With no jury or judge

shouted. Mallory stiffened, froze to immobility. The needle had jammed hard into the palm of his band, but he didn't even notice it. The lieutenant had spoken in English! Stevens was so young, so inexperienced. He'll fall for it, Mallory thought with a sudden sick certainty, he's bound to fall for it. But Stevens didn't fall for it. He opened the door, leaned out, cupped his hand to his ear and gazed vacantly up to the sky, his mouth wide open. It was so perfect an imitation of dull-Witted failure to catch or comprehend a shouted message that it was almost a caricature. Mallory could have hugged him. Not in his actions alone, but in his dark, shabby clothes and hair as blackly counterfeit as Miller's, Stevens was the slow, suspicious island fisherman to the life. "Eh?" he bawled. "Lower your sails! We are coming aboard!" English again, Mallory noted; a persistent fellow this. Stevens stared at him blankly, looked round helplessly at Andrea and Mallory: their faces registered a lack of comprehension as convincing as his own. He shrugged his shoulders in despair. "I am sorry, I do not understand German," he shouted. "Can you not speak my language?" Stevens's Greek was perfect, fluent and idiomatic. It was also the Greek of Attica, not of the islands; but Mallory felt sure that the lieutenant wouldn't know the difference. He didn't. He shook his head in exasperation, called in slow, halting Greek: "Stop your boat at once. We are coming aboard." "Stop my boat!" The indignation was so genuine, the accompanying flood of furious oaths so authentic, that even the lieutenant was momentarily taken back. "And why should I stop my boat for you, youyou" "You have ten seconds," the lieutenant interrupted. He was on balance again, cold, precise. "Then we will shoot." Stevens gestured in admission of defeat and turned to Andrea and Mallory. "Our conquerors have spoken," he said bitterly. "Lower the sails." Quickly they loosened the sheets from the cleats at the foot of the mast. Mallory pulled the jib down, gathered the sail in his arms and squatted sullenly on the deckhe knew a dozen hostile eyes were watching himclose by the fish box. The sail covering his knees and the old coat, his forearms on his thighs, he sat with head bowed and hands dangling between his knees, the picture of heart-struck dejection. The lug-sail, weighted by the boom at the top, came down with a rush. Andrea stepped over it, walked a couple of fujifilm e900 digital camera instructions uncertain paces aft, then stopped, huge hands hanging emptily by his sides. A sudden deepening in the muted throbbing of the diesel, a spin of the wheel and the big German caique was rubbing alongside. Quickly, but carefully enough to keep out of the line of fire of the mounted Spandaus there was a second clearly visible now on the poopthe three men armed with the Schmeissers leapt aboard. Immediately one ran forward, whirled round level with the foremast, his automatic carbine circling gently to cover all of the crew. All except Malloryand be was leaving Mallory in the safe bands of the Spandan gunner in the bows. Detachedly, Mallory admired the precision, the timing, the clockwork inevitability of an old routine. He raised his head, looked around him with a slow, peasant indifference. Casey Brown was squatting on the deck abreast the engine-room, working on the big bailsilencer on top of the batch-cover. Dusty Miller, two paces farther for'ard and with his brows furrowed in concentration, was laboriously cutting a section of metal from a little tin box, presumably to help in the engine repairs. He was holding the wire-cutting pliers in his left handand Miller, Mallory knew, was right-handed. Neither Stevens nor Andrea had moved. The man beside the foremast still stood there, eyes unwinking. The other two were walking slowly aft, bad just passed Andrea, their carriage relaxed and easy, the bearing of men who know they have everything so completely under control that even the idea of trouble is ridiculous. Carefully, coldly and precisely, at point-blank range and through the folds of both coat and sail, Mallory shot the Spandau machine-gunner through the heart, swung the still chattering Bren round and saw the guard by the mast crumple and die, half his chest torn away by the tearing slugs of the machine-gun. But the dead man was still on his feet, still had not hit the deck, when four things happened simultaneously. Casey Brown had had his band on Miller's silenced automatic, lying concealed beneath the ball-silencer, for over a minute. Now he squeezed the trigger four times, for he wanted to mak' siccar; the after machine-gunner leaned forward tiredly over his tripod, lifeless fingers locked on the firing-guard. Miller crimped the three-second chemical fuse with the pliers, lobbed the tin box into the enemy engine-room, Stevens spun the armed stick-grenade into the opposite wheelhouse and