The Gay Dolphin Adventure

Malcolm Saville

A Lone Pine Adventure

First revised edition published in 1969 by Wm. Collins Sons and Co. Ltd., London and Glasgow, This edition was first published in 1970 by May Fair Books Ltd., 14 St. James's Place, London S.W.I, and was printed in Great Britain by Love & Malcomson Ltd., Brighton Road, Redhill, Surrey.

CONDITIONS OF SALE: This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

For My Wife

Foreword

In the western corner of Kent there stretches for some twenty miles in length by three to eight in depth the lonely and mysterious Romney Marsh-land which once was covered by the sea and now is below its level, dotted with sheep and intersected by deep, dark dykes.

On the Kent-Sussex border, at the very edge of the Marsh, the ancient town of Rye clings in a huddle of grey walls and red roofs to a rocky pyramid rising abruptly from the windy levels. You can go to Rye, as Jon and Penny did, to explore for yourself its cobbled streets and narrow winding courts and alleys. You will not find the Gay Dolphin, nor Trader's Street, but there is a street from the end of which you can look out over Camber Castle to the sea. And two miles away to the west, on another but very different kind of hill, Rye's forgotten sister port of Winchelsea drowses in the sun and you can go there, too, and perhaps find the old windmill in which Jon hid.

The country in which this story is set is real, but the people are not and have no reference to any living person. Hastings, Rye and Winchelsea are three of the seven Cinque Ports that in the Middle Ages were responsible for the sea defence of England and were the cradle of the British Navy. The other ports are New Romney, Hythe, Dover and Sandwich.

M.S.

1. Friday: Jon and Penny

The morning sunlight, slanting down through the murky roof and through the smoke and steam of Charing Cross Station, settled in silvery pools round the bookstalls and barriers. Sometimes the scurrying passengers were caught in the beams and picked out, as actors are on the stage by the spotlights.

Just by the entrance of the main departure platform a particularly broad beam caught and then held two hatless heads - one red and the other yellow. The red-head was a girl of about fifteen with wide-set grey eyes and a tip-tilted, freckled nose.