Free A Hero for Leanda by Andrew Garve

away altogether. But the average had been high, partly because of an east-going current which, in good winds and poor, carried them steadily toward their objective.
    Leanda, by now, was shaping up into quite a promising sailor. She no longer pointed the ship so close to the wind that it lost way and wallowed sluggishly, or pulled in the jib sheet when Conway told her to haul in the main. She watched everything that he did, and, when she didn’t understand why, she asked. He responded to her interest, explaining and demonstrating with the patience of a devotee. They got on excellently together. After a week of close companionship they were both more friendly and more personally interested in each other.
    One evening, when Leanda was steering and Conway was sitting opposite her in the cockpit, whipping a piece of codline, he suddenly said, “You know, I’m glad I brought you.”
    Leanda said, “Because I can cook, I suppose!”
    “No—but you’re a nice person to have around. I’ve kind of got used to you.”
    “You’ll look well if I’ve spoiled you for sailing alone,” she said.
    “It’ll certainly be very different.”
    Leanda gazed around the empty sea. “I simply don’t know how you can bear it on your own. Nothing to look at, week after week, except water! It’s not my idea of seeing the world.”
    Conway grinned. “Wasn’t it John Stuart Mill who said that the best way to see the world was to get away from it ?“
    “Was it? You’re always quoting funny little tags.”
    “Pearls of wisdom, accumulated at Tara ’s tiller!”
    “Well, I still think it’s an extraordinary way to five .“
    “For that matter,” Conway said, “I find your way of living pretty extraordinary—sneaking about with leaflets, rioting in the streets, being sent to jail, organizing political propaganda... You can’t say it’s natural. Most girls of your age would be thinking of getting married and raising a family.”
    “I’ve plenty of time for that,” Leanda said. “I’m only political about Spyros, you know. Once it’s free, I shall turn to other things. I’ll be glad to.... But you—what happens to you in the end? Are you going to be an Ancient Mariner?”
    “I might be.... Old Joshua Slocum never got tired of it.”
    “Who was he?”
    “He was a man who sailed round the world on his own —till he disappeared. He was supposed to have been run down in the dark.”
    “What a dismal prospect!” Leanda said.
    “Oh, well, maybe I’ll get fed up with it in the end.... Perhaps I’ll be like the sea captain who retired.”
    “What sea captain?”
    “He’d spent forty years afloat. One day he put an oar over his shoulder and walked straight inland. He walked and walked, until one morning, after many weeks, a boy stopped him in the street and said, ‘Hi, mister, what’s that thing over your shoulder?’ Then the sea captain knew he’d reached a place where he could spend the rest of his days in peace!”
    Leanda smiled. “It’s a nice story.... Perhaps you’ll go back to Ireland in the end. People say it’s lovely.”
    “It is indeed,” Conway said. “Pretty as a picture... I remember a place my father and mother used to take me to for picnics sometimes—the wild pansies grew so thick on the dunes you could scarcely move for them, and the fuchsia flowers in the hedges were as big as plums.”
    “What did your father do, Mike?”
    “Oh, he did a lot of things, but toward the end he was keeping a small hotel, a holiday place, up in the wilds of Donegal. He was very sentimental about Ireland . I can see him now, sitting in the bar with a bunch of his friends, singing passionate songs about Ireland ’s struggle in a voice choking with sobs. He was a lovely man, though—a big, tough man with a soft heart. He’d have liked me to take over the place, the way fathers do, but I was tired of the bogs and wanted to get away on my own. So he paid for me to go to Dublin , to the university, and I became