They were a mile away from the coral island, and it looked just as perfect as the hundreds of other islands, some large, some small, in this far corner of the South Seas. From a distance of two miles, they all looked the same - just a greenish smudge on the horizon. At one mile, there were coconut trees as far as the eye could see, a yellow strip of sand and a few dark dots which were undoubtedly canoes, proving that this particular small island was inhabited.

Abstract

A quarter of a mile from shore, just outside the reef, the small barque dropped anchor just long enough to lower a rowing boat. Two men in linen suits clambered down into the boat, clutching light bags made of sailcloth with a change of clothes and other essentials. They reached upwards to grasp two heavy wooden boxes, which they placed in the centre of the boat, then removed their jackets and ties and with a practised air began rowing in the direction of the shore.

"I'll be back for ye twa Sassenachs on Saturday," shouted the skipper. "Mind yerselves wi' ma wee boat on that reef, now!" "Don't worry. You can trust me," shouted one of the oarsmen, a slim man in his early twenties with an engaging smile. "God bless!" shouted the first mate, a Liverpool man who made no secret of the fact that he was an atheist. "Missionaries!" he muttered to the skipper as the rowing boat moved away. "How many souls do you think they'll save by Saturday?" The skipper grunted and waved to the man on the winch to pull in the anchor. The barque had a full load of sail to catch the morning breeze, but it was now so still that without the engine they would hardly have moved at all. The skipper watched the rowing boat to make sure it cleared the reef safely, then yawned. "Ye know where to find me if I'm needed." Then he vanished below deck, and nobody gave the island or the rowing boat another glance.

After several days as passengers on the barque, the two oarsmen were enjoying their little outing. It was like being on the Serpentine. Once they were through the gap in the surf that marked the reef, the water around them was calm. Instead of deep blue, it was now pale and clear in the lagoon, and they could see tiny tropical fishes swimming all around them.

"Hang on a moment, Archer," said the man with the smile. "Stop pulling for a second. I need to see where we're going."

"Puffed out again, Sooty?" enquired the other. "If you had ever done serious training for the Arbuthnot-Jones you wouldn't be complaining now."

The chaffing between the two old friends followed a familiar routine. Whenever one was tempted to be irritated with the other, the warm shared memories of schooldays came flooding back.

"Don't start criticising your skipper, or you'll be made to walk the plank," Blair retorted. "When we get there I shall show how fit I am by carrying both boxes of Bibles. You can carry the parasol."

"Now you've got your breath back, perhaps we can start rowing again," said Archer. They were following a route parallel to the shoreline, aiming for the beached outrigger canoes.

"Funny that nobody seems to be about," said Blair as he lifted his oar. "Perhaps they've all gone off to Berlusconi's for an ice-cream."

The two pals had been together in the South Seas for some months, travelling on small trading vessels which traded cooking pots and cheap trinkets for copra. Missionaries, like farmers in the Canadian prairies, are always looking for virgin soil to plough. There was no use trying to distribute Bibles on the larger islands, where others had preceded them. More than once they had walked ashore on seemingly remote beaches, only to find that the inhabitants were already devout Protestants. Sometimes the islanders turned out to be Catholics and chanted "Hail Mary" to them as they disembarked. Archer and Blair knew that within a week they could turn the islanders into Anglicans, but the Bible Society back in London strictly forbade such practices. So each month, they scoured the chart for ever smaller and more remote islands.

This particular dot was too small to appear on any map, but it was in a part of the South Seas over which the British Empire held sway, at least in theory. In practice, there was no way of telling what seafaring visitors had preceded them, or what kind of welcome they might expect. The natives were almost always friendly, and responded to a few well-chosen words in pidgin English. Blair sang hymns in a tuneful tenor voice, while Archer was a dab hand at storytelling. On most islands they found that a week was quite long enough to teach the inhabitants the fundamentals of revealed religion, without going so far as to claim fully-fledged converts. At the end of each voyage Blair and Archer scrupulously sent their reports to the Society with an exact tally of Bibles distributed and islands visited, baptising each one with a name drawn from the past register of St Stephen's College. There was a Soames Island, a Mandelson Island, and even a Prescott Island. The Bibles themselves were printed in large editions in Bombay on paper suitable for the tropics, with numerous colour illustrations.

By now they were approaching the shore, resting on the oars as the boat coasted gently through the shallows past the occasional floating coconut. "Very strange," said Archer, shaking his head. "You'd think they'd be down on the beach by now to welcome us." They scanned the line of coconut trees above the beach, but there was no sign of life. Yet the giant outrigger canoes showed every sign of being in good repair.

They pulled the boat on to the sand, unloaded their modest belongings and lay down in the narrow strip of shade given by one of the canoes," It was nearly noon, and if the islanders were too nervous to meet them, it would be foolhardy to plunge into the interior. Far better to wait on the beach and allow time to give them confidence to approach." Then with the exchange of a few trinkets, the missionary work could start.

"Fa-a-ag!" shouted Archer without warning. This was an old joke between them. But on this occasion Archer kept his voice low, so as not to alarm any natives within earshot."

"Yes, sir?" replied Blair, entering into the spirit of the game.

"Fetch me two of Berlusconi's capital jam puffs, and a couple of coconuts. And make sure you look sharpish."

"Rightee-ho!"

Blair drew a small panga from his bag, strolled up the beach, picked up two coconuts and neatly chopped away the end of each one, leaving a hole small enough to drink through. "There's a terrible jam puff crisis at the moment. They're blaming it on the Kaiser. But here's your coconut, sir," he said.

"Thank you, young Sooty. By the way, there's no need to call me sir."

After they had finished the coconuts and a few biscuits, they dozed for a while. When they awoke, there was still no sign of human life. The sun was falling from the sky, and they moved to the other side of the outrigger to remain in the shade.

"Why did you leave the old Coll. when you did?" Blair felt he should use this rare moment of intimacy to ask a question which he had never quite dared pose before. Archer, like himself, was a difficult man to embarrass, but Blair knew the subject he was raising was a sensitive one.

"It wasn't beastliness or anything like that, if that's what you're thinking," Archer replied. "It was some nonsense over a missing postal order. To be honest, I don't remember all the details. But they asked me not to come back for the final two terms. Actually, that suited me fine, though I would have enjoyed a final crack at the school mile record."

"So you made your way in the world?" "That's right." Archer paused. "I had my own motor within a year."

"Did they really send you down at the Old Bailey? What happened, exactly?"

Archer paused again. He drew a circle in the sand, and continued. "Some business about share certificates, and loans, and promissory notes. I won't bore you with the details. Take my advice, never trust a lawyer and especially not a judge. I now know the prisons are full of innocent men who have been tripped up by the law."

"How awful," said Blair, shaking his head. "And the real criminals go scot-free."

"When they let me out, I travelled here and decided to stay. And how about you? I heard about the Mesopotamia business."

"I was innocent too," said Blair. "But I managed to stay one step ahead of the lawyers. The way I see it, you have to follow God and your conscience. Veritas prevalebit. What counts is knowing, deep down inside, that you're doing the right thing."

"Good for you, old chap," said Archer. "I tried to do that. Of course, I wasn't religious like you. But at least I never got anyone killed."

Blair was unsure what Archer meant by this, but decided to change the subject. "Did you ever get that novel published?" he asked.

"Not yet. Publishers are such duffers. But I'm going to persevere."

"I might try writing a novel some day. The dear old mater always said I was good at making things up."

There was another long pause as the sun continued to sink, and the water in the lagoon began to turn a golden colour. A slight evening breeze began to blow, moving the coconut trees and making a handful of nuts drop on the sand.

"My turn to fag, I think," said Archer, scrambling to his feet. He walked up the beach to the line of trees and bent down for the coconuts.

There was a single piercing cry, and a hail of arrows flew out of the dark green shade. Blair saw his chum stumble and fall forward. Before he could draw breath about thirty natives armed with bows and arrows, sticks and spears had surrounded Archer's crumpled figure and were pounding it to a pulp. The men wore no trace of clothing, just leaves and bones tied together with rough ropes of coconut fibre. Their leader carried what appeared to be a rusty naval cutlass. Blair understood in an instant that this was an island on which no white man had ever set his foot and survived to tell the tale.

As the savages ran towards him across the sand, he clasped his panga and took to his heels, but realised there was nowhere he could escape. He ran into the water, hoping to slow their advance somehow. Did it all really have to end like this? Wasn't Captain Cook killed by natives on the beach of a Pacific island? Then at least he and Archer would be in good company. But he would never return in triumph to St Stephen's to rout his enemies, he would never acknowledge the cheers of the adoring populace from a Rolls-Royce, he would never play Henry V at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, and he would never become prime minister, a job for which he considered himself well suited. Perhaps if he offered to put down his weapon and smoke the pipe of peace, they might spare him? He was tiring now, and the war-whoops of his pursuers were getting closer. He turned, dropped his panga in the water and held up his empty hands.

Above the tops of the coconut trees rose the smoke of a cooking fire. Blair grinned his most persuasive grin. In response the savage with the cutlass let out the full-throated roar of a man within sight of his dinner, who knew, deep down inside, that he was doing the right thing. Blair turned again and tried to run into deeper water, but he felt a stinging pain between his shoulderblades and a blow which knocked him forward. He was gulping seawater and sand, and trying to get back on his feet, when another blow on the side of the head left him groggy. He turned on his back, opened his eyes skywards and tried to think of something beautiful before he lost consciousness completely. Cherie! He wanted so much to see the girl in the blue dress, whose photograph he had kept in his desk wrapped in tissue paper. Cherie! Cherie! But try as he might, he could not conjure up her features. Instead, a nightmarish image swam before his eyes as he slipped below the water. He saw a carving knife cutting into a joint of meat, and behind it a pair of staring eyes. It was the face of the grocer's daughter.

Anthony Blair Captain of School (Black Pig Books) is available in hardback through the Guardian Bookshop for £9.99. A six-CD audiobook read by Peter Donaldson. is available for £19.99.