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and save them from the storm. Older men than Simon turned, drenched, desperate, exhausted, to see whether they would find their own courage or their own despair reflected back from his dark, cunning, courtier's eyes.
    ‘Er’ll not stand much more of this, sir! Ship’s riddled like a sprained cask a'ready!’
    ‘Fast as we plugs 'er, the sea bursts the plug out!’
    ‘We've lost four bolts of cloth down yer, and little but water to show for it!’
    John Hawkins watched them for a moment without answering, the lantern-light showing the sodden sea-cloak, the wet black glove around the mast, and the way the wind had curled and disordered the usually trim hair and beard on the small, round head. Yet his smile, when it came, was sardonic, unafraid.
    ‘The sea drives a hard bargain, it seems! But we shall have to pay up, my masters - there's naught else for it. Do you have more cloth, Master Drake?’
    ‘Aye, sir.’
    ‘Then let us set to. These leaks must be plugged - we can only run before the wind just now. Hand me that maul, master carpenter!’ As he moved aft from the mast, he noticed Simon for the first time, the white, panic-stricken face lit by a swing of the lantern. ‘Come on, lad, you'll live to see worse than this.’
    And so, for another long age, they slipped and struggled and cursed as they fought the inrushing sea in a welter of foam and darkness, until at last, somehow, there was less water, the main leaks only oozed steadily through their plugs where once they had spouted, and Simon was able to collapse, exhausted, with his back to the seeping hull, and sleep.
    Tom ached to join him; but first, for some reason, he did not know why, he felt a need to go up on deck again, to the slippery, heaving quarterdeck, to feel the numbing blast and drenching rain of the scarcely slackened storm. He stared out into the night at the sudden luminous bursts of foam that fumed alongside out of the chaotic darkness of the savage, heaving sea. Up here, his heart sang and exulted with the fury of the storm, and he was not at all afraid. He stood near the Master, Robert Barrett, a massive, silent dark figure by the weather rail. Tom saw the water streaming off his cloak as he stood, conning the ship through the night, feeling what he could not see - the state of the tiny, reefed foresail that had been repaired, the movements of the men on the deck below at the tiller, the continually changing response of the top-heavy ship to the pressure of wind and wave.
    Tom stared into the turbulent night, and wondered if he, too, might be such a man one day; so calm and steady, on such a hellish night. But that was an ocean of time away; for the moment, there was the joy of this night, this storm; and beyond that - beyond the luminous foaming spray bursting over the bowsprit - was the southern sea, and their goal: the legendary coast of Guinea. Africa!

4. Conga
    T HERE WAS a time when Madu began to feel he would have to stop; simply throw down his crutch and collapse on the hard beaten dust of the trail, and let the hundred bare feet of his people trample over him. All that long hot day they had been travelling, from dawn, when the first lemon-coloured spears of early light lanced their way between the trees to a chorus of birdsong, until late afternoon, when the white-hot silver glare of the sun was as hot and searing as a blacksmith's forge. Madu's head throbbed, and his eyes began to blur. The day was a terrible endless dream, from which he could escape only by closing his eyes and collapsing into black, exhausted sleep.
    Only Temba, and the fear of shame, prevented him. Temba stayed with him, cheerfully carrying his own headbundle, the rolled-up leopardskin, and leading the kid behind him. His clowning never ceased. Once the kid escaped, and Temba, enraged, wrapped himself in the leopardskin and chased it, snarling, until he was stopped by a furious young mother who said he had frightened her baby. When he had caught the kid he stood