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and unpopular in a crew of men, who with all their faults and villainies, had the one virtue of courage. Andrews remembered Carlyon’s face, as he stepped back from the dark bundle where it lay on a beach silvered by the moon. The thoughtful eyes which peered from the ape-like skull had been suffused with disgust and a kind of disillusionment. They had re-embarked with the utmost speed, lest the shot should have aroused the revenue men, but Carlyon was the last to enter the boat. He came with evident reluctance like a man who had left a lover on land, and he had indeed left a lover, whom he did not see again for many weeks, a dear and romantic illusion of adventure.
    ‘Andrews, Andrews,’ the voice had lost its charm. That music was spell-less, for Andrews remembered now that it was with the same soft melancholy regret that Carlyon had spoken to the offending smuggler. Pointing out to the sea he had said, ‘Look there. Can you tell me what that is?’ and the man had turned his back to scan a waste of small ridges, which formed, advanced, fell and receded, and continued so to form, advance, fall and recede, as his eyes glazed in death.
    ‘I can’t go to him,’ he said aloud.
    ‘But if he came to you?…’ she asked, as though she intended to make up a quarrel between two schoolboys on their dignity.
    ‘No, no,’ he said, and suddenly rose with a poignant, stabbing sense of fear. ‘What’s that?’ he whispered. Elizabeth leant forward in her chair listening. ‘You are imagining things,’ she said.
    With unexpected brutality he struck her hand, as it lay on the table, with his fist, so that she caught her breath with pain. ‘Can’t you whisper?’ he asked. ‘Do you want to tell the whole world there’s someone here? There, didn’t you hear that?’ And this time she thought that she could hear a very faint stir of gravel no louder than a rustle of leaves. She nodded her head slowly. ‘There’s someone moving on the path,’ she murmured. The hand which he had struck stiffened into a small and resolute fist.
    ‘For God’s sake,’ Andrews muttered, staring round him. She jerked a finger at the door which led to the shed where he had slept the previous night. He half ran to it on tiptoe, and as he looked back, he saw that she had again taken up the stocking which he had dropped unused upon the floor. The red glow of the fire struck upwards and tinged with colour her serene, pale face. Then he closed the door and stood in the dark of the shed, giving occasional rapid shivers like a man in a fever.
    The next sound he heard was Carlyon’s voice. Its suddenness pierced him. He had expected at least to have been given warning, and time to brace his knees and heart, if by no more than a knock or the click of a lifting latch.
    It penetrated to him through keyhole and crack, kindly and reassuring. ‘Forgive me,’ it said. ‘I’m completely lost in this fog.’
    Countering the deceptive music with its own clear tone, Elizabeth’s voice struck against Carlyon’s like sword against sword. ‘Why didn’t you knock?’ it said.
    Had she realized Andrews wondered, listening intently in the dark, that this was the man he feared. He searched a frightened mind in vain for some way of warning her. He could imagine Carlyon’s ape-like face gazing at her with a disarming frankness. ‘One can’t be too careful around here,’ he said. His voice sounded a little nearer as though he had come over to the fire. ‘You are not alone?’ he asked.
    Andrews put his hand to his throat. Something had betrayed him. Perhaps as he stood like a blind man in the dark she was giving away his hiding place soundlessly with a wink, a lift of the eyebrow. He had a momentary impulse to fling open the door and rush at Carlyon. It would at least be man against man with no odds, he thought, until the unsleeping inner critic taunted him: ‘You are not a man.’ At least a coward can have cunning, he protested, and kneeling down on the