Free Splintered Icon by Bill Napier Page A

thousand? How close are we to the Caribbean or the Americas?'
    I felt that I was being tested. As anxious to please as a puppy with a new master, I searched my brains desperately for an answer. It was with extreme reluctance that I had to say, 'I do not know, sir.'
    Mr Harriot laughed, while clenching the tube between his teeth. 'Neither does anyone else, young Ogilvie, do not be so downcast. Consider a line drawn from the North Pole of the earth, through London, to the South Pole. This is a line of longitude. If the sun is at its highest point along that line, then at that same moment the sun is also at its lowest point along the opposite line of longitude, one hundred and eighty degrees away.'
    A light dawned, vaguely. 'But if we know the moment of noon in England, and if noon on our ship comes six hours later, then we must be a quarter of the way round the globe, since the sun takes twenty-four hours to travel around the earth. Therefore our longitude is ninety degrees away from that of England.' I could hardly contain my pride in providing the answer.
    Mr Harriot smiled. 'But how can you tell when it is noon in England?'
    'Set a clock to noon when you leave England! Whenever it reads noon on the clock, whatever the time of day or night on the ship—'
    'What clock? A sand glass? An Egyptian water clock? A spring clock? These barely keep time on stationary ground. On a heaving ship they are useless.'
    'Then I am baffled, Mr Harriot.' I could see that I was failing, not only as a warrior, or even as a mariner, but also as a scholar. The dreadful thought came to me that perhaps my level in life was that of a shepherd after all.
    Harriot laughed again. 'Don't look so dismayed! The problem has defeated the best minds in England and elsewhere. But with half the globe still to be discovered, and trade routes to be found joining us to Cathay, and vast treasures being brought from the Americas, the man who solves the problem of accurate navigation will become rich beyond measure.'
     
    CHAPTER 10
     
    A secret purpose!
    Somewhere around three in the morning my eyes refused to stay open a minute longer. I staggered to bed and slipped under cool sheets. I sank into dreamland with a jumble of sailing ships, ballockknives, heads on poles and a hardwood truncheon rising and falling, rising and falling, thumping again and again into the body of a fifteen-year old boy; and Salter, vomit trickling down his head, his face contorted in anger, shouting, 'Secret purpose, secret purpose, what is the secret purpose?'
    In the grey light of the morning I skipped breakfast, paid the little Italian landlady, threw my holdall with the manuscript into the back of the Toyota and took off, following the signs to The North. Once on the motorway I pushed ninety, keeping in the fast lane most of the way. I was feeling angry.
    Partially it was professional pique. Tebbit got up my nose. I didn't like being treated like one of the servants, excluded by a snap of the fingers from what might just turn out to be a superb piece of historical research. Certainly not by some minor gentry who seemed to think he was master of the universe. The Roanoke expedition was the first attempt to colonise North America; Tebbit had been handed a journal with something to say about that, and I wanted to know what it was. In any case, I doubted if he had the proprietorial right to deny me my slice of history.
    And I felt entitled for another reason: my kidney was still aching. All the way up the motorway, the words secret purpose kept going through my head.
    I'm damned if I'm going to let this slip through my hands; just translate and walk away.
    I was in my flat by noon. I kept ringing the Tebbit number, but it was permanently engaged, and I finally drove out to Picardy House. I was met by an impressive array of Bentleys and Jaguars, and thought for a moment I'd stumbled on a party until my eye caught the uniformed policeman and the people in white overalls fussing around the