‘Never you mind about my leg. You go ahead with Claire. We’ll take it in our own time.’

Dikon, having gathered from sundry pieces of distressingly obvious pantomime on Simon’s part that this suggestion met with his approval, followed him at a gruelling pace up the track. The ocean spread out blandly before them as they mounted. Dikon, unused to such exercise, very rapidly acquired a pain in the chest, a stitch, and a thudding heart. Sweat gathered behind his spectacles. The smooth soles of his shoes slipped on the dry grass, and Simon’s hobnailed boots threw dust into his face.

‘If we kick it in,’ said Simon presently, ‘we can get up to the place where I reckon I saw the signalling on Thursday night.’

‘Oh.’

‘The others won’t come any farther than this.’

They had climbed to a place where the track widened and ran out to a short headland. Here they found a group of some ten or twelve men who squatted on the dry turf, chewed ends of grass and stared out to sea. Two youths greeted Simon. Dikon recognized one of them as Eru Saul.

‘What d’you know?’ Simon asked.

‘She’s out there,’ said Eru. ‘Going down quick, now. You can pick her up through the glasses.’

They had left the Colonel’s glasses with Gaunt, but Eru lent them his. Dikon had some difficulty focusing them but eventually the hazy blue field clarified and in a moment or two he found a tiny black triangle. It looked appallingly insignificant.

‘They’ve been out to see if they could salvage anything,’ said Eru, ‘but not a chance. She’s packed up all right. Tough!’

‘I’ll say,’ said Simon. ‘Come on, Bell.’

Dikon returned the field glasses, thanked Eru Saul and with feelings of the liveliest distaste meekly followed Simon up the fence line which now rose precipitously before flattening out to encompass a higher shoulder of the Peak. At last they reached a very small platform, no more than a shelf in the seaward face of the mountain. Dikon was profoundly relieved to see Simon, who was well ahead, come to a halt and squat on his heels.

‘What I reckon,’ said Simon as Dikon crawled up beside him, ‘he must have worked it from here.’

Dry-mouthed and still very short-winded, Dikon prepared to fling himself down on the ledge.

‘Here!’ said Simon. ‘Better cut that out. Stay where you are. We don’t want it mucked up. Pity it rained yesterday.’

‘And what do you expect to find, may I ask?’ asked Dikon acidly. Physical discomfort did not increase his tolerance for Simon’s high-handedness. ‘Are you by any chance building on footprints? My poor fellow, let me tell you that footprints exist only on sandy beaches and in the minds of detective fiction-mongers. All that twittering about bent blades of grass and imprints slightly defaced by rain! In my opinion, they do not occur.’