I stayed that way through the night as we picked up the M4 and rushed westwards. It was two in the morning when we entered Bristol, skirting the city centre as we followed the A4 down to Avonmouth.

Amongst the other craft in the yacht basin was a big motor yacht.

She was moored to the wharf and she had her gangplank down. Her name painted on the stern and bows was Mandrake. She was an ocean-goer, steel-hulled painted blue and white, with pleasing lines. I judged her fast and sea-kindly, probably with sufficient range to take her anywhere in the world. A rich man's toy. There were figures on her bridge, lights burning in most of her portholes, and she seemed ready for sea.

They crowded me as we crossed the narrow s.p.a.ce to the gangplank.

The Rover backed and turned and drove away as we climbed to the Mandrake's deck.

The saloon was too tastefully fitted out for Manny Resnick's style, it had either been done by the previous owners or a professional decorator. There were forest-green wall-to-wall carpets and matching velvet curtains, the furniture was dark teak and polished leather and the pictures were choice oils toned to the general decor.

This was half a million pounds worth Of vessel, and I guessed it was a charter. Manny had probably taken her for six months and put in his own crew - for Manny Resnick had never struck me as a blue-water man.

As we waited in the centre of the wall-to-wall carpeting, a grimly silent group, I heard the unmistakable sounds of the gangplank being taken in, and the moorings cast off. The tremble of her engines become a steady beat, and the harbour lights slid past the saloon portholes as we left the entrance and thrust out into the tidal waters of the River Severn.

I recognized the lighthouses at Portishead Point and Red Cliff Bay as Mandrake came around for the run down-river past Weston-super-Mare and Berry for the open sea.

Manny came at last, he wore a blue silk gown and his face was still crumpled from sleep, but his curls were neatly combed and his smile was white and hungry.

"Harry," he said, "I told you that you would be back."

"h.e.l.lo, Manny. I can't say it's any great pleasure."

He laughed lightly and turned to the woman as she followed him into the saloon. She was carefully made up and every hair of the elaborate hairstyle was in its place. She wore a long white house-gown with lace at throat and cuffs.

"You have met Lorna, I believe, Lorna Page."

"Next time you send somebody to hustle me, Manny, try for a little better cla.s.s. I'm getting fussy in my old age."

Her eyes slanted wickedly, but she smiled. "How's your boat, Harry? Your lovely boat?"

"It makes a lousy coffin." I turned back to Manny. "What's it going to be, Manny, can we work out a deal?"

He shook his head sorrowfully. "I don't think so, Harry. I would like to - truly I would, if just for old times" sake. But I can't see it. Firstly, you haven't anything to trade and that makes for a lousy deal. Secondly, I know you are too sentimental. You'd louse up any deal we did make for purely emotional reasons. I couldn't trust you, Harry, all the time you'd be thinking about Jimmy North and your boat, you'd be thinking about the little island girl that got in the way, and about Jimmy North's sister who we had to get rid of-" I took a mild pleasure in the fact that Manny had obviously not heard what had happened to the goon squad he had sent to take care of Sherry North, and that she was still very much alive. I tried to make my voice sincere and my manner convincing.

"Listen, Manny, I'm a survivor. I can forget anything, if I have to."

He laughed again. "If I didn't know you better, I'd believe you, Harry." He shook his head again. "Sorry, Harry, no deal."

"Why did you go to all the trouble to bring me down here, then?"

"I sent others to do the job twice before, Harry. Both times they missed you. This time I want to make sure. We will be cruising over some deep water on the way to Cape Town, and I'm going to hang some really heavy weights on to you." "Cape Town?" I asked. "So you are going after the Dawn Light in person. What is so fascinating about that old wreckr "Come on, Harry. If you didn't know, you wouldn't be giving me such a hard time." He laughed, and I thought it best not to let them know my ignorance.

"You think you can find your way back?" I asked the blonde.

"It's a big sea and a lot of islands look the same. I think you should keep me as insurance," I insisted.

"Sorry, Harry." Manny crossed to the teak and bra.s.s bar.

"Drink?" he asked.

"Scotch," I said, and he half filled a gla.s.s with the liquor and brought it to me.

"To be entirely truthful with you, part of this is for Lorna's benefit. You made the girl bitter, Harry, I don't know why - but she wanted especially to be there when we say goodbye. She enjoys that sort of thing, don't you, darling, it turns her on."

I drained the gla.s.s. "She needs turning on - as you and I both know, she's a lousy lay without it," I observed, and Manny hit me in the mouth, crushing my lips and the whisky stung the raw flesh.

"Lock him up," he said softly. As they hustled me out of the saloon, and along the deck towards the bows, I took pleasure in knowing that Lorna would have painful questions to answer. On either hand the sh.o.r.e lights moved steadily past us in the night, and the river was black and wide.

orward of the bridge there was a low deckhouse above the forecastle, and a louvred companionway opened on to a deck ladder that descended to a small lobby. This was obviously the crew's quarters, doors opened off the lobby into cabins and a communal mess.

In the bows was a steel door and a stencilled sign upon it read "FORECASTLE STORE'. They shoved me through the doorway and slammed the heavy door. The lock turned and I was alone in a steel cubicle probably six by four. Both bulkheads were lined with storage lockers, and the air was damp and musty.

My first concern was to find some sort of weapon. The cupboards were all of them locked and I saw that the planking was inch-thick oak. I would need an axe to hack them open, nevertheless I tried. I attempted to break in the doors using my shoulder as a ram, but the s.p.a.ce was too confined and I could not work up sufficient momentum.

However, the noise attracted attention. The door swung open and one of the crew stood well back with a big ugly .41 Rueger Magnum in his hand.

"Cut it out," he said. "There ain't anything in there," and he gestured to the pile of old life-jackets against the far wall. "You just sit there nice and quiet or I'll call some of the boys to help me work you over." He slammed the door and I sank down on to the life-jackets.

There was clearly a guard posted at the door full-time. The others would be within easy call. I hadn't expected him to open the door and I had been off-balance. I had to get him to do it again - but this time I would have a go. It was a poor chance, I realized. All he had to do was point that cannon into the storeroom and pull the trigger. He could hardly miss.

I looked down at the pile of life-jackets, and stood again to pull them aside. Beneath them was a small wooden fruit box, it contained discarded cleaning materials. A nylon floorbrush, cleaning rags, a tin of Bra.s.so, half a cake of yellow soap, and a brandy bottle half filled with clear fluid. I unscrewed the cap and sniffed it. It was benzine.

I sat down again and rea.s.sessed my position, trying to find a percentage in it without much success.

The light switch was outside the doorway and the light overhead was in a thick gla.s.s cover. I stood up and climbed halfway up the lockers, wedging myself there while I unscrewed the light cover and examined the bulb. It gave me a little hope.

I climbed down again and selected one of the heavy canvas life-jackets. The clasp of the steel strap on my wrist.w.a.tch made a blunt blade and I sawed and hacked at the canvas, tearing a hole large enough to get my forefinger in. I ripped the canvas open and pulled out handfuls of the white kapok stuffing. I piled it on the floor, tearing open more life-jackets until I had a considerable heap.

I soaked the cotton waste with benzine from the bottle and took a handful of it with me when I climbed again to the light fitting. I removed the bulb and was plunged instantly into darkness. Working by sense of touch alone, I pressed the benzine-soaked stuffing close to the electricity terminals. I had nothing to use as insulation so I held the steel strap of my wrist.w.a.tch in my bare hands and used it to dead-short the terminals.

There was a sizzling blue flash, the benzine ignited instantly and 180 volts. .h.i.t me like a charge of buckshot, knocking me off my perch. I fell in a heap on to the deck with a ball of flaming kapok in my hands.

Outside I heard faint shouts of annoyance and anger. I had succeeded in shorting the entire lighting system of the forecastle. Quickly I tossed the burning kapok on to the prepared pile, and it burned up fiercely. I brushed the sparks from my, hands, wrapped the handkerchief around my mouth and nose, s.n.a.t.c.hed up one of the undamaged lifebelts and went to stand against the steel door.

In seconds the benzine burned away and the cotton began to smolder, fiercely pouring out thick black smoke that smelled vile. It filled the store, and my eyes began to stream with tears. I tried to breathe shallowly but the smoke tore my lungs and I coughed violently.

There was another shout beyond the door.

"Something is burning." And it was answered, "For Chrissake, get those lights on."

It was my cue, I began beating on the steel door and screaming at the top of my voice. "Fire! The ship is on fire!" It was not all acting. The smoke in my prison was thick and solid, and more boiled off the burning cotton kapok. I realized that if n.o.body opened that door within the next sixty seconds I would suffocate and my screams must have carried conviction. The guard swung the door open, he carried the big Rueger revolver and shone a flashlight into the storeroom.

I had time only to notice those details and to see that the ship's lights were still dead, shadowy figures milled about in the gloom, some with flashlights - then a solid black cloud of smoke boiled out of the storeroom.

I came out with the smoke like a fighting bull from its pen, desperate for clean air and terrified at how close I had come to suffocating. It gave strength to my efforts.

The guard went sprawling under my rush and the Rueger fired as he went down. The muzzle flame was bright as a flashbulb, lighting the whole area and allowing me to get my bearings on the companion ladder to the deck.

The blast of the shot was so deafening in the confined s.p.a.ce that it seemed to paralyse the other shadowy figures. I was halfway to the ladder before one of them leaped to intercept me. I drove my shoulder into his chest and heard the wind go out of him like a punctured football. _ There were shouts of concern now, and another big dark figure blocked the foot of the ladder. I had gathered speed across the lobby and I put that and all my weight into a kick that slogged into his belly, doubling him over and dropping him to his knees. As he went over a flashlight lit his face and I saw it was my friend with the garlicky breath. It gave me a lift of pleasure to light me on my way, and I put one foot on his shoulder and used it as a springboard to leap halfway up the ladder.

Hands clutched at my ankle but I kicked them away, and dragged myself to the deck level. I had only one foot on the rungs, and I was clinging with one hand to the lifejacket and with the other to the bra.s.s handrail. In that helpless moment, the doorway to the deck was blocked by yet another dark figure - and the lights went on. A sudden blinding blaze of light.

The man above me was the lad with the cosh, and I saw his savage delight as he raised it over my helpless head. The only way to avoid it was to let go the handrail and drop back into the forecastle, which was filled with surging angry goons.

I looked back and was actually opening my grip when behind me, the gunman with the Rueger Magnum sat up groggily, lifted the weapon, tried to brace himself against the ship's movement and fired at me. The heavy bullet cracked past my ear, almost splitting my ear drum and it hit the coshman in the centre of his chest. It picked him up and hurled him backwards across the deck. He hung in the rigging of the foremast with his arms spread like those of a derelict scarecrow, and with a desperate hinge I followed him out on to the deck and rolled to my feet still clutching the life-jacket.

Behind me the Rueger roared again and I heard the bullet splinter the coping of the hatch. Three running strides carried me to the rail and I dived over the side in a gut-swooping drop until I hit the black water flat, but I was dragged deep as the boil of the propellers caught me and swirled me under.

The water was shockingly cold, it seemed to drive in the walls of my lungs and probe with icy lances into the marrow of my bones.

The life-jacket helped pull me to the surface at last and I looked wildly about me. The lights of the coast seemed clear and very bright, twinkling whitely across the black water. Out here in the seaway there was a chop and swell to the surface, alternately lifting and dropping me.

Mandrake slid steadily onwards towards the black void of the open sea. With all her lights blazing she looked as festive as a cruise ship as she sailed away from me.

Awkwardly I rid myself of my shoes and jacket, then I managed to get my arms into the sleeves of the life-jacket. When I looked again Mandrake was a mile away, but suddenly she began to turn and from her bridge the long white beam of a spotlight leaped out and began to probe lightly and dance across the surface of the dark sea.

Quickly I looked again towards the land, seeking and finding the riding lights of the buoy at English Ground and relating it to the lighthouse on Flatholm. Within seconds the relative bearing of the two lights had altered slightly, the tide was ebbing and the current was setting westerly. I turned with it and began to swim.

The Mandrake had slowed and was creeping back towards me. The spotlight turned and flared, swept and searched, and steadily it came down towards me.

I pushed with the current, using a long side stroke so as not to break the surface and show white water, restraining myself from going into an overarm stroke as the brightly lit ship crept closer. The beam of the spotlight was searching the open water on the far side of Mandrake as she drew level with me.

The current had pushed me out of her track, and the Mandrake was as close as she would come on this leg about one hundred and fifty yards off - but I could see the men on her bridge. Manny Resnick's blue silk gown glowed like a b.u.t.terfly's wing in the bridge lights and I could hear his voice raised angrily, but could not make out the words.

The beam reached towards me like the long cold white finger of an accuser. It quartered the sea in a tight search pattern, back and across, back. and across, the next pa.s.s must catch me. It reached the end of its traverse, swung out and came back. I lay full in the path of the swinging beam, but at the instant it swept over me, a chance push of the sea lifted a swell of dark water and I dropped into the trough. The light washed over me, diffused by the crest of the swell, and it did not check. It swept onwards in the relentless search pattern.

They had missed me. They were going on, back towards the mouth of the Severn. I lay in the harsh embrace of the canvas lifejacket and watched them bear away and I- felt sick and nauseated with relief and the reaction from violence. But I was free. All I had to worry about now was how long it would take to freeze to death.

began swimming again, watching Mandrake's lights dwindle and lose themselves against the spangled backdrop of the sh.o.r.e.

I had left my wrist.w.a.tch in the forecastle so I did not know how long it was before I lost all sense of feeling in my arms and legs. I tried to keep swimming but I was not sure if my limbs were responding.

I began to feel a wonderful floating sense of release. The lights of the land faded out, and I seemed -to be wrapped in warmth and soft white clouds. I thought that if this was dying it wasn't as bad as its propaganda, and I giggled, lying sodden and helpless in the life-jacket.

I wondered with interest why my vision had gone, it wasn't the way I had heard it told. Then suddenly I realized that the sea fog had come down in the dawn, and it was this that had blinded me. However, the morning light was growing in strength, I could see clearly twenty feet into the eddying fog banks.

I closed my eyes and fell asleep; my last thought was that this was probably my last thought. It made me giggle again as darkness swept over me.

Voices woke me, voices very clear and close in the fog, the rich and lovely Welsh accents roused me. I tried to shout, and with a sense of great achievement it came out like the squawk of a gull.

Out of the fog loomed the dark ungainly shape of an ancient lobster boat. It was on the drift, setting pots, and two men hung over the side, intent on their labours.

I squawked again and one of the men looked up. I had an impression of pale blue eyes in a weathered and heavily lined ruddy face, cloth cap and an-old briar pipe gripped in broken yellow teeth.

"Good morning," I croaked.

"Jesus!"said the lobster man around the stern of his pipe.

I sat in the tiny wheelhouse wrapped in a filthy old blanket, and drank steaming unsweetened tea from a chipped enamel mug - shivering so violently that the mug leaped and twitched in my cupped hands.

My whole body was a lovely shade of blue, and returning circulation was excruciating agony in my joints. My two rescuers were taciturn men, with a marvellous sense of other people's privacy, probably bred into them by a long line of buccaneers and smugglers.

By the time they had set their pots and cleared for the homeward run it was after noon and I had thawed out. My clothes had dried over the stove in the miniature galley and I had a belly full of brown bread and smoked mackerel sandwiches.

We went into Port Talbot, and when I tried to pay them with my rumpled fivers for their help, the older of the two lobster men turned a blue and frosty eye upon me.

"Any time I win a man back from the sea, I'm paid in full, mister.

Keep your money."

The journey back to London was a nightmare of country buses and night trains. When I stumbled out of Paddington Station at ten o'clock the next morning I understood why a pair of bobbies paused in their majestic pacing to study my face. I must have looked like an escaped convict.

The cabby ran a world-weary eye over my two days" growth of dark stiff beard, the swollen lip and the bruised eye. "Did her husband come home early, mate?" he asked, and I groaned weakly. , Sherry North opened the door to her uncle's apartment and stared at me with huge startled blue eyes.

"Oh my G.o.d, Harry! What on earth happened to you? You look terrible." "Thanks," I said. "That really cheers me up."

She caught my arm and drew me into the apartment. "I've been going out of my mind. Two days. I've even called the police, the hospitals everywhere I could think of."

The uncle was hovering in the background and his presence set my nerves on edge. I refused the offer of a bath and clean clothes - and instead I took Sherry back with me to the Windsor Arms.

I left the door to the bathroom open while I shaved and bathed so that we could talk, and although she kept out of direct line of sight while I was in the tub, I thought it was developing a useful sense of intimacy between us.

I told her in detail of my abduction by Manny Resnick's trained gorillas, and of my escape - making no attempt to play down my own heroic role - and she listened in a silence that I could only believe was fascinated admiration.

I emerged from the bath with a towel wound round my waist and sat on the bed to finish the tale while Sherry doctored my cuts and abrasions.

"You'll have to go. to the police now, Harry," she said at last.

"They tried to murder you."

"Sherry, my darling girl, please don't keep talking about the police. You make me nervous."

"But, Harry-"

"Forget about the police, and order some food for us. I haven't eaten since I can remember."

The hotel kitchen sent up a fine grilling of bacon and tomatoes, fried eggs, toast and tea. While I ate, I tried to relate the recent rapid turn of events to our previous knowledge, and alter our plans to fit in.

"By the way, you were on the list of expendables. They didn't intend merely holding a barbecue with your fingers. Manny Resnick was convinced that his boys had killed you-2 and a queasy expression pa.s.sed over her lovely face.

"They were apparently getting rid of anyone who knew anything at all about the Dawn Light."

I took another mouthful of egg and bacon and chewed in silence.

"At least we have a timetable now. Manny's charter which is incidentally called Mandrake - looks very fast and powerful, but it's still going to take him three or four weeks to get out to the islands. It gives us time."

She poured tea for me, milk last the way I like it. "Thanks, Sherry, you are an angel of mercy." She stuck out her tongue at me, and I went on. "Whatever it is we are looking for, it just has to be something extraordinary. That motor yacht Manny has hired himself looks like the Royal Yacht. He must be laying out close to a hundred thousand pounds on this little lark. G.o.d, I wish we knew what those five cases contain. I tried to sound Manny out - but he laughed at me. Told me I knew or I wouldn't be taking so much trouble.