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gaze on the distant ship. "Surely you don't think it's pirates, do you?"
    "Pirates?" Jack lowered his glass. "No, I don't think it's pirates." She gave him a puzzled look, but he saw no reason to explain. "You've got three hours," he said, and turned away abruptly to set to work at lowering the Sea Hawk's small dinghy.
    She gasped. "Three hours! But that's outrageous. I—" The rest of her protest was lost in the rattle of the dinghy's chains. He was aware of her, gray eyes flashing, nostrils flaring as she fumed silently beside him until the rattling stopped. She began again, "If we had made an earlier start—"
    "We didn't." The dinghy launched, Jack dangled the rope ladder over the side, and turned to face her. "The climb up to the crater's rim shouldn't take you more than forty-five minutes, and it'll be quicker coming down. That gives you a good hour and a half to look around the summit, and make sketches of the Faces of Futapu or whatever it is you plan to do up there, and still be back on the beach in three hours."
    She obviously wasn't used to being dictated to. She glared at him, her chest rising and falling with indignation, her grip on the strap of her knapsack tightening until her knuckles showed white. If she'd had his neck in her hands, he'd be dead. "And if I'm not?"
    Jack gave her his meanest smile. "Then I'll assume someone's made you his dinner, and the Sea Hawk sails." He let the smile fade. "Understood?"
    Her lips pressed together into a thin, hard line. "Quite."

Chapter Five
    To India's relief, it was Patu and not that vile Australian who rowed her over to the stretch of gleaming white coral sand that formed the bay's shoreline.
    "There's a path by that stream," Patu said, helping her out onto the beach. "It'll take you around the side of the mountain and up to the top."
    India let her head fall back, her gaze lifting above the beach's fringing palm trees to the darkly jagged peak towering overhead. She'd read about this path, which was said to have been made by the natives of the island. The cannibal natives. As far as they were concerned, Mount Futapu was a kind of god. In times past, they had been known to throw living sacrifices into the volcano's crater.
    From the deck of the Sea Hawk, the island had looked wild and beautiful, like something from a dream. Now, as she stared up at its steep cliffs of naked rock and gorges choked with impenetrable jungle, it seemed to have acquired a darker, faintly menacing aspect. It was all this talk about cannibals, she decided. It had made her fanciful, something she heartily despised and was not normally inclined to be.
    "You will be back in three hours, won't you, miss?" said Patu.
    India touched one hand to the watch she wore pinned to her bodice, and smiled. "I shall be ever vigilant of the time." Her boots sinking in the loose sand, she turned to go, then paused to look back and ask, "Would he really leave?"
    "I suspect he would, miss."
    India nodded. "I thought so."

    She found the path easily enough. At first the climb was gentle, an idyllic stroll through groves of coconut palms with high feathery tops that murmured softly with the breeze. Brilliantly hued butterflies danced and played about her while, overhead, a vivid blue and yellow parrot peered down at her with arched head and open beak, his scolding cry echoing exotically through the jungle. India looked up at him, and laughed.
    Farther inland, the track steepened, the palms giving way to moss-covered giant trees hung with pendant ropes of lianas and a tangle of unknown vines and creepers. The distant boom of the surf was still audible, but lessened here, even her footfalls seeming hushed. India lengthened her stride, oblivious to the whine of mosquitoes and the steamy heat that was gradually becoming more oppressive as she moved away from the shore. This was what she loved, this heady, heart-pumping sense of adventure, the excitement of experiencing the unfamiliar and the unexpected. At a turn in