CHAPTER ONE

The 'Arisaig' Reaches Cornwall

The fo'c'sle was hot with the heat of the engines. Yet I shivered as I set down my glass and reached for the bottle. The glare of the naked light hurt my eyes. I filled my glass again. The liquor spilled fire down my throat as I drank, but it did not warm me. I was cold through to my very spine. Boots rang on the steel deck above our heads. A body stirred in its hammock, snorted, rolled over and then settled itself again. The hammock swayed like a bundle of straw to the roll of the boat. The sour odour of human bodies mingled with the fumes of the cognac and the blue fog of tobacco smoke made my eyes smart.

'What's the time?' I asked. My mouth was dry — a dusty cavity in which my tongue moved like a rubber pad. The words came harsh and unnatural as I put the question.

'You speak me what is the time two minutes ago?'

'Well, I'm asking you again,' I said harshly. Damn all Italians to hell! Why did I have to sit drinking with an Italian? Must Mulligan have Italians in his crew? But the British wouldn't drink with me, blast 'em. The Egg was only drinking with me because he was drunk and would drink with anybody. Or was it because he enjoyed watching the fear that welled up from the chilled hollow of my bowels? He was laughing at me. I could see it in his dark eyes. 'What's the time, damn you?' I shouted at him..

He pulled a large silver watch out of his breast pocket and turned the ornate gilt face towards me. A quarter past three. If Mulligan was right in his reckonings we should be in sight of the English coast. We had passed the Bishop Light well to starboard at dusk.

The Egg put the watch back in his pocket and picked up his glass. He drank with a noisy, sucking sound. His thick lips shone wet in the swinging light. They smiled and his eyes watched me.

What was he thinking? What went on under that bald skull of his? The lips were cruel, the eyes — brown like a dog's, dark like a passionate girl's — were cold. 'God damn it,' I cried. 'What are you smiling at?' I felt anger surge up in my body drowning the chill of fear so that my body seemed to swell out until the cramped fo'c'sle was too small to hold it. His sallow eyelids flickered and when I looked into his eyes again they were wide so that I could look through to the rotten core of him. He did not speak. He just gazed at me with those wide-open, cruel eyes.

The anger left me and I felt cold again. 'God damn all Italians,' I heard myself mutter. How long had I been drinking? What did it matter? What did anything matter? I was clear of Italy. England lay ahead, out there in the darkness beyond the steel bulkhead.

The man who had stirred in his hammock rolled over on to his back, stretched his arms and then sat up, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. 'Wot, drinking again, Emilio?' he said to the Italian. 'Gawd! don't yer never stop drinkin'?' He peered down at the bottle. 'Cognac, eh? Where did you get that? Bet yer've ripped open one of them cases.'

The Italian smiled. 'You like a drink, Ruppy?'

'Don't mind if I do,' the bos'n grinned. 'But Gawd 'elp yer if the skipper finds yer bin at the cargo. Mulligan ain't pertic'lar wot 'e does ter blokes that get in 'is 'air. All right. I know you're pretty quick with that knife o' yours. But 'e got a gun, ain't 'e?'

The Italian's bald skull cracked in a grin that showed the white gleam of his perfect teeth. 'Signer Mulligan, he is on deck, yes? He not come down here. The stink, it is too much for him.' And he laughed silently.

'Well, it's your funeral, mate.' Ruppy swung his legs out of the hammock and slid to the floor. He buttoned his jersey into his trousers and pressed both hands into his belly as though thrusting his guts into place. He suffered from hernia — that was why he was called Ruppy. He was thin and scrawny with the face of a turtle and an Adam's apple that moved up and down in his scraggy neck as he swallowed. A two days' growth of sparse, grey stubble grew out of the seamed dirt of chin and neck. He brought out an enamel mug and filled it half full from the bottle. 'Well, 'ere's to the bleedin' perisher wot pays through the nose fer short measure on them cases.' He wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his jersey and looked down at me, swaying gently to the motion of the ship. 'S'ppose you're trying to get up enough courage ter go ashore, eh?' The sneer was unconcealed. 'Why the hell didn't yer stay in Italy? That's where your sort belong. All right. I know why yer shipped a't o' Naples. You had ter, that's why. Soon as there weren't no British Army, the Ities got nasty an' turned on yer. Don't blame 'em, niever. Runnin' away — reckon that's all you ever done.'

Anger surged up in me again, drumming at my temples. I banged my glass down and jumped to my feet. He was such an insignificant, wizened little object. What right had he to sneer at me? I felt my hand clench. With one blow I could smash him against the steel of the bulkhead.

That's right — go on, 'it me.' His watery eyes peered up at me. 'Go on,' he cried again, "it me, why don't yer? Ain't yer even got the guts ter do that?' he sneered as I lowered my fist. 'No — afraid of Mulligan. That's what it is. You've always bin afraid o' something, ain't yer?'

'What do you know about what makes men afraid?' I cried.

'As much as most men,' he snapped back. 'I did me time in the Army, didn't I? Three years before the war and then Dunkirk and fru the desert to Alamein. Wasn't my fault, was it, that I got a rupture an' they slung me out?'

'Sure you done your time,' I said.

'Sawd me country through like any decent man, that's wot I done. Rank o' corporal I 'ad when me belly went back on me.'

'All right,' I said, 'So you saw your country through. But look at you now — a rotten little scab running liquor for a crook that got his dough in and out of North African ports whilst you were sweating in the desert.'

'Well, a bloke's got to live, ain't he?' He gulped at the cognac, rinsing it round his mouth like a mouth-wash. His Adam's apple jerked as he swallowed the liquor and breathed out fiercely. 'Ain't that so, Emilio?' he asked, turning to the Egg. 'A bloke's got to live. Wot d'yer fink the ruddy Ministry o' Labour offered me when I got discharged as unfit fer dooty? — a job da'n the mines! An' me wiv a rupture the size of a barn door got in the defence o' me country. Liftin' the barrel of a bleedin' ack-ack gun, that's 'ow I got it. Now I ast yer — do I look like a Bevin boy? I got me rights, same as anybody else. So I sez to meself, Charlie, I sez, you fer a job wot's easy on the belly, and wot pays fer the time yer servin' your country.' He thrust his face suddenly close to mine. 'You comin' the 'igh an' mighty! Blimey, who d'yer fink you are ter be tellin' me I'm a scab and a racketeer? Wot yer goin' ter do when yer get ashore, anyway — you just tell me that?'

'I got a friend in Penzance,' I said, stung by his sneering face. 'Sent me word he could get me a job.'

'An' told yer Tom Mulligan would give yer passage to England, eh?'

'How did you know?'

"Ow did I know? 'Cos yer ain't the first we brought back from It'ly, that's why? If your pal put you in touch wiv the skipper, then the job he got fer yer ain't no better than wot we're doin' on board the Arisaig. Gawd strewf, 'ow the 'ell d'yer fink the likes of you live in England? You ain't got no hidentity card, no ration book — in the eyes of the officials yer don't exist. Yer a floatin' population of scum wot lives off the Black Market. An' if yer want my advice, yer'll make straight fer London when we've landed yer. That's the safest place for your sort. Join the spivs and petty twisters wot 'ang ara'nd the race courses and the dawgs. Yer'll be safe wiv them — fer a bit.' He belched and heaved at his stomach.

I sat down again. God, how I hated myself! I felt the tears burning in my eyes and put my head in my hands to hide my sense of loneliness. A hand suddenly rested on my shoulder and Ruppy's voice with all the habitual harshness gone out of it, said, 'Come on, chum. Don't take no notice o' me. Yer'll feel better when yer seen yer fam'ly.'

I shook my head and wished he'd go back to his sneering. 'I've no family,' I said.

'No fam'ly! Blimey! That's tough. But yer got friends, ain't yer?'

'No,' I told him. 'Only the fellow in Penzance. You see, I left England when I was four. The only thing I can remember about England is when I was on the deck of a ship that took us to Canada. My father pointed the coastline out to me. It was just a grey smudge on the horizon. That and the day my mother went away — those are about my earliest recollections. We lived at a place called Redruth in Cornwall. That's where I was born.'

'But if yer went to Canada when you were four, why the 'ell didn't yer join the Canadian Army?'

'I didn't stay in Canada. After my father died, I went to Australia, to the gold mines. I was twenty then — a miner, like my father. After the war had been going on for some time I got a ship to England. But France fell and Italy came in and we Were held up at Port Said — so I joined Wavell's mob. This is the first time I've been to England since I was four years old.' Damn him — why had he started me off like this? Why didn't he go on sneering at me? I could stand that. I began to swear. It was a pointless waste of words, but it forced the tears of self-pity away.

'You oughter've gone back to Canada, chum,' he said. 'There wouldn't 'ave bin no questions ast there.'

'I couldn't get a ship,' I said. I reached out for the bottle and poured myself another drink.

'Yer don't want no more o' that firewater,' he advised, putting a restraining hand on my arm that was like the claw of a bird. 'Yer goin' ashore soon and yer'll need to be sober.'

But I took no heed, filling the glass and draining it at a gulp.

Footsteps sounded on the companion ladder. The door opened. 'Hey, Pryce! The skipper wants you.' It was a dumpy little man they called Shorty.

'Okay,' I said.

He went back up the companion ladder and his feet sounded again on the steel deck as he made his way aft towards the wheelhouse. The unfastened door slatted back and forth to the movement of the ship. I took another drink and then got to my feet. The watch off duty swayed in their hammocks. The steel walls, peeling and greasy with dirt, dipped and rose, dipped and rose. The naked bulb swung dizzily before my eyes. The Italian watched me. His eyes were on my belt and they glittered like live coals. I hitched up my trousers and my fumbling fingers bit into the flesh of my stomach as I felt for and found the outline of the money belt around my waist.

'What are you staring at?' I snarled.

'At-a nothing, signore,' he answered, and his eyes reverted to that soft, expressionless brown.

'You're lying,' I said.

He shrugged his shoulders, spreading his arms and drawing down the corners of his mouth, a picture of abject docility and innocence.

I took a step towards him. 'So that's why you're drinking with me, is it? You thought you'd get me stinking. You thought you'd rob me, eh?' He cringed away from me, those brown eyes suddenly mirroring his fear.

'Better go up and see the skipper, mate,' Ruppy said, catching me by the sleeve. But I suddenly wanted to hit the Italian — just one blow to show what I thought of the whole bloody race of 'em. And then I realised it would do no good. It wouldn't change his nature — it wouldn't make him any less avaricious, any less cruel. It wasn't his fault. He was a Neapolitan and it was the dirt and filth and poverty of Naples that had made him what he was.

I shrugged my shoulders and went up into the clean wholesome air of the deck. The night was still and dark with the sails flapping idly like bat's wings spread against the velvet backcloth of the sky that was all studded with stars. There was scarcely a breath of wind. Over the side our navigation lights showed a flat, oily swell. The tall masts of the little schooner swayed back and forth across the Milky Way and her gear creaked and groaned as the sails drew fitfully. I went aft, watching the faint, white blur of our wake as the engines drove us steadily towards the land. Every now and then a beam of light swept across us from a lighthouse on our starboard quarter. Almost astern was another, but below the horizon, so that it was like a faint flicker of the Northern Lights. And over the port bow, yet another blinked with monotonous regularity, hidden behind a mass of land that showed every now and then against the sudden brightening of the night.

The clean smell of tar and sea-wet cordage was strong after the sour fumes of the fo'c'sle. I breathed in great gulps of this fresh, salt air as I made my way towards the little wheelhouse. But a hand seemed clutching at my brain so that I couldn't think clearly. I stumbled over a coiled-down length of rope and fetched up at the rail gazing at the smooth, black surface of the water that I sensed rather than saw. I felt the long, flat swells rolling under our keel and gazed towards that dark line of coast that leapt into being every time the light flashed in our direction. And then I looked again at the smooth, comfortable swelling of the sea. It looked so inviting, so restful. Whilst out there, where the coast showed black, was danger and uncertainty.

I shook myself and felt for the belt around my waist. My eyes were tired. I was exhausted, drained of the will to go on. It was the same feeling that I had had that time up by Cassino when the patrol… I shivered and turned quickly towards the wheelhouse.

Inside it was warm and bright. Shorty stood at the wheel, his gaze alternating between the faintly glowing compass and the black night outside with the feebly slating sails. Mulligan was bending over a chart, a pair of dividers in his hand. He looked up as I entered. He was a thin, meagre little man with a craggy face, sharp blue eyes and a hare-lip that gave him the look of a stoat. He wasn't the sort of man you'd expect to find in command of anything, let alone a ship. But a devil looked out of those bright blue eyes and he had a tongue on him that was worth two full-sized men when it came to driving others. That tongue, sharp and rasping as the rough edge of a steel file, could get men moving faster than a pair of outsize fists. Men were afraid of that tongue and of those sharp little ferret eyes. He'd talk to a man, quiet and soft as a kitten, till he'd discovered his weakness, and then that tongue of his would get to work so that the man hated and feared him.

I held on to the edge of the chart table as the ship swayed and dipped. Mulligan watched me. He didn't speak, but just stood there gazing up at me, a sarcastic little smile on his deformed mouth. 'Well, what do you want me for?' I asked. I couldn't stand him staring at me. 'Are we nearly there?'

He nodded. 'There's our position.' He pointed to the chart. 'That's the Longships Light way to starb'd noo. We'll drop ye off at Whitesands Bay, just north o' Sennen.' His voice, with its queer Scots accent, droned on, giving me directions and pointing out landmarks on shore for my guidance. But I didn't listen. How can anyone listen to a voice purring out of a half Scots, half French parentage when the cognac is mounting to his head and making the blood hammer through his veins? The voice suddenly changed and the new rasp in it penetrated my mind. 'What about yer fare?' The question was repeated in a sharp, staccato bark.

'I paid it to you when I came aboard at Naples,' I reminded him. What was he getting at? My brain struggled to focus on what he was saying. 'I paid you fifty pounds in English notes. And it was twice what I ought to have paid.'

'That's as may be,' he answered, and his eyes never left my face. 'You paid me for a passage to England. But ye didn't pay me for putting ye ashore at dead o' night on a desairted stretch o' the coast. Smuggling a man into England is agin the law. It's dangerous, man, and Ah'm no willing ter take the risk wi'oot Ah get something oot of it.'

'See here, Mulligan,' I said angrily. 'You agreed to take me to England for fifty pounds. You knew what risk you ran when you took my fifty quid. Now you keep your side of the bargain.'

He peered up at me with that crooked, twisted smile of his. 'If that's the way ye want it, man, all reecht. We'll take ye on to Cardiff where we're bound and put ye ashore there. But Ah'm warnin' ye — they're awfu' strict at the docks there and unless ye ken yer way aboot — '

'Come off it, Mulligan,' I said and stretched out my hand to grip him by the collar and shake some sense into him. But he backed away from me, showing his discoloured teeth as he stretched his hare-lip to a grin. His right hand was in his pocket. I forced myself to relax. No good quarrelling with the man on whom my safety depended. 'What's your price?' I said. 'I'll give you an extra ten pounds.'

He shook his head and laughed. 'Ye'll be landed at Cardiff or ye'll pay my price,' he said.

'And what's your price?' I asked him.

'One hundred and thirty pounds,' he answered.

'A hundred and thirty quid!' I gasped. 'But that's — " I broke off.

He was laughing. I could see it in his eyes. 'That leaves ye wi' exactly twenty pounds.'

'How did you know how much I'd got on me?'

'Ye told me yersel' the other nicht. Ye were drunk and boasting of what a man could do wi' that much money, despite all the restrictions and identity cards and ration books. Well, it seems a shame that the police shouldna be given a chance.' Then his voice was suddenly hard and flat. 'A hundred and thirty quid — that's my price for a boat to pull ye to the shore. Ye can take it or leave it.'

The blood roared in my head. I felt my muscles swell. He had the chart table between us. I kicked it over with my boot. But as I went for him he backed away with a snarl and his right hand came out of his pocket with a gun. It stopped me for a second. And then suddenly I didn't care. He could plug me if he liked. I threw back my head and roared with laughter. It was the drink that had got in me. I knew that. But I didn't care. I just stood and laughed at him, crouched so puny and twisted in the corner of his own wheelhouse with that ridiculous little gun in his hand. I saw fear leap in his eyes and then I went for him. If he'd fired I don't think I'd have felt it, so elated was I with the sense of the power of my body. But he didn't fire. He hesitated. And in that second I had swept the pistol out of his hand and had seized him by the neck. The fingers and thumbs of my two hands overlapped as I closed my grip, lifting him from the ground and shaking him like a rat. 'Now what about my boat to the shore, eh?' I cried, and I heard myself let out another bellow of laughter.

I raised him so that his eyes were level with mine. I looked into them. They were so close it was like looking in through windows. And I saw he was afraid. I was glad of that and shook him so that his bones rattled. I shifted the grip of my right hand to the belt of his trousers and raised him to throw him through the window of the wheelhouse.

And then something hit me. A great explosion of pain burst at the foot of my skull. For an instant I saw the wheelhouse clear through the splitting agony of my eyeballs. My arms sagged beneath Mulligan's weight and his face came close to mine. Then my legs seemed to melt under me and everything was as black as hell as I crumpled up.

Next thing I knew was there was water on my face. It was cold and salt. I was going under again. There was a swimming blackness all about me. I struggled, thrusting upwards with my arms and legs. Again the sting of water on my face and the cold of the night air. I breathed in a great gulp that hurt my lungs. The darkness was shot with flame and then I was sinking again. This time I didn't struggle. I let the suffocating blackness steal over me. It was such a restful way to go. The water was cool and still as I sank. But the urge to live rose in me and I began to struggle upward again. My hands reached out, clutched and broke their nails against something solid. I grasped hold of it and fought my way back to consciousness. It was wood — a wooden board. It lifted slightly and then clamped down, pinching my fingers.

"E's comin' r'and, skipper.' The voice was right above me. It was Shorty.

'He's a skull on him like a rhinoceros,' Mulligan's voice replied. 'Ye hit him hard enough to split it open, yet he's no bin oot more'n fifteen minutes.'

I opened my eyes. It was dark, but I could see the darker outline of a pair of knees hunched against the stars. Then I closed my eyes again. The pain was unbearable. It was as though a great lump of lead had got loose inside my skull and was being pitched around by the movement of the sea. But it didn't hurt me to listen and my ears told me all I wanted to know. Waves were slopping at the gunnels of the boat and there was a steady creak of the rowlocks as the oars swung in and out. I was being rowed to the shore. The bow pitched violently and smacked into a small wave that slopped water over on to my face. I struggled up to my elbow.

'Ye'd best lie still,' said Mulligan in his phoney Scots. 'If ye don't Ah'll gi' ye anither crack on the head wi' the butt end o' me pistol.' His face was so close to me as he bent down that I could smell the reek of cognac on his breath.

'Okay, I'll keep still,' I breathed. My voice sounded faint and far away. I relaxed against the gunnel, the nerves of my whole body racked and wearied by the hammering pain in my head. A slight wind had got up, and over Shorty's rhythmically swinging shoulders the lights of the Arisaig danced in the ruffled water. The little schooner was hove to under mains' and stays'l. She was about three hundred yards astern of us, a graceful shadow in the faint light of the stars and the swinging beam of the Longships.

I twisted my head round and caught the gleam of Mulligan's eyes watching me. Pain stabbed at my eye sockets as I turned my neck muscles. I shifted the weight of my body to my right elbow, so that I could look for'ard without turning my head. Mulligan made a threatening movement with the pistol, which he held by the barrel. Then he relaxed as I lay still. The shore was a black shadow reared up against the night sky. With each sweep of the oars it came closer and blacker. Soon it towered above us, blotting out half the sky with its rugged, granite cliffs, and through the still night came the steady thud and suck of waves breaking.

'Where are you landing me, Mulligan?' I asked.

'Just where I said I would,' he replied. 'Northern end at Whitesands Bay. You'll be aboot two miles from Sennen. Or, if ye climb straight up from the beach and strike inland, ye'll reach the main road an' that'll take ye into Penzance.'

I didn't say anything. The black line of the coast was very near now. I thought I could see the faint white of the waves breaking. I strained my eyes into the darkness. But it made them ache so that I had to close them.

So that was England, and only a few miles from where I was born. My father had talked so much about the Cornish coast that I seemed almost to recognise it, even in the dark. But it was a queer way to be coming back — to be landed alone from a boat at dead of night with no friend and A sudden fear seized me. I forgot the pain in my head for a second as my fingers fumbled for the belt. I could feel it there against my skin. I searched for the pocket. Yes, it was still solid and packed with notes. Or was it less packed? Had they fooled me? Fifteen minutes they said I'd been out. Time enough for them to take the money.

I glanced up at Mulligan. His eyes were fixed on me.

Was it a trick of the dark or was there a sardonic gleam in them?

'What about the boat fare, Mulligan?' I asked. 'How much have you taken?'

'Lie still,' he hissed, and he held out the butt of his pistol ready.

The great granite cliffs were very near now. They seemed reared up, high, high into the night. A line of white seethed at their foot.

I slipped my hand under my jersey, beneath my vest, till I felt the leather of the belt lying against my skin. I found the pocket. It bulged. But when I got my fingers inside it the crispness of the notes had changed to paper, as though the pouch were stuffed with worthless Italian lire. I looked at Mulligan. 'How much did you take?' I asked him.

His face was so close to mine I could see the hare-lip stretch as he grinned. 'What Ah said Ah'd take, plus fifteen quid for the inconvenience ye caused me. Ye've got five quid, me bonnie boy, and that's five quid more'n ye deserve.'

'Five quid!' And I'd had two hundred when I hailed him at Port Santa Lucia in Naples Bay. 'Why didn't you take the five quid as well?' I asked.

He laughed. It was a hard, grating sound; like the creak of the oars in the rowlocks. 'Because Ah'm no wanting inquiries made about the Arisaig. Five pounds'll last ye quite a bit. The will to stay free is awfu' strong in a man. Ah could've filled ye full of lead and thrown ye overboard wi' some old iron in yer boots. But I dinna trust me crew when it comes to murdering a man. Though it's what ye deserve.'

'How do you know what I deserve?' The anger boiled up in me, stronger than the pain in my head. 'What were you doing sailing in and out of the North African ports when Rommel held the coast? I'll bet you weren't talking your phoney Scots then.'

He laughed again. 'Mais non, mon vieux — jeparlais toujours le francais quand j'etais en Afrique.' 'Or German,' I added. Who was he to tell me what I deserved, this rotten, crooked little bastard of a Scots father and a French mother.

A wave broke and the white of its crest licked along the gunnel, wetting my sleeve and slopping water into my face. We were very near the beach now. I could see it — a faint smudge of steeply rising sand that ended in a granite wall. Damn them! Why should I let them get away with my money like that?

'Do you know how long it took me to make that two hundred pounds?' I asked.

'No — and Ah dinna care,' was the reply.

'Two years,' I answered. 'Two years up in the lignite mines near Florence. Nearly a half a million lire. I had to pay through the nose for sterling.'

'More fool you,' Mulligan snapped back. 'Ye could've made it in a single trip wi' one of the gangs operating the Black Market in the Naples area.'

'Well, I made it the honest way,' I answered him. I looked up at him out of the corner of my eyes. He was watching me intently, the pistol grasped by the barrel. He must have seen me watching him, for his hand tightened on the weapon. I shifted my arm so that my hand was almost touching his boot. I glanced at the waves seeping against the steep sandy shore. The stern of the boat lifted. We were almost in the break now. The suck of the backwash was quite loud. I shifted my weight so that I could use my arms. One heave and he'd be in the water and then we'd see who'd have the money. I felt my fingers touch the wet rubber of his sea boots. I braced my back against the gunnel. And at that moment the stern lifted again and Mulligan said, 'Reecht, boys — run her in.' He looked down at me and said, ''Mais avec toi, man petit, je ne cours pas des chances' The butt of the pistol rose and fell. My head seemed to crack like a broken eggshell and everything went black.

When I came to I thought I was in my bunk with a hangover. It was so comfortable and my head throbbed with pain. I felt, chilly and moved my hands to pull the bedclothes up. But there were no bedclothes. A slight breeze was ruffling through my hair and my feet were wet. My head throbbed and the waves flopped and seethed to the hammer of the pain. I rolled over on my back and opened my eyes.

Above me the stars were dimming with the pale light of morning. I moved my hands under me and encountered sand. The sound of a wave scattered pain through my head and water swilled up to my buttocks. I sat up with a groan and gazed about me through pain-dimmed eyes. I was sitting on a beach of yellow sand, my feet stretched over the tide mark. A wave rose up out of the half light, broke white and flooded up the beach, wetting me to the waist.

I scrambled back out of reach of the advancing tide. I fingered my scalp gently. Through matted hair my fingers encountered an ugly bump just above the left ear and another right at the back of the skull. When I looked at my hand there was half-congealed blood mixed with sand. For a moment I sat there with my head in my hands, trying to collect my thoughts. This must be England — the Cornish coast, right by Land's End. And — that was it — I had just five pounds. Five pounds and no background. It wasn't much of an introduction to my native land. In a sudden frenzy of fear I thrust my fingers into the zip-fastened pocket of my money belt. I brought out the wad of paper that had replaced my hundred and fifty one pound notes. Toilet paper. With trembling hands I shredded it through, searching for the five pounds that swine Mulligan had said he'd left me. Piece by piece I separated those sheets of toilet paper and let them drift away in the wind. Then I ran through the pockets of my jacket. Nothing. But in the right hand pocket of my trousers I found it. It was a mean little wisp of folded notes, wet and stained. But, oh God, how glad I was of it. In my fear that I had been left nothing, those five sodden notes seemed suddenly gigantic wealth.

I put them in the pocket of my belt and struggled to my feet. I felt feint and slightly sick. The cliffs reeled and toppled. I stumbled to the edge of the sea and doused my head with water till my scalp wound tingled with the salt. Then I turned and began to struggle along the sands towards the inward curve of the bay.

The dawn came reluctantly, cold and grey, showing me the sweep of the bay. The farther tip of it was thrust out into the sea and ended in a tumble of jagged rocks. The village of Sennen Cove huddled beneath the headland. The wind had freshened from the sou-west and the sea was already flecked with little white-caps. Before I was halfway across the bay, the sun had risen above the hills inland — an angry red disc that barely penetrated the mist of low cloud that had trailed with the dawn across the sky. A few minutes later the sun disappeared. An autumnal chill was in the air. I stopped and looked back. The black granite cliffs which I had left were capped with a veil of cloud. Even as I watched the mist thickened and swept down, blotting out the northern limit of the bay entirely. Within a few minutes the mist had closed down and I was walking through a thin grey void, my world reduced to sand and the surf of breaking waves. The chill of the moist blanket of the mist seeped through my damp jersey and ate into my very bones. So this was England! I thought of the sunshine and the blue skies of Italy. Forgotten in that moment was all the dirt and flies and squalor, the vindictive sneers of the Italians, the loneliness. I wished I had not come.

CHAPTER TWO

At the Ding Dong Mine

I have set down in detail the manner of my return to my native Cornwall because, like 'the prelude to an opera, it was all of a part with the strange events that followed. As an outcast myself, it was inevitable that I should be thrown into company with men who themselves lived outside the law. At the time, I admit, I felt that I was the subject of a series of most fetal coincidences. But now that I look back on the whole affair, I feel that it was less a series of coincidences than a natural sequence, one thing leading inevitably to another. From the moment that I decided 10 take Dave Tanner's advice and reurn to England on the Arisaig I was set upon a course that led me with terrible directness to Cripples' Ease.

It may sound fantastic. But then is anything more fantastic than life itself? I have so often been angered by people who damn books from the comfortable security of their armchairs for being too fantastic. I have read everything I have ever been able to lay my hands on, from the Just So Stories to War and Peace — that's the way I got myself educated — and I have yet to read any book that was more fantastic than the stories I've heard in the mining camps of the Rockies or down under in the Coolgardie gold district of Western Australia. And yet, I will say this, that if I had been told as I strode over the mist-shrouded road to Penzance, that I was walking straight into a terrible mine disaster — not only that, but into a pitiful story of madness and greed that involved my own family history — then I just should not have believed it.

For one thing I was far too absorbed in my own wretchedness. I had dreamed so often of this homecoming. All Cornishmen do. Their dream is of a lucky strike and then back to Cornwall to swagger their wealth in the mining towns with big talk of the things they've done and the places they've been. And here was I, back in Cornwall, an outcast — alone and penniless. I doubt whether there was any one more depressed, more completely dispirited by his own sense of loneliness — yes, and his sense of fear — than I was. And all round me was the deep, soundlessness of the mist in place of the blazing blue of the Italian skies.

There was no traffic on the road. Everything was dead and cold and wet. Old tales of the tinners — old superstitions that I'd heard by the camp fires — came to my mind. I'd thought them stupid tales at the time. Piskies, the Giants, the Knockers, the Black Dogs, the Dead Hand and a host of other half-remembered beliefs — they all seemed real enough up there in the mist on the road to Penzance. There were times when I could have sworn somebody was following me. But it was just my imagination. That and the fact that I'd have been scared of my own shadow if the sun had suddenly broken through the mist.

The trouble was that I hadn't understood what it would be like coming back to an organised society. I hadn't realised quite how much of an outcast I should feel. Four years in Italy is apt to give you the idea that the organisation of the masses is such an impossible task that any individual can discreetly lose himself in the crowd.

But in Sennen Cove, after breakfasting at the inn under the curious gaze of the waiter, I had gone into the little general stores to get a map of the district. The shop was warm and friendly, full of seaside things with a stand of postcards crudely illustrating old seaside jokes. It reminded me of little places near Perth. A girl was talking to a man with a little brushed-up, sandy moustache — obviously an officer on leave. 'You wouldn't think it possible, more than three years after the end of the war,' she was saying, 'Nearly fifteen thousand, it says. Listen to this — " You 'II find them on the race tracks, in the Black Market, running restaurants, selling bad liquor, organising prostitution, gambling and vice, dealing in second hand cars, phoney antiques, stolen clothing — they're mixed up in every rotten racket in the country." Parasites — that's what this paper calls them. And that's what they are.' She threw the paper down on the counter. It lay open at the page she had been looking at. The headline ran — FIFTEEN THOUSAND DESERTERS. 'I know what I'd do with them if I were the Government,' the girl added. 'Round them up and send them to the coal mines for three years. That'd teach them.'

I had bought my map and hurried out of the shop, scared that the girl would notice me. Unseen eyes seemed watching me from the blind windows of the cottages as I hastened up the damp street and footsteps seemed to follow me as I climbed the hill to the main road. A little knot of people waiting for the bus at the school watched me curiously as I hurried by. I felt like a leper, so raw were my nerves and so much did I hate myself.

I reached Penzance shortly after noon, having been given a lift over the last three miles of the road by a lorry loaded with china clay. It was market day in Penzance. I strolled down to the waterfront. There were men dressed much the same as myself in seamen's jerseys and a jacket. Nobody took any notice of me. I felt suddenly at ease for the first time since I had landed in England.

Drifters and single-funnelled coasters lay alongside the piers and the rattle of cranes and donkey engines kept the gulls wheeling over the oily harbour scum. The mist had lifted and thinned to a golden veil. The streets were already beginning to dry. Across the Albert Pier, St. Michael's Mount gleamed like a fairy castle in a shaft of sunlight.

I lit a cigarette and, leaning against the iron railing by the car park, fished in my wallet for Dave Tanner's address. As I unfolded the crumpled sheet of notepaper the sun came through and the rain-washed faces of the houses smiled down at me from the low hill on which the town is built. I felt warm and relaxed as I read through Tanner's letter:

2 Harbour Terrace Penzance, Cornwall 29th May. Dear Jim, I hear things are not what they were in Italy now that the Army's moved north and the peace treaty has been signed. If you're getting tired of the Ities and would like a change of air, I can fix you up with a job in England — no questions asked! The bearer of this note — name of Shorty — can fix passage for you in the Arisaig which will be taking on cargo in Livorno.

Is Maria the same dark-eyed little bitch I knew or has she retired to raise a brood of American bambini? If she is still at the Pappagallo, give her my love, will you? England is all controls and restrictions, but those who know their way about do all right, same as we do in Italy. But I miss the sun and the signorinas.

Hope you take this opportunity to come over — it's a mining job and right up your street.

Your old chum, Dave.

I folded the note and put it back in my wallet. Shorty had come out to the lignite mine with it himself. That had been in August with the sun beating fiercely down, the earth baked brown and the dust rising in choking clouds. How different, I thought, to this clean, sparkling air with the sun shimmering on the wet pavements. In that moment I held my fate in my hands. I didn't know it then, of course, but I had only to forget all about Dave Tanner and seek a job on my own and the thread that was leading me to Cripples' Ease would be broken. And I came so very near to breaking it. I thought of the Arisaig and how Mulligan had cheated me. If those were the sort of men Dave mixed with… and the job he had for me — no questions asked, that was what he had written. That could only mean one thing — a racket of some sort. I recalled the man himself. Neat, dapper, quick-witted — a Welshman. He wasn't the sort to live strictly within the law. Even as a corporal in charge of a Water Transport coastal schooner, he'd had his own little rackets — shipping personal consignments of silk stockings, wrist watches and liquor from Livorno to Civitavecchia and Napoli, and on the north-bound trips, olive oil, sweets and nuts. I put my hands in my pockets and immediately encountered the remains of my meagre five pounds.

I turned then and went along the quay. In that moment the fatal decision was made. Harbour Terrace was behind the gas works, a narrow street running up from the harbour. Number Two was next to a corn merchants, the end house of a long line, ill exactly alike. There were torn lace curtains in the window and that air of faded respectability that belongs to the boarding house throughout the English-speaking world.

A girl answered my ring. She was about twenty-eight and wore a yellow jumper and green corduroy slacks. She smiled at me Brightly, but with the lips only. Her grey eyes were hard and watchful.

'Is Mr Tanner in?' I asked.

Her lips froze to a thin line. Her eyes narrowed. 'Who did you say?' she asked. Her voice was thin and unmusical.

Tanner,' I repeated. 'Mr Dave Tanner.'

There's nobody of that name living here,' she said sharply and started to close the door as though to shut out something she feared.

'He's an old friend of mine,' I said hurriedly, leaning my bulk against the door. 'I've come a long way to see him. At his request,' I added.

There's no Mr Tanner living here,' she repeated woodenly.

'But — " I pulled the letter out of my wallet. This is Number Two, Harbour Terrace, isn't it?' I asked.

She nodded her head guardedly, as though not trusting herself to admit even that.

'Well, here's a letter I received from him,' I showed her the signature and the address. 'He's a Welshman,' I said. 'Dark hair and eyes and a bit of a limp. I've come all the way from Italy to see him.'

She seemed to relax. But there was a puzzled frown on her face as she said, It's Mr Jones you're wanting. His name's David and he has a bit of a limp like you said. But he's away to the fishing now.' And then the guarded look was back in her eyes as though she'd said too much.

'When will he be back?' I asked. There was an uneasy emptiness in my stomach, for he must have had a reason for changing his name, and I didn't like the frightened look in the girl's eyes.

'He left on Monday,' she said. 'And this is Wednesday. He can't possibly be back till tomorrow. Might even be Friday. It depends on what the weather's like.'

'I'll come back this evening,' I told her.

'It won't be any use,' she said. 'He can't be back till tomorrow.'

'I'll come back this evening,' I repeated. 'What's the name of his boat?'

'No good coming this evening. He won't be here. Come tomorrow.' She gave me a bright, uncertain smile and closed the door on me.

I lunched on fish and chips and then went down to the South Pier to make a few inquiries. From an old salt I learned that David Jones was skipper of the Isle of Mull, a fifty-five ton ketch used for fishing. He confirmed that the Isle of Mull was unlikely to be back for at least another day. But when I asked him where the Isle of Mull did her fishing, his blue eyes regarded me curiously and I had that same sense of withdrawal, almost of suspicion, that I had had when talking to the girl at Harbour Terrace. 'Over to Brettagny mebbe, or out to the Scillies,' he told me. 'T'edn't like 'erring, 'ee knaw. 'Tis mackerel and pilchard 'e be after, an' it depends where 'e do find'n.' And he stared at me out of his amazingly blue eyes as though daring me to ask any more questions.

After that I went back into the town. It was just after three. The sun had gone out of the sky and the mist was coming down in a light drizzle. Penzance looked wet and withdrawn. Until shortly before eight o'clock, when I walked back through the gathering dusk to Harbour Terrace, I was still free to make my own decision. For the space of a few hours I could have broken that thread of destiny and with luck I'd have eventually got passage in a ship to Canada, and so would never have discovered what happened to my mother.

But fear and loneliness combined is a thing few men can fight. Tanner was the only soul I knew in a strange country. He was my one contact with the future. What did it matter if he were mixed up in some shady business? I was a deserter. And since that put me outside the law so long as I remained at liberty, it was outside the law that I should have to earn my living. To that extent I faced up to the reality of my situation. What I could not face up to was the uncertainty and difficulties of the unknown if I tried to fend for myself. I took the easy way, comforting myself that if I didn't like Tanner's proposition, I could decide against it later.

And so as a clock down by the harbour struck eight I turned up by the gas works into Harbour Terrace. The single street light showed the rain dancing on the roadway and water swirling down the gutters of the steep little street. It was an older woman who answered the door this time. 'Is Mr David Jones back yet?' I asked her.

Her face paled and she glanced quickly over her shoulder at the stairs which ascended in a rigid line to the unlighted interior of the house. 'Sylvia! Sylvia!' she called out in a hoarse, agitated voice.

A door at the top of the stairs opened and the girl I had seen before stood framed in the flood of light. 'What is it, Auntie?'

'There's a gentleman inquiring for Mr Jones.'

The door was instantly closed, shutting out the light, and the girl came down the stairs. She was still dressed in her yellow jumper and green corduroys. But her face was pale and drawn as she faced me in the doorway. 'What do you want?' she asked. And then almost in the same breath: 'He's not back yet. I told you he won't be back till tomorrow. Why've you come again — now?' Her voice dropped uncertainly on the last word.

'I'd said I'd come back this evening,' I reminded her. Then my eyes fell to her hand. There was blood on it, and more on her slacks. And there was an impersonal, familiar smell about her. A surgical smell. Iodine!

She saw the direction of my gaze. 'One of our lodgers,' she muttered. 'He's cut himself on a glass. Excuse me, I must go up and finish bandaging his arm.' As soon as she'd said the word 'arm' her eyes widened. For a second she stared straight at me, quite still. Then panic leapt into her fear-struck eyes and she flung herself at the door.

But I brushed her and the door back and stepped inside. 'He's back, isn't he?' I said, closing the door. 'He's back and he's hurt.'

She leapt to the stairs and stood there, panting, barring my way like a tigress defending her young. 'What do you want with him?' she breathed. 'Why have you come? All that about coming from Italy at his request — that was all lies, wasn't it? You were asking questions about him down at the harbour this afternoon. That's what I was told. Why?'

I said, 'Look, I don't mean any harm. It's true what I said this morning.' I fished the letter out of my wallet again. 'There, if you don't believe me, read that letter. That's his handwriting, isn't it?'

She nodded, But she didn't read it immediately. She stood there with her eyes fixed on mine as though I were a wild beast and she was afraid to release me from her gaze. 'Read it,' I said. 'Then perhaps you'll believe what I say.'

Reluctantly she lowered her eyes. She read through. Then she folded it carefully and handed it back. Her face had lost the strained look. But the wide eyes looked tired and drained. 'Was Maria — his girl?' she asked. Her voice was soft, yet somehow harsh.

'Oh, God!' I said. 'She was nobody. Just a girl in a trattoria.'

The door at the top of the stairs opened and Dave Tanner's voice called down sharply, 'What the devil are you doing, girl? Come and fix this arm before I lose any more blood.' His figure was black against the light from the room behind. The wide shaft of light showed the grey cupids on the peeling wall-paper. Across it sprawled his shadow. He was in his shirt sleeves and held a bloodstained towel to his left arm. His hair was damp with the rain, or maybe it was sweat. 'Who the hell was it anyway?'

'It's all right, Dave,' she answered. 'It's a friend of yours. I'll come and fix that arm now.'

'A friend of mine?' he echoed.

'Yes,' I called up to him. 'It's me — Jim Pryce.'

'Jim Pryce!' He peered down into the unlighted hallway. His face caught the light. It was drained of all colour, the bones standing out like a caricature in marble. 'A helluva moment you've chosen to come visiting,' he said. Then impatiently: 'Well, come on up, man. Don't stand there gaping at me as though I were Jesus Christ.'

The girl suddenly came to life and hurried up the stairs. I followed her. We went into the bedroom and she shut the door and started to work on his arm. 'What happened?' I asked.

'Oh, just a spot of trouble,' he said vaguely and his face contracted with pain as the girl dabbed iodine into what was obviously a bullet wound.

'Who was Maria?' the girl suddenly asked.

'That's a pretty nasty wound,' I said quickly.

'It's nothing — nothing whatever. A flesh wound, that's all. What did you say, Syl?'

'I asked who was Maria?' the girl said and dabbed iodine into the wound so that the sweat stood out in beads on his forehead.

'Just a girl,' he snapped. He looked across at me. His black eyes gleamed in his taut face. 'What've you been telling her?'

'Nothing,' I said. 'I had to show her your letter. She wouldn't let me in.'

'Oh,' Then to the girl in a curt voice: 'That's enough of the iodine. Now bandage it. No, he can do that. Get me some dry clothes. And when you've done that we'll need some food to take with us.' As she opened the wardrobe, he said to me. 'We'll cut up by Hea Moor and Madron. You'll not be minding a night march, will you now?'

'Yes, but what's happened, Dave?' I asked.

'Nothing,' he said and held out his arm for me to bandage. With his other hand he took a gold case from his hip pocket and lit a cigarette. The lighter was gold too. A diamond ring flashed on his finger. The girl put a pile of clothes on the chair at the foot of the bed. 'Now get the food,' he said. He spoke with the cigarette clinging to his underlip. 'It's time we were going. And see if you can find another raincoat.' The girl's face was sullen and her eyes flickered up at me with fierce hatred. She wanted to be going with him. She went out and I began to bandage his arm. 'Hey, not too tight, bach,' he said. 'Yes, that's better.' He grunted as I pressed against the arm muscles to tie the bandage. 'Was it Mulligan you came over with?' he asked as he began to change his wet clothes.

'Yes,' I said. 'And the dirty bastard robbed me when he brought me ashore.'

'Did he now?'

'You don't seem very surprised,' I said.

'Why should I be surprised? The man's as crooked as an eel.' He turned suddenly. 'Look you now, don't be blaming me, man. The Arisaig is the only vessel we have on the Italian run. It was the best I could do. It's not every skipper who will take the chance of smuggling a deserter into the country.' A flicker of a smile creased the corners of his eyes. 'It wouldn't surprise me, you know, if you were to meet Mulligan again.'

'How's that?' I asked. His back was turned towards me and he was struggling into a dry pair of workman's corduroys. He did not answer. 'Look, Dave,' I said, 'what's this job you've got for me? Is it still available?'

'Yes, I think so,' he said. He pulled on a seaman's jersey. As his head emerged from the neck, his mouth was twisted in pain and the sweat ran down — his face. He put his cigarette back between his lips and drew in a great lungful of smoke. 'It's a good job, you know — mining, did I tell you?'

'Yes,' I said. 'You told me that in your letter.'

He nodded and forced his injured arm into his jacket. 'Come on now,' he said. 'Your way is the same as mine. I'll tell you about it as we go.' He stuffed some cigarettes into his pocket and transferred his case and lighter and a thick wallet from his sodden jacket to the one he had put on. His quick eyes glanced round the room. Then he opened the door. He seemed in a great hurry to be gone.

I followed him down the stairs. In the dark hallway he leaned over the banisters and shouted down into the basement for the girl. 'Just coming, Dave,' she answered. The tip of the cigarette glowed red as we waited. He was puffing at it nervously. The gloom of the little hall was lessened by the light from the street that entered by a dirty fanlight above the front door.

The girl's feet sounded hollow on the bare stairboards. I could — ear her quick, frightened breathing as she emerged from the basement. There's sandwiches and an old raincoat of father's,' she said, her voice breathless.

'Listen, Syl.' Dave's voice was a harsh whisper. 'Those clothes upstairs — burn them. Clean up everything. Leave nothing whatever to show that I returned — you understand? And when they come around asking questions, tell them I never came back. See that the old woman doesn't jabber.'

He turned to leave then, but the girl clung to him. 'Where can I get in touch with you?' she asked quickly.

'You can't.'

'You'll come back, won't you?' This in a fierce whisper.

'Yes, indeed I will,' he assured her. 'I'll send a message. But understand — I never came back here. And don't let on to them where I've gone.'

'How can I when I don't know?'

'Indeed you can't — that's why I didn't tell you.' He turned to me. I could see his eyes in the dim light. 'Open the door and see if there's any one about.'

I pulled the door open. The street was deserted. The rain came down in a steady stream. In the light of the street lamp it slanted in thin steel rods to dance on the roadway and run gurgling down the gutters. I looked back into the hallway. The girl was clinging to Dave, her body pressed to his in a primitive declaration of passion that stripped her bare. Dave was looking past her to the open doorway, the cigarette still in his mouth.

When he saw me nod he detached himself from the girl and came towards me. The girl started to follow him. He turned to her. 'See that you get those things burned,' he said. Then he kissed her quickly and we left Number Two, Harbour Terrace. As I shut the door I saw the girl standing alone at the bottom of the stairs. She was staring straight at me, but she didn't see me. The skin was tight and drawn on her face and I had the impression that she was crying, though there were no tears in her eyes.

It's a strange thing but it never seemed to occur to me to leave Dave to fend for himself. I didn't know what had happened. But a man doesn't get a bullet wound in his arm for nothing. Nor does he abandon his girl and his lodgings, with instructions for his blood-stained clothes to be burned, unless he's been mixed up in something pretty shady. For all I knew he might be involved in murder. But I was swept up in the thing now and, as I say, it never occurred to me to leave him. Probably it was the company and the fact that he was an outcast, like myself. There is nothing to my mind so terrible as loneliness — not the loneliness that comes to a man in a town when he is afraid of his fellow creatures.

We kept to mean, badly lit streets as we threaded our way out of Penzance. We didn't talk. Yet I found immeasurable comfort in the presence of that small figure limping along beside me.

We came out at last on to a main road and as we climbed a short hill through the rain we left the lights of Penzance behind us. At the top I paused and looked back. The town was just a ragged huddle of lights, faintly visible through the driving rain.

'Come on, man,' Dave said impatiently. And I knew he was afraid of those lights.

'How far are we going?' I asked.

'Eight or nine miles,' he answered. We trudged on. 'We'll separate at Lanyon,' he added.

'Where are you going?' I asked.

A farm. I'll be hiding up for a bit.'

Another girl?' I asked.

His teeth showed in the darkness as he grinned up at me. 'Is c Casanova you think I am?' My remark had flattered his vanity. He was one of those men who for no apparent reason is attractive to women, and he enjoyed the sense of power it gave him.

'What about me?' I asked. 'Where am I going?'

'Botallack,' he replied. There's a message I'll be wanting you to carry too.'

'Good God!' I said. 'My father worked at Botallack.'

'Indeed. Then you'd better change your name, you know. Let me see — Canada wasn't it? Any Irish in Canada?'

'Fair number,' I told him.

'In the mining districts?'

'Some.'

'Well then — what do you say to O'Donnel? That's a good Irish name, indeed it is. And it's very suitable for a big man; look you. From now on you're Jim O'Donnel. Okay?'

'Sure,' I said. 'What's in a name?'

He laughed sardonically. 'A hell of a lot sometimes, you know.' He was silent for a moment. I knew he was looking up at me, and I knew what he was thinking. 'Did you have to ask for me by my real name?' he said at length.

'How was I to know you had changed it?' I said.

He grunted. 'She didn't know Jones wasn't my real name.

Damn it, man, you might have thought of that. And showing her the letter. It's pretty mad, she was. She's nothing particular in the way of looks and she knows it.'

After that we walked in silence, mile after weary mile, through the driving rain. We went on through Hea Moor and Madron and then up the long hill flanked by cedar woods and rhododendrons to the moors. We met no one. Only two cars passed us and each time my companion drew me out of the line of the headlights. He was taking no chances of being seen. On the long hill out of Madron his pace became slower and slower, so that I had to keep on waiting for him. His breathing was heavy and his limp more pronounced. Out on the moors at the top we came into the wind and the rain slanted across our faces from the south west. It was pitch dark, and silent save for the steady swish of the rain.

I was soon wet to the skin. The raincoat was an old one and though made for a man much bigger than Dave, it was too short for me and did not meet across the chest. I could feel the water coursing down my body underneath my clothes. It began at the neck, where two little pools formed in my collar bones and trickled icily down my sides, running together at my loins and then down the insides of my legs and so into my squelching shoes.

Dave's feet began to drag. He was stumbling along. Soon I was supporting him with one hand under his arm. It was clear he couldn't go much farther. His breath was coming in hard, rasping sobs and he limped heavily. I stopped him. 'Let's look at that arm,' I said.

It's nothing,' he answered fiercely. 'Come on now. We need to be clear of the moors by daybreak.'

But I got out my matches and, after breaking two, managed to keep one alight for a second. His left hand was sodden with blood, which mingled with the rain to form pale red drops on his fingertips. 'That arm's got to be bound up,' I said. 'Where can we get some shelter — a barn or something?'

He hesitated. Then he said, 'All right. There's a turning a little way on to the right. It leads down to Ding Dong. It's an old mine working, and there's the remains of a blowing house that's more like a cave than anything else. We'll be safe enough there.'

We kept to the right of the road and about a quarter of a mile farther on came to a dirt road leading away into the moors. It was half an hour's walk to that mine at the pace we were going and before we got there I was practically carrying Dave. He hadn't much strength left in him. The road deteriorated to a stone-strewn moorland track. It led to a grassy mound and, dimly visible through the black soundlessness of the night, loomed the blacker shape of one of those granite engine houses that will stand to the end of time. A little farther on we came upon a huddle of mine-workings, vague mound shapes of broken rock. We scrambled in amongst these and after a bit of searching Dave found what he wanted, a low stone archway. This was the 'Castle' of the old blowing house.

We stumbled through and found ourselves miraculously out of the rain and wind.

Gorse and furze grew in abundance and in a short while we were squatting naked before a sizzling blaze, our clothes hung over branches to dry. I fixed Dave's arm with a tourniquet and then we started in on the sandwiches. I had pulled whole bushes up by the roots and these, with some old baulks of timber I had found, gave us plenty of fuel. The smoke from the blaze was whipped out of the doorway by the wind. If anybody had seen us squatting there completely nude before the fierce blaze of the fire, our shadows dancing on the broken rock of the walls, they would have thought it a trick of time and gone away believing they had been piskeyled back into the days of the ancient Britons. But there was no one to see us. We were on a wild stretch of the moors and outside it was teeming with rain and blowing half a gale.

With water from a pool in the doorway I washed the blood off Dave's arm. Then I renewed the bandage. The wound no longer bled, even when I took the tourniquet off. The bullet had passed through the fleshy part of the upper arm. It did not seem to have damaged the muscles for he could still flex his fingers and move his wrist and elbows. I put on a fresh bandage of strips torn from the tails of our shirts. As I worked I began asking questions. He lit a cigarette and didn't answer. 'I suppose you were running liquor?' I suggested finally.

His gaze met mine. I could see the flames of the fire dancing in his dark eyes. He had the look of an animal that's been cornered. His silence exasperated me. I wanted to knock the cigarette out of his mouth and shake the truth out of him. 'What happened?' I asked again. 'Did a revenue cutter board you? What happened to the Isle of Mull? There was shooting. Did you shoot back?'

His eyes narrowed. The small dark features were immobile, the cigarette dangling from his bloodless lips. His stony silence chilled me. Suddenly I had to know. Ever since we had left the house in Harbour Terrace my energies had been concentrated on leaving Penzance behind us. But now as I knelt naked by the blazing fire that scorched my buttocks, I had time to think. Racketeer he undoubtedly was. The skipper of a fishing boat doesn't have gold cigarette cases and diamonds. I didn't mind that. But a killer was different.

'Dave,' I said, 'for God's sake tell me — did you shoot back? Was anybody else — hurt?'

His eyes didn't leave my face. They were cold and hard. They were like the eyes of a panther I had once seen looking down at me from a branch of a tree as it lay crouched to spring. I suddenly caught hold of him and shook him, 'What happened?' I cried, and my voice sounded strange.

The thin line of his lips curled. The expression of his eyes changed so that he was looking through me. He was seeing a scene that was indelibly planted in his mind. And he was enjoying it. He began to hum a tune, crooning it to himself in an ecstasy of reminiscence. 'They insisted on taking the hatches off. I warned them not to. But they insisted.' He suddenly looked at me. He was still smiling secretly. 'What could I do, man? It was their own fault, wasn't it? I jumped for the other boat. That's when I got this bullet through the arm. And then they opened the hatches. It was a lot of noise she made and then she sank, just as though she'd hit a mine. Just lovely, it was. But it's sorry I am about the old boat. Fond I was of her — fonder than I've ever been of a boat.'

'How many were killed?' I asked.

His eyes went dead and the muscles of his face hardened. 'It's nothing to do with you, man. Their own fault, wasn't it now?' He put his hand on my arm. 'Don't be asking any more questions, Jim,' he said. 'It's shooting my mouth off, I've been. Forget what I've said. I'm feverish, that's all.' He stared into the fire. His face relaxed so that he looked little more than a kid.

I squatted back on my haunches. I felt cold and wretched in the blaze of the fire that burned my neck. I thought of the stories I'd heard of the wreckers that had operated along these rugged coasts before the lighthouses were built, and how the fiends had knifed the survivors that struggled in through the break of the waves. Here was something just as horrible. And I was mixed up in it. A few hours ago I had been a deserter — nothing more. Now I was mixed up in murder. I shivered. 'What about this job?' I asked huskily. 'Is it anything to do — to do with your activities?'

His lips remained set and his eyes hard. Yet somehow I knew he was smiling to himself.' 'It's scared you are,' he said.

'Of course I'm scared,' I said, suddenly finding my voice. 'There's men been killed tonight and I'm involved. I've only done one thing wrong in my life. I ran when I should've gone on and got killed like any decent fellow. I ran because my nerves were shot in ribbons with three consecutive nights' patrolling through mines and booby traps in that hell of Cassino. I couldn't take it. But that's all I've done. And now here I am hiding on a desolate stretch of moors with — with a murderer.'

His eyes leapt to mine. They were like hard, glittering coals. His right hand slid across towards his clothes. I watched him — not afraid, but fascinated. He felt in the pocket of his jacket.

Then his eyelids drooped and he relaxed. His hand shifted to the breast pocket of his jacket and he brought out his cigarette case. He shivered as he lit a cigarette and when he'd put the case back, he moved nearer the fire. He huddled over it, watching me out of the corners of his eyes. He was nervous and uncertain. He sat there for a while, so close to the blaze that his thin white body glowed red. He stared into the flames and every now and then he shivered. It was as though he saw in the heart of the flaming wood, his future. I realised that he was scared.

The silence became oppressive. I remembered how he had slid his hand to the side pocket of his jacket. Suppose he became scared that I'd give him away? There was no forecasting his reactions. 'Forget about it and get some sleep, why don't you?' I said.

He raised his head and looked at me slowly. 'I never killed anybody before, you know,' he murmured. Then he turned back and continued to gaze into the flames. 'All through the war I never killed a soul — never even saw a dead body. The R. A.S. C. company I was with kept pretty well in the rear. And then, because I'd been in coal ships out from Swansea, I was transferred to a Water Transport Company. It wasn't me, you know, that thought up that idea of booby-trapping the hatches. The Captain, it was — damn his eyes. How was I to know the whole bloody vessel would go up in a sheet of flame? I thought it would just scuttle her. How was I to know — tell me that, man?' His eyes were excited and his whole body moved with the widespread disavowal of guilt made by his hands. 'Why is it you sit there so silent? You think it's damned I am? What right have you to judge? Didn't you walk out on your pals — a deserter? There's nothing rottener. Isn't it true that a man who deserts is — is — " He opened his arms again, unable to find the word. 'I didn't desert, did I? I jumped to save my skin. Any one would have done the same.' He leaned forward on his elbow and peered up at me. 'I'm not a murderer, I tell you.' It was a cry of desperation. Then he muttered. 'By God, if that's what you think — " In a single lithe movement he had risen and was feeling in the pocket of his jacket.

I braced myself. My tongue felt dry. 'For God's sake, sit down,' I said. 'I'm in no position to do you any harm.'

He hesitated. Then he seemed to relax. 'That's right,' he said. 'You're not, are you?' he smiled. It wasn't a real smile. It was no more than a drawing back of the lips to show the flash of his even white teeth. He looked like some devil, his body all red with the firelight and his teeth bared. Behind him his distorted shadow sprawled menacingly over wall and roof.

I passed my tongue across my lips. It rasped like a piece of adhesive tape. 'Sit down,' I said again. 'You're all hepped up. I can't do you any harm. Besides, I need your help.'

He didn't say anything. He stood there, looking at me for the moment, his dark head thrust forward like a snake considering whether to strike. Then he shivered and went into the corner of the cave and relieved himself. Away from the fire his body was white again. He was watching me all the time. I could see his eyes like two red coals in the gloom. Then he came back to the fire and stood right over it with his legs apart so that the warmth of it seeped up his body. He was shivering so that I wondered whether he wasn't a bit feverish.

After a moment he crouched down and began staring into the flames again. 'Funny what your childhood's days do to you,' he said softly. 'We lived in the Rhondda. My father was a miner. Two pounds ten a week, that's what he got, and my mother to keep the six of us. Three sisters I had and me the eldest of the children. I was at work in the pits when I was twelve and by the time I was sixteen it's a man's job I was trying to do, and me so weak I could hardly walk home after the end of each shift. It's not much food there is when there's six mouths to feed, and the pits closing all along the valley. By the time I was eighteen I was drawing dole. So I went down to Cardiff, you know, and worked as stevedore. It wasn't long before I was handling stuff brought in by the sailors. Why should a man starve himself when there's crooks earning thousands of pounds that have the law on their side?' He gave a sudden harsh laugh. 'I've been back to the Rhondda once or twice. Shall I tell you something? There's boys that used to play in the Valley with me that are old men now. No wonder the country's in a bad way for coal. And it's nobody but themselves they've got to blame.' He wriggled closer to the fire. 'They've sucked the life blood out of a great race of people for years. Why shouldn't I do a little bloodsucking? If I murdered a thousand of them I'd be justified, wouldn't I?' He picked a flaming brand out of the fire and held it aloft. 'Them and their bloody laws — I don't care that much for them.' He flung the blazing log out through the door. The flame of it died and vanished in a sizzle of steam as the rain swept over it. 'See what I mean?' His eyes blazed at me across the fire. 'What are laws? They're not made by the men who starve. They're made to protect the moneyed class. They're my enemies, aren't they? Well, aren't they?' His voice died suddenly and he turned his gaze back into the fire. 'But I didn't know the old boat would go up like that.'

I was beginning to feel chilly. My clothes were dry now and I got up and put them on. Dave watched me for a while, then he did the same. When he was fully dressed, he went to the entrance and looked out at the weather. Then he came back to the fire. 'No use whatever going out in that. We'd best kip down here for the night.'

'What about your farm?' I said. 'You said you wanted me there by daybreak.'

He rounded on me. 'Who said I was going to a farm?' he snarled.

'You did,' I reminded him.

He crossed over to me, dragging his left foot. 'Understand this,' he said, 'I never told you I was going to a farm. I never told you anything. You never met me. You never came to see me. You don't know me. Understand?'

I nodded.

He searched my face. Finally he seemed satisfied and went back to the other side of the fire. 'We'll go on tomorrow,' he said. Then he wrapped himself up in his raincoat and curled up close to the smouldering heap of timber. His eyes closed for a second. But I noticed that he slept with his right hand in his jacket pocket. His face, with the eyes closed, looked old and drawn. There was no trace of the boy in him that I'd seen earlier.

I was dead tired, but though I lay down with my raincoat round me, I could not get to sleep. Through long hours I lay huddled close to the fire, thinking over the events of the day and listening to my companion's regular breathing. Outside the rain streamed down, the monotonous sound of it being relieved only when a gust of wind lashed at the mouth of the cave. Strange shadows flickered across the broken rock of wall and roof and occasionally a piece of timber moved in the fire sending up a shower of sparks. God, I kept on thinking, what a mess I've got myself into! How much easier would it have been if I had kept right on at Cassino, and got myself killed like the rest of the platoon. Or would I have still lived on, crippled and disfigured, a relic of human idiocy in some home for wrecks that they dare not show to the public? At least I was alive and intact.

I suppose I must have dozed off, for a little later it seemed I opened my eyes to find the fire nearly out and a wan light creeping furtively through the entrance-way. It was very cold. I got up and went out. The rain was still sheeting down out of a leaden sky. All about me was a scene of bleak confusion. The walls of the mine buildings had collapsed and mingled with the dumps of rock to form desolate mounts of sharp-edged stone. I got furze and more timber and built up the fire again. Dave's eyes were open and he lay watching me. His face was very white so that his eyes looked like two black sloes. His right hand was still in the pocket of his jacket.

As I moved about the cave I was uncomfortably aware of his watchfulness. The damp of the morning had chilled me to the marrow. It made me nervous and every time my back was turned towards him I felt an almost uncontrollable urge to glance quickly back over my shoulder. At last he got to his feet. His hand was still in his pocket and he was watching me. I tried to understand the expression in his eyes. But I couldn't. They were the eyes of a monkey — mischievous, cruel and without reason. At last I could stand it no longer.

'Why do you stare at me like that?' I asked.

He gave a little shrug and his lips stretched to a thin smile. He lit a cigarette. I watched the deliberate movements of his hands. They had long, slender fingers and small wrists — the hands of an artist or a man who lives on his nerves and drink. 'I was just trying to decide whether I could trust you,' he said at last. Again the smile. 'You see, I don't know very much about you, do I? We drank together at the Pappagallo, that's all.'

'I might say the same about you,' I answered, my eyes on his hand, which he had put back in the pocket of his jacket.

'Yes, but I don't carry your life in my hands.' He nodded towards the fire. 'Suppose you sit down and tell me about yourself,' he suggested.

I hesitated. The hair was prickling along my scalp as I looked into the utter blankness of his eyes. I suddenly felt an overwhelming desire to get that gun — to get it before he used it. 'Sit down.' It was softly spoken, but there was a harshness in his voice that made me obey without further hesitation. 'Now let's have your story.' He had seated himself across the fire from me. He was puffing nervously at his cigarette. In the bleak light that came in through the entrance his face looked wretchedly drawn, the lines etched deeply into the white skin.

I began to tell him how I had left England when I was four, moved to Tin Valley in the Canadian Rockies, had started washing dishes in one of the local saloons when I was ten, became a miner when I was twelve. But he interrupted me. 'I don't want data. I want your background. Why did your father leave England and go to Canada?'

'My mother left him.' I sat staring into the fire, thinking back down the lane of my life. 'If you want my background,' I said, my father was a drunk. He drank to forget. My mother was very lonely. I found a photograph of her amongst my father's things after his death.' I pulled out my wallet and took from it my mother's photograph. Across the bottom was written in a found, childish hand — To Bob, from his love — Ruth Nearne.' I passed it across to Dave. 'My father talked of nothing but Cornwall. He was desperately sick for home. But he never made his fortune and he wouldn't come back to be mocked. That's what he used to tell me. He was afraid of being mocked for having lost his wife. She went with a miner from Penzance. My father hated her and loved her all in the same breath.'

I had forgotten why I was saying all this. I'd never spoken about it to any one. But suddenly, up on those bleak moors in the derelict waste of that old tin mine, it seemed right that I should be talking about it.

'I don't know about Welshmen,' I went on, 'but Cornish miners go all over the world. There's not many mines that haven't got Cornishmen working in them. And they cling together. Up there in the Rockies my father found plenty of Cornishmen. He'd bring them back to our hut and they'd talk mining by the hour over potties of bad rye, feeding pinewood into the stove until the iron casing became red hot. And when there wasn't any company he'd tell me about our own country and the mines along the tin coast. Botallack and Levant — he'd worked in them both, and even now I reckon I could find my way around in those mines from the memory of what he told me of them. He was a thin, wiry little man with sad eyes and a hell of a thirst. That and silicosis killed him at the age of forty-two.'

'Did you ever hear from your mother?'

I looked up. I had almost forgotten that Dave was there, so absorbed had I become in my memories. 'No,' I said. 'Never. And I was never allowed to refer to her. The only clue I ever got as to her whereabouts was when he was raving drunk one night and mouthed curses upon a place called Cripples' Ease.

There's a village of that name near St. Ives. I found it on the map. But I shall never go there. He was dead drunk for a week then. I think he must have heard something. He died when I was sixteen. I think I would have asked him about her when he was dying, but he had a stroke and never regained consciousness.'

'Oh — that's terrible!'

I looked up to find Dave with a look of genuine sadness in his eyes.

'And you never found out what happened to her?' he asked.

'No,' I said.

'But now that you are in Cornwall?'

I shook my head. 'No,' I told him. 'Let the past lie buried. He wouldn't have wanted me to try to find out. He may have been a drunk, but I loved him.'

That secret smile was back on Dave's lips. But this time it was different. It was as though he was really amused at something. 'Maybe the past will not lie buried.'

'What do you mean?' I asked.

He shrugged his shoulders and handed back the faded print.

After that we sat in silence for a long while. Outside the rain swept across the waste of mine workings in a leaden curtain and the grey light glistened on the piled-up mounds of slag. At length Dave got up and sniffed at the weather. 'It'll clear up after midday,' he said. 'You'll be able to start out then. Our ways part from here.'

'Where do I go?' I asked.

'Botallack,' he replied. 'Ask for Captain Manack. And give him this.' He tossed his gold cigarette lighter across to me. 'That'll prove that I sent you to him. Now I'm going to get some sleep and I suggest you do the same.'

'What about your arm?' I asked.

'Indeed it's all right,' he said and curled himself up in his raincoat in front of the hot embers.

For some time I sat staring out into the black curtain of the rain. At length I grew sleepy and dozed off.

When I woke the sun was shining and I was alone in the cave. I went outside. The moors looked warm and friendly and the rubble of the old mine workings steamed gently in the warmth of the sun. The gold of the gorse shimmered in the heat and birds were singing.

I called. But no one answered. Dave had gone.

CHAPTER THREE

Cripples' Ease

The sun was westering as I climbed Cam Kenidjack. The great granite blocks of the earn were black against the flaming sky and the heather of the hillside was dark in shadow. But when I reached the top and stood on the huge, flat-topped slabs, I felt the faint warmth of the sun, and the heather on the farther slope glowed a warm purple. The moors spilled away from under my feet to a coastline that was torn and broken by old mine workings. It was as though one of the giants of Cornish legend had rootled along this rugged coast in search of boulders to hurl at some neighbouring Titan. The sea beyond was like a tray of burnished copper. A line of storm clouds lay black along the horizon, their ragged edges crimsoned by the red disc of the autumn sun. The wind blew strong and salt in my face.

So this was the Cornish tin coast. There was a lump in my throat. Since I was old enough to understand, my father had talked to me of little else but this strip of Cornwall where he had lived and worked until he married. And I was actually standing on Carn Kenidjack — the Hooting Carn. This was where the two tinners were supposed to have watched the Devil's wrestling match.

Below me three tracks sprouted from the heather and thrust dirty-brown fingers down to the stone-tilted roofs of the miners' cottages on the coast road. I got my bearings from my map. That was St. Just, away to the left there, and Botallack, and Boscaswell where my father had been born, and Trewellard. Yes, and there was Pendeen — I could just see the white pimple of the lighthouse peeping above the rim of the coast. A little to the left the two shafts of Wheal Geevor showed black scaffolds against the copper sea. And that waste of broken rock down by the cliff edge, that was Levant.

I knew the line of the coast by heart as though I had spent my boyhood exploring it. I needed no map to tell me which was Cape Cornwall and Kenidjack Castle. I had felt a sudden excitement as I found Botallack Head and recognised, in the scored cliff-top behind it, the surface workings of the Botallack mine. I could even pick out the various shafts, getting my bearings from the broken ruins of the old engine houses that were the only ordered things in that chaos of tumbled stone. The mine was derelict now, but in my father's day it had been a great copper producer. He had taken me through it gallery by gallery, describing each level in the minutest detail, so that looking down on it from Cam Kenidjack I could almost see the outline of the underground workings just as my father had so often traced it for me on the dusty floor of our hut.

I thought of Kalgoorlie and the seething mine valleys of the Rockies and the big new concrete buildings that housed their plants. And they seemed so recent and characterless beside this little strip of torn-up coast where tin had been streamed by men who had left traces of their rude hut circles and megalithic burial chambers up here on these desolate moors. These were the mines that had given the Ancient Britons the ore to barter with for ornaments and silks with Greek merchants from Marseilles way back in the Bronze Age… And only fifty years ago the whole area had seethed with activity, as thousands of men worked beneath the rugged cliffs and even out under the sea. And now it was all derelict. Just that one mine — Wheal Geevor — still working.

The ruddy glow of the sun began to fade out of the heather. The great red ball was sinking behind the gathering storm clouds.

I watched until the last red slice of it disappeared. And when I looked down the slope of the hillside to the coast again, the sea had become a dark abyss and the worked cliff-tops and broken hillside were gloomy and unfriendly. The heather was like burnt stubble now and the rocks took on weird shapes in the gathering dusk. The country seemed to shiver in the cold wind and withdraw into its dark past.

I went on again then, making for the nearest of the tracks that led down into Botallack. But I went slowly, almost reluctantly. Now that I was face to face with the future I felt ill at ease again. I tried to pretend that if I didn't like the job I could go elsewhere. But back of my mind there lurked a fear that I should not be allowed to do that. All sense of excitement at returning to my father's own country was drained out of me. Perhaps it was because all warmth had left the country with the setting of the sun. It was bleak and bare — and depressing. Or perhaps I had a sense of premonition.

By the time I had reached the coast road that runs from St. Ives to the Land's End it was almost dark. The clouds mat had fringed the horizon when the sun set were now a black mass piled up half across the sky. Distant lightning forked in jagged streaks, providing the only indication where cloud ended and sea began. After each flash, the far-off roll of thunder sounded above the dull roar of the sea and the moan of the wind in the telegraph wires. To the north, the revolving light of Pendeen Watch swung in a white glare through the dark of the gathering storm.

Many of the cottages must have disappeared since my father's day, for Botallack was now little more than an inn and a few farm buildings. There was not a soul on the road. But from the lighted doorway of the inn came the sound of an accordion and men's voices. They were singing The Old Grey Duck.' I hadn't heard that old song since my father had died. It had been a great favourite with him when he was drunk. I hesitated. I did not want to face the curious gaze of the inhabitants of this tiny village. Yet I had to find out where Captain Manack lived and I needed a drink to steady myself. I needed time to think too.

There were about half a dozen men seated in the bar when I went in. Two were playing Cornish skittles; the rest were grouped around the accordion player. He was a big, burly man with short, grizzled hair and he sang with an old clay pipe clamped between toothless gums. The singing was punctuated by the clatter of the wooden pins as the ball on its string swung through their ranks. A big fire blazed in the grate and the place looked warm and cheerful. I crossed over to the bar and ordered a pint of beer, very conscious of the fact that the singing had almost ceased as they watched me. Samples of ore stood among the bottles and glasses that twinkled at their reflections in the mirror that backed the shelves. There was a leaden chunk of mother tin and a big lump of iron pyrites that glittered brighter man gold in the strong light. The landlord was friendly enough, and I began talking to him about the mining industry. He was short and wide in the shoulders. Every now and then he gave a little rasping cough and his skin had the grey pallor of silicosis.

I suddenly realised that the accordion had stopped playing. The singing had ceased, so had the click of the skittles. I turned quickly. No one was talking. They were all looking at me. I was seized with a panic desire to run. But my feet seemed to be rooted to the floor. I took a grip on myself. They couldn't tell just by the look of me. 'Why do you all stare at me?' I heard myself ask.

It was the accordion player who answered.''We bin trying to make 'ee out from yer talk. Thee's a furriner sure, an' yet 'ee's a fitly way of speaking.'

'I'm Canadian,' I said.

'Iss, iss, but thee's got Cornish blood in 'ee,' the old man insisted.

I felt relieved. But I wondered how he could tell. I suppose it was the fact that I'd been brought up to Cornish dialect. I could drop into it quite easily and did now. 'Iss,' I said. 'Me father was a tinner over to Redruth afore we went to Canada. Born at Boscaswell, he was, an' worked cores down in Botallack till they knacked the bal.'

The old man nodded approvingly. 'A' thort so,' he said. The whole room was smiling at me. 'The way 'ee were talking,' the old man went on, 'puts me in mind of the old days in Camborne and Redruth. I mind the time when the bals were working full blast and the kiddiwinks was full o' Cornishmen tarkin' all sorts of strange, outlandish tongues. They'd packed their traps when things were bad — that were in the Nineties. Iss, an' there weren't a corner o' the world they hadn't been to, 'ee knaw; Chile, Peru, the silver mines at Lima where old Dick Trevithick went, Kimberley, Jo'burg, the States — they'd been most everywheres there'd been a mine working. They came home soon's the bals began to open up again. Strange clo's they wore an' strange 'abits they had, but they hadn't forgot their native Cornish way o' speakin', no more'm 'ee have, boay.' He shook his head sadly. 'There was money about in them days, 'ee knaw. Not laike it is now. Why me father would tell me o' the days when there was nigh on fifty bals working in this part o' the country alone. Now there's only the one.' He took his pipe out of his mouth and spat. 'Navvies' work, that's what it is now. Mind 'ee, they was rough lads that came back in the old days. Whilst 'ee got 'eesel' eddicated.' He peered across at me. 'Thee's not looking for work, is 'ee boay?' I didn't say anything and he didn't seem to expect a reply.

'Thee wouldn't find much mining work in these parts now. Edn't I right, Garge?' he asked the landlord.

'Thas right, Bill.' The landlord turned to me. 'Thee'll hear people say that the bals in Cornwall is worked out,' he said. "Taint so. But 'ee's got to go deep, deeper'n they'll go these days for all their modern equipment. Started some o' the mines up, the Government did during this last war. Thee can see one of'n in the cove down beyond Cape Cornwall. That was when Malay was took by the Japs. Spent a mint o' money they did in the valley there. But it were the same as it were with the adventurers. No sooner'n they were gettin' near the tin than they knacked 'er — found they could get tin from Bolivia or some sicn place. When I was a boay, copper were 'bout all anybody thort on around here. An' when the copper was worked out, the mine closed down. But under the copper there's tin — and plenty of it. Thee can ask any of the boays who've worked deep. They'll tell 'ee the same. There's tin under the copper. I seen it meself. But it would cost a heap of money to get at it, for the mines is all full o' water now, full right up to the adits.'

'What about the eyebits?' I asked. 'There must be some rich patches left above water. Isn't anybody working them?'

'Ar, there's one or two little groups gettin' an uneasy living out of'n,' replied the landlord. 'But there edn't no future in it.'