When I went on deck next morning it was cloudy, a grey day with the wind from the west. It looked as though we would have a good sail and after breakfast I went with Bert to the Port Captain's office. I think they knew all about me. Anyway, we had no difficulty in clearing again for Meganisi. Then, back on board, we heard the sound of women's voices in the saloon and I went below to find Sonia there. She was on the settee berth, facing Florrie across the table, and she jumped up as I came in. "Paul." Her voice was urgent. "They're packing up. They're not staying at Ayios Giorgios."
Holroyd had spent an afternoon in the red dunes, had found nothing of real interest and had made the decision to move after supper the previous night. She had left the camp at four in the morning, walked down to the main road where she had waited over an hour before getting a lift. "I was afraid I'd miss you."
"She wants to come with us." Florrie's tone was controlled — not openly hostile, but it was clear she didn't want another woman on her own boat.
"Only to Meganisi," Sonia said quickly. "You see-last night-Kotiadis came up to the camp-" She was facing me, her voice, her whole manner, distraught. "The Chief of Police at Levkas had been making enquiries for him and that eve-
ning he had phoned him at his hotel in Jannina. I've just been trying to explain to Mrs. Barrett. They know where Dr. Van der Voort is now. Kotiadis can't do anything-not at the moment. But he's passed all the information on to Professor Holroyd-where your father's staying, the locations he was working on last year, everything. And I'm scared. I'm scared of what will happen when Professor Holroyd gets there. Please-" she was leaning forward, a note of desperation in her voice. "Mrs. Barrett doesn't realize. . please try and convince them of the urgency. They shouldn't meet-your father and Professor Holroyd-not before I've seen him, not without warning."
So it was all coming to a head on this island of Meganisi. I sat down. "You say Holroyd knows the location of his digs?"
She nodded. "Kotiadis told him. That's why they're moving camp this morning."
"And the digs are on Meganisi, not Levkas?"
"One on Meganisi-by an island called Tiglia. That's in the channel between Meganisi and Levkas. The other is across the channel, on the Levkas side-a bay. I can't remember the name now. I typed it. But it's gone for the moment."
"What are you suggesting then?" I asked. "That he'll go for Holroyd the way he went for Cartwright?"
She shook her head. "No, not that. But something. I don't know. I must get there first. Otherwise-" She hesitated. "Oh, it's all so stupid. And to try and explain what I feel. Can't you see? Working on his own all last year, and now … If it isn't all to be wasted, he's got to fight this man. Not physically, I don't mean that. Not with violence. But he mustn't become another Marais. He mustn't lose out to an academic publicist, have all his work filched by a man who's never done any real basic research in his life. It's wrong, wrong-all wrong. He's got to fight back-somehow."
She was looking anxiously at the three of us. "Please-please take me. I don't like the thought of him there alone. Anything could happen. But if he had support, people there who believed in him …" She reached for her handbag.
"Something else I have to tell you. Dr. Gilmore is arriving by plane this afternoon, at Corfu." She handed me a cable. "I got that just before we left Despotiko." It gave Gilmore's flight number and ETA and instructed her to contact him at the Kerkira Hotel. "I kept him informed, everything, by letter. He asked me to. And then, when I knew Professor Holroyd was coming out, I cabled him. I think Dr. Gilmore is the only man who can help your father now."
"And you want us to pick him up at Corfu?" She nodded, her silence more pleading than words.
The white limestone cliffs of Paxos were on our starboard bow, Corfu dropping astern, when Bert relieved me at the helm. "Are you going outside Levkas or through the canal?" I asked him. "The wind's north-westerly, increasing." It was the prevailing wind of this coast and I thought it would be force 6 by the late afternoon.
"Oh, I think the canal," he said, without even glancing at the chart.
"It's a dead run and a lee shore when we make the entrance."
He nodded. "But once inside we'll be in quiet water." He was thinking of our passenger. He had looked tired, almost frail when we had met him at the airport the previous day, and though we had had an early meal, he had insisted on staying up until he had all the facts of the situation clear in his mind. I had given him my cabin and he had not stirred from his bunk all morning.
"It's running it a bit fine- it'll be almost dark when we get there." I handed over the wheel and took another look at Chart 1609. It was divided into two sections-the canal itself and the north and south entrances, including the whole of the island of Levkas. The northern entrance was a bight formed by the island and the mainland; it had a sand spit backed by shallows running away to the north-east, and the entrance itself was a 90° turn to starboard, close in to the shallows and flanked by sandbanks. It looked singularly unattractive for a boat running under sail before a strong north-westerly breeze. "Well, you know what it's like."
"Yes, I know it."
He had altered course to port, and though the jib was still full, the staysail was beginning to slat under the lee of the main. The boat was steady, but pitching slightly now that the sea was getting up. He asked me to boom the staysail out and up for'ard I was more conscious of the surge of the bows, could feel the weight of the wind. The sky was blue, but veiled with cirrus, the sea white with the break of wave-caps. When I'd rigged the boom and clipped it to the clew of the staysail I went aft and eased out the mainsheet. From the stern I could still see the Pindus Mountains, a white glint of snow at the far end of the Corfu Channel where the Albanian coast began.
Down in the saloon Florrie and Sonia had finished their lunch. "Dr. Gilmore all right?" I asked.
Sonia nodded. "He's had a cup of Marmite and now he's propped up in his bunk reading some abstruse paper in the American Journal of Anthropology. He said he had no idea that a small boat could be so comfortable." She smiled. "He's really remarkably chirpy. Oh, and he asked me to give you this. He thought it might help you to understand your father." She reached to the shelf behind her head and handed me a wadge of typewritten sheets. "It's an article written by one of his students." It was headed- T/j^ Tragic Life of Eugene Marais.
"You mentioned that name yesterday morning."
She nodded. "Marais was also a South African. That's why it came to my mind. And because it's a very sad, very well-known case. A brilliant man who had his work filched by somebody else."
"And he killed himself?" It was there in the first paragraph-Lflrf};er^ journalist, poet and naturalist, patriot and drug addict, and in the end-suicide; but for all that a man so in advance of his time. ." "Is that what you're afraid of?" I asked. "That he'll commit suicide?"
"No. No, I don't think so. I hadn't really thought. But you read it. You'll see then why Dr. Gilmore thought it relevant."
Florrie came in from the galley with my lunch and I put the typescript on top of the drink locker. I was hungry. Also I was more concerned at the moment about the entrance to the Levkas Canal. I was remembering what Florrie had said about her husband's navigation, and it would be dark by the time we got there.
However, there is no point in anticipating a moment of crisis, and since I had nothing else to occupy my mind when I had finished my meal, I took the typescript up on deck and settled myself for'ard of the wheelhouse. I was sheltered from the wind there and the sun was warm. I'm not a great reader, not of biographies anyway, and I don't think the piece was particularly well written. Nevertheless, it was such an extraordinary story that I forgot for a moment about the difficult entrance we would have to make, barely noticed the increase in the wind's strength.