The 14 Nigerians - six women and eight men - were tossed about in heavy seas for 20 hours before Fuerteventura's coastal patrol plucked them from their little wooden boat on Thursday night. Small wonder, as they clambered shivering on to Spanish soil, clutching plastic bags and blinking in the glare of the Civil Guard flashlights, that relief, as well as shock, was etched upon their faces. Faith, 25, seven months pregnant, told me next morning she'd been scared to death and hadn't stopped vomiting "The sea was high The boat was jumping up and down. I thought we were finished." But like her shipmates huddled in that rickety craft, she overcame her fear because of the greater terror of what she had left behind in Nigeria "There is a war there, a big problem. Going back would be the end of my life."Just 90km separates the African coast near El Aioun in Western Sahara from Gran Tarajal in Fuerteventura, the nearest of Spain's Canary Islands to Africa. Within an hour of putting to sea, the two Moroccan pilots of the patera would have glimpsed the island's Entallada lighthouse and used it to guide them.The two pilots were arrested and their powerful outboard motor confiscated. Moored on Gran Tarajal harbourside is a sad flotilla of pateras, containing the hastily abandoned debris of similar clandestine voyages: a plastic flip-flop, an empty milk carton, an orange, a sodden T-shirt.

Sometimes the passengers fail to make it and the boats arrive empty.Easygoing Fuerteventura, the least commercialised of Spain's tourist-loving Canaries, is the new southern frontier of Europe. Few of the millions of English and German holidaymakers drawn to the island's silver beaches and gentle pace can be aware of the mounting traffic of those fleeing horror in sub-Saharan Africa.Solomon, 30, arrived in January from Sierra Leone after rebels seized his family's land and threatened to cut off his hands if he did not join them "They burned my sister to death in her home. They killed my parents on the road as they were trying to escape to Liberia, and threw them in a mass grave. They beat me on the head." Solomon removes his baseball cap to show a deep scar "I walked for three nights to the town of Bo I hid in the bush during the day.

Then I got a lift to Freetown."Solomon befriended some Americans on a ship, running errands for them, buying cigarettes. They took him on board and three weeks later put him off at Puerto de Rosario in Fuerteventura. He went to the Red Cross, near the bus station, where they helped him request asylum "At least I feel safe here If I go back it's going back to death. If they're kidnapping UN peacekeepers, what chance do I have? If Spain sends me back it means they want me to die."Spain will not send Solomon or Faith back, nor any of the hundreds who have arrived in Fuerteventura in recent months from Nigeria and Sierra Leone Spain has no repatriation treaty with these countries.

Moroccans, by contrast, are flown to Spain's Moroccan enclave of Melilla and plonked across the frontier within 72 hours.These new African arrivals are young, healthy, educated and, increasingly, female They are fleeing war, not poverty or famine. "Only the fit survive the terrible journey," says Gerardo Mesa, head of the Red Cross in Fuerteventura. "We warned the government last year that numbers of refugees were building up in El Aioun. We were overwhelmed by the influx, and scrambled to find beds, food and medical care We can't send them back But we mustn't improvise.