A Hero for Leanda by Andrew Garve Read Free Book Online

was an enormously fat, physically lethargic man, with a paunch like a bass drum. Conway liked him at once. There was nothing lethargic about his twinkling dark eyes or his quick intelligence, and it soon became clear that he had the whole situation very much in hand. He was, it appeared, Metaxas’ agent only in the personal and political sense. The two had known each other in boyhood and had kept in touch; they shared the same attitudes over Spyros and the same hopes of Kastella; and when Ionides had learned that Thalia was for sale he’d snapped her up, ostensibly on his own account. Everything had been done discreetly, and the close association between him and Metaxas was not generally known in Mombasa , so that Conway and Leanda could deal with the agent openly.
    They had a short talk, and then Ionides took them to lunch at his pleasant veranda’d bungalow above the golf links, where he introduced them to his pretty dark wife and five of his eight children. After a siesta he got out plans and maps so that Conway could study the city and its surroundings. Mombasa , Conway discovered, was built largely on an island, which was linked on the northwest. Round the island flowed a wide and sheltered creek, deep and safe, providing along one arm the old harbor of Mombasa, now almost entirely given up to Arab dhows, and along another the modern harbor of Kilindini, where the great ships berthed. Southward, between the two harbors, lay a broad lagoon, and beyond, the narrow exit through the reef to the Indian Ocean . Thalia —which they would now go and look at, Ionides said—was lying hauled out above an inlet called Mbaraki Creek, not far from the Yacht Club. A few minutes later they were on their way in the Cadillac.
    Conway , judging his prospective ship as sailors do, by “a blow in the eye,” had an immediately favorable impression. Her lines, as he’d already learned from the drawing, were modern, but not exaggeratedly so, and he guessed she would be reasonably comfortable and sea-kindly, without being slow. Even out of her element she made a lovely picture, with her dazzling white hull, her impeccable mahogany brightwork, her chromium fittings and instruments. A rich man’s toy, Conway thought—though none the worse for that. He walked slowly round her, not wishing to hurry the first pleasurable impact. The draught was about five feet, which should give her a good grip of the water. Judging by the size of the lead keel, most of the ballast was outside. He stroked the immaculate copper sheathing with appreciative fingers—no teredo worm would bore through that.
    Presently he followed Leanda up the short ladder to the cockpit. Aboard, he carried out a thorough examination. The ship was obviously in excellent condition, practically new. There was no need here to probe with a knife for dry rot. She was strong, too—many of the oak frames, he saw, were doubled. The joinery was a delight, the teak deck round the coach roof beautifully laid. With her thirty feet of length and nine feet of beam, her accommodation seemed spacious after Tara’s—a main saloon, with a fixed table between two settee berths and all modem conveniences leading off it; an open cockpit aft; and a forecabin with one bunk. The galley at the after end of the saloon, with its stainless-steel-covered bench and swinging two-burner paraffin stove, left nothing to be desired. There was a roomy navigation space with a chart table and drawers below full of admiralty charts—including, Conway noted, a complete set for the Indian Ocean . He examined the food bins, the ventilators, the chain locker. He took a look at the carefully stowed sails, noting with approval that they were all tanned and proofed against mildew. Back on deck he inspected the halyards and the sheets, the winches and guard rails and steel-tube pulpit forward, the laced canvas dodgers for the cockpit, the anchors and the chain, and the tiny alloy pram dinghy on the coach roof. He opened