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directly; they were of the type for whom eye-contact is a weapon, a means of threat or persuasion. They did not waste it on casual socialising. Eventually a small sailing vessel drew alongside and took them in the direction of Corfu (according to Kazakian, who seemed greatly relieved when they had left). He reassured me we would be in Venice ‘tomorrow’. He nodded at me, as if I were a mute baby. ‘Yes,’ he said smiling. ‘Yes.’
     
    By noon the next day the engine suddenly stopped. I at first assumed we were making another rendezvous. The boat drifted under a copper sky, away from the hazy outline of land to starboard. Esmé lay in my lap breathing deeply and the world was filled with an enormous silence. I was enjoying the sensation until, from the wheelhouse, Captain Kazakian began to yell fiercely in all the languages of the Levant and Mediterranean.
     
    I saw the engineer come running along the deck. He was waving his arms and screaming. I sat upright. Thick black smoke gouted from the little engine-room and drifted towards us. It was menacing. Like a sentient, supernatural creature which might devour us if we moved.
     
    A few moments later Kazakian left his post and with one eye on the cloud, as if he shared my impression of it, walked slowly up to where we stood. He was grinning and shaking his head, his hands going through their entire vocabulary of gestures, a sure sign of his utter terror. ‘I thank God you are with us, Mr Papadakis, for you are the only one who can help us with our problem. You are a genius of a mechanic. Everyone in Galata says so. I know it.’ This litany of praise was merely a preliminary and I suffered through it, waiting for him to reach his point.
     
    ‘Will you please look at our engine?’ he said.
     
    Esmé had become frightened again. In spite of the sun’s warmth, she pulled her coat about her and withdrew to the bench.
     
    Reluctantly I followed Kazakian into the tiny engine-room, having taken the precaution of placing a handkerchief over my mouth and nostrils. I staggered before what was almost a tangible wall of heat. I gave instructions to shut everything down and tried to look for the trouble. The engine was typical of its kind, of no specific manufacture and operated by people who treated it with more superstition than mechanical skill, repaired so many times that scarcely an original part remained. I had become used to understanding the individual logic which went into these pieces of machinery; one had to guess the quirks of another’s mind. There was no manual which would have been of the slightest possible use to me. After a while it emerged there was a blockage in one of the pistons. I set about dismantling the whole primitive system, having them clean each part as we went. The launch was burning any fuel she could find and the engine was patched with rags, bits of metal, even the remains of a corned beef can, while the boiler was a nightmare of welded scrap iron. Carefully I reassembled everything and gave orders to make steam again. To my enormous relief she ran more smoothly than before. I had not looked forward to being some minor Daedalus to that seedy Minos.
     
    Delighted, Captain Kazakian insisted we go to his cabin. It was little more than a cubbyhole behind the wheelhouse and smelled worse than any other part of the boat. He wanted to drink some arak. But by now I was firm. First, I told him, I must see if my sister was all right. It was growing dark. I found her shivering on the bench where I had left her. I was worn out and inclined to greater anxiety. I was determined to get us to Venice before anything else went wrong with the boat. I returned to Kazakian’s cabin. I thought Esmé had typhus, I said. This impressed him. He looked grotesquely startled, as if he suspected himself of giving her the disease. Then he insisted vigorously that she was merely seasick. I had lost patience with him.
     
    ‘You had better understand, I think, that it is