Sailhardy had stood with me gazing at the fantastic sight. " The Albatross' Foot!" he had exclaimed softly. " The warm current was sweeping past Tristan as we left the other day. It will be here in a day or two. It will cut that ice up like a hot knife through butter."

It did. I watched in amazement as Sailhardy's strange story of the warm, life-bringing current came true. The great moving battalions of ice, and even the landfast ice on the mainland, wilted before the attack of The Albatross' Foot. In a world where everything was frozen, The Albatross'

Foot was the only warm thing. I blessed the day I had brought the islander with me. My squadron was saved. During the next two years, Sailhardy told me many things about the strange current of Tristan da Cunha-completely fascinating to an oceanographer like myself. But it was war, and we had work-grim work-to do, and there was not time or opportunity to carry out even the preliminaries to the study I wished to make of The Albatross' Foot. After the squadron had been saved Sailhardy had enjoyed a privileged position on the bridge of H.M.S. Scott.

"I don't think Jimmy the One ever got used to my being on the bridge," smiled Sailhardy, as if reading my thoughts.

" Regular Royal Navy," I said. " The form, old boy. Everything according to tradition. Even the admiral at the

Cape never got used to me, a mere volunteer sailor, being given a strategic command. I was in the same category as yourself. Not a hundred per cent. A week-end sailor. An upstart. An islander and a Cambridge scientist-it was just too much for some of the old school of regulars to stomach."

" Yes," exclaimed Sailhardy hotly. " Their goddamned prejudice! Jimmy the One asked me once, what does your captain-you were always my captain-know of running a ship the regular way?"

I hadn't heard this one.

" And what did you say?" I asked.