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useless island, would he have scuttled and left his company marooned and open to possible capture?
    He shook himself angrily. It was no good thinking like that. No bloody use at all.
    The sense of isolation and unreality set against the war he had so recently left behind became even more evident in the last few miles of the approach. Past a line of submerged reefs where the water looked like that in a Japanese painting, on towards some small fishing boats with batlike sails, motionless above their own reflections.
    The sun had risen to lay bare the ship and the island, pinning the men down in its grip behind their hiding places.
    Ainslie trained his glasses on the entrance and heard Forster say, ‘Port ten. Midships. Steady.’ And Gosling’s gruff acknowledgement as he eased over the wheel.
    The opening was still difficult to make out, the dipping headlands so close to one another that it appeared as if the ship was steaming for the beach.
    There were more craft in sight now, very small, for local fishing, or whatever they did to earn an existence.
    A voice-pipe whistled, and Menzies called, ‘Masthead lookout reports there are several boats moored in the entrance, sir.’
    Quinton breathed out slowly. ‘Now we know. They’re expecting us all right, but taking no chances.’
    Ainslie walked to the engineroom voice-pipe and blew down it. At any other time it would be comical to think of Halliday down there in the ancient, single-shaft engineroom. He was more used to thousands of horsepower and all that went with it to drive a modern submarine.
    ‘Chief? This is the captain.’
    Halliday answered, ‘Aye, sir. Everything all right up there?’
    ‘May be a spot of bother in about thirty minutes. Boats moored across the entrance. I might want full speed. Fast as she’ll go. Never mind the gauges.’
    He heard Halliday give a dry chuckle as he said, ‘Full speed. Aye, sir. Eight knots at a guess, and I’ll mebbee blow the bloody boilers doing
that
!’
    ‘Fair enough.’
    Ainslie closed the pipe and raised his glasses again.
    ‘Put some-hands up forrard, Number One. Have them stripped off, like a lot of waterfront layabouts. I want it to look as if we are going to anchor.’
    As Quinton hurried away Ainslie said to Voysey, the second coxswain, ‘Pass the word, PO, I’ll need the starboard anchor let out ready to drop.’
    The next few minutes were alive with preparations, as steam was raised on the capstan, and with a protesting clink of cable one anchor was lowered from its hawse-pipe. Occasionally, as the ship rolled, it boomed against the hull like a giant hammer on an oil drum.
    Gosling remarked dourly, ‘One good thump and the hook’ll come right through the bloody bows!’
    Ainslie made up his mind. A quick glance at his watch and a further one towards the island.
    ‘Slow ahead. Steer straight for the entrance, Swain.’
    The telegraph clanged, and Gosling pressed his belly harder against the wheel while he peered through the glass screen towards the gap and its small barrier of boats.
    Ainslie hurried down the ladder, the sun searing his shoulders like heat from a furnace door. Across the blistered deck and then up the iron ladder which mounted the foremast to the podlike crow’s nest above the derricks.
    Leading Seaman Calver, a gunlayer, was acting as lookout. Quinton would choose him. He had been one of the best in
Tigress.
Even his eyes, like pieces of pale glass, gave an appearance of alert watchfulness.
    ‘Here, Calver, lend me your glasses.’
    They were big, heavy ones, Calver’s trophy from a captured Italian torpedo boat. Ainslie trained them on the ledge of the crow’s nest and studied the entrance. It looked almost up to the bows through the powerful lens. He saw the boats, tiny like the others, some people standing up in two of them to watch the approaching ship.
    Calver said, ‘Don’t look like much, sir.’
    Ainslie bit back his disappointment. Once he had neverbelieved it would work.