'He saw you?'

'Oh yes, and the girls too, and Ian – wanted to speak to Geordie but he was unaccountably sicker just then.' Geordie, propped up on a saloon berth, winked at me, and I realized that my news had cheered everyone up amazingly. Although we, and our ship, were all technically still under arrest it was clear that we weren't in any real trouble, thanks to the various bits of evidence I had offered the police chief, and we lacked only physical freedom – not any of the oppression of spirit that imprisonment usually meant.

Tell me about your interview,' I asked Campbell.

It had apparently been somewhat hilarious. Instead of being chastened at being caught with a small armoury under his bunk Campbell was airy and unconcerned about it, claiming that the guns were properly licensed, that he was a well-known collector and wouldn't dream of travelling without something for target practice, and that in any case only one of his guns had been fired – and that by his daughter, gallantly defending herself from attack by a shipload of murderous pirates. He was scathing about Clare's poor shooting and seemed not at all troubled by her having winged a man, only irked by her not having killed him outright. It appeared that while in Papeete, Kane had had a small bullet taken from his shoulder, ironically by the same doctor who tended to Geordie. He was not, it seemed, badly hurt, which disappointed Campbell considerably.

He was soundly reproved for not having declared the guns on his arrival and was threatened with their confiscation, but IK he'd wangled his way out of that somehow; and had got away with their being sealed at the mouth for the duration of our stay.

It turned out that the other gun that I had seen belonged to Nick Dugan, and he was similarly ticked off. According to Clare there had been at least two other small handguns in use during Esmerelda's fight with Pearl, but none of them surfaced during the search that was made, and I asked no questions. I also learned that Geordie had a shotgun on board which apart from being legally licenced, had even been declared by him to the Papeete customs – and was the only gun on board that had not seen some action.

Campbell had blustered much as I had and had invoked all the powers he could think of to back his credentials, and apparently M. Chamant had done much what he had done with me – had let him speak at will, listened carefully, and had finally released him back to the ship with a fairly mild request that he write down an account of the affair. Everything pointed to our story being accepted, and indeed later that afternoon the guards began to let us all out on deck in twos and threes for some exercise, after they'd moved Esmerelda to a mooring buoy well away from the quayside. Things were looking up, and we all turned in that night a great deal happier than we'd been at the start of the day.* 5*

A senior police official came on board next morning and took formal statements from everyone on board, which took a considerable time, though some of us had written them out in advance and needed only to sign them in the official presence. My camera was removed as well, and I prayed that my photography had been up to scratch. The doctor came to see Geordie again and Campbell cornered him and asked innumerable questions about the hospital on Tanakabu, and about the possibility of getting another doctor to go out there soon.

We were all beginning to feel restless and uneasy. In spite of some relaxation, we were still confined to the ship and as they kept us battened down apart from whoever was being allowed on deck it was stifling and airless on board.

Some time in the afternoon Geordie sent word that he'd like a word with me and so I went to his cabin. He was propped up in bed and surrounded by books. His face was still heavily bandaged but he was obviously much stronger and the effects of the concussion had long worn off.

'Sit down, boy,' he said. 'I think I've found something.'

To do with what?' I asked, though I could already guess. Several of the books were nautical and the Pilot was prominent among them. 'Has it got to do with those damned nodules?'

'Yes, it has. Just listen awhile, will you?'

I felt a small indefinite itch starting in the back of my skull. At the end of the terrible business on Tanakabu I had felt sickened of the whole search and had wanted nothing more to do with it. The nodules could lie on the seabed forever as far as I was concerned, and with the murder of Mark more or less exposed even the urge to lay that ghost had died away to a dull resignation. But now, deprived of ordinary activity, I couldn't help feeling that it would be interesting to have the problem to chew on again, and my professional curiosity was rising to the surface once more. So I settled down to hear Geordie out without protest.

'I was thinking of that lunatic Kane,' he said. 'He slipped up when he mentioned New Britain – the time he shouldn't have known about it. I got to thinking that maybe he'd slipped up again, so I started to think of all the things he ever said that I knew of, and I found this. It's very interesting light reading.'

He handed me Volume Two of the Pacific Ocean Pilot opened at a particular page, and I began to read where he pointed. Before I had got to the bottom of the page my eyebrows had lifted in surprise. It was a lengthy passage and took some time to absorb, and when I had finished I said noncommittally, 'Very interesting, Geordie – but why?'

He said carefully, 'I don't want to start any more hares-we blundered badly over Minerva – but I think that's the explanation of the other drawing in the diary. If it seems to fit in with your professional requirements, that is.'

It did.

'Let's get the boss in on this,' I said and he half-lifted himself from his bunk in delight. He'd played his fish and caught it.

I got up and went to round up Campbell, Ian and Clare and brought them back to the cabin. 'Okay, Geordie. Begin at the beginning.' I could see that the others were as pleased as I had been to have something new to think about.

'I was thinking about Kane,' Geordie said. 'I was going over in my mind everything he'd said. Then I remembered that when he'd seen Clare's drawings he'd called one of them a "scraggy falcon". We all saw it as an eagle, didn't we? So I checked on falcons in the Pilot and found there really is a Falcon Island. The local name is Fonua Fo'ou but it's sometimes called Falcon because it was discovered by HMS Falcon in 1865.'

Clare said, 'But where's the "disappearing trick"?'

'That's the joker,' I said. 'Falcon Island disappears.'

'Now wait a minute,' said Campbell, a little alarmed. 'We've had enough of this nonsense with Minerva.'

'It's not quite the same thing,' said Geordie. 'Recife de Minerve was a shoal – exact position unknown. Falcon, or Fonua Fo'ou, has had its position measured to a hair – but it isn't always there.'

'What the hell do you mean by that?' Campbell exploded.

Geordie grinned and said to me, 'You'd better tell them -you're the expert.'

'Falcon Island is apparently the top of a submarine volcano of the cinder type,' I said soberly. 'Every so often it erupts and pumps out a few billion tons of ash and cinders, enough to form a sizeable island.' I referred to the Pilot. 'In 1889 it was over a mile square and about a hundred and fifty feet high; in April 1894 there wasn't anything except a shoal, but by December of the same year it was three miles long, one and a half miles wide, and fifty feet high.'

I pointed to the pages. There's a long record of its coming and goings, but to bring it up to date- in 1930, Falcon was one and a quarter miles long and four hundred and seventy feet high. In 1949 it had vanished and there were nine fathoms of water in the same position.'

I passed the book over to Campbell. 'What seems to happen is that the island gets washed away. The material coming out of the volcano would be pretty friable and a lot of it would be soluble in water.'