You first, Captain,” he said, and his hand swung up.
Guyon flung himself to one side and the bullet chipped stone from the wall. In the same moment Hamish Grant slashed at the light with his walking stick, plunging the room into darkness.
Marcel cried out sharply and fired twice. He was aware of a shadow moving over towards the right in the split-second flash and fired twice again. The second time the hammer clicked on an empty chamber. He flung the useless weapon into the darkness with a sob and reached for the door.
There was the scrape of a foot behind him and a great arm slid around his neck. He was aware of the pain, of the relent-less brute strength, and struggled wildly. Hamish Grant increased the pressure, his fingers locked together like steel bands, and the Frenchman went limp.
The old man dropped him to the floor and said hoarsely, “Raoul, where are you?”
There was a movement in the darkness beside him. “Here, General.”
Hamish Grant put out a hand and touched him on the shoulder. “Are you hit?”
“Not a chance,” Guyon said. “But let’s get out of here. We must find the girls.”
The old man opened the door cautiously and walked into the passage. Something moved, a dark shadow against the light. He reached out, a snarl rising in his throat, and his wrists were gripped tightly.
A tired, familiar voice said: “All right, General. It’s me.”
CHAPTEREIGHTEEN
LAST ROUND
mallorystruggled across a great slippery mass of rounded stones and paused on top of a natural escarpment. He had never felt greater loneliness in his entire life. On each side stretched the sea, and before him, clear in the moonlight, the sinister, twisted maze of jagged rocks and great boulders that made up the reef.
At high water the escarpment upon which he was now standing would be a good five fathoms deep, and he moved on, slipping and stumbling across a morass of slimy seaweed, sinking up to his knees in places.
It had taken him three-quarters of an hour to get half-wayalong the reef. With each passing moment it became more and more apparent that unless he could increase his rate of progress the tide would sweep back in to pound him across these cruel rocks.
He came out on to a strip of wet sand shining in the moon-light, and started to run. For perhaps a hundred yards the sand held true and then petered out into gravel and broken stone.
He entered a forest of dark pointing fingers which lifted into the moonlight like some strange prehistoric monument and wasted ten minutes finding his way through. As he struggled out along a shelving bank of seaweed he paused and looked down at moonlight shining on the waters of the Middle Passage.
It stretched before him, a dark tunnel with at least twenty feet of headroom at low water. The wind blowing in from the sea, scattering spray in his face, decided him. At his pre-sent rate of progress he was certain to be caught. There was only one remaining chance of beating the tide and he slid over the.edge.
Strangely enough, when he entered the water he wasn’t aware of the cold and his lifejacket worked perfectly. He turned on to his back and started to swim, using both arms in a powerful back stroke.
The passage was shadowy in the moonlight and very still and the sound of the sea outside seemed to come from another place. He remembered what lay beneath him, fathoms deep in the darkness, and pushed the thought away, concentrating all his strength on the task in hand.
It was perhaps fifteen minutes later that he became aware of a different note outside and spray foamed through the crannies above his head, splashing across his face. The water-level started to rise at once and with every passing minute the roof came nearer.
Pie turned on his face and swam forward, thrashing wildly with his feet. A few moments later he came out into a jagged basin. As a swell lifted him up he grabbed for a ledge and hauled himself out of the water.