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hauled
himself up.
    “Make it two minutes, Orace,” he
said. “I had company last night.”
    “Yessir,” said Orace
phlegmatically, gathering up cups; and he had retired to the
galley again before Simon saw that he had left a second glass of orange juice
ostentatiously parked in the mid dle of the table.
    The mist had receded under the sun until it
was only a haze on the horizon, and a sky of pale translucent azure
lofted over a sea like glass. Simon went up on deck with a towel round
his middle and slipped adroitly into the water, leaving the towel behind. He cut away across the
estuary in a straight line of hiss ing
crawl, turned and rolled over on his back to wallow in the invigorating delight
of cold water sheathing his naked limbs, and made his way back more leisurely to eat bacon and eggs in a deck
chair in the spacious cockpit while the strengthening sun warmed his shoulders.
    All these things, then, were real—the
physical gusto of life, quickened by unasked romance and laced with the wine of dan ger. Even the privileged cynicism of Orace only
served as a touchstone to prove
reality, rather than to destroy illusion. It was like the old days—which as a matter of fact were by no means so old. He lighted a cigarette and scanned
the other boats which he could see from his anchorage. A cable’s length away, towards the Pointe de la Vicomt é , he picked a white rakish mo tor cruiser of about a hundred tons, and knew that
this must be the one even before he
went down to the saloon for a pair of binoculars
and read the name from a lifebelt. Falkenberg. Si mon’s lips twitched in a half-smile that was
entirely Saintly. The name of the
legendary Flying Dutchman was a perfect baptism for the pirate ship of that hawk-faced black-browed man who called
himself Kurt Vogel, and the Saint mentally saluted the antarctic quality of
bravado that must have chosen it. Still using his
binoculars from the prudent obscurity of the saloon, he took in the high
outswept bows and the streamlined angles of the wheelhouse forward, the clean
lines of superstructure dipping to the
unusually low flat counter, and credited her with twin racing engines and a comfortable thirty knots. Abaft the
saloon there was a curious projection neatly shrouded in canvas—for the moment he could not guess what it was.
    He stropped his razor and ran water into a basin; and he was
finishing his shave when his man came through with the break fast plates. Simon rounded his chin carefully and
said: “Orace, have you still got
that blunderbuss of yours—the young howitzer you bought once in mistake for a gun?”
    “Yessir,” said Orace unemotionally.
    “Good.” The Saint wiped his razor
and splashed water over his face. “You’d better get out my automatic
as well and look it over.”
    “Yessir.”
    “Put a spot of oil in the works and load
up a couple of spare magazines. And grease the cartridges—in case I take a swim
with it.”
    “Yessir.”
    “We may be busy.”
    Orace’s moustache stirred, like a field of
corn under a passing zephyr. His limp was a souvenir of Zeebrugge
Mole and days of authorised commotion as a sergeant of His Majesty’s
Marines, but it is doubtful whether even in those years of
international discord he had heard as many different calls to arms as
had come his way since he first took service with the Saint.
    ” ‘Ave you bin gettin’ in trouble again?” he demanded
fiercely.
    The Saint laughed behind his towel.
    “Not trouble, Orace—just fun. I won’t try
to tell you how beautiful she is, because you have no soul. But she came
out of the sea
like a mermaid, and the standard of living went up again like a rocket. And would you mind moving off that
bit of the carpet, because the
comparison is too hideous. She stood there with the water on her, and she said
‘Will you let me out?’ And I said
‘No!’ Just like that.”
    “Didyer, sir?”
    “And she pulled a gun on me.”
    “Go on, did she?”
    “She pulled a