delicately shifted off his foot a dead octopus which had somehow bounced on to it when he had come alongside.
“Would they like to buy fish?” he inquired.
“We don’t want to buy fish,” roared Spiro.
“But foreigners like fish,” the fisherman pointed out.
“Fool!” roared Spiro, tried beyond endurance. “We don’t want fish. We want petrol.”
“Petrol?” said the fisherman in surprise. “But what do you want petrol for?”
“For this boat,” roared Spiro.
“I’m afraid I haven’t got enough for that,” said the fisherman, glancing at his tiny petrol tin in the bows of his boat. “Tell me, where do they come from?”
“They’re English,” said Spiro, “but now listen. What I want...”
“The English are a good people,” said the fisherman. “There was one only the other day... bought two kilos of fish off me and I charged him double and he didn’t notice.”
“Look!” said Spiro, “what we want is petrol and what I want you to do...”
“Is it a family?” the fisherman inquired.
“No, it’s not a family,” said Spiro, “but what I want you to do...”
“It looks like a family,” said the fisherman.
“Well, it’s not,” said Spiro.
“But he and she look like the mama and the papa,” said the fisherman, pointing at Sven and Mother, “and the rest look just like their children. The one with the beard, I suppose, must be the grandfather. What part of England do they come from?”
It was quite obvious that if this went on much longer Spiro would seize an empty wine bottle and bash the fisherman over the head with it.
“Do you think perhaps I ought to have a few words with him?” said Mactavish.
“No,” said Larry. “Here, Spiro, let me deal with him.” He leaned over the side of the benzina and in his most mellifluous voice said in Greek,
“Listen, my soul, we are an English family.”
“Welcome,” said the fisherman, smiling broadly.
“We have come here in this boat,” said Larry slowly and clearly, “and we have run out of petrol. Also we have run out of food.”
“Run out of petrol?” said the fisherman. “But you can’t move if you haven’t got petrol.”
“That is exactly the point,” said Larry. “So would you be kind enough to let us hire your boat so that we may go down to Metaloura, get some petrol and bring it back here?”
The fisherman absorbed this information, wiggling his brown toes in the pile of red mullet, squid and octopus that was lying in the bottom of his boat.
“You will pay me?” he inquired anxiously.
“We will pay you fifty drachmas to take one of us to Metaloura and another fifty drachmas to bring that person back.”
Briefly the man’s eyes widened with astonishment at this lavish offer.