Tender to Danger

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Mr. Meriden was eccentric. Mr. Meriden was very rich. Mr. Meriden was very stubborn. He was also a very tiresome man. Untroubled either by a sense of humour or by too keen an awareness of reality, he pursued his eccentricities with a determination that had something quite obsessional about it. No obstacle deterred him; no obstacle, that is, which could be battered down by money. Opposition to his wishes merely confirmed his belief in the essential rightness of them. Those who worked for Mr. Meriden earned their pay.

The Skipper of the motor yacht Moonlight thought of all this as he gazed across the green water of Zavrana’s little harbour. When he looked at the mountains that drew an ominous curtain round the town, he remembered his mild protest against the voyage. “Well, I don’t know, Mr. Meriden. Supposing there’s a war. Yugoslavia’s a long way from home.”

War! Mr. Meriden had smiled omnipotently and laid it down that there would be no war, and here they were, idling along the Dalmatian coast through the sunny August of 1939.

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