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house, and I often saw her crouched on top of the big rock above the woodpile watching me sawing or lazing, leopard-like across the branch of the thorn tree. I hoped she’d stay that way. I didn’t want a civilised tabby cat. It would not have gone with thefurniture.

Chapter 9
What I Was Really Looking For Was a Miracle
    There was a boat-builder’s yard at Gythion. It was at the entrance to the island (now linked to the mainland by a causeway and a sea wall on which Paris and Helen took refuge on the eve of their flight to Troy.) I had often wandered around there among the fishing boats under repair and the sad hulks of vessels whose sea-going days were over and who had now come ashore to end their days as misplaced and neglected as a retired merchant skipper.
    The boat builder’s name was Alexis and he was, I hoped, a friend. There was a boat there that he said I could have for thirty pounds, but it had no motor and no sails and it was too big to row any distance. I did not wander with any specific intent. I had not got thirty pounds. I believed I had a backer to the extent of about ten pounds which was roughly what I bartered my labour and a month of my life for down in the cotton fields. It was just that I didn’t want to miss another opportunity; also I liked wandering around boat-yards at the edge of the sea. What I was really looking for, of course, was a miracle – a miracle that would come to me out of that sea.
    Alexis and I sometimes sat under the trees of the island cafe trying to make conversation about boats above the noise of the record player and above the limitations of my Greek. We didn’t do too badly and the wine was a great help to understanding. “You see that one? I built that one myself.”
    He pointed to a desolate-looking caïque or
kaiki
, as the Greeks call them, which was resting on blocks high up on the beach less than fifty yards away. The paint waspeeling off the open seams along its sides, the rigging was bleached and frayed and the ironwork rusty, and the furled sail revealed its tatters and uselessness all along the length of a distorted boom.
    But as I looked at her I was suddenly conscious of the great difference between her and the other boats hulking in the yard. Her prow lifted proudly and the poise and the tilt of the single mast created the impression – surely intentional – that she would rise gracefully to the incoming swell rather than the littered ground which bore her.
    She was as broad-bosomed and broad-bottomed as a plump dowager but, in my new awareness, I recognised not so much the dignity of the boat as her self-assurance that her merits would be acknowledged and that, once again, she would ride the Mediterranean seaways that were her birthright.
    Alexis launched into a detailed description of the two years he spent lovingly making her using the simple tools of his ancient craft. He told me of the oak, pine and eucalyptus wood that had gone into her construction. Greeks could make a rhetorical performance last ten minutes just to say: “It turned out well” and Alexis was in full flow when I held up my hand like a point-duty policeman to stop him.
    â€œDoes it float?” I asked him.
    â€œGive me a couple of weeks to work on it and she will float you to America.”
    Suddenly I found myself probing in earnest. A few buckets full of water would close up the seams and a few coats of paint would restore her seaworthiness. Rigging and sails would have to be replaced but the engine was as good as new. Closer inspection revealed that thepropeller had a few dents “but it is nothing.”
    I also discovered that the
kaiki
belonged to a man whom Alexis referred to as Kapitanos who used to take boatloads of passengers to the caves at Mani until civilisation caught up with him and he beached his
kaiki
and himself and took the tourists to the caves by coach. That was two years previous.
    Those who know a Greek
kaiki
will