The islanders called it The Albatross' Foot, so Sailhardy had said, because the current resembled, in macrocosm, the warm double vein in an albatross' foot with which the great bird hatches its eggs. The only warm thing in an albatross' nest in sub-zero temperatures is that life-giving warm vein. Life-giving it was, said Sailhardy, in the truest sense, because it brought in early summer the basic plankton-life for all other life to the frozen seas round Tristan, and by its warmth dispersed the ice.

" Drake Passage," repeated Sailhardy. " There's a gale coming, and it's from the Drake Passage. I smell it. It's not coming from the South Shetlands at all." His voice, with its strange fascinating accent, had a curious clarity of modula tion, as if he had learned the trick of talking against a storm without having to raise his voice. The flat calm was broken only by an occasional cat's-paw of wind.

" Does it matter?" I asked.

He looked at me sternly. " Bruce," he said, " you've been away from the Southern Ocean too long. You've forgotten. You came back to Tristan that once after the war-you stayed a whole year until the next ship-but for the rest of the time you've been in Cape Town and London."

I laughed. " A man must live, Sailhardy, even an oceanographer. I came back to Tristan after the war and spent every penny of my war-time gratuity trying to find The Albatross' Foot. You know. How many days of that year did we spend at sea together, you and I, in this very boat?" He came over to the stern and unshipped the high, clumsy tiller, as if to reiterate his warning of an impending storm. " It wasn't long enough," he said. " It took three years before The Albatross' Foot came again. You should have waited."