'I have heard the mate talk of a tavern at the end of the docks called the Three Tuns, which the dock hands are known to frequent. Perhaps we can find someone there who met the Doctor and might be able to tell us where he is to be found now.'

James shrugged. The town clock rang nine. I began to walk along the jetty to the land side of the dock, and he followed. The docks were wet.

A light fog was rolling in off the sea, gathering strength, blurring the lights from nearby windows. One by one the stars above us went out, obscured by a thickening blanket of cloud. I was concerned. If this fog held we would not be sailing tonight - maybe not for several days. I continued to walk, James beside me, our footsteps ringing dully on the road. Dim yellow lights guttered along nearby streets and up the hill towards town. Sounds of distant revelry drifted on the night air.

I heard laughter. A door banged open, spilling light into the street.

Several drunken sailors stumbled past. They called a cheerful if beer-sodden greeting to us, before stumbling past. The door banged shut and the light and sounds from within faded.

James said quietly, 'A tavern.'

I shook my head. 'Not the one. We go on.'

A few minutes later we found the Three Tun,. It was a two-storey building which in the fog seemed to squat like some hulking animal upon the pier. It was a ramshackle affair, with boards peeling from the outside and guttering and a rain barrel clogged with moss. But light shone strongly from inside, blurred by the damp air collecting around the slatted windows.

I hesitated. Beside me, James stopped as well. I don't think either of us really knew what to do now we were here. A place like this was outside my experience - it was almost certainly outside James's as well.

I thought it looked like an animal. It smelled like one, too. Beer and tobacco and sweat. And I could hear the noise it made from the far side of the road. A guttural, angry noise, like an animal about to kill. The noise was a composite of crashes, angry shouts, gleeful taunts.

James and I exchanged glances. We had taken but one step towards the establishment when the window nearest us shattered, burst asunder by a wooden table which flew through the air and shattered on the ground before us. Smashed bits of wood and gla.s.s scattered across the pier.

Wreckage skittered along the wooden boards and dropped over the edge. I heard distant splashes, m.u.f.fled by the fog. That's when I saw it.

I grabbed the object, held it up to James.

'A boot. Horace, this is the mother of all bar fights. I really think we ought to think twice before -'

I waved the boot excitedly. 'Look at it! It's leather, hand-st.i.tched, crude but very tough. A hunter's boot. Leela's boot!'

'You're clutching at straws -'

'No. I'm right. She's in there. Or was in there. Maybe she's involved in the fight. We have to help her!'

'Horace, you're fifty-five years old! What in the world do you think you can -'

I ignored James, ran towards the tavern, pushed the door open.

Inside was chaos. At least thirty men, all seemingly h.e.l.l-bent on killing each other with whatever weapons were to be found at hand. Bits of wood, chair legs, chairs, tankards, jugs both full and empty filled the air in a continuous rain of projectiles. I counted three barmaids standing on tables - what was left of them - screaming as they bashed whatever head found itself nearest with whatever they happened to be holding. Mainly thick earthenware jugs by the look of it.

I glanced at James, who had entered the tavern and was standing before me. His eyes widened suddenly. We both ducked in time to avoid a body hurled out of the melee. The body - that of a medium-sized sailor - flew over our heads and crashed into the door, collapsing with a groan into insensibility. James tried to speak, and only then did I register the volume of noise.

'- the wench, get her -'

'-she's got a -'

'you fool, not with that, with -'

'- cut me, she -'

'- out of the way then you -'

'- bleeding, I'm -'

'- devil take you for a -'

I stood helplessly by and watched the throng. I dared not approach. At that moment there came the sound of a gunshot. I jumped with surprise. The noise had come from right beside me, and it cut through the confusion, bringing silence in its wake.

'That will be quite enough of that, thank you, gentlemen.' James's voice - and his pistol - brooked no argument.

The fight lost some of its momentum. I saw the barman - a squat figure belted with muscle - crack heads with a nasty-looking cosh and that ended it permanently. The barmaids began to clear up the mess as we pushed through the sullen-looking crowd to a hunched figure crouched defiantly on the floor. I stopped as the figure turned to threaten me with a knife.

A woman, yes. But not Leela.

Her face was scratched and bleeding, her hair and clothes in rags. A man lay bleeding on the floor beside her. As I watched, he got painfully to his feet and aimed a kick at the woman. The barman grabbed his leg, dragged him shouting to the door and tossed him out into the night.

The barman then returned, pushed back past us, grabbed the girl by the arm and dragged her towards the door. 'I told you before about this.

You pay me and you can work all the men you want. But you pull a knife in my tavern and you deserve everything you get.'

The woman began to scream - a stream of abuse levelled at every man in sight. The barman slapped her hard, picked her up while she was reeling from the blow, and threw her out of the bar after the man on whom she had, presumably, just used the knife.

Someone banged loudly on the remains of a table. 'Ale. I want ale here!'

And in the blink of an eye everything was raucous laughter and tuneless, drunken singing.

I looked at James, who was still holding his pistol. He scowled.

'It was her boot, James. I am sure of it.'

I turned to leave, face red with embarra.s.sment, and that was when I caught a glimpse of a red-haired man in dock worker's clothes for half a second before the cosh he was wielding struck the side of my head an agonising blow, and I fell insensible to the ale-sodden floor.

13.

Sidewinder

We had been adrift the rest of the night and the sun had risen when I had the idea. 'Perhaps we can steer it.'

Royston roused from his exhausted stupor long enough to say, 'It's a whale. whale. How can we possibly steer it?' How can we possibly steer it?'

I shrugged; my skins, still wet, chafed my salt-sore shoulders. 'You steer horses, don't you? You use rope and kick them. We have rope. I am strong enough to kick this beast if it will not go where I want.'

'Leela, that's nonsense. Our only chance is to hope someone will find us. And hope the whale will not sound, or die. Either way we'll be food for sharks. If you want to hope for something, hope for that, not that we can drive this thing through the ocean like a coach and nine.'

'It is good that the men of your land are not all as weak as you or there would be be no men in your land.' no men in your land.'

Royston did not have the strength to reply. That or he could not be bothered. Either way I did not care. Royston could languish in his despair and die here on this swimming island if he wanted. I was going to live - or die trying.

I thought hard. It was true the whale had dipped beneath the sea many times since we had climbed aboard. Each time I thought we were to die.

But the animal did not stay under water long, and did not go very deep, either. And I noticed that the spume from its blowhole was now darker, flecked with evil-smelling blood. I had mentioned this to Royston. He thought the whale was staying on the surface because it was no longer able to effectively oxygenate its blood. I did not understand that.

He explained. 'To live we must breathe. The air has many things in it but only one of the things keeps us alive. That is called oxygen. The more oxygen the whale has in its blood, the longer it can hold its breath beneath the water. It's bleeding copiously. Maybe it cannot dive.'

I had thought about that. The idea that the air was full of things we breathed in and out was nonsense. If there were things in the air I would see them. I ignored Royston after that. He was obviously delirious.

Nonetheless, the whale stayed on the surface. And it was swimming fairly quickly, so it was still strong. I hoped it would not die before I managed to make it take us to the ship.

I gathered together the rope we had. Horses were steered by rope in their mouths. Somehow I had to get the rope in the whale's mouth. I made a la.s.so and hurled it forward, nearly slipping into the sea as I did so. The la.s.so landed square in the jaws of the whale. I pulled the makeshift reins tight. The whale, irritated, slapped the water with its tail. It bit down.

The rope snapped. I now had two pieces of rope and the whale had not changed course.

I thought about what to do next. The animal had eyes and ears and flippers. The flippers were motionless - obviously it did not use them to steer itself. Then I had another idea. The whale had not responded to force. Maybe it would respond to reason.

I crawled along the head of the beast and leaned over until my face was as close as I could get to one ear.

'Hear me, whale,' I cried as loudly as I could manage. 'I am the one who killed the squid and saved your life. Swim towards the sun. Do this and I will -' I stopped. What could I offer a whale? What did I have that it might want? 'And I live.'

The whale showed no sign of having heard me. I certainly was not going to beg this beast to do my bidding. I crawled back on to the top of the head. Royston was waiting for me there. He was laughing. Actually he was laughing and crying at the same time.

I showed him my knife. 'If you have a death wish I am sure the sharks will be very happy to indulge it.'

He stopped laughing. 'Blind,' he called. His salt-encrusted lips barely moved. 'You're as blind as a bat. Quite clearly we're both going to -'

I stopped listening. I had another idea. I remembered that the horses I had seen in London were also guided by putting covers over their eyes. I sat Royston upright, took off his jacket and let him slump back on to the whale again.

I took the jacket, crawled back across the head and found one of the whale's eyes. It was small - a lot smaller than the squid's had been. And it was curious. It looked everywhere. But mostly it seemed to look sideways, straight out from the head. The shape of the head meant the whale probably could not see directly forward. Wondering what might happen, I got as good a grip as I could on the slippery hide and draped the jacket over the whale's eye.

A moment pa.s.sed. Had it made any difference? I could not tell from looking at the water so I looked up at the sky instead. The sun was in a different position. Now it was more directly ahead than to the side, as it had been.

I grinned. The whale snorted wet air from its blowhole. 'Thank you,' I whispered respectfully.

The sun climbed further up into the sky. After a while it grew very hot.

The whale still dipped beneath the waves, though less frequently as time wore on. As the sun approached its highest point Royston aroused himself enough to join me on the head He removed his shirt and positioned himself beside the whale's other eye. Shouting instructions to each other, we managed to keep the whale on a course heading east. I did not know if we were travelling as fast as Tweed, Tweed, if they would stop and wait for us, if we would catch them up before we died of hunger or thirst. if they would stop and wait for us, if we would catch them up before we died of hunger or thirst.

As the sun began to move behind us I left Royston to guide the whale, tied myself to the great beast's fin and lowered myself back into the water. A short time later we had fish to eat. I squeezed fluid from the fish, which was close to fresh, and we drank that. Fish and water tasted foul, but I had eaten and drunk a lot worse as a child. They would keep us alive for another day - if the sun did not kill us. My skin was burning with exposure - I was in considerable pain, though I knew how to ignore it. Royston was different. He was more susceptible to the sun and the water. And he was still seasick. After eating the fish I had caught he was so sick I thought he would lose his grip on the whale's hide and fall into the water. I had to tie him to the fin and risk his drowning when the whale dipped without warning beneath the surface. I caught another fish for him. This one he nibbled - and managed to keep down.

By now the whale had veered off the direction I wanted it to take. I crawled back to the whale's head and put it back on course. I studied the water and the sky, wondering how much of Royston's improved health was due to the reduction in speed of the whale - which, it seemed clear to me now, would die soon. The squid had left many wounds in the whale's body, large circular bite marks which ran in curving lines across its back and flanks and head. I tried to see into the huge mouth; there was blood there. Had the squid damaged the whale's tongue?

The whale seemed unaffected by its condition. Apart from the gush of stinking breath from its blowhole and the slap of its tail against the water, the whale was able to produce an astonishing range of clicks and whistles, pops and other noises.

I wondered if it was trying to talk to me. I couldn't understand it so I stopped thinking about it. I was more worried about catching the ship up and getting some real food. Almost a whole day had pa.s.sed by now - and I was very hungry.

I caught some more fish, gutting a trailing shark to distract the others from bothering me. We ate, and then took turns to try to sleep, roped to the whale's fin, awoken every so often by the stinging gush of the whale's breath, or an unexpected dipping beneath the now much colder waves.

So the night pa.s.sed, the moon rose and set once more, and the sun rose once again - this time on to a much changed sea.

It was as we ate a breakfast of more fish and fish juice that I noticed that the sea had become very smooth. Blood trailing from the whale's wounds into the water during the night had attracted a few sharks but they had now vanished. The whale, though, seemed rather more agitated than normal. Its attempts to dive were becoming more frequent - although its success at remaining submerged longer than a few seconds remained unchanged. I had the impression the whale wanted to get beneath the surface. And in truth I found the slow oily swell which the surface had adopted was making me nervous as well. That or I was reacting to the whale's agitation. I wondered how close the whale was to death. I looked around for Cryuni but could not see him. Very well. We were safe for a while yet.

The sun was close to its highest point when Royston spotted the black column inching above the eastern horizon towards which we were moving. 'The ship,' he gasped through cracked lips. 'I can see masts.'

I looked more closely at the black line. 'That's not a ship.' I said quietly. 'It moves like an animal.'

Royston forced his eyes to work against the glare of the sun skipping off the lazy water. 'Oh d.a.m.n. It's not a ship. What is it, a cloud?'

I looked more closely. Something about this thing was making me very wary. I had to keep the whale's eye covered all the time to hold our course. The animal seemed to want to swim away from this cloud - whatever it was.

And then Royston gasped. 'G.o.d save us, it's a tornado.'

'What is a tornado?'

'Bad news. I suggest you let the whale have its head. He'll swim away.

If we get caught in that it'll kill us.'

'If we let the whale swim where it wants we will lose the ship and die anyway.'

'Talk about being caught between the devil and the deep blue sea.'

Royston tried a laugh but it came out cracked and husky. There was no humour in it to start with. It was a horrible sound, full of despair and resignation. I knew the sound. Royston thought he was facing death.

The cloud was nearer now I could see it clearly. It was a black column stretching from the surface of the sea to the sky. Where it touched the sea, the water rose in a large hill. I could see the sunlight reflecting off the surface. The water was spinning, s.n.a.t.c.hed up into the air by a terrible force lurking like a web-tree spinner, somewhere out of sight among the clouds. I thought of the Xaust Xaust wind I'd been caught in as a child and shuddered. Not again. wind I'd been caught in as a child and shuddered. Not again.