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direction to where you went before. Of course, it would be quicker by boat.’
    The Doctor took the hint and stood up. ‘Then you’d better take me there straight away.’
    ‘Not to the Naval Base!’ Robbins protested. ‘If I sailed in there, they’d have me in irons.’
    The Doctor thought for a moment. Then he Iooked at his watch. ‘All right. But I wonder if you could go and see what’s happened to my young friend? She said she was only going away for five minutes to buy some picture postcards.’
    Robbins looked at the Doctor in disbelief. ‘I don’t know where to look for her.’ By his voice he suggested that if the Doctor wanted to find her, the Doctor could go and look.
    ‘There must be a picture postcard shop somewhere here,’ said the Doctor. ‘You live here—you must know where she could have gone. I’d go if it weren’t for my leg hurting again. I got wounded in the Crimea.’
    ‘The Crimean War?’ said Robbins, astounded because that war took place over a hundred and twenty years ago.
    The Doctor shrugged. ‘Perhaps it was Gallipoli. Anyway, be a good fellow and go and find her. I’ll pay for our cups of tea.’
    Without a word Robbins got to his feet and shuffled out. The Doctor went to the counter and settled the bill, and then looked out of the cafe. Robbins was already out of sight. The Doctor quickly hurried to the quayside, unloosed Robbins’ boat, jumped into it, started the noisy little outboard motor, and headed out to.sea. An old man on the quayside mending fishing nets looked up but did nothing to stop the Doctor.
    Five minutes later Robbins returned to the spot with Jo. He had grumbled all the way. ‘All you and that fellow asked me to do was to take you from the mainland and bring you here, and then take you back again, not to go searching in postcard shops—’ He stopped dead as he saw that his boat was missing. He called to the man mending nets, ‘Where’s my boat?’
    The net mender looked up: ‘A fellow went off with it,’ he called, then pointed off to a headland jutting out into the sea. ‘He’s making for over there.’
    ‘The Naval Base!’ Robbins exploded.
    ‘The what?’ said Jo.
    Robbins dug into the pockets of his overcoat to find something. ‘He wanted me to take him to the Naval Base, and I wouldn’t. I’m going to get the police.’ At last he found what his hands were looking for—a key to a bicycle padlock. He went over to a bicycle chained to a quayside railing, and unlocked the padlock. ‘You wait here, Miss,’ he told Jo. ‘When I come back here with the policeman, he’s likely to ask you a few questions about that friend of yours.’
    Robbins was about to mount the machine. Jo thought quickly. ‘Look!’ she called, ‘isn’t that your boat coming back now? Maybe he only wanted a little joy-ride.’ She pointed out to sea.
    Robbins propped his bicycle against the railing, and crossed to where Jo was standing. ‘Where is it?’
    ‘Over there,’ Jo said, pointing. ‘If you screw your eyes up you can just see your boat heading back here.’
    Robbins screwed up his eyes to look. Jo ran silently towards the railing, jumped on to Robbins’s bicycle and started to pedal away furiously.
    ‘Hey!’ Robbins shouted. ‘Stop thief!’
    ‘I’ll bring it back,’ Jo cried over her shoulder. Already she was well away from the quayside, and heading for the Naval Base by the coastal road.
    Captain Hart, RN, commanding officer of the Naval Shore Establishment called HMS Foxglove , was a worried man. With an excellent service record behind him, and, he hoped, an equally excellent career ahead of him, he did not like having to report that he had failed to find out why three merchant ships had mysteriously sunk within five miles of his headquarters in the past two months. When Doctor Who first came to his notice, he was painfully dictating a letter to a W.R.N. Writer, Jane Blythe. The letter was addressed to their Lordships at the Admiralty,