For five minutes they moved along in silence. Then Bond put a hand on the girl’s knee and said, “We should be all right now, Honey. When they find the boss is dead there’ll be panic. I guess some of the brighter ones will try and get away to Cuba in the plane or the launch. They’ll worry about their skins, not about us. All the same, we’ll not take the canoe out until it’s dark. I guess it’s about ten by now. We should be at the coast in an hour. Then we’ll rest up and try and get in shape for the trip. Weather looks all right and there’ll be a bit more moon tonight. Think you can make it?”
Her hand squeezed his neck. “Of course I can, James. But what about you? Your poor body! It’s nothing but burns and bruises. And what are those red marks across your stomach?”
“Tell you later. I’ll be okay. But you tell me what happened to you last night. How in hell did you manage to get away from the crabs? What went wrong with that bastard’s plan? All night long I could only think of you out there being slowly eaten to death. God, what a thing to have dreamed up! What happened?”
The girl was actually laughing. Bond looked sideways. The golden hair was tousled and the blue eyes were heavy with lack of sleep, but otherwise she might just be coming home from a midnight barbecue.
“That man thought he knew everything. Silly old fool.” She might have been talking about a stupid schoolteacher. “He’s much more impressed by the black crabs than I am. To begin with, I don’t mind any animal touching me, and anyway those crabs wouldn’t think of even nipping someone if they stay quite still and haven’t got an open sore or anything. The whole point is that they don’t really like meat. They live mostly on plants and things. If he was right and he did kill a black girl that way, either she had an open wound or she must have died of fright. He must have wanted to see if I’d stand it. Filthy old man. I only fainted down there at dinner because I knew he’d have something much worse for you.”
“Well, I’m damned. I wish to heaven I’d known that. I thought of you being picked to pieces.”
The girl snorted. “Of course it wasn’t very nice having my clothes taken off and being tied down to pegs in the ground. But those black men didn’t dare touch me. They just made jokes and then went away. It wasn’t very comfortable out there on the rock, but I was thinking of you and how I could get at Doctor No and kill him. Then I heard the crabs beginning to run-that’s what we call it in Jamaica-and soon they came scurrying and rattling along-hundreds of them. I just lay still and thought of you. They walked round me and over me. I might have been a rock for all they cared. They tickled a bit. One annoyed me by trying to pull out a bit of my hair. But they don’t smell or anything, and I just waited for the early morning when they crawl into holes and go to sleep. I got quite fond of them. They were company. Then they got fewer and fewer and finally stopped coming and I could move. I pulled at all the pegs in turn and then concentrated on my right-hand one. In the end I got it out of the crack in the rock and the rest was easy. I got back to the buildings and began scouting about. I got into the machine shop near the garage and found this filthy old suit. Then the conveyor thing started up not far away and I thought about it and I guessed it must be taking the guano through the mountain. I knew you must be dead by then,” the quiet voice was matter of fact, “so I thought I’d get to the conveyor somehow and get through the mountain and kill Doctor No. I took a screwdriver to do it with.” She giggled. “When we ran into each other, I’d have stuck it into you only it was in my pocket and I couldn’t get to it. I found the door in the back of the machine shop and walked through and into the main tunnel. That’s all.” She caressed the back of his neck. “I ran along watching my step and the next thing I knew was your head hitting me in the stomach.” She giggled again. “Darling, I hope I didn’t hurt you too much when we were fighting. My Nanny told me always to hit men there.”