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Bond shone his torch on the ceiling and sides of the cave It had certainly been fashioned or finished byoutwards from somewhere in the centre of the island

'At least another twenty yards to go, an must have said to the slave overseers And then the picks would have burst suddenly through to the sea and a welter of ared for ever ater, would have hurtled back into the rock to join the bodies of other witnesses

The great boulder at the entrance would have been put in position to seal the seaward exit The Shark Bay fisherman who suddenly disappeared six months before must have one day found it rolled away by a storrn or by the tidal wave following a hurricane Then he had found the treasure and had known he would need help to dispose of it A white ster in Harleed to the black o back to the black ht current hi the tunnel, Bond guessed that one more barrel of cement had splashed into the mud of the Harlem River

It was then that he heard the dru fish he had heard a soft thunder in the water that had grown as he entered the cave But he had thought it was only the waves against the base of the island, and anyway he had had other things to think about

But now he could distinguish a definite rhythm and the sound boomed and swelled around him in a muffled roar as if he himself was imprisoned inside a vast kettle-druuessed its double purpose It was a great fish-call used, when intruders were about, to attract and excite the fish still further Quarrel had told hiht beat the sides of their canoes with the paddle to wake and bring the fish This must be the same idea And at the sa to the people on shore, made doubly effective when the dead body ashed up on the following day

Another of Mr Big's refineht Bond Another spark thrown off by that extraordinary mind

Well, at least he knehere he was now The druways and Quarrel think as they heard theuessed the drums were some sort of trick and he had ot safely away That would here the gold was hidden and the ship would have to be intercepted on the high seas

Now the enemy was alerted, but would not knoho he was nor that he was still alive He would have to go on if only to stop Solitaire at all costs fro in the doomed ship

Bond looked at his watch It was half an hour after ht have been a week since he started his lonely voyage through the sea of dangers

He felt the Beretta under his rubber skin and wondered if it was already ruined by the water that had got in through the rent made by the barracuda's teeth

Then, the roar of the dru louder everya tiny pinpoint of light ahead of hilimmer showed in the water ahead of him He dowsed the torch and went cautiously towards it The sandy floor of the cave started to hter Now he could see dozens of s around him and ahead the water seeht Grabs peered from the small crevices in the rocks and a baby octopus flattened itself into a phosphorescent star against the ceiling

Then he couldpool beyond it, the white sandy bottoht as day The throb of the drums was very loud He stopped in the shadow of the entrance and saw that the surface was only a few inches away and that lights were shining down into the pool

Bond was in a quandary Any further step and he would be in full view of anyone looking at the pool As he stood, debating with himself, he was horrified to see a thin red cloud of blood spreading beyond the entrance froan to throb, and when he h it There was also the thin stream of bubbles fro up to burst unnoticed at the lip of the entrance

Even as he drew back a few inches into his hole, his future was settled for hie splash and two negroes, naked except for the glass ers held like lances in their left hands

Before his hand reached the knife at his belt they had seized both his ar him to the surface

Hopelessly, helplessly, Bond let himself be man-handled out of the pool on to flat sand He was pulled to his feet and the zips of his rubber suit were torn open His helmet was snatched off his head and his holster fro the debris of his black skin, like a flayed snake, naked except for his brief swied hole in his left shoulder

When his hel boom and stutter of the dru syncopated rhythh to wake all Jaainst the buffeting teuards turned him round and he was faced with a scene so extraordinary that the sound of the druh his eyes

In the foreground, at a green baize card-table, littered with papers, in a folding chair, sat Mr Big, a pen in his hand, looking incuriously at hi in a well-cut fawn tropical suit, with a white shirt and black knitted silk tie His broad chin rested on his left hand and he looked up at Bond as if he had been disturbed in his office by afor a raise in salary He looked polite but faintly bored