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the beach for
something to protect him from hypothermia. He knew that wet clothes
allowed body heat to bleed away from the body, which would kill as
surely as severing a main artery. At last he found a piece of
tarpaulin the size of a bed sheet.

    His
numb fingers were useless things now, like bent sticks that did not
belong to his body. It took a full five minutes to wrap the tarpaulin
around himself with a piece over his head like a monk's cowl.

    There
he sat for an hour, perilously close to passing out from exposure.
But he had to wait until he could see the ocean properly. The mental
picture of the terrorists escaping the Mary-Anne by lifeboat still
hammered in his brain.

    Gradually
dawn came, sending streaks of gray edged with red up into the sky.

    Two
hundred yards to the left he could see that the huge thing he had
taken to be a ship was an old seafort. It had probably been part of
the country's coastal defenses for centuries.

    Which
country? Holland? France? England? He could be anywhere.

    As
soon as he could he forced himself to his feet. Gathering the
tarpaulin around his shoulders like a cloak, he walked down to the
water's edge-now at low tide-and looked out.

    No
ship.

    No
terrorists. They were all dead. Somehow he was certain of that. The
ship had gone down so quickly.

    His
friends were dead too. But somehow he could feel no sadness. He could
think only of the old Skipper, blind, but with the heart of a lion,
beating that steady tattoo on the iron wall of the ship as if it were
a massive drum.

    His
clothes were drying and his blood drove its way back painfully into
his limbs and face. His nose began to ache where it had been smashed
by the terrorist three days ago.

    Mark
Faust turned his back on the sea and began to walk slowly up the
beach. Above the softening roar of the surf he fancied he could hear
the distant, distant sound of metal beating against metal. A slow
rhythm; almost like the heartbeat of a sleeping giant. He didn't look
back.

    "Keep
beating the drum, Skipper," he murmured. "Keep beating the
drum."

    The
boy carried on, limping up into the dunes. The cold breeze made his
eyes water. The slow, regular beat continued, only growing fainter
and fainter as he limped slowly inland away from the restless ocean.

    After
a hundred paces he could hear the massive beat no more. But somehow
an echo of it continued in his heart.

Chapter
Eight

"You've
copped for a cracking black eye there, me old cocker. Who's tha' been
scrapping with?" asked the man as he piled up the concrete
blocks for the caravan.

    David
hopped toward him, happy he could tell his story again. "I
wasn't fighting. I was flying. I was sitting on top of the elephant
at the hotel."

    "Elephant?"
exclaimed the man. "They've got a zoo, then?"

    "No-wer,
an elephant slide."

    The
man efficiently wedged more concrete blocks under the caravan. "A
slide?"

    "Ye-ess.
Anyway, I got the black eye when I was flying."

    "Flying?"

    "Ye-ess!"

    The
man laughed heartily.

    "Nobody
believes me. They keep saying I fell in the

    stream.
But I was flying. Then I banged my face on the tree."

    "You
were flying too fast, then?"

    "Suppose
so."

    Chris
leaned forward against the car, elbows resting on the roof. David had
told the story of how he got his black eye to anyone who would listen
to him. By now he was getting touchy if anyone doubted the truth of
the story, so he and Ruth decided it best to humor him.

    Now
the six-year-old repeated the flying episode to the workman. Chris
looked over the caravan, feeling pleased with himself. Within six
hours of being told by the old git in Out-Butterwick that the caravan
was no longer for rent, they had found this one for sale on a caravan
site down the coast. It had two bedrooms, kitchen, bathroom, lounge
and dining area. A regular home from home.

    Now
in its setting, he could have kissed it. They had positioned it on
the edge of the seafort's courtyard which was big enough to avoid
being claustrophobic,