Then Pitt thought of himself. Not with self-pride for destroying the yellow Albatros or searching the Queen Artemisia and getting away with it undetected. He thought of himself only as an idiot for risking his life on a job he had no business performing, a job he wasn't paid to do. His orders were to expedite oceanographic expeditions. No one said anything about chasing after drug smugglers. What could he accomplish? He wasn't a guardian angel of humanity. Let Zacynthus, Zeno, INTERPOL and every other damn cop in the world play cat and mouse with von Till. It was their game, they were trained for it. And they were paid for it too.

Again Pitt swore loudly to himself. He had already spent too much time daydreaming. It was time to head for shore. Mechanically, his eyes watched the ship's lights diminish bit by bit into the fading darkness of the early morning. He was just wading onto the beach when the sun lifted itself from the horizon and threw its rays on the rock-strewn summits of the Thasos mountains.

Pitt stripped off the tank and let it fall to the soft wet sand along with the breathing regulator and his mask and snorkel. Exhaustion curled its numbing tentacles around him and he succumbed to it, dropping to his hands and knees. His body felt sore and beat, but his mind hardly noticed these things; it was busy with something else.

Pitt could find no indication of the heroin on board the ship, nor would the Bureau of Narcotics or the Customs Inspectors. That much was certain. Below the waterline, that was a possibility. But surely the wary investigators would have divers examine every inch of the hull when the ship docked. Besides, there was no way a cargo of that size could be removed, unless it was dropped in the water and recovered later. That wouldn't work either, he thought, it was too obvious; retrieving a watertight container filled with a hundred and thirty tons of solid material would require a full scale salvage operation. No, there had to be a more ingenious method, one that had successfully defied detection for so long.

He took the driver's knife and idly began sketching the Queen Artemisia's outline in the wet sand. Then, quite suddenly, the idea of a diagram intrigued him. He stood up and traced a hull that stretched for approximately thirty feet. The bridge, the holds and engine room, every detail he could recall was etched into the yielding white sand. Minutes passed and the ship started to take shape. Pitt had become so totally absorbed in his work that he didn't notice an old man and a donkey, trudging wearily along the beach.

The old man stopped in his tracks and stared at Pitt from a ripened old face that had seen too many decades of strife to show an expression of bewilderment. After a few moments he shrugged uncomprehendingly and ambled off after his donkey.