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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.

They had spent three weeks among the islands between Dubrovnik and Split, and had put back to Zavrana because of a rumour that a peasant had ploughed up a bust of Diocletian and was prepared to consider any reasonable offer. Mr. Meriden had been disappointed. Inquiries on the spot had discovered neither peasant nor emperor, and to console himself Mr.

Now he was in love with this new fantasy, and Zavrana played into it admirably. Nothing could be more serene than the lovely islands that floated in the blue reaches of the Adriatic beyond. The broken reflections of lean masts and drying sails turned lazily in the green water of the port. The tinted roofs of pleasant, but not palatial, villas were visible on the wooded foothills amidst the oaks and chestnuts, the cypresses and cedars of Lebanon. There were orangeries and olive groves and the glittering, cycloramic backdrop of the Dinaric Alps to lend its enchantment to Zavrana itself, nestling (cosiness figured prominently in Mr. Meriden’s fantasy) snugly in the foreground. It was the ideal base, picturesque, secluded, blissfully quiet, and with Dubrovnik easily accessible by car. Its one small enterprise combined the functions of boatyard and undertaking establishment. The work was cheap and good, whether you wanted a coffin or a dinghy. Mr. Meriden had looked at a design for a coffin, but had decided that it could wait awhile, even though the quotation was very favourable. He had crossed to the other department and discussed some work to be done on the yacht. There had been storm damage to be repaired; also he had wanted alterations in the saloon. He had found he could save lots of dinars on the estimate those Dubrovnik sharks had given him. And then, a wonderful thing had happened. He had found another bargain.