I had never noticed the island before, despite its most noticeable name. It was a very small island, a mere speck that lay some twenty miles south-east from Wavebreaker’s present position, and that was exactly the direction from which the currents and wind would drive a derelict boat.

I fetched the pilot book and looked up Murder Cay, but found no listing for the grimly named island. “Try Sister Island,” Ellen suggested laconically.

It seemed a perverse suggestion, but Ellen’s perversity was often justified, so I duly looked up Sister Island and discovered that was the new name for Murder Cay. The Pilot Book offered no explanation for that change of name, which seemed a deal of trouble for what must be one of the smallest inhabited islands in all the Bahamas. Sister Island was only three miles long and was never more than a half-mile wide. The island’s southernmost promontory was marked with a white light which was meant to flash three times every fifteen seconds and be visible up to five miles away, but the book ominously reported that the light was ‘unreliable’. The whole island was surrounded by coral reefs called the Devil’s Necklace, and I wondered what unfortunate sailor had given the island and its reefs their macabre names. The deep-water access to Murder Cay lay through a dog-legged and unbuoyed passage to the west of the island. The best guide to the deep-water approach seemed to be a tall skeleton radio mast that was conveniently opposite the passage entrance and was supposedly marked with red air-warning beacons. There was an airstrip on the island which should have displayed a flashing green and white light, but, like the white light and the air-warning beacons, the green and white light was also said to be unreliable. The eastern part of the lagoon evidently offered good shelter, but the pilot book noted that the island had no facilities for visiting yachts. In other words, mariners were being warned to keep away from Murder Cay, yet the pencil line on Hirondelle’s chart led inexorably to that island, and there it had ended.