" I want proof," I said. " I want plankton. I want eightyeight million plankton." He pulled the battered, Navy-style cap back from the red-brown balaclava cap beneath, and looked speculatively at me.

" Eighty-eight million?"

I grinned at him. " My special net will hold exactly one quart of sea-water, and one quart of sea-water, in the concentration I need to prove The Albatross' Foot, will contain eighty-eight million of the little so-and-so's. When-and if we ever do find them, you shall see what a little beauty a plankton really is. Under the microscope. It's octagonal, with a magnificent six-starred centre. The middle is round, and is all fluted and grained like machined silver wire."

" You'd better hurry and get that net up," he said. He reached out and took the hard collar of my buttoned-up anorak jacket and rubbed it against the cloth by my throat.

" Listen!" he said. " Listen. If it were dry, you'd hear it squeak. That would mean your storm is from the South Shetlands. But it doesn't. It's wet. It means it's from the Drake Passage."

I could see it in his face. He was willing the storm-a storm of which I could see not the slightest sign-to come. He wanted to pit the whaleboat against a full gale in the Southern Ocean. He looked to his right, to the south-west first, and then to his left, to the south-east. Then he swung round and gazed at Tristan itself, dominated by the old snowcapped volcano and slightly masked by cloud, like a miniature version of the famous Table Mountain tablecloth at Cape Town.

" Masthead," he said, so softly that I had to strain to hear. " Tristan da Cunha, the masthead of the world!" I ran my eye over the lean figure. I knew he was my own age, but the attrition of wind, sea and ice had weathered his face to an age anywhere between forty and sixty.

" And a masthead must have a lookout," I joked. " That is why I took you with me during the war. What did I know of the Southern Ocean then? I wanted a man with all the sea-lore of this ocean at his fingertips. I was as scared as hell of losing my ships before I even got a sight of a raider. I found my man-Sailhardy."