He stayed awake for the remainder of the night, consciously fighting against an almost overpowering tiredness, against leaden eyelids and a woolly, fuzzy mind, ignoring the demands of a parched throat and dry, swollen tongue that seemed to fill all his mouth that he should let go, let his quivering eyelids fall and bring a few hours’ blessed oblivion. But something far back in his mind kept telling him that he mustn’t let go, that the lifeboat and the lives of twenty, people were in his hands, and when these urgings were not enough he thought of the little boy asleep less than two feet away, and then he was wide awake again. And so a night that was the epitome of all the sleepless nights he had ever known dragged endlessly by, and after a long, long time the first faint streaks of grey began to lighten the eastern horizon.
Minutes passed, and he was beginning to see the mast clearly silhouetted against the greying sky, then the line of the gunwale of the boat, then the separate and distinct forms of the people lying about the boat. He looked first at the boy. He was still sleeping peacefully in the sternsheets beside him, wrapped in a blanket, his face only a white blur in the darkness, his head lying pillowed in the crook of Gudrun Drach-mann’s arm. She herself was still sitting on the lower cross seat, twisted round at an uncomfortable angle, her head on the sternsheets. Bending down more closely, Nicolson could see that her head wasn’t resting squarely on the seat but against it, the edge of the wood cutting cruelly into her right cheek. Carefully he raised her head, eased a doubled corner of the blanket over the edge of the seat and then, moved by some strange impulse, gently moved back the wave of blue-black hair that had fallen forward over her face, concealing the long, ragged scar. For a moment he let his hand rest there, lightly, then he saw the sheen of her eyes in the gloom and knew that she had not been asleep. He felt no embarrassment, no guilt, just smiled down at her without speaking: she must have seen the gleam of his teeth against his darkly-tanned face, for she smiled in return, rubbed the scarred cheek softly, twice, against his hand then slowly straightened, careful not to disturb the sleeping boy.
The boat was settling deeper in the water, the level inside already two or three inches above the floorboards, and Nicolson knew it was time and past time to bale it out. But baling was a noisy business, and it seemed pointless to wake people from the forgetfulness of sleep to the iron realities of another day when the boat could go at least another hour without being emptied: true, many people were up to their ankles in water, and one of two actually sitting in it, but these were only tiny discomforts compared to what they would have to suffer before the sun went down again.
And then, suddenly, he saw something that drove away all thought of inaction, all thought of sleep. Quickly he shook McKinnon awake — he had to, for McKinnon had been leaning against him and would have fallen had Nicolson risen without warning — rose, stepped over the after thwart and dropped down on his knees on the next lower cross seat. Jenkins, the seaman who had been so dreadfully burnt, was lying in a most peculiar position, half-crouched, half-kneeling, his bloodied wrists still tied to the thwart, his head jammed against the tank leading. Nicolson stooped and shook him by the shoulder: the seaman fell further over on his side, but made no other movement. Again Nicolson shook him, more urgently this time, calling his name, but Jenkins would never be shaken awake nor hear his name again. By accident or design — probably by design, and in spite of the ropes that bound him — he had slipped off the thwart some time during the night and drowned in a few inches of bilge-water.
Nicolson straightened his back and looked at McKinnon, and the bo’sun nodded, understanding at once. It wouldn’t do the lifeboat’s morale any good at all if the survivors woke and found a dead man in their midst, and that they should slip him quietly over the side without even a shred of a burial service seemed a small price to pay for preserving the already fading reason of more than one who might lose it entirely if he opened his eyes only to find already in their midst what he knew must eventually come to all.
But Jenkins was heavier than he looked, and his body was awkwardly jammed between the thwarts. By the time McKinnon had cut free the securing ropes with his jack-knife and helped Nicolson drag him to a side bench, at least half the people in the lifeboat were awake, watching them struggle with the body, knowing that Jenkins was dead, yet looking on with eyes lack-lustre and strangely uncomprehending. But no one spoke; it seemed as if they might get Jenkins over the side without any hysterical outbursts or demonstrations, when a sudden high-pitched cry from for’ard, a cry that was almost a scream, made even the most tired and lethargic jerk their heads round and stare up towards the bows of the boat. Both Nicolson and McKinnon, startled, dropped the body and swung round: in the hushed stillness of the tropical dawn, the cry had seemed unnaturally loud,
The cry had come from the young soldier, Sinclair, but he wasn’t looking at Jenkins, or anywhere in that direction. He was on his knees on the floorboards, rocking gently to and fro, staring down at somebody lying stretched on his back. Even as Nicolson watched, he flung himself to one side and pillowed his head on his forearms and the gunwale, moaning softly to himself.
In three seconds Nicolson was by his side, gazing down at the man in the bottom of the boat. Not all of his body was lying on the boards — the backs of his knees were hooked over a thwart, the legs pointing incongruously skywards, as if he had fallen backwards from the seat on which he had been sitting: the back of his head rested in a couple of inches of water. It was Ahmed the priest, Farnholme’s strange and taciturn friend, and he was quite dead.
Nicolson stooped over the priest, quickly thrust his hand inside the man’s black robe to feel for the heart and as quickly withdrew. The flesh was cold and clammy: the man had been dead for hours.
Unconsciously, almost, Nicolson shook his head in bewilderment, glanced up at McKinnon and saw his own expression reflected there. He looked down again, bent over the body to lift up the head and the shoulders, and it was then that the shock came. He couldn’t shift the body more than a couple of inches. Again he tried and again he failed. At his signal, McKinnon lifted one side of the body while Nicolson knelt down till his face was almost in the water, and then he saw why he had failed. The jack-knife between the shoulder-blades was buried clear up to the hilt, and the handle was caught between the planks of the bottom-boards.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
NICOLSON ROSE slowly to his feet and drew his forearm across his forehead. It was already hot for the time of the day, but not that hot. His right arm hung loosely by his side, the butt of the Colt gripped tightly in his hand. He had no recollection of pulling it out of his belt. He gestured at the fallen priest.
“This man is dead.” His quiet voice carried easily in the hushed silence. “He has a knife in his back. Someone in this boat murdered him.”
“Dead! You said he was dead? A knife in his back?” Farnholme’s face wasn’t pleasant as he pushed for’ard and knelt at the priest’s side. He was on his feet in a moment, his mouth a thin white line in the darkness of his face. “He’s dead all right. Give me that gun, Nicolson. I know who did it.”
“Leave that gun alone!” Nicolson held him off with a stiff arm, then went on: “Sorry, Brigadier. As long as the captain’s unwell I am in charge of this boat. I can’t let you take the law into your own hands. Who did it?”
“Siran, of course!” Farnholme was back on balance again, but there was no masking the cold rage in his eyes. “Look at the damn’ murdering hound, sitting there smirking.”
“‘The smiler with the knife beneath the cloak’.” It was Willoughby who spoke. His voice was weak and husky, but he was quiet and composed enough: the night’s sleep seemed to have done him some good.
“It’s not under anyone’s cloak,” Nicolson said matter-of-factly. “It’s sticking in Ahmed’s back — and it’s because of my damn’ criminal carelessness that it is,” he added in the bitterness of sudden recollection and understanding. “I forgot that there was a boat jack-knife as well as two hatchets in number two lifeboat . . . Why Siran, Brigadier?”