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and saluted back. Immediately, there were so many salutes they looked like waving corn, and someone shouted ‘Vivan los mariñeros ingleses.’
    Kelly smiled, feeling the initiative was still his, as it had been throughout the interview. He had stamped his own presence on the opposition and that, surely, was the way to success. Master of your fate. Captain of your soul. Nobody pushed Kelly Maguire about. Not even the Spanish government.
    As he began to climb down the jumping ladder back to the whaler, he was aware of dozens of heads hanging over the rails above him. As the boat began to draw away, there were even a few friendly waves but he kept his gaze firmly ahead and showed no signs of having seen them.
    Back aboard Badger, he climbed to the bridge where he was met by Smart. As he nodded, Smart turned to the voice pipe. ‘Half ahead both.’
    As they passed the old freighter, they could see a fat man wearing a peaked cap leaning on the bridge. The bridge messenger handed over a megaphone and Kelly shouted into it.
    ‘You may carry on,’ he said. ‘They’ve accepted that you’re outside territorial waters.’
    The man in the cap waved and, a few moments later, they saw the water churning at her stern as she began to move off.
    ‘I’ll go and change,’ Kelly said.
    As they watched him go to his cabin, Smart turned to the navigating officer.
    ‘How did he do it?’ he asked.
    The navigator looked bewildered for a moment, then he grinned. ‘Talked to ‘em like a Dutch uncle,’ he said. ‘At one point, I thought he was even going to put his arm round that bloody Spaniard’s shoulder.’
    Smart smiled. ‘I bet he had the other behind his back, though,’ he said. ‘Wearing a knuckle-duster.’

 
     
Two
    Gibraltar lay like a crouching lion across the sea, a vast lump of limestone on the southern tip of Spain, dominating the narrow stretch of water that was a cross-roads for ships hurrying east and west, to and from the Mediterranean, and north and south on the North African trade route.
    It was never entirely foreign. The beer had a different label, sherry was a novelty and the brandy sometimes produced disastrous results, but the pubs and cafés were much the same as in Portsmouth, dispensing egg and chips for the sailors and providing pianos so they could thrash the keys in a sing-song when they felt like it.
    Since the Ayala-Jeb el Aioun incident, the war had grown. In the early days it hadn’t been a real war at all, just a comic opera with an occasional death, run by the grandees of the Right against the dozens of parties of the Left, all known by a different set of initials – POUM, PSUC, FAI, CNT, UGT – who couldn’t even agree among themselves. The whole thing had been ruled by ‘mañana’ – tomorrow – that single word that seemed to regulate the whole of Spanish life, while the artillery shells that were fired were said to be so old and useless the belligerents just fired them back; there was even said to be one which had been going backwards and forwards for months.
    It was different now. Russian support for the government had increased, and international brigades had been formed from volunteers from every country in Europe – many of them young men of wealthy families out to show their disgust at their parents’ indifference to the poverty and misery of the Depression by fighting for the wrong side. The reaction, of course, had been strong German and Italian support for the fascist revolutionaries which had brought their soldiers, aeroplanes and ships into the conflict. A policy of non-intervention was still being followed by the French and British Governments but with international meddling had come increased bitterness, and in a savage war of ideologies, it was now far from abnormal for women teachers to be stripped, marched about with shaven heads or even shot, and for priests to fight against priests and not hesitate to kill. To the Fascists the Republicans were ‘anti-Christ