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Here, because of the huge coastal swa has happened since Colue Jamaican fishermen have taken the place of the Arawak Indians, but otherwise there is the iht it the most beautiful beach he had ever seen, fiveeasily into the breakers and, behind, the palraceful disarray to the horizon Under therey canoes were pulled up beside pinkthem smoke rose from the palm thatch cabins of the fishermen in the shade between the swa the cabins, set on a rough lawn of Bahae for the employees of the West Indian Citrus Company It was built on stilts to keep the terainst h track and parked under the house While Quarrel chose two rooms and made them coh the palm trees to the sea, twenty yards away

For an hour he swa of Surprise and its secret, fixing these three hundred yards in hisabout the shark and barracuda and the other hazards of the sea, that great library of books one cannot read

Walking back to the little wooden bungalow, Bond picked up his first sandfly bites Quarrel chuckled when he saw the flat buly

'Can't do nuthen to keep them away, Cap'n,' he said 'But Ah kin stop theit the salt off They only bites hard for an hour in the evenin' and then they likes salt with their dinner'

When Bond came out of the shower Quarrel produced an old medicine bottle and swabbed the bites with a brown liquid that set more skeeters and sandfly in the Cayives theot this ht brought its quick melancholy and then the stars and the three-quarter moon blazed down and the sea died to a whisper There was the short lull between the two great winds of Jaain

Quarrel jerked his head towards the

'De "Undertaker's Wind",' he commented

'How's that?' asked Bond, startled

'On-and-off shore breeze de sailors call it,' said Quarrel

'De Undertaker blow de bad air out of de Island nightti de "Doctor's Wind" come and blow de sweet air in from de sea Leastwise dat's e calls dem in Jamaica'

Quarrel looked quizzically at Bond

'Guess you and de Undertaker's Wind got much de sahed shortly 'Glad I don't have to keep the same hours,' he said

Outside, the crickets and the tree-frogs started to zing and tinkle and the great hawk across the s and clutched it, gazing with tre from the cross-beams inside

Occasionally a pair of fisherirls, would walk by down the beach on their way to the single tiny rum-shop at the point of the bay No man walked alone for fear of the duppies under the trees, or the rolling calf, the ghastly anis in chains and fla out of its nostrils

While Quarrel prepared one of the succulent etables that were to be their staple diet, Bond sat under the light and pored over the books that Strangways had borrowed from the Jamaica Institute, books on the tropical sea and its denizens by Beebe and Allyn and others, and on sub- by Gousteau and Hass When he set out to cross those three hundred yards of sea, he was deter to chance He knew the calibre of Mr Big and he guessed that the defences of Surprise would be technically brilliant He thought they would not involve si needed to work undisturbed by the police He had to keep out of reach of the law He guessed that so Man's work for him and it was on these that he concentrated, on murder by shark and barracuda, perhaps by Manta Ray and octopus

The facts set out by the naturalists were chilling and awe-inspiring, but the experiences of Cousteau in the Mediterranean and of Hass in the Red Sea and Caribbean were ht Bond's dreaiant squids and sting rays, hammerheads and the saw-teeth of barracuda, so that he whimpered and sweated in his sleep

On the next day he started his training under the critical, appraising eyes of Quarrel Everyhe swa the firalow At about nine they would set out in a canoe, the single triangular sail taking thee Bay where the sand ends in cliffs and sainst the coast

Here they would beach the canoe and Quarrel would take hiun on breathtaking expeditions in the sort of waters he would encounter in Shark Bay

They hunted quietly, a few yards apart, Quarreleffortlessly in an element in which he was alht the sea but always to give and take with the currents and eddies and not to struggle against them, to use judo tactics in the water

On the first day he ca spines in his side Quarrel grinned and treated the wounds with ed Bond for half an hour with pal quietly the while about the fish they had seen that day, explaining the habits of the carnivores and the ground-feeders, the ca colour through the blood stream

He also had never known fish to attack a man except in desperation or because there was blood in the water He explained that fish are rarely hungry in tropical waters and that most of their weapons are for defence and not for attack The only exception, he admitted, was the barracuda 'Mean fish,' he called them, fearless since they knew no enemy except disease, capable of fifty miles an hour over short distances, and with the worst battery of teeth of any fish in the sea